Navy will retire fire-damaged warship
SAN DIEGO -- The U.S. Navy said Monday that it will decommission a warship docked off San Diego after suspected arson this summer caused extensive damage, making it too expensive to restore.
Fully repairing the USS Bonhomme Richard to warfighting capabilities would cost $2.5 billion to $3 billion and take five to seven years, said Rear Adm. Eric H. Ver Hage of the Navy Regional Maintenance Center.
The 840-foot amphibious assault ship burned for more than four days in July and was the Navy's worst U.S. warship fire outside of combat in recent memory. The ship was left with extensive structural, electrical and mechanical damage.
Ver Hage said about 60% of the ship would probably need to be replaced to have it fully restored, including the flight deck, mast and many levels directly below the flight deck. Restoring it for another use, perhaps as a hospital, would take almost as long as full restoration and cost $1 billion.
Decommissioning the ship will take nine months to a year and cost $30 million, Ver Hage said.
The Bonhomme Richard was nearing the end of a two-year upgrade estimated to cost $250 million when the fire started.
Arson is suspected as the cause of the July 12 fire, and a Navy sailor was questioned as a potential suspect, a senior defense official said in late August. Ver Hage declined to comment on the status of several investigations Monday, and he didn't give a timeline for their completion, saying they "will conclude when the time is right."
S.C. execution delayed for lack of drugs
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The South Carolina Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of a death row prisoner after corrections officials said they couldn't obtain lethal injection drugs in time.
Richard Bernard Moore had been scheduled to be put to death Friday. The court scheduled the execution this month after he exhausted his federal appeals. Moore, 55, has spent nearly two decades on death row following his conviction for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County.
However, an attorney for the state Department of Corrections wrote in a letter to the court last week that the agency cannot carry out the execution due to the lack of drugs. Chrysti Shain, a department spokesperson, confirmed Monday that the agency had not obtained any of the three drugs.
The state's injection protocol calls for the sedative pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. But the department said that its last supplies of the drugs expired in 2013.
Funeral home settles after LGBT ruling
DETROIT -- A Detroit-area funeral home has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit that led to a groundbreaking decision that protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment.
Aimee Stephens, 59, died weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court in June said she was covered by federal civil rights law.
Stephens worked as an embalmer and funeral director at R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City. She was fired in 2013 when she told her boss that she no longer wanted to be recognized as a man and instead wanted to be known as Aimee and would report to work wearing a conservative skirt suit or dress.
Stephens' boss said her appearance would be a distraction for grieving families.
The business is paying $130,000 to Stephens' estate, plus $120,000 in legal costs and fees.
Ex-prosecutor gets 13 years for scheme
HONOLULU -- A U.S. judge sentenced a former high-ranking Honolulu prosecutor to 13 years in prison Monday, saying she stole money from her own grandmother and used her husband's position as a police chief to frame her uncle -- all to maintain her lavish lifestyle.
Katherine and Louis Kealoha, now estranged, were once a respected power couple. Louis Kealoha, who agreed to retire amid the wide-ranging federal investigation, is scheduled to be sentenced in a separate hearing.
"This case has staggered the community in many ways," U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright said, describing how Katherine Kealoha orchestrated a reverse mortgage scheme that forced her grandmother to sell her home, framed her uncle for stealing the Kealohas' home mailbox, stole money from children whose trusts she controlled as a lawyer, cheated her uncle out of his life savings, convinced her firefighter lover to lie about their affair, and used her position as a prosecutor to turn a drug investigation away from her physician brother.
A jury last year convicted the Kealohas of conspiracy, along with two former officers who are scheduled to be sentenced today. To avoid a second trial, the Kealohas later pleaded guilty to bank fraud, saying they provided false information to obtain loans. Katherine Kealoha, 51, also pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge.
Louis Kealoha filed for divorce after they were convicted.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports