Sheril Smith, slain woman, was mother of ex-Sunnyside players Michael and Xavier Smith

Pima County Superior Court Judge Clark Munger Monday sentenced Tyrone Little Cisco, 33, to life in prison for the shooting death of Sheril Smith.

A jury convicted Cisco in April of first-degree murder. He is not eligible for parole.

He fatally shot the mother of former University of Arizona running back Xavier Smith Jr. five times on April 6, 2007, then fled to Eloy.

The weapon was a 12-gauge shotgun, according to testimony.

Two months before the killing, Cisco took out a $1 million life insurance policy on Smith and a $500,000 policy on her 15-year-old daughter.

The night of the killing, he dropped off Smith’s daughter at a Marana park and told her he and her mother were going rabbit hunting for Easter and would return to pick her up.

Prosecutors said he intended to kill the teen, too, but she escaped harm by getting a ride from the park to a friend’s home.

Cisco left an order of protection Smith got against her estranged husband under her body, trying to make it appear she was killed by him, according to testimony.

Smith’s son Michael was the 2006 Tucson Citizen Student Athlete of the Year. He and his brother played football at Sunnyside High School.

Melanie Gamble, who with her husband had been charged with attempted first-degree murder of her 8-month-old daughter, was sentenced to seven years of probation Tuesday on one felony charge of child abuse.

She reached a plea agreement with the Pima County attorney in exchange for testimony against her husband, Gregory Brian Gamble

During his criminal case last week, Pima County Superior Court Judge Jane Eikleberry issued a directed verdict on child abuse charges, saying she believed the baby’s stepfather “didn’t intend to murder the child.”

Melanie Gamble in June 2008 told a neighbor her husband was holding her baby by the neck and the neighbor called police.

The judge said she believed Gregory Gamble, 20, didn’t hold the baby’s head underwater in a bathtub for more than five seconds.

Melanie Gamble must comply with a state Child Protective Services case plan for her child, attend parenting classes and maintain employment. Gregory Gamble will be sentenced later this month.

A jury found a former Pima County Jail nurse not guilty Friday on all 10 felony sex abuse and unlawful sexual contact charges in what his defense attorney characterized as a case of “he said, she said.”

In closing arguments, Thomas S. Hartzell told jurors the accusations came from felons – among them a prostitute, a bad-check writer and a woman who lied to police about her identity – who conspired to accuse Christopher Erin Johnston, 29, of sex crimes.

The motive, he said, was revenge because an inmate felt “violated” after Johnston performed an EKG exam.

The exam requires attaching adhesive pads to the bare chest so that electrode leads can be attached in the study of heart rhythm.

Ex-jail inmate Nancy Rostenhausler testified she asked for a medical visit in the jail because she was having chest pains.

Johnston administered an EKG. He told detectives he may have touched her breasts while attaching the pads but the touching was inadvertent.

Rostenhausler testified that she complained to her sister, who was also incarcerated at the jail. She said she was upset that Johnston saw her bare breasts and touched them, she testified.

A juror asked if that was her first EKG and she said it was.

Hartzell said the sister spoke to other inmates and had them “make accusations of unlawful sexual contact against Johnston, a registered nurse.

The alleged incidents took place in July and August 2007.

Johnston is no longer employed at the jail and is no longer registered with the Arizona State Board of Nursing.

One alleged victim, Robyn Sanchez, jailed on a prostitution charge, said Johnston asked her if she “gave good (a sex act).”

She also testified he suggested they meet in a bathroom at Wal-Mart after she got out.

Hartzell called the accusers “very criminal women.” He told the jury: “It’s not against the law to say, ‘Do you give good (sex act),’ or ‘Meet me at Wal-Mart.’ ”

Johnston, who did not testify, told detectives his “sarcastic sense of humor” was misinterpreted and that he said “those things just to entertain myself.”

Prosecutor Shawn Jensvold said the illegal acts did occur and that the inmates “deserve to be treated like women, not like cattle, not like property, with respect.”

A Pima County Superior Court jury convicted Fabian Hernandez Friday of second-degree murder, kidnapping and armed robbery after two days of deliberation.

Hernandez, 19, told detectives he was trying to sell Henry Sherlock cocaine at the Desert Willows Trailer Park, 6001 S. Palo Verde Blvd., when Sherlock grabbed his wrist or arm and began to drive away.

Hernandez said he fired his .45-cal. semiautomatic Ruger into Sherlock’s vehicle because “I was scared I would be dragged.”

He said just before the shooting he was walking around the trailer park, where he lived, smoking a cigarette and contemplating suicide. He said he smoked marijuana and drank a beer shortly before the incident.

Sherlock’s minor son and stepson, who were in the vehicle with him, testified Hernandez pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Sherlock in the head for no apparent reason.

Hernandez was also charged with kidnapping and armed robbery. He was accused of pulling a woman out of a vehicle shortly after the shooting and taking her purse at gunpoint. He said he was conducting a drug deal with her and did not kidnap her.

Prosecutor Kellie Johnson said Hernandez was linked to the crimes by fingerprint evidence, several witnesses and by aerial video from a law enforcement aircraft flying over the scene.

Hernandez faces 10 to 22 years in prison on the second-degree murder charge. The presumptive sentence is 16 years. The prosecutor is asking for an aggravated sentence based in part on the fact that two other people were in the vehicle at the time of the fatal shooting.

Christopher Matthew Payne, sentenced in March to die for the premeditated murder of two of his children, must begin serving 51 years in prison.

That includes two consecutive terms of 23 years on child abuse and other charges in the deaths of Ariana and Tyler Payne.

Payne, 30, is appealing his death sentences. His prison term is concurrent with the death sentences, the judge ruled, so it will begin while his murder convictions are under appeal.

Pima County prosecutor Susan Eazer asked Superior Court Judge Richard S. Fields on Thursday to give Payne aggravated sentences on three felony child abuse charges and two charges of concealing and abandoning a body.

Fields gave Payne 23 years, one year less than the maximum, on the child abuse charges.

The judge cited the “especially heinous, depraved and cruel” manner in which Ariana and Tyler were murdered, that there were two victims and that both were under age 15.

Fields said the mitigating factors cited in a presentence report – current family support from his father and stepmother, and no earlier felonies – do not outweigh the depravity of the crimes.

Payne must also serve “substantially aggravated” sentences of 2.5 years each on two counts of abandoning and concealing a body. That time will be served consecutively.

Payne was given credit for 791 days served in the Pima County Jail while awaiting trial and sentencing.

His attorney John O’Brien said at the sentencing hearing Thursday that Payne should not face prison time on child abuse charges. He said Payne has already been sentenced “on conduct contained in the charges of child abuse.”

They include the 12 broken ribs Ariana, 4, sustained; his failure to feed her and Tyler, 5; and his failure to to get the children medical care when he saw they were dying, according to court testimony.

Payne locked them in a closet and starved them, then put their bodies in a plastic tub in a storage locker. Tyler’s body was never found.

Their mother, Payne’s ex-wife Jamie Hallam, asked the court to sentence Payne to consecutive terms on the child abuse charges.

Prosecutor: 4 women victims of man’s unlawful behavior

The sex-crimes trial of a former Pima County Jail nurse got under way Wednesday as four former inmates testified he touched their breasts for sexual pleasure during visits to the jail’s medical suite.

The alleged incidents took place in July and August 2007, according to prosecutor Shawn Jensvold.

Christopher Erin Johnson, 26, who no longer works at the jail, is accused of five felony counts of sexual abuse and five felony counts of unlawful sexual conduct.

The prosecutor alleges four women were victims of his unlawful behavior while jailed when he was employed there as a nurse.

Defense attorney Thomas S. Hartzell suggested at least one alleged victim mistook Johnson’s placing “these sticky pads” on her bare chest for an electrocardiogram as sexual contact.

Dorsey Gradis, a registered nurse, said she worked at the jail while Johnson was employed there. She said “there is no reason to touch the nipple or manipulate the breast” while attaching EKG leads to the chest. Leads are normally placed around the breast, she said.

One alleged victim testified Wednesday that Johnson, aware she was jailed on a prostitution charge, asked her if she performed a particular oral sex act well.

She said he placed her hand on his erect penis as she sat on an exam table and, as she was leaving the exam room, held her shoulders and pressed his penis into her back. He was wearing cotton medical scrubs, she said

She said he gave her his phone number and asked for a date.

One woman told jurors Johnson’s pupils became dilated and his breathing changed as he conducted a “breast exam.”

And another witness testified he felt her breast with the palm of one hand and then “flicked my nipple.” She had been seven months pregnant, she said. She also said Johnson told her she had “pretty breasts.”

“I told him he was creeping me out and I pulled down my shirt” and left the exam room, she said.

The former inmate said Johnson told her to lift her shirt so he could place his stethoscope on her bare chest.

All the alleged victims picked Johnson out of a photo lineup provided by detectives.

Hartzell suggested that the complainants – most of them convicted felons, he noted – made up their stories or misunderstood Johnson’s actions during medical exams.

In court documents filed in May 2008, Hartzell stated his client “recently revealed a traumatic head injury in his past which requires an independent evaluation to determine what extent potential brain damage may have contributed to the complained-of behavior.”

Hartzell asked, court records show, that the jury be told before deliberating that legal defenses to a charge of sexual abuse are that the defendant “was not motivated by sexual interest” and the act was done “in furtherance of lawful medical practice.”

The trial is being heard before Pima County Superior Court Judge Jane Eikleberry.

The parents of Roy J. Harris, the 28-year-old swept away in a flooded wash July 19, filed suit against Tucson seeking damages for his death.

The suit, filed by Mary and Roy Harris on April 10, says the city had a duty to maintain 15th Avenue north of Mabel Street, “at or near” the Bronx Wash “in a reasonably safe condition for drivers.”

The suit states the city should have known of the road’s tendency for flooding and that floodwaters created an unreasonably dangerous hazard to drivers.

The parents asked the court for reasonable damages.

Michael Graham, spokesman for the city Transportation Department, said he could not comment on the lawsuit. The city attorney’s office did not return a call Wednesday requesting comment.

The remains of Harris have not been found. Marana police said testing of bones found last month that could be Harris’ are not complete, but results may be released in May.

Tylutki

Joseph Alexander Tylutki, 20, was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison for the 2007 shooting death of 19-year-old Vincent Bohlman, his friend since third grade.

Court documents show that Tylutki was selling marijuana for Bohlman, who had been arrested shortly before the shooting in an unrelated pot selling case.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Michael Cruikshank said Tylutki should serve his time in protective custody because of a history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, possible fetal alcohol syndrome and evidence that he had undergone at least six years of psychological counseling for emotional problems.

Only the Department of Corrections can make that determination, Cruikshank said.

Tylutki will not be eligible for parole.

He had been charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 27, 2007, slaying.

Tylutki called 911 and confessed to the shooting immediately afterward, telling police he had shot Bohlman in self-defense. A knife had been placed in Bohlman’s hand after he was shot, police said.

Tylutki pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder and faced 10 to 18 years in prison.

Tylutki wept Tuesday as he apologized to Bohlman’s family.

“I’m sorry about what I did. I wish I could take it back,” he said.

Both young men were graduates of Salpointe Catholic High School.

Tylutki and Bohlman became friends in third grade when they attended Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic School, according to testimony in the case.

Their friendship continued through their years at Salpointe, where Tylutki looked up to Bohlman, a popular football player.

More than 100 people were interviewed in the preparation of a presentence report, which described the relationship between the two young men and said Tylutki was someone “who struggled in life.”

Defense attorney Michael Bloom said Tylutki, who was adopted as an infant, was bullied in school for years because he wears glasses and had self-esteem problems.

Vincent Bohlman said his son “had his head screwed on tight” and planned to become a “facial reconstruction surgeon. He was so positive,” his father said.

He said Bohlman had stood up for Tylutki on the playground in grade school in a dispute over a ball.

He called Tylutki cowardly and “an animal who admitted killing my son with no motive and no warning.”

Frances Barrientez, Bohlman’s mother, told the judge it was difficult to describe “the devastation that his death has brought to my life.” Bohlman was her firstborn, she said.

“He was not given a choice. He was an unarmed man.”

Both parents asked for the maximum possible prison sentence. Neither parent mentioned their son’s drug activities.

Court documents state Bohlman, a University of Arizona sophomore, was selling marijuana out of two apartments and was in debt to the “Mexican mafia.”

Tylutki was described in court records as a “runner” for Bohlman, collecting money for Bohlman’s drug deals.

Bohlman was shot in a bedroom of his family’s home after he and Tylutki and another friend smoked marijuana, took illegally obtained Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, and then started to “bicker,” the judge said Tuesday.

First-degree murder defendant Fabian Hernandez, 19, told a jury Tuesday he was selling crack cocaine to Henry Sherlock when Sherlock grabbed his wrist and started driving away.

Hernandez said that’s when he pulled a gun and fired, not intending to kill Sherlock but because “I was scared I would be dragged.”

Hernandez took the witness stand as the first defense witness in his trial, which began last week.

He is accused of fatally shooting Sherlock in the head and kidnapping Lottie Payne at gunpoint moments later on Aug. 16, 2008, at the Desert Willows Trailer Park, 6001 S. Palo Verde Blvd., near the Benson Highway.

Prosecutors said he pulled her from an SUV and took her purse.

Hernandez denied kidnapping and robbing Payne, 49.

Hernandez said he approached an SUV, asked the woman in it if she wanted to buy crack or marijuana, and she stepped out of the vehicle to talk with him about buying drugs.

Hernandez said he had her purse because she asked him to hold it while she looked for money.

Hernandez said he fled and hid when he heard police arrive at the shooting scene.

He said he took off the black T-shirt he was wearing and left it on the ground before going inside the rental trailer where he lived with his girlfriend.

Prosecutors said Hernandez asked the girlfriend and two other friends to lie for him about his actions that night.

A police surveillance aircraft shot video of Hernandez entering the trailer. He eventually surrendered.

Detectives found the handgun used in the shooting and the cell phone Hernandez used before he approached Sherlock, 39, prosecutors said.

Fingerprint evidence linked both to Hernandez, prosecutors said.

On Tuesday, Hernandez admitted he dumped the .45-caliber semiautomatic Ruger at the trailer park and tossed the phone.

Previously, he claimed he knew nothing about the shooting.

Prosecutor Kellie Johnson cross-examined Hernandez on Tuesday, asking him why he waited until Tuesday to disclose that he acted without premeditation, that he didn’t plan to kill Sherlock and “reacted without thinking” by firing his gun after Sherlock allegedly grabbed his wrist or forearm.

Hernandez said he lied to investigators about his involvement but decided Tuesday to say he had acted in self-defense because he felt he was in danger.

“Where I come from, you don’t trust the police,” he said.

Sherlock’s 11-year-old son testified earlier Tuesday that Hernandez ran up to the Hernandez vehicle and shot his father in the head as they drove out of the trailer park.

The boy said he was in the back seat behind the driver’s seat and saw his father get shot and slump over.

“Everything went white,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday, Hernandez asked for a new lawyer, telling Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo he didn’t like public defender Kyle Ipson and wanted to represent himself.

Leonardo denied Hernandez new counsel and the trial continued. Hernandez’s attorneys had said in court documents that Hernandez was unable to help with his defense because of unspecified behavior.

The former Davis-Monthan airman on trial for allegedly attempting to kill his stepdaughter pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of child abuse.

The plea means he could be sentenced to probation, said David Berkman, chief criminal deputy county attorney in the Pima County Attorney’s office.

He had been charged with attempted first-degree murder.

Berkman said Superior Court Judge Jane Eikleberry issued a directed verdict on Friday, stating that based on the evidence presented, the alleged crimes were “not dangerous in nature.” A jury trial in the case began Wednesday.

Gamble, a weapons loader, was accused of holding the 19-month-old’s head under water for about five seconds in a bathtub and of holding her in the air with one hand around her throat when he got angry after she wouldn’t stop crying.

The child had no permanent injuries from the incidents, a physician testified.

Gamble’s now-estranged wife, Melanie Gamble, the mother of the child, testified against him last week in exchange for a plea of guilty to one count of child abuse. She is to be sentenced Tuesday morning.

Gamble’s defense attorney, Richard Kingston argued that Gamble was a stressed-out, first-time father who didn’t handle frustration well and was inexperienced with young children.

Kingston said the couple, who married when the child was 8 months old, had financial and other problems in their marriage. They are divorcing.

Pruitt

Sixteen-year-old Shelden Andrew Pruitt was sentenced Monday to six years in prison for the shooting death of his teenage half sister last summer.

In addition to the term for negligent homicide ordered by Pima County Superior Court Judge Frank Dawley, Pruitt received lifetime probation on one count of child abuse.

As part of the plea deal, he accepted responsibility for the shooting and expressed remorse.

Pruitt had been charged with one count of second-degree murder in the July 26, 2008, shooting of Alexandria Salinas, 14, at their father’s Corona de Tucson home. Pruitt pleaded guilty to the lesser charges March 25.

Pruitt was prosecuted as an adult, although he was 15 at the time of the shooting.

He will serve his term in prison as an adult, then be returned to the county jail for at least 100 days while details of the lifetime probation are set up.

For most of his life, Pruitt lived with his mother, siblings and half siblings in Colorado.

He came to live with his father, Roland Salinas, in Tucson several weeks before the shooting. He has no other family here.

Pruitt met his father for the first time during a monthlong visit with him and his family here in 2007.

In 2008, after increasing hostility from his mother, who was in her third marriage, and his stepfather, his father agreed to take Pruitt into his home for a fresh start, according to court records.

A mitigation report, based on school, medical and social service records, filed in the case by his defense attorney states that “Andrew’s stepfather ridiculed him and was verbally abusive to him.”

It also notes his mother’s long failure to maintain him on prescribed medication for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and her decision to treat his symptoms with a diet.

It also points out he had “poor and inconsistent parenting” from birth, noting he had “no consistent father figure” throughout his mother’s multiple marriages. At one point, there were seven children in the home. Her first three children had three different fathers.

The report notes the teen was hospitalized twice for injuring himself and that a psychiatrist recommended he distance himself from both his parents.

Pruitt’s mother was never married to Roland Salinas. Salinas said he wanted no contact with the child unless he had him “24/7,” according to the report.

The boy was moved from Colorado to Alaska and back to Colorado, as his mother changed partners and then married again, in 2007.

Pruitt, who had been bullied for years because of his small stature, said he feared the gangs he’d heard about in Tucson so he took his stepfather’s gun from Colorado to protect himself.

That was the gun used in the fatal shooting.

No motive for the shooting was indicated in court documents.

Reina Irene Gonzales reacts as she is sentenced to two concurrent 22-year prison terms Monday for her role in the starvation deaths of her boyfriend's two children.

Reina Irene Gonzales, 25, was sentenced in Pima County Superior Court on Monday to two concurrent 22-year prison terms for her role in the murders of Tyler and Ariana Payne.

Gonzales initially faced first-degree murder charges and 35 years to life in prison for each death. In a plea deal, the prosecutor agreed to reduce the charges to second-degree murder and accept a sentence of 22 years for each death, to be served concurrently.

The plea was accepted by the court in August 2008. Sentencing was delayed until after her testimony in the capital murder trial of her former boyfriend Christopher Payne.

Judge Paul Tang found aggravating factors in the case – including the heinous and depraved manner in which the murders were committed, that the victims were young children and that two children were killed. That is why he agreed to the aggravated sentence of 22 years.

Defense attorneys argued that Gonzales has an unspecified “mental defect,” was under the control of an abusive boyfriend (Payne) and was a daily user of heroin and crack cocaine, which impaired her thinking. They said she deserved mercy.

Gonzales and Payne were arrested after the decomposing body of his 3-year-old daughter, Ariana, was found in a North Side storage locker Feb. 18, 2007. The body of his 4-year-old son, Tyler, has never been found.

Payne admitted the children died while locked in a dark closet, starving. At the time, he was more than $15,000 behind on child support payments to ex-wife Jamie Hallam for the two children.

Payne was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in March and sentenced to death.

Tang said Monday it was inconceivable “how a mother could treat these children, half siblings of your own son, in this manner. You suffer from a mental deficit and you were using mind-numbing drugs.

“But during the same period of time, you provided normal care to (her son with Christopher Payne). These actions are deplorable unconscionable and unforgivable.”

Gonzales’ lawyer, Brick Storts III, read a letter from his client to the judge saying she was sorry for the killings and “has turned her life over to God.” She was present, but he said she didn’t feel able to speak to the judge herself.

“Her inaction was reprehensible. We have to think about the terror of what they (the children) were going through,” Storts said. “She was outside the door and she didn’t help them.”

Still, he said, she has a conscience and “an understanding of the wrongfulness of her inaction.”

The defense tried to have Gonzales declared mentally retarded so she would not face the death penalty, which prosecutors initially sought.

Two experts found that she was not mentally retarded but has a “borderline IQ” of 69 to 73.

She dropped out of high school, but was able to work at a fast-food restaurant and a University of Arizona sorority house. She applied for and received food stamps and welfare payments. Those actions show she was not mentally retarded, the prosecutor said.

Reina Gonzales during testimony in March.

Pima County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Juan Navarro showed a jury Friday the .45-caliber semiautomatic Ruger handgun prosecutors say Fabian Hernandez used to kill Henry Sherlock on Aug. 16, 2008.

Sherlock, 39, had driven to the Desert Willows trailer park at 6001 S. Palo Verde Blvd., near Benson Highway, to pick up his stepson, who was visiting a friend.

The stepson, Marcos Contreras, 18, and Sherlock’s son, Henry Sherlock Jr., 11, were seated in the vehicle with Sherlock as he drove slowly over a speed bump and out of the trailer park.

Hernandez, then 18, approached the car and fired one shot into Sherlock’s head according to testimony in Hernandez’s first-degree murder trial, which began Thursday.

Sherlock, who was not armed, died at the scene, Navarro said.

However, Sherlock, a driver for Wackenhut, a Border Patrol contractor that transports criminal suspects, had the handgun he wears on the job locked in his trunk, investigators testified.

Prosecutor Kellie Johnson showed jurors Friday bloody photographs of Sherlock’s dead body, still in the driver’s seat with seat belt buckled, slumped to the side.

Hernandez is being tried on one count of first-degree murder for allegedly killing Sherlock. He is also on trial on charges of kidnapping and robbing a woman at gunpoint in the moments after the shooting.

Johnson told the jury that after killing Sherlock, Hernandez moved on to a nearby vehicle in the trailer park, pulling Lottie Payne, 49, out of an SUV and stealing her purse at gunpoint.

Witnesses said Hernandez fled on foot as deputies arrived in response to the shooting.

He was apprehended nearby with the help of a sheriff’s helicopter, which tracked Hernandez with a spotlight, according to testimony by Navarro and sheriff’s detective Christopher Hogan, who arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting.

Several witnesses to the Payne incident identified the assailant as Hernandez, according to court records.

Navarro found the Ruger in a recycling basket at the trailer park, he told the jury Friday.

A photograph of the gun, visible beneath a pile of crushed Bud Light beer cans, was shown to jurors.

Hernandez’s defense lawyers had tried to delay the trial, stating in court documents their client was not able to help with his defense because of unspecified behavior exhibited with his attorneys and previous “suicidal ideation.”

Defense lawyers are trying to exclude cell phone photographs of Hernandez making a profane gesture while holding a gun that appears to be the Ruger used in the shooting.

The photos were in a cell phone detectives found at the trailer park in the hours after the shooting. Prosecutors said the cell phone was used by Hernandez.

Johnson said in court documents she will not introduce as evidence multiple cell phone photos of Hernandez dressed in blue clothing or make any reference to a possible gang affiliation in relation to the killing of Sherlock.

Payne was to be a witness in the trial but she was killed when she was run over on April 8 in an apparently unrelated incident, according to court records.

Prosecutors have asked the court to allow them to use her pretrial statements at trial.

Hernandez’s trial began without an opening statement by the defense. Public defender Kyle Ipson is expected to make that statement after the prosecutor presents the state’s case.

Jason Darryl Fries, 34, was sentenced to 17 years in prison by Pima County Superior Court Judge Howard Hantman on Thursday for stealing a van with a 3-month-old baby inside.

He had been charged with child abuse and kidnapping but Pima County prosecutor Jonathan Mosher said the other charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea for the theft of the vehicle.

Defense attorney Julian A. Ore-Giron said Fries had an offer from an aunt in Kentucky to take him in and help him change his life. She said he had successfully received drug rehabilitation “services” provided by the Pima County Jail’s contracted medical provider, ConMed.

Fries, smiling, told Hantman he had been a meth addict since age 14 and said he would try to change his life if given less than the maximum sentence of 20 years.

Fries said that although he saw baby car seats in the van and toys – and the door to the van was open when he stole it – he did not see the baby in the car seat behind the driver’s seat. More than 50 sheriff’s deputies searched the Northwest Side for the infant, who was inside the van in 100-degree heat for more than a hour Oct. 28. The baby was not seriously injured. Fries told the judge Thursday he stole the van on impulse “because it was there.”

The van was found a couple of blocks away in an alley behind the home where he lived.

Mosher told the judge Fries had five prior felony convictions and deserved 18 to 20 years in prison for stealing the van.

He told the judge Fries used meth and had sex with his girlfriend immediately after stealing the van. He said Fries must have looked inside the van for something else to steal, like a CD player, and rejected Fries assertion that he didn’t see the baby.

Hantman said he believed Fries’ assertion that he didn’t know the baby was in the van.

Mosher said the plea deal allowed for a 10- to 20-year prison sentence. Charges of kidnapping against Fries were dropped in the plea deal because Mosher said the state couldn’t prove Fries knew there was a baby in the car.

Mosher said the mother of the baby had pulled into her driveway and, in a hurry to take another child inside to use the bathroom, left the baby in the car with the door open and the keys in the ignition.

On April 16, Justice Court Judge Jose Luis Castillo dismissed a charge of misdemeanor second-degree criminal trespass filed last September against Tucsonan John R. Brakey.

Brakey was arrested after he refused to leave Pima County election headquarters, 3434 E. 22nd St., on Sept. 6, 2008.

He refused to leave the building after allegedly “disrupting the process” of ballot counting during an audit of the ballots following the Sept. 2 primary election.

He told the Citizen he was arrested after he questioned why some ballot bags were improperly sealed.

County election workers called a sheriff’s deputy to escort him from the building after he didn’t heed their order to leave.

Brakey is a computer expert who was called to testify for the Pima County Democratic Party in its effort to force Pima County to release electronic vote databases back to the late 1990s, the Citizen reported in September, after the arrest.