TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2012
PAGE 8A
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TRANSPORTATION
Pilot remains in custody after outburst
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Clayton Osbon smiled at his wife and JetBlue employees who watched his first federal court appearance from the gallery, but did not speak other than to tell the judge he understood his rights and the charges against him.
Osbon, 49, was not asked to enter a plea during the 10-minute hearing. U.S. Magistrate Judge Clinton E. Averite is expected to rule on the bond issue at a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Osbon has remained in Amarillo since the plane he was piloting last Tuesday was forced to make an emergency landing there following his bizarre unraveling on Flight 191. Passengers wrestled Osbon to the ground after witnesses said he ran through the cabin yelling about Jesus
He was taken to an Amarillo hospital for a medical evaluation and remained there for several days. It was not immediately clear where he was being held Monday.
and al-Qaida, and then restrained him with seat belt extenders.
Conny Osbon hurried to a waiting car outside the courthouse following her husband's hearing. She released a statement through the airline Sunday saying the in-flight outburst "wasn't intentionally violent toward anyone" and asked the media to respect their family's privacy.
Osbon wore normal clothes in the courtroom, dressed in a green shirt and baggy green pants. He was shackled at the feet. His attorney, Dean Roper, declined to comment after the hearing.
Longtime friends and fellow pilots have said they don't recall Clayton Osbon having any previous mental or health problems.
Prosecutors have charged Osbon with interfering with a flight crew. Under federal law, a conviction can bring up to 20 years in prison.
JetBlue pilot Clayton Frederick Osbon, right, is escorted to a waiting vehicle by FBI agents as he is released from The Pavilion at Northwest Texas Hospital, in Amarillo Monday. Osbon was taken directly to the Federal Court Building in Amarillo, Texas for arraignment.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NATIONAL
OAKLAND, Calif. — A gunman opened fire at a Christian university in California Monday, killing at least six people and wounding three more, authorities said. Police say they have a suspect in custody.
The shooting erupted around midmorning at Oikos University in Oakland and left six dead, according to City Council President Larry Reid, who says he was told the count by the police chief.
Gunman kills at least six in college shooting
Officer Johna Watson did not give any other details about the detained suspect.
Authorities earlier described the gunman as a heavyset Korean man in his 40s wearing khaki clothing. "I can confirm that we do have one person who has been detained that we believe is possibly responsible for this shooting." Watson said.
Earlier, television news footage showed a chaotic scene as heavily armed officers swarmed into the building in search of the shooter. The footage also showed bloodied victims on stretchers being loaded into ambulances.
Associated Press
STATE
Mega Millions winner has yet to claim prize
The winning ticket was purchased in northeast Kansas, though lottery officials don't plan to identify the store until the winner comes forward.
Winning tickets also were sold in Illinois and Maryland, making the Kansas ticket worth about $218 million.
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Lottery officials say the holder of the state's winning Mega Millions ticket has not come forward to claim a share of the $656 million jackpot.
The prize must be claimed either at the Kansas Lottery's headquarters in Topeka or at its regional office in Great Bend.
Kansas law gives a prize winner a year to claim a jackpot, and it allows winners to remain anonymous.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dennis Wilson, the Kansas Lottery's executive director, answers questions about the winning Mega Millions ticket sold in northeast Kansas Saturday.
Associated Press
ON TRIAL
Nurse may face death row for killing five
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LUFKIN, Texas — A jury heard evidence Monday to decide if an East Texas nurse goes to death row or spends the rest of her life in prison for killing five kidney dialysis patients by injecting them with bleach.
Kimberly Saenz, 38, sobbed quietly as one witness called by her lawyer talked about how devastating the case has been to Saenz's fifth-grade daughter, one of her two children. The witness was among a dozen who testified Monday, nine of them for Saenz.
"Come out in a box?" attorney Steve Taylor asked Frank AuBuchon, a retired Texas prison official.
"Yes, sir," he replied as Saenz looked down at the defense table.
She was convicted Friday of killing the patients and deliberately injuring five others
at a clinic run by Denver-based health care giant DaVita Inc.
Most of the defense witnesses attested to Saenz's participation in her two children's school work and athletics, how she attended church and was a good worker at a previous job. All were questioned briefly except for the final witness, a prison consultant who described Saenz's restrictions as an inmate serving life without parole and having no chance to get out.
Photos of the victims were among the evidence introduced by Angelina County District Attorney Clyde Herrington, who called only three witnesses Monday.
her head in her right hand.
All were Lufkin law enforcement officers who told of arresting Saenz for public intoxication and of citing her for criminal trespass, both related to domestic disturbances with her husband. Records introduced also showed her husband had filed for divorce and obtained an emergency protective order against her in June 2007, a year before the outbreak of death and illnesses at the Lufkin Davita clinic.
Taylor brought out in questioning that Saenz and her husband had reconciled.
Other records showed she had been fired from her job as a Lufkin hospital nurse after drugs showed up missing and were found in her purse. Her nursing license eventually was suspended. And prosecutors showed records she had submitted false information on a job application in 2009, indicating she worked at a roofing company during the years when she was a nurse.
Death row only was mentioned in a few brief references during all of Monday's questioning and testimony.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Federal appeals court rejects challenge to California law
Colleges cannot discriminate when admitting students
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES — Affirmative action proponents took a hit Monday as a federal appeals court panel upheld California's ban on using race, ethnicity and gender in admitting students to public colleges and universities.
The ruling marked the second time the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals turned back a challenge to the state's landmark voter initiative, Proposition 209, which was passed in 1996.
Affirmative action proponents, who had requested that
"...California voters have every right to prohibit government from color-coding people and playing favorites..."
the court reconsider its 1997 decision after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that affirmative action could be used in college admissions, said they would continue fighting.
was not surprising since the issue had already been decided. This case was redundant and baseless, he said.
"We think the decision is wrong," said Detroit attorney George B. Washington, who is representing the group of minority students and advocacy groups that filed the latest challenge in January 2010.
RALPH KASARDA
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney
"The bottom line from both decisions by the 9th Circuit — today's and the ruling 15 years ago — is that California voters have every right to prohibit government from color-coding people and playing favorites based on
Washington said he would ask the full appellate court to review the case since this decision was issued by a three-judge panel.
In its ruling, the court rejected the plaintiffs' arguments that a new ruling is needed and said the previous decision still applies.
Ralph Kasarda, attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation who had argued in favor of the ban, said the court's decision
individuals' sex or skin color," Kasandra said in a statement.
At least six states have adopted bans on using affirmative action in state college admissions. Besides
California and Michigan, they include Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Washington.
In California, the year after ban was adopted, the number of black, Latino and Native American students at the University of California's most prestigious campuses — Berkeley and Los Angeles — plummeted by 50 percent, according to the plaintiffs cited in the court opinion.
Advocates of affirmative action say such bans lead to the exclusion of minority students and less campus diversity.
The university has tried to compensate for the drop in those students by using other admissions criteria, including a "comprehensive review" of applicants, admitting the top 4 percent of graduates from any high school and decreasing the weight of standardized tests, the opinion said.
But affirmative action proponents say the measures have not been enough to boost opportunities for historically excluded minorities.
Although blacks, Latinos and Native Americans comprise about half of California's high school graduates, they make up only 19.5 percent of the current freshman class at UC Berkeley. Whites compose roughly 30 percent and Asians 48 percent. The remainder is out-of-state students.
Backers of affirmative action bans say ruling out race, gender and ethnicity criteria guarantees that all applicants are treated fairly and not discriminated against.
The issue has led to protracted legal battles in several states.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court said the University of Michigan Law School could consider race in admissions decisions to promote campus diversity.
That decision led to a three-judge panel of the U. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning Michigan's affirmative action ban last year. The full appellate court, however, has agreed to reconsider the case.
In February, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear another case against the University of Texas, alleging that use of affirmative action is discriminatory. If the court decides against the university, the ruling could definitively end consideration of race in public university admissions.