Son murdered his mom, a beloved Syracuse educator. Now, he faces a gamble on his own sanity
Updated May 13, 2021;
Syracuse, NY It’s unique among the dozens of murders awaiting trial in a Syracuse courthouse: a 27-year-old son stabbed his beloved mother and fled town in February 2019, before willingly coming back to face what he’d done.
That dichotomy has led to a nearly unheard of occurrence: both prosecutor and defense lawyer meet with the family jointly after each court appearance, to explain what’s going on.
But after two years of litigation, Howard’s fate may soon be out of all of their hands even his own. His case was back in court Thursday.
Syracuse judge walks into the wrong courtroom, gets picked on by judge holding court
Updated May 11, 2021;
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Except another judge was already sitting in the judge’s chair.
Cuffy immediately realized his mistake and hung his head as lawyers, jail deputies and court security burst out laughing.
It didn’t help that Cuffy walked in on perhaps the biggest jokester on the floor. From the bench, Judge Stephen Dougherty didn’t miss a beat. He grabbed the microphone and intoned:
“All rise! Now entering the courtroom, Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy.”
Cuffy’s humorous mistake is the result of a game of musical courtrooms that he and his three counterparts have been playing since courts reopened following the early days of the pandemic.
Syracuse man admits raping girl, 10, to send pics to another ‘girl’ (who turned out to be a man)
Updated Apr 22, 2021;
Syracuse, NY A Syracuse child rapist, whose case caused a political stir in 2019, will spend at least two decades in federal prison after admitting Thursday that he abused a 10-year-old girl so he could exchange explicit images with another 15-year-old girl he found on the internet.
Austin Pratt, 24, will be sentenced to between 20 and 30 years in prison after his plea Thursday to child exploitation and pornography charges, federal prosecutors in Syracuse announced.
In a bizarre twist, though, the “15-year-old girl” who Pratt exchanged pornography with over Instagram turned out to actually be an adult man, federal prosecutors said.