Condemned prisoner Franklin Dewayne Alix was headed to the Texas death chamber Tuesday evening for fatally shooting a Houston man during a robbery.

Condemned prisoner Franklin Dewayne Alix was headed to the Texas death chamber Tuesday evening for fatally shooting a Houston man during a robbery. Alix, 34, faced lethal injection for the capital murder of 23-year-old Eric Bridgeford, who interrupted Alix as he robbed the apartment of Bridgeford's sister. The sister also accused Alix of abduction and rape. Authorities say Alix conducted a six-month crime rampage. The execution would be the fifth this year in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Alix's lawyer, Robert Rosenberg, said appeals to the courts to stop the execution were exhausted. "I know I messed up," Alix told The Associated Press recently from death row. "I killed the dude. I wasn't trying to but I did. The dude wasn't bothering me. I was bothering him. "I don't want to die. I'm remorseful. But I won't apologize."
According to trial testimony, Alix abducted Bridgeford's sister Jan. 3, 1998, forced her into the trunk of a car, drove around and raped her, then brought her home. As he was ransacking her apartment, Bridgeford came in, saw Alix with a gun and ran off but was shot in the back. Alix fled and was arrested a few days later. Alix denied the rape, said he spotted the woman outside her apartment at night and considered her "easy prey." He said he threatened to put her in the trunk of a car and she "volunteered to give me her TV" if he wouldn't kill her.
"That's how I got in her house," he said. "Her brother came home. It was just a simple robbery. My intention was never to kill anybody. I'm looking to rob, not kill." He said he was behind a door when Bridgeford entered the apartment. "I swung around, put the gun in his face," Alix said, "If I wanted to, I could have shot him between the eyes. I pushed off, and the gun went off. It happened in a second. It felt like hours. I looked at him and took off running."
Asked what he took in the robbery, he replied: "I didn't get nothing." At his 1998 trial, his lawyers tried to persuade the jury he didn't intend to kill Bridgeford. Jurors deliberated five hours before convicting him of capital murder. Alix said a debt of "a couple of thousand" dollars to a friend got out of control and forced him to turn to robbery to get money.
Harris County prosecutors said the slaying was one of three plus two rapes and dozens of robberies they tied to Alix from August 1997 through January 1998. "He was just a major league crime spree," Luci Davidson, a former prosecutor now in private practice, recalled last week. "He's probably one of the worst criminal defendants I ever tried as a prosecutor."
She said he confessed to most of the crimes. Alix said he confessed to the rape of Bridgeford's sister because he believed it would help him not get the death penalty. "I'm on death row because I was confused," he said. "I came here with confusion. I'm leaving a better person."
DNA evidence used in his trial also played a role in a scandal involving the Houston Police Department's crime lab when retests discredited the initial results. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming a federal district judge's findings, said the DNA evidence was part of a "larger body of proof," including Alix's long history of violence, that showed jurors he was dangerous and should be sentenced to death.
Scheduled to die next, on April 22, is William Berkley, 31, condemned for the March 2000 abduction, robbery, rape and fatal shooting of 18-year-old Sophia Martinez, whose body was found in the desert outside El Paso.

Stephen Baker, representing the drug mastermind Curtis Warrens , lambasted island authorities for failing to censure those within Jersey police

Stephen Baker, representing the drug mastermind Curtis Warrens , lambasted island authorities for failing to censure those within Jersey police who had lied to install an illegal bug in the car of one of the co-accused.Curtis Warrens 13-year jail sentence for conspiring to smuggle £1m of cannabis into Jersey should have been reduced because of the authorities’ “cheating”, his lawyer has argued
The advocate argued Warren's prison tariff should have been lessened to send out a warning that law enforcement agencies breaking the rules should never be tolerated.
Dame Heather Steel, judging the appeal of Warren and his five-strong gang, revealed that a decision about the gangster's challenge against conviction and sentence could take over a week.

Compton Gang Shooting

RAIDED Nationwide Import Car Salvage on North Shepherd late last week, as well as at least three homes.

RAIDED Nationwide Import Car Salvage on North Shepherd late last week, as well as at least three homes.The plot they allege to have uncovered underscores not only the growing role of Guatemala in the international drug and weapons business, but also is unique in that it involved an organization run and operated by people with no previous criminal records. The Houston group would have perhaps evaded the law if it weren't for a gun dealer dropping a dime on them by calling the feds, according to testimony by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Gaetano Beato.
Agents seized computers and financial documents and arrested the business owner, Guatemala native Joel Linares, 35, as well as a Conroe couple who were allegedly his employees in crime. They are accused of being part of a Linares-led plot that moved at least 105 illegally bought guns from Houston to Mexico and Guatemala, where some ended up in the hands of cartel gangsters.In seeking their release on bond, their lawyers have sought to show that the defendants have clean backgrounds and have never been accused of any crimes, and are not a violent threat to the community.What may have been the crew's final undoing was what federal agents contend was an attempt to sneak $2.5 million worth of heroin into the United States by stashing it in the drive shaft of a pick-up truck.A team of ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were watching in November 2009 as Linares met outside the salvage yard with two other men, Fernando Huezo, 28, a California native who lives in Conroe and had family in Guatemala, and Felix Dallas-Ortega, a Cuban who lives here. Dallas' age is unclear, as is where he is charged.Acting on Linares' orders, prosecutors contend that the next day, Huezo and Dallas headed to the border in separate vehicles. Huezo guided him into the border city of Matamoros, located across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, as well as put him in touch with people there who would trade out his drive shaft for one loaded with 17.9 kilograms of heroin.Three have confessed As he came back into the United States, Dallas was arrested and confessed, according to ATF. Also later caught was Huezo and Huezo's his common-law wife, Jenni Cortez, 26.
Cortez and Huezo have confessed to their roles in the plot, Beato testified. All documents related to Cortez's case have remained sealed, even five days after she was arrested.She is said to have purchased at least 43 semiautomatic pistols and rifles since September 2008 at a cost of about $42,000, according to a news release from the Justice Department. She allegedly received about $200 for each purchase.At least 15 of those guns were recovered in Mexico or Guatemala and later traced back to Cortez. The others were allegedly purchased by her husband.A recent U.S. State Department report notes that Guatemala's role in the drug world has expanded as the government of neighboring Mexico has intensified pressure on drug cartels, leaving organizations looking for new ways to move places to expand as well as bring mayhem and bloodshed.Authorities repeatedly have said that a vital part of the cartels doing business is being able to outfit their private armies with U.S.-made weapons.

teenager shot in the neck and another getting shot in the face.

The Amador County Sheriff's Office learned of the gun play almost immediately after it happened. Deputies rushed to the scene and discovered two young, Hispanic men bleeding amidst the slot machines and lights. Each had been hit with pistol fire at close range. Law enforcement officers from around Amador converged on the Rancheria to quickly set up a perimeter. The entire gaming facility was then evacuated as the sheriff's SWAT cleared the parking structure. The heavily-armed team members, along with deputies and detectives, began searching every vehicle on the grounds. They carefully combed the area where witnesses had observed the shooter and connected suspects fleeing. Eventually, four suspects were netted between two parked cars. As the cuffs were being slapped on those individuals, a bystander reported seeing two suspicious males coming out of the brushy, wooded area near Dalton Road. A California Highway Patrol officer was in position to apprehend them while sheriff's deputies raced to the scene. Using surveillance video of the actual shooting, detectives confirmed that one of the two suspects coming out of the brush was the trigger man. That shooter, a Hispanic man in his late teens to early 20s, has yet to be identified by authorities. Amador County Undersheriff Jim Wegner stated that all parties involved in the confrontation were from Stockton and had known associations with the violent street gangs the Nortenos, and the Surenos. The groups are deadly rivals in California's gang culture. It's still unclear which side fired during the clash. Since December, the Ione Police Department and the Jackson Police Department have both arrested alleged members the Nortenos for various felonies - all individuals who live in Amador County. The two victims in today shooting were medi-flighted to trauma centers in the Central Valley. They are reportedly in stable condition. The alleged shooter is being held at Amador County Jail for attempted murder without bail.
Having worked all day at the crime scene, Wegner told the Ledger Dispatch that he appreciated assistance on the perimeter from the CHP, Jackson PD and Sutter Creek PD. He also praised the Rancheria's security officers for their efforts. "Their security did a really good job of helping us," the undersheriff said late Sunday afternoon. "They got surveillance images to us right away and provided important information to help our detectives make this arrest."

Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place

Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn.Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that both guns were once seized in criminal cases in Memphis. The officials described how the weapons made their separate ways from an evidence vault to gun dealers and to the shooters.
The use of guns that once were in police custody and were later involved in attacks on police officers highlights a little-known divide in gun policy in the United States: Many cities and states destroy guns gathered in criminal probes, but others sell or trade the weapons in order to get other guns or buy equipment such as bulletproof vests.

Curtis Darnell Johnson, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to unlawfully transporting firearms, current 15-year sentence will be reduced.

Curtis Darnell Johnson, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to unlawfully transporting firearms, current 15-year sentence will be reduced.Prosecutors had used a 2002 battery conviction as one of the underlying crimes to charge him as an armed career criminal. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 7-2 majority, said Florida's battery statute doesn't constitute a violent felony because physical force isn't an element of the crime.
Johnson, 41, now faces a 10-year maximum and just two to three years under federal sentencing guidelines, said Assistant Federal Defender Lisa Call of Jacksonville, who argued the case in Washington in October. She said she felt confident after the argument - her first before the Supreme Court - because the justices seemed focused on the issue.
Not without complicationsBut the impact of the decision extends beyond Johnson."When Congress writes these general criminal laws, they want to piggyback on broad categories of state crimes," said Florida Coastal School of Law professor B.J. Priester. "The Supreme Court instructed the lower courts that they have to do a more nuanced interpretation of these state laws."
Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman said the opinion is the latest in a series of high court rulings to scale back the types of crimes prosecutors can use to enhance sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act. The stiff minimum sentences have given prosecutors more bargaining power to leverage pleas, said Berman, who teaches criminal sentencing.He said federal sentencing laws that are triggered by state crimes are bound to be complicated because each state has its own set of laws.
"What's really a mess is the way Congress wrote this statute," Berman said. "The Supreme Court has come to the conclusion that this is meant for people who have a more serious criminal history."The opinion won't impact state prosecutions because it only applies to federal gun crimes, said attorney A. Russell Smith of Jacksonville, former president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. What's unclear is how many federal cases will be affected."It's going to have defense lawyers carefully scrutinizing the specifics of prior convictions the government is using to enhance sentences," Smith said.
Johnson has prior convictions dating back to 1985 for aggravated battery, burglary and cocaine possession. He also had a previous misdemeanor battery conviction, which meant his second one became a felony under Florida law.Federal prosecutors used the second battery as an underlying felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act. But Scalia noted that the Florida Supreme Court had previously determined that battery can be proven with any intentional physical contact, no matter how slight.
Because of that, Scalia wrote, the crime doesn't necessarily include physical force, which is required to enhance a sentence under the federal act. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined comment on the ruling.Call said Johnson was excited when told of the opinion. She said interacting with the Supreme Court justices was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and she praised the Federal Defender's Office for helping her prepare.

Project Folkstone focused on a “criminal organization” involved in a cross-border gun smuggling operation that specialized in trafficking illegal guns

Project Folkstone focused on a “criminal organization” involved in a cross-border gun smuggling operation that specialized in trafficking illegal guns in the GTA. Police said that criminal organization was smuggling guns into Canada from the U.S., along with various drugs including cocaine, marijuana and heroin.David Barker, 39, of Windsor, is charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, weapons trafficking and commission of an offence for a criminal organization.
Jason Tompkins, 35, of Windsor, is charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, commission of an offence for a criminal organization, importing firearms and trafficking weapons.Police said Tompkins was a “main player” in the criminal operation who liaised with the gun sources in Kentucky and the buyers here.
“He was facilitating the transport and smuggling of the guns coming into the country,” said Corey.Police nabbed two other Windsor men, but their names haven’t been released. They were all shipped to Newmarket.

Russians are on trial in the United States in at least three separate cases involving gun crimes

Russians are on trial in the United States in at least three separate cases involving gun crimes, including a waiting-room murder, a Kalashnikov-armed gang of thieves and a repeat-offender bank robber.Oregon prosecutors are struggling to solve a mysterious murder in which a Russian-speaking unlicensed dentist is accused of shooting another Russian-speaking man believed to be his patient.
Viktor Gebauer, 79, has pleaded not guilty in the fatal shooting of Viktor Merezhnikov, 47, whose body was found in a chair in what prosecutors are calling a makeshift waiting room at Gebauer's home in Gresham, Oregon, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.Deputy district attorney Chris Ramras said a motive for the Feb. 18 shooting has not been established. "We may never know," he was quoted as saying.He said both men had immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, but he did not know from which former republics. Gebauer, who speaks no English, became a U.S. citizen in 1998 and had practiced dentistry for years without a license, local media reported.
Ramras said the victim called his brother, Vladimir Merezhnikov, "to say he was being held at gunpoint by Gebauer, who was threatening to kill him," The Associated Press reported. When the brother arrived, Gebauer opened the door holding a gun and threatened to shoot him. Merezhnikov saw his brother slumped in a chair before Gebauer closed the door again, the report said.Gebauer later surrendered to police. He told them he had never seen Viktor Merezhnikov before and alleged the victim tried to rob him by using a knife, the AP said. Citing court documents, The Associated Press said the victim was found shot in the abdomen.The victim's wife, Raisa, told the police her husband had visited Gebauer's home in the past. She said her husband "did not own a knife like the one found in his left hand, and that he was right-handed," the AP said.
In an unrelated case, Pennsylvania police have accused three young men believed to be Russian of a series of armed robberies with Kalashnikov assault rifles, local media reported.Maksim Illarionov is suspected of masterminding a series of robberies over the past weeks, the Centre Daily Times reported on its web site Thursday.
Illarionov, 21, was arrested March 3, with Dmitriy Litvinov, 23, and Alexei Semionov, 28, local media reported. They were caught in possession of stolen goods and stolen weapons after they allegedly burglarized homes in the town State College. All three are awaiting trial in jail, local WJAC television reported on its web site.While being escorted by police, Illarionov said the charges against him were “Russian propaganda,” the Centre Daily Times reported. When searching the homes linked to the suspects, police said they found four guns, including two AK-47 rifles.In a comment posted on the paper's web site, a user under the name of LakeErie claimed that he was the guns' owner and that Litvinov "was swearing friendship to me not long ago." Police said one of the Kalashnikovs was discovered in Litvinov's mother's home."I am Russian myself and there is good and bad people among us, just like anywhere else. So please don't judge all of us on example of 3 retards," the entry reads.
In a third case, a former Soviet fighter pilot might face up to life in prison after robbing a bank in upstate New York for the second time in almost 20 years.Alexander Borisov, 46, pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery at a hearing in Dutchess County Court last week, the Poughkeepsiejournal.com reported.Borisov admitted to entering the First Niagara Bank in Millerton on Nov. 30, threatening a teller with a gun and fleeing with some cash. He was caught by police minutes later after abandoning a stolen car.He robbed the same bank in December 1991 and two banks in Connecticut during the following four weeks, Poughkeepsiejournal.com said.

Christopher Tres Cadejuste, of the 500 block Oak Hill Lane, allegedly fired the gun at the victim

Christopher Tres Cadejuste, of the 500 block Oak Hill Lane, allegedly fired the gun at the victim, the ex-boyfriend of Cadejuste's girlfriend, after the two men had a physical altercation in 700 block of Edgar Drive around 9:16 p.m., according to police.
The men were arguing about an previous altercation between the victim and Cadejuste's girlfriend, according to police.Cadejuste, 17, has been charged as an adult with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and malicious destruction of property, according to court records.His is being held without bond at the Wicomico County Detention Center and has a District Court hearing scheduled for March 22.