An Iowa judge yesterday rejected a request for new trial in the case of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, convicted of murdering college student Mollie Tibbetts three years ago in Poweshiek County. Bahena Rivera will receive the mandatory sentence of life without parole on August 30. At a hearing last week, his lawyers tried to link Tibbetts’ death to sex trafficking and the disappearance of an 11-year-old boy in the area this summer during the trial.
An Iowa panel has voted to settle a lawsuit and pay five protesters who supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and who claimed their constitutional rights were violated when they were banned from the Iowa Capitol grounds. The State Appeal Board yesterday approved a recommendation by state lawyers to pay Jalesha Johnson, Louise Bequeaith, Haley Jo Dikkers, Brad Penna and Brandi Ramus $5,000 each and their attorney $45,000. The five were arrested July 1, 2020, when a scuffle broke out with police officers at the Capitol. After the arrests, the Iowa State Patrol told the five protesters that legislative leaders ordered them banned from the grounds. A judge must approve the settlement to finalize it.
The National Weather Service is now able to trigger cell phone alerts for high-end Severe Thunderstorm Warnings through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, or WEA. There will now be different levels of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings—base, considerable, and destructive. The ‘destructive’ storms, with winds of 80 mph and baseball size hail, will trigger the phone alerts. This would have triggered during the derecho last August, as well as during the large hail storm around Des Moines earlier this summer.
The Prairie Meadows casino near Des Moines has re-imposed a mask mandate for its guests to slow the spread of COVID-19. The mask mandate went into effect at 8 a.m. Sunday. The Polk County-owned casino, horse racing track and hotel was closed for three months in 2020 because of the pandemic. It reopened in June 2020 with a mask mandate but lifted the requirement earlier this year. The move comes amid a resurgence nationally of the coronavirus and its Delta variant. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance last week calling for even vaccinated people to wear masks indoors, in areas with high transmission risk.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and 11 other state governors have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its decisions on abortion, including Roe v. Wade. Reynolds and the other governors signed on to an amicus brief filed last week in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The governors want the high court to reverse course on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey to leave the decision of abortion policy to states.
In June of this year, the Eastern Iowa Airport says it saw about 80% of travelers compared to numbers from June 2019, which is quite a recovery post-pandemic. More travelers mean a need for more employees, and the airport in Cedar Rapids has about a hundred positions open, from guest services to concessions and even with the airlines themselves. The airport is hosting a job fair today from 9 a.m. to noon, and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. It will be held in an airport hanger at 9410 Shepard Court Southwest. Representatives from airlines, rental car companies, airport concessions and many other departments will be there for on-the-spot interviews.
An Iowa man was sentenced to a decade in federal prison for cyberstalking a Minnesota woman with conduct the judge likened to a form of mental torture. U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams also ordered during a sentencing hearing that 58-year-old Michael Shawn McGuire of Cresco pay a $15,000 fine and $17,500 in restitution to the woman. McGuire admitted to four counts of cyberstalking last December. The woman met McGuire on an online dating website in 2017 and the two dated for several months before she broke up with him. Prosecutors say he then tormented her for two years.
