The nation in brief

Tulsa man gets life for killing neighbor

TULSA -- A 63-year-old Oklahoma man convicted of murder and a hate crime in the fatal shooting of his Lebanese neighbor was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Stanley Vernon Majors was convicted earlier this month of gunning down 37-year-old Khalid Jabara outside his Tulsa home in August 2016.

Majors did not speak at Tuesday's sentencing other than to say "No," when asked if he had any questions.

Prosecutors said Majors killed Jabara while out on bond after bombarding him with racial insults in a feud with Jabara's family that lasted several years. It escalated to the point where the victim's mother, Haifa Jabara, obtained a protective order in 2013 that required Majors to stay 300 yards away and prohibited him from possessing any firearms until 2018.

But prosecutors said Majors struck Haifa Jabara with his car in 2015 and drove off. She suffered a broken shoulder, among other injuries.

While awaiting trial in that case on assault and battery charges, a judge freed Majors from jail on $60,000 bond, overruling objections by prosecutors

Defense attorneys argued that Majors showed signs of dementia and appeared to have problems with his long-term memory.

Guantanamo detainee's release delayed

MIAMI -- The Pentagon missed a deadline Tuesday to send a prisoner from the Guantanamo Bay detention center home to Saudi Arabia in what would have been the first transfer under President Donald Trump.

Ahmed al-Darbi pleaded guilty before a military commission at the U.S. base in Cuba in 2014 to charges stemming from an attack on a French oil tanker. He was supposed to be transferred to a rehabilitation program for former jihadists in Saudi Arabia in exchange for his testimony in two other Guantanamo war crimes cases.

But the U.S. is still awaiting unspecified "assurances" from the Saudi Arabian government before the transfer can take place, said Navy Cmdr. Sarah Higgins, a Pentagon spokesman.

Al-Darbi's lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, said dealings between two nations can take longer than expected and that he believes "all sides are working together toward the same goal" to complete the transfer.

No prisoners have left Guantanamo under Trump, including five men who were previously deemed eligible for transfer out of the detention center. There are now 41 men held at the base. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush together released nearly 750 men from Guantanamo.

Charges dropped in N.C. statue toppling

DURHAM, N.C. -- A North Carolina prosecutor gave up Tuesday in trying to prosecute people charged with yanking a Confederate monument off its base after last summer's white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va.

The toppling of the statue in front of a Durham County government building helped thrust North Carolina into a national debate on Confederate monuments after the Charlottesville protests that left one counterdemonstrator dead. The Virginia demonstrations were triggered by a dispute over another Confederate monument there.

Durham District Attorney Roger Echols' decision came a day after a judge dismissed criminal charges against two defendants and found a third innocent. Trials for five others on misdemeanor charges were to be held later but were seen as likely to be plagued by problems identifying protesters on video.

Twelve people were initially charged with felony rioting and misdemeanors.

County set to privatize defense system

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A rural Missouri county is moving to a privatized system for public defenders, a system that some advocates would like to see become more common.

Starting March 1, people charged with crimes in Texas County who cannot afford an attorney will get private lawyers. The state will foot the bill because the Missouri public defender agency has decided to privatize the southern Missouri county, which has about 26,000 residents.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed a lawsuit alleging the existing system fails to provide even "minimally adequate representation to indigent defendants."

About 15 percent of the state public defender system's budget already goes to contracts with private attorneys. But fewer than half of Missouri's counties have lawyers available to accept contracts.

A Section on 02/21/2018

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