The state/region in brief

Board delays vote on inmate e-mails

A state board postponed consideration Monday of a contract that would allow state prison inmates to send e-mails.

The contract with the St. Louis-based Keefe Group would allow inmates to buy hand-held devices that they could use to send and receive emails, as well as listen to music purchased from the prison commissary.

Under a system in place at 10 of the state’s 19 prisons and work-release centers, inmates already can receive printouts of e-mails but cannot send an e-mail in response.

The price to send a single e-mail to an inmate would rise from 30 cents to 40 cents under the expanded contract. A package of 60 messages would increase in price from 15 cents per message to 30 cents per message.

Inmates would also be able to send e-mails for 40 cents each or for 30 cents per message for a package of 60 messages.

Department spokesman Shea Wilson said Tuesday that inmates would only be able to send e-mails in response to e-mails they had received.

Board of Correction Chairman Benny Magness said board members wanted to gather more information on the contract before making a decision.

He said there is a “misconception from the public” that the proposal gives inmates broader Internet access.

Wilson said the board’s office had a received a few calls from the public about the proposal, and Corrections Board member John Felts, who is chairman of the Board of Parole, had received several calls.

Magness said the board will vote on the proposal at its meeting next month.

A date for the meeting hasn’t been set.

Police: Ex-inmate killed in shootout

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.

  • Springfield police have identified a man killed in a shootout as a recently released inmate.

The Springfield News-Leader reported that 29-year-old Martin Y. Potts died Friday after shooting at officers. One detective was grazed by a bullet.

Potts had been released from prison Dec. 28 after serving about six years of a nine-year prison sentence for kicking in his exfiancee’s door and holding a knife to her throat. Court documents said Potts told bystanders he would kill- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTEher if anyone called the police.

Friday’s shootout happened while police were investigating a string of commercial burglaries. A stolen truck that had fled from police was later located, and police followed footprints in the snow to a home. The shootout began while officers were executing a search warrant.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ex-camp worker

up for probation

FORSYTH, Mo. - A former southwest Missouri camp counselor who was sentenced to 10 years for fondling boys at the camp stands to get probation after serving 120 days.

The judge who sentenced 23-year-old Lee Bradberry of Auburn, Ala., on four charges will decide in four months whether he will be released from prison.

Bradberry was sentenced Friday for fondling the boys while they attended the Christian-based Kanakuk Kamp in Branson in 2011.

KYTV reports that Bradberry is the third Kanakuk staff member in the past four years to be charged with sex acts involving boys at the camp.

A former assistant camp director is serving two life sentences plus 30 years for several sex-related convictions.

The case against another camp employee is pending.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hearing delayed

in 2 girls’ deaths

OKEMAH, Okla. - A hearing has been rescheduled for an Oklahoma man charged with first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of two girls.

Online records show 27-year-old Kevin Sweat is due in Okfuskee County District Court March 28.

He was previously scheduled to have a hearing Tuesday.

Sweat was ordered to stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder last month in the 2008 shooting deaths of 13-year-old Taylor Placker and 11-yearold Skyla Whitaker. He has pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

Sweat was already in custody in connection with the death of his girlfriend, Ashley Taylor, when he told investigators in 2011 he shot “the demons” who approached him along a rural road.

Sweat is scheduled to go on trial for Taylor’s death in June.

  • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 02/27/2013

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