Northwest Herald / NWHerald.com
Sheriff: N.M. teen planned to kill more The ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The New Mexico teenager accused of gunning down five family members over the weekend ambushed his father as he returned home from an overnight shift at a rescue mission, then reloaded his rifles and planned to go to a Walmart and randomly shoot people, authorities said Tuesday. Instead, 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego texted a picture of his dead mother to his 12year-old girlfriend, then spent much of Saturday with the girl and her family, authorities said. That evening, the teen went to the church where his father had been a pastor, and Griego eventually confessed to killing his parents and three younger siblings. “The motive, as articulated by the suspect, was purely that he was frustrated with his mother,” Bernalillo Coun-
ty Sheriff Dan Houston said. “He did not give any further explanation.” Houston said Griego had planned the shootings for at least a week, but it’s unclear whether he actually went to a Walmart or why he changed his mind about continuing the Nehemiah attack. Griego Griego told detectives he also contemplated killing his girlfriend’s parents, Houston said. The sheriff said he didn’t know if Griego’s contact with his girlfriend avoided further bloodshed. But he said she apparently knew what had happened, and officials are investigating whether she should be charged with failing to report the crime. Griego apparently had told others of his plans, but whom and when is still under investigation, Houston said.
8nation briefs ex-foster child testifies in Mass. class action
BOSTON – Beginning at age 8, Lauren James bounced among at least 14 foster homes, along the way being forced to scrub floors, clean up after dogs, miss meals and take up to five psychiatric drugs at a time. Now 24, she was the opening witness Tuesday in a case aimed at putting the Massachusetts foster care system on trial. The federal class-action lawsuit was filed in 2010 by Children’s Rights, a New York-based group that alleges that thousands of children in state foster care are abused and neglected.
Lawyer: Delay, move ohio football players’ trial
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The lawyer for one of two high school football players charged with raping a 16-year-old girl wants to delay the trial and also have it moved out of an eastern Ohio city that has received international attention. Attorney Brian Duncan filed the motion Friday on behalf of Trent Mays, who is scheduled for trial next month in juvenile court in Steubenville. Duncan said he expects to file another motion this week to move the trial.
– Wire reports
Judge: Evidence audit in case still under gag order • THEFT
Continued from page A1
He had been a patrolman at the time of his resignation, but was a detective from December 2009 to November 2011. Hojnacki was not assigned to the evidence vault and was not an evidence custodian, McHenry Police Chief John Jones has said. A McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office letter indicated that prosecutors believed at one point that Hojnacki also might have been taking narcotics from sealed evidence bags. In a May letter to the thenpresident of the McHenry County Bar Association, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Combs said he wanted lawyers to be aware of potential evidentiary problems related to all McHenry Police Department arrests. “A subsequent investigation has revealed that Officer Hojnacki may have tampered with narcotics evidence,” Combs wrote. “The McHenry [P]olice [D]epartment has reason to believe that Officer Hojnacki has been opening
sealed evidence bags and removing narcotics.” Because of a gag order put in place at the request of Hojnacki’s attorneys, Combs has been unable to comment about the results of an additional audit of the evidence room by an outside agency. The Northwest Herald filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of that audit, which was denied by Judge Prather. However, Prather said that once the case is completed, she will reconsider. Until then, she said, the gag order stands. Chief Jones declined to comment Tuesday, saying he also was bound by the gag order. “I want to speak, but there’s a gag order, and I’m respecting that gag order,” he said. Shortly after Hojnacki’s arrest, Jones released a statement saying that he thought Hojnacki’s actions were “despicable.” Hojnacki deserved to prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Jones said. “I will not tolerate any act that makes him no better than the criminals we arrest on a daily basis,” Jones said.
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NATION & WOrld
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 • Page A5
Exit polls: Netanyahu has lead But narrow win means coalition needed for Israel By JOSEF FEDERMAN The Associated Press
JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line allies fared far worse than expected in a parliamentary election Tuesday, preliminary results showed, likely forcing him to reach across the aisle to court a popular political newcomer to cobble together a new coalition. While Netanyahu ap-
peared positioned to serve a third term as prime minister, the results marked a major setback for his policies and could force him to make new concessions to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. His most likely partner was Yesh Atid, or There is a Future, a party headed by political newcomer Yair Lapid that showed surprising strength. Lapid has said he would only join a government committed to sweeping economic changes and a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians. Addressing his supporters early today, Netanyahu vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible. He said
the next government would be built on principles that include reforming the contentious system of granting draft exemptions to ultraOrthodox Jewish men and the pursuit of a “genuine peace” with the PalestinBenjamin ians. He did Netanyahu not elaborate, but the message seemed aimed at Lapid. Shortly after the results were announced, Netanyahu called Lapid and offered to work together. “We have the opportunity to do great things together,” Netanyahu
was quoted as saying by Likud officials. According to preliminary results, Netanyahu’s LikudYisrael Beitenu alliance was set to capture about 31 of the 120 seats, significantly fewer than the 42 it held in the outgoing parliament and below the forecasts of recent polls. With his traditional allies of nationalist and religious parties, Netanyahu could put together a shaky majority of 61 seats, initial results showed. But it would be virtually impossible to keep such a narrow coalition intact, though it was possible he could take an additional seat or two as numbers trickled in throughout the night.
5 still missing in Algerian attack The ASSOCIATED PRESS ALGIERS, Algeria – Algerian forces scoured the Sahara Desert on Tuesday, searching for five foreign energy workers who vanished during a chaotic four-day battle with hostage-taking Islamist militants. One official said the men may have fled the sprawling complex during the fighting and gotten lost. Thefour-dayconfrontation that began when al-Qaidaaffiliated militants stormed the remote desert natural gas complex and took hostages early Jan. 16, was punctuated by exploding cars, attacks from helicopters and a final assault by Algerian special forces. In all, 37 hostages, including an Algerian security guard, and 29 militants were killed, but five other foreign workers remain unaccounted for. “Are they dead? Did they attempt to flee the site after the attack like some other expatriates? Are they lost in the desert after taking a wrong turn?” an official who is part of Prime Minister Abdemalek Sellal’s office told The Associated Press. “These are all questions we ask ourselves, but one thing is sure, everything is being done to know their fate.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The Ain Amenas gas plant, jointly run by BP, Norway’s Statoil and the Algerian state
AP photo/Kyodo News
In this Jan. 16 photo secretly taken by a hostage, an Islamic militant in a camouflage uniform (rear right) stands near employees who were taken hostage at the Ain Amenas natural gas complex in Algeria. oil company, is deep in the Sahara, some 800 miles south of the Mediterranean coast, with few population centers nearby. More than 700 people work at the facility, including 130 foreigners from 26 countries who were targeted by the militants. The Islamists caught as many of those foreign workers as they could and wrapped some with explosives to use as human shields. Many foreign and Algerian workers hid and then slipped out of the sprawling facility into the hard feature-
less desert, eventually reaching the Algerian soldiers who had surrounded the complex. This part of the Algerian Sahara has none of the romance of the rolling velvet dunes of the Grand Erg Oriental to the north or the wild, twisted rock formations of Tassili N’Ajjer National Park farther south. Instead it is flat, dry and bitterly cold in the winter, with temperatures dropping to 37 degrees Fahrenheit at night. The hostages also could have died in the fiery shootouts at the plant after being
draped with explosive belts. Seven of the bodies recovered have yet to be identified because of their degraded condition, authorities said. The $2 billion natural gas complex, which came online in 2006, was showing signs of life again Tuesday. Dozens of workers swarmed in to clean it up after experts went through and removed explosives that had been planted by militants. The site was still littered, however, with the burnt-out carcasses of dozens of fourwheel drive vehicles destroyed in the clashes.
Modifying (Changing) the Terms of a Divorce Judgment Sara L. Busche,
earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Purdue University and Juris Doctor degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Before joining Gitlin, Busche & Stetler she was a social worker for Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. She is now an experienced family law litigator. Q: I don’t like the terms of my divorce judgment. I made a bad deal. Can I get it changed? A: No, not because you don’t like it. Of course by agreement with your former spouse, virtually any change can be made. Q: Are there some parts of the divorce judgment that just cannot be changed? A: Yes. The divorce judgment can be divided in two parts: the property distribution part, which is not modifiable, and the rest of the judgment (child custody, child support, visitation and maintenance) which is modifiable. The property distribution, which is non-modifiable, would include disposition of the house, pension plans, cars etc. Maintenance is not modifiable only if the divorce agreement says it cannot be changed. Q: What is the basis on which I would be allowed to have a divorce judgment modified by the judge? A: A showing of a “substantial change of circumstances.” The position of the law is that the divorce judgment, whether it was entered by a settlement agreement, or as a result of a trial, is a final judicial act. The law says that the judge made
the determinations in the divorce judgment based on the facts in existence at the time the judgment was entered, so the party seeking to change the terms of the judgment must show that there has been a substantial change of circumstances since the entry of the judgment. Q: Can child support be increased if the child support obligor is making substantially more money now than he was at the time of the judgment? A: Yes, as long as the needs of the children have also increased. The law does not state what a substantial increase in income is. The rule of safe harbor of Gitlin, Busche & Stetler is that the increase should be at least 20 percent. Q: Can child support and maintenance payments be reduced? A: Yes. On the same basis that child support and maintenance may be increased, that is, upon a showing of a substantial change of circumstances, but a reduction in income must be bonafide and cannot be self imposed. Q: Do the same rules (substantial increase or decrease in income) apply to maintenance (alimony)? A: Yes, but the law allows a marital settlement agreement to state that maintenance is nonmodifiable. You should examine your marital settlement agreement to see if the maintenance payments are stated to be non-modifiable. Q: Can I have my support obligation reduced because I changed jobs and my new job pays me substantially less? A: Possibly. The question is whether the job change was made in “good faith,” that is, whether
the change in job status was prompted by a desire to evade the responsibility for support. Q: If I can prove that it would now be in the best interest of my children for the judge to transfer custody to me will the judge do so? A: No, not based only on what is in the best interest of the child. The best interest of the child is the standard by which the court awards an original grant of custody. But for a modification (transfer) of custody, you must first prove a change occurred in the circumstances of the child, or the custodian and that those changes have had an adverse effect on the child, plus thereafter proving that it would be in the best interest of the child to transfer custody. In addition, during the first two years after the divorce judgment is entered, you must establish that the “child’s present environment may endanger seriously his physical, mental, moral or emotional health.” This is very difficult to establish. Q: I originally agreed my husband could have custody, but now my circumstances have greatly improved so that it would be in the best interest of my child to be in my custody. Will I win? A: Gitlin, Busche & Stetler has been involved in many cases where a young parent gives up custody because she does not want the responsibility of raising the child. Some years later she becomes more mature, has made an economically fortunate marriage and is now ready for parenthood. The modification of child custody statute is, however, specific in stating that the required change of circumstances must be on the part of the child, or the parent having custody, that is, a change of circumstance on the part of the non-custodial parent will not bring about a change of custody.
GITLIN, BUSCHE & STETLER Practice limited to family law H. Joseph Gitlin • Sara L. Busche • Michael R. Stetler • Tessa C. Jania
111 Dean Street • Woodstock, IL 60098 • ph. 815-338-0021 • www.gitlin.com
These Q&A’s are published as a service to the community. They are not designed to provide specific legal advice for a specific legal problem. For specific advice you should personally consult with a lawyer.