The Law&Crime Network will be following the four cases this week. You can watch trials live on the Law&Crime Network YouTube page.
OH v Joshua Sills
Josh Sills (AP News)
Philadelphia Eagles offensive guard Joshua Sills is scheduled to go to trial Tuesday for allegedly raping and kidnapping a woman in December 2019.
According to the Ohio Attorney General, “Sills engaged in sexual activity that was not consensual and held a victim against her will.” Law enforcement confirmed the crime was immediately reported and the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Office had been investigating the case for nearly three years.
In the state’s response to the defense’s motion for dismissal, the state lists the facts of the case as follows: After driving the victim and her cousin home “after a night of drinking,” Sills allegedly restrained the victim in his pickup truck and then raped the victim. Sills allegedly forced the victim to perform oral sex on him, strangled and bit the victim multiple times — which according to the state — left marks.
The trial is scheduled to begin Monday, with opening statements slotted for Tuesday.
FL v Mario Fernandez Saldana
Mario Enrique Fernandez Saldana (left) in a 2020 driver’s license photo. He helped murder his wife’s former husband Jared Bridegan (right), authorities said. (Driver’s license image: State Attorney’s Office, 4th Circuit; image of Bridegan: City of Jacksonville Beach Police Department)
Prosecutors said they plan to seek the death penalty against a man charged with ambushing and murdering Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan.
The web is tangled between the defendant, Mario Enrique Fernandez Saldana, and the victim, because he is the new, yet estranged, husband of Bridegan’s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner-Fernandez.
Jared Bridegan was driving after taking three of his children for a routine weekly dinner on Feb. 16, 2022. He had dropped off the twins he shared with Gardner-Fernandez, leaving them at their mother’s residence. He was returning home with his and Kirsten’s 2-year-old daughter in the backseat of his SUV.
Police in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, said he encountered a tire in a dark road. Investigators believe someone put it there on purpose to make him stop. Bridegan opened his SUV door, presumably to move the tire.
“It was then that he was gunned down in cold blood,” Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Gene Paul Smith said.
Fernandez Saldana heads to trial Tuesday.
NY v Jonathan Majors
Actor Jonathan Majors was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman in what cops called a domestic dispute. Officers initially did not go into much detail, but charges included strangulation. (Screenshot: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)
Actor Jonathan Majors was arrested in March 2023 for allegedly assaulting a woman in New York City. Local police identified the alleged victim only as a 30-year-old who was involved in a domestic dispute with the high-profile thespian.
The incident allegedly happened in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Officers said they took Majors into custody without incident. He is charged with strangulation, assault, and harassment.
Majors’ trial begins Thursday.
ID v Lori Vallow Daybell
Lori Vallow Daybell is seen in an April 2022 mugshot.
In or around September 2019, Lori Vallow Daybell murdered her children, a jury in Ada County, Idaho, determined in May. On a third charge of conspiracy to commit murder, for the death of her husband’s first wife Tammy Daybell who died in October 2019, Vallow Daybell was also found guilty.
Vallow Daybell and her fifth and current husband, Chad Daybell, 54, stand accused of murder over the 2019 deaths of Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ashlyn Ryan, 17. The children disappeared on different dates in September of that year. Vallow Daybell was initially arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on charges of child desertion.
Daybell was arrested in June 2020 after the children’s bodies were found buried at his property. The two defendants were indicted for the murder of Vallow Daybell’s children and Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, in May 2021 on multiple counts of murder in the first degree, conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, and grand theft by deception.
Vallow Daybell is scheduled to be sentenced for the crimes on Monday.
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