COURT NEWS

By DEBRA HAIGHT

BCR Correspondent

This week’s court news includes sentencings, a possible plea deal, a trial delay and a federal court ruling in a Michigan gerrymandering case.

The trials of two people accused in the New Year’s Eve murder of Benton Harbor native Tyrone Hassel III have been delayed. He was home on leave from the army at the time of his death. The murder occurred outside his father’s home in St. Joseph Township near Benton Harbor.

Hassel’s wife, Kemia, and Jeremy Cuellar are accused in the killing. All

three were in the U.S. Army and testimony at a February hearing indicated that Kemia Hassel and Cuellar planned the shooting when all three were deployed to South Korea. Kemia Hassel and Jeremy Cuellar were allegedly having an affair and wanted his life insurance money.

The two were scheduled to go to trial this week on charges of first-degree premeditated murder. Cuellar also faces a felony firearms charge. Prosecutors asked for the delay because not all of the laboratory reports are back. The trials are now set for July.

Sarah Jane Kurtz, 50, of West Eureka Road in Eau Claire, pleaded guilty Tuesday to embezzlement between $50,000 and $100,000. She had been scheduled to go to trial on a charge of embezzlement over $100,000 this week. She will be sentenced June 17 at 1:30 p.m. before Judge Sterling Schrock in St. Joseph.
The embezzlement of over $272,000 took place over an eight year period from 2011 to 2018 when she was the secretary/treasurer at the Village Seventh-day Adventist School in Berrien Springs.

Kurtz’s husband, Martin, is a lieutenant in the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department. The police report noted that the alleged embezzlement was investigated by the Michigan State Police Fifth District Headquarters due to conflict of interest concerns with the sheriff’s department and the local police department.

According to the police report, the alleged embezzlement was discovered last summer when a teacher’s salary check bounced and an audit was conducted. The police report indicated that Kurtz allegedly sent an email to the school in July 2018 confessing to taking $127,000.

The audit showed that money was embezzled from the school in a number of ways including automatic bill payments, the use of the school’s debit card for personal purchases, fund transfers to a personal account and by cash payments.

In sentencings, a former motocross champion who assaulted a court magistrate and ran from the Cass County Law & Courts Building last October was sentenced to prison in Cass Circuit Court on witness intimidation and other charges.

Dominic Aldo Izzi, 28, of Saint Clair, Michigan and a former motocross champion, pleaded guilty to several felony charges and was sentenced to

concurrent terms of two to five years and 23 months to four years in prison. He has credit for 189 days already served and must pay $3,144 in fines and costs.

Izzi pleaded guilty to unlawful driving away of an automobile and domestic violence in connection with a Sept. 3 incident, four counts of resisting and obstructing police and one count of assaulting or obstructing a public officer on Oct. 31 and one count of witness intimidation and bribing on Nov. 1. All the incidents occurred in the Cassopolis area.

Chief Assistant Prosecutor Tiffiny Vohwinkle said Izzi’s victim in the domestic violence case suffered several injuries including a broken nose, broken ribs, ruptured eardrums and lacerations during the Sept. 3 incident.  She noted that Izzi also has warrants out for him in Arkansas, California, Georgia and Wisconsin.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in favor of the Michigan League of Women Voters in a gerrymandering lawsuit. The Michigan League and 11 Democratic voters filed lawsuit against the state of Michigan in 2017 contending that the state’s 2011 state legislative and congressional maps violated the Constitution.

A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit ruled that how the 2011 legislative maps were drawn violated the First and Fourteenth amendments and ordered that several legislative district boundaries in Michigan be redrawn.

The ruling requires the state to implement new boundary maps for many of Michigan’s state and federal legislative districts in time for the 2020 election. The boundaries will then be redrawn again in 2021 after the results of the 2020 census are known.

“We presented evidence showing a clear intent by the state legislature to dilute the power of voters and draw themselves into safe districts,” League attorney Mark Brewer said. “With today’s decision, new maps will move the state closer to ensuring voters are picking their representatives, not the other way around.”

Legislative district boundaries would likely have changed anyway as voters approved a ballot measure last November to change the way boundaries are drawn. The new law requires district boundaries for state senator, state representative and U.S. congress seats to be set by an independent commission of citizens rather than the political party in power.