COURT NEWS

By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent

A verdict has been reached in one of two high profile Berrien County Trial Court cases, while a jury is still deliberating in the other. Meanwhile, a Niles man has pleaded guilty to felony charges in connection with a December police standoff in Niles Township and the Michigan Court of Appeals has sent a Cass sex abuse case back for resentencing.

Jurors in the Antwan Mims murder trial brought back guilty verdicts last Friday on all five counts including two counts of first-degree murder. The eight day trial before Berrien County Trial Judge Arthur

Cotter included testimony from witnesses, police and Mims himself who claimed self defense.

Mims is now convicted in the murders of Cortez Miller and Michael Johnson outside a Benton Harbor home on March 25, 2018. Mims fled the state after the shootings and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List before his capture in Georgia last July.

He will be sentenced March 18 and faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the chance for parole on the first degree murder counts.

As the Berrien County Record went to press Tuesday, jurors in the John Benton Lewis murder trial were still deliberating. They received the case

Friday afternoon but did not reach a verdict before breaking for the weekend.

Lewis is accused of killing his wife at their Niles Township home in August 2017. He claimed that unknown males broke into their home and shot his wife and stole her vehicle. Police and prosecutors have said that Lewis was having an affair with another woman and had asked an acquaintance to bring ammunition to the home that day.

Testimony in the Lewis case came from a number of witnesses including police investigating the incident, women who claimed they had affairs with Lewis, members of Carla Lewis’ family.

A Niles man who barricaded himself in his Niles Township home twice in December pleaded guilty last week to felony and misdemeanor charges in Berrien County Trial Court.

Kyle Paul Collinsworth, 21, of Florence Avenue in Niles, will be sentenced April 1 on charges of aggravated assault, interference with electronic communications and possession of cocaine less than 25

grams. He had been scheduled to go to trial on March 20. He remains in jail on $25,000 cash or surety bond.

Berrien County Assistant Prosecutor Jane Wainwright reported that under terms of a plea agreement reached this week, Collinsworth pleaded guilty to two felony charges and one misdemeanor charge (aggravated assault) in return for not being considered a habitual offender and having a felony charge of assault with a dangerous weapon dismissed.

Police responded to two incidents involving Collinsworth on Dec. 14 and 16 in the 1600 block of Florence Avenue in Niles Township. In the first incident, two individuals reported they had been threatened by Collinsworth who was wielding a knife. He initially barricaded himself in the home but later escaped.

Police were called back to the home Dec. 16 when reports came in that he had barricaded himself in the home again. Police secured the exterior of the residence and negotiated his surrender.

The aggravated assault charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail. The interference with electronic communications charge is a two year felony, while the possession of cocaine charge carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison.

An Edwardsburg man sentenced to prison in 2017 on criminal sexual conduct charges will be resentenced after a ruling by the Michigan Court of Appeals last week.

George Hanson, 67, of South Leonard Court in Edwardsburg, was found

guilty of five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (penetration) after an August 2017 trial and was sentenced in October 2017 to a prison term of 25 to 40 years. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender.

The incidents occurred from 2007 to 2014 at a home in Edwardsburg against a young girl who was nine when the molestation began.

The Court of Appeals affirmed Hanson’s convictions but remanded the case back to Cass Circuit Court for resentencing. They ruled that Hanson should have received concurrent sentences and not consecutive sentences on the charges he was convicted of.