Trish Mehaffey

A grieving daughter chastised her father’s killer at his Friday sentencing for sending a hurtful and nasty letter to her family, saying he did them a favor by killing their loved one. Conklin was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

A pilot civil specialty court will start next month in Johnson County to help individuals who were involuntarily committed be successful on their own in the community. The court sessions will ensure participants continue their meds, treatment and receive other needed supports.

The Snapchat video of a North Liberty man, on trial this week for first-degree murder, and his girlfriend saying “we killed” her stepmother in July 2022, was played for the jury Thursday in Benton County District Court in Vinton.

A Cedar Rapids man who intentionally set fire to a house and left 15 animals inside to die was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison.

A prosecutor says motive for North Liberty man helping his girlfriend kill her stepmother in 2022 was money. They also left behind evidence of Snapchat video about suffocating her with a pillow.

A judge, in a bench trial, found a Cedar Rapids man guilty of sexually abusing a 4- to 5-year-old child. He acquitted the man of sexually abusing a 6- to 7-year-old boy.

A former Linn County reserve deputy sheriff was sentenced to 12 years for child pornography. A federal prosecutor said he was “committed to obtaining as much child pornography as he could.”

A former bookkeeper for a Traer trucking company is accused of embezzling over $400,000 from 2015 to 2020. She issued unauthorized checks for her personal use over that period.

A former Boone Co. Sheriff’s K-9 officer who left his canine partner in his patrol truck for 22 hours in 91 degree heat in September 2022 was charged for causing dog’s death.

Jacovan Bush, formerly of Fairfax, was convicted of lesser charges in the 2008 fatal shooting of a 19-year-old in Cedar Rapids during a fight between rival groups. He was convicted and sentenced last week for a fatal home invasion in Arkansas.

A former Tama County jailer was sentenced to two years probation for having sex with an inmate over a period of months in 2020 and in April of 2021. The former inmate, a Cedar Rapids man, is suing the county, sheriff and former jailer over the incidents.

The first phase of a multiyear building project for Cedar Valley Humane Society will open next month. The ribbon cutting ceremony will likely be in early May.

Leo Kelly, who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, says he didn’t intend to disrupt vote that day, but felt invited by Trump to go into the building. His trial is scheduled to begin May 1 in U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.

The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed a Manchester man’s murder conviction of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko, who was fatally stabbed in her car parked outside Westdale Mall in 1979. The court ruled Jerry Burns voluntarily left his DNA on a drinking straw police found in the trash of a restaurant. No warrant was needed.

A former Iowa City oral surgeon who extracted fentanyl from office vials in 2019 was sentenced this week to two years in federal prison. His license was indefinitely suspended in 2019.