Free Republic

Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY Voters removed a 3rd District judge who reduced the sentence of a sex offender and also caught the wrath of deer hunters and gun owners for an anti-hunting diatribe from the bench. In Salt Lake, Tooele and Summit counties, 54 percent of voters Tuesday said Judge Leslie Lewis should not be retained, a rare defeat for a sitting jurist. Lewis, a judge since 1991, was out of town and unavailable for comment, court spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said Wednesday. “I just don’t like the way this one was done,” said Greg Skordas, one of 40 lawyers...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A gunshot that killed a 19-year-old deer hunter was self-inflicted, state investigators determined. Steve Burchard, of Newark, died Saturday in Licking County after he was shot in the head with his rifle. No one else was involved in the shooting, the Division of Wildlife of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said Monday. Investigators still were trying to determine exactly what happened. Burchard had been hunting with three others near St. Louisville, about 45 miles northeast of Columbus. He did not meet with the others at the end of the day, and they eventually found his body....

HAYWARD, WIS. -- Chai Soua Vang, who killed six Wisconsin deer hunters and wounded two others last fall, was sentenced this afternoon to life in prison with no possibility of release. Vang will serve six life sentences, plus five years for each, consecutively, said Judge Norman Yackel, in Sawyer County Circuit Court in Hayward. Yackel said the sentences are the harshest provided by the state and were justified by the gravity of the offense, Vang's character as well as a need to protect the community and deter future crime.