nation briefs – Daily Herald

Delta plane slides off icy taxiway at the Green Bay airport

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) A Delta Air Lines plane slid off a taxiway amid icy conditions Saturday morning at an airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Airport officials said Flight 1770 was headed for Atlanta when it left the taxiway around 6:15 a.m. No injuries were reported, nor was there any damage to the plane.

Conditions were icy at the time of the incident, but Airport Director Marty Piette told the Green Bay Press-Gazette that he wasnt sure if thats what caused the plane to slide off the taxiway. He said airport staff were aware of the icy conditions and treated the taxiway with sand and alerted pilots of the icy and slippery conditions.

Freezing drizzle was blamed for several crashes on northeastern Wisconsin roads Saturday morning.

The 107 passengers were bused back to the airport for rebooking on other flights and were given meal vouchers.

Passenger Kent Maxwell, of Green Bay, told the newspaper that people on the plane were calm and respectful as the airline dealt with the issue.

I fly a lot and usually problems cause infrequent passengers to really get excited, Maxwell said. That didnt happen on this flight. I think most people can relate to sliding off the road into a ditch.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) One African American defendant was forced by a judge to represent himself at trial. Another was shackled in front of an all white jury during a sentencing hearing. And a third black defendant facing the death penalty is intellectually disabled.

Those are some of the arguments made by defense attorneys in documents filed this week with the state Supreme Court in an attempt to stem the pace of executions in Tennessee, which has surged to the forefront nationally in its application of the death penalty. They also argue Tennessees use of capital punishment is rooted in a racist past and is still plagued with inherent racism.

Attorney General Herbert Slatery is seeking to set dates for the nine death row inmates, all men, to die. Four of the nine are African American. Attorneys for the inmates point out that the justices could keep Tennessee moving in the opposite direction of the country as a whole or could join the ranks of most states in trending away from executions.

While the standards of decency of the nation as a whole have evolved towards rejection of the death penalty, Tennessee has fallen out of step with the rest of the country particularly in the last eighteen months, during which the State has executed six of its citizens at a rate not seen since before 1960, attorneys for the inmates wrote.

One of the inmates facing a possible execution date, Tony Carruthers, would be the first person in about a century to be put to death after being forced to represent himself at trial, supervisory assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry wrote in a filing.

Carruthers and another man were convicted of the 1994 killing of three people in an attempt to corner the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood.

The trial judge refused to appoint another attorney after Carruthers, whose attorneys describe him as severely mentally ill, ran off about a half-dozen lawyers with threats or lack of cooperation, the filing said. A court has never weighed in on whether Carruthers self-representation was constitutionally adequate, Henry wrote.

Farris Morris, an African American man convicted of a 1994 double murder and rape, was shackled during his sentencing trial in sight of an all-white panel of jurors, according to the filing that seeks to block an execution date for him. Two jurors noted the shackles in affidavits, but a court said after his conviction that nothing in the trial record showed he was visibly shackled in front of jurors, the filing states.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) Tommy Fisher peered into a Fox News camera and talked up his North Dakota-based companys ability to build a border wall faster and cheaper than others could, with technology so revolutionary, its like comparing the iPhone to a pay phone. Fisher Sand and Gravel, he said, was eager to help President Donald Trump deliver on a key campaign promise.

Hopefully the president will see this, Fisher said during the April appearance on Fox & Friends First, part of a blitz on conservative media over several months as the construction executive took a well-worn path to the presidents ear. Fishers company ultimately won a $400 million contract, though the contract is now being audited over concern it may not meet operational requirements.

That Fisher, 49, was able to land the contract came as no surprise in North Dakota, where people who know him describe a man with a get-it-done attitude, a knack for self-promotion and a strong belief in the company he took over from his father when he was just 25.

U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who grew up with Fisher, called him a gung-ho, hardworking, smart guy. Though Fisher long ago moved to Arizona he runs the company from a distance Armstrong said he remains well known in his hometown.

Go sit in a coffee shop in Dickinson and try to find someone who doesnt like Tommy, Armstrong said. Hes a great corporate citizen.

Kurt Robinson, who worked in the companys IT department from 1996 to 2005, said he left to start his own business in part because he wasnt happy with leadership in Dickinson. He said the company would have tanked if not for Fisher, who was managing it from Arizona.

Tommy is the driving force of the company and he is a very good businessman, Robinson said.

Fisher, who said last month that he expected the audit to find nothing amiss, didnt respond to a request for an interview.

Mississippi authorities were searching for two prisoners believed to have escaped Saturday from one of several prisons rocked by violence that has left at least five inmates dead in the past week.

Gov. Phil Bryant on Saturday said via Twitter that he has directed the use of all necessary assets and personnel to find the two inmates who escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

The state Department of Public Safety has deployed state troopers and the highway patrols special operations group to help the Department of Corrections find the two inmates and to help restore order at the troubled facility that they escaped from, Bryant said.

The Corrections Department said in a Facebook posting that David May, 42, and Dillion Williams, 27, were discovered missing from Parchman during an emergency count about 1:45 a.m. May is serving a life sentence for two aggravated assault convictions in Harrison County, and Williams is serving a 40-year sentence for residential burglary and aggravated assault in Marshall County.

The department said via Twitter Saturday afternoon that there were no major disturbances occurring at Parchman.

There was a minor fire at Unit 30 earlier this week. That fire, set by an inmate, was immediately extinguished. Like other facilities in the prison system, the prison has limited movement, the department tweeted.

Five inmates have died in prison violence since Sunday; three of those deaths have occurred at Parchman. The prison is a series of cell blocks scattered across thousands of acres of farmland in Mississippis Delta region. Inmates who escape their cells sometimes dont make it off the property.

Associated Press

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