Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick sent to jail

Detroit

A judge sentenced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to four months in jail Tuesday for a sex-and-text scandal, calling him "arrogant and defiant" and questioning the sincerity of a guilty plea that ended his career at City Hall.

The punishment was part of a plea agreement worked out last month. Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner adhered to that deal but said Kilpatrick would not get time off for good behavior, potentially up to 20 days in this case. "When someone gets 120 days in jail, they should get 120 days in jail," Groner said.

Kilpatrick, a Democrat, admitted lying while testifying last year in a civil lawsuit filed by former police officers who accused him of illegally demoting or firing them.

He and chief of staff Christine Beatty, both 38, were accused of having an affair and denied it, but text messages obtained by a lawyer in the case — and later the Detroit Free Press — contradicted them.

Kilpatrick also was given a 120-day concurrent sentence for assaulting a sheriff's officer who was trying to deliver a subpoena in July.

Port Jervis, N.Y.

Snowstorm jolts travel in Northeast

The first big snowstorm of the season in the Northeast closed sections of major highways Tuesday and blacked out more than 100,000 utility customers.

The National Weather Service posted a winter-storm warning for parts of New York state through this morning and issued winter-storm advisories for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Vermont.

"It looked like a miniblizzard in October," said Joe Orlando, spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.

Arrival delays into New York's La Guardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport averaged more than two hours in the afternoon because of wind. Low ceilings delayed some flights out of Philadelphia's airport more than four hours, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.

Huntsville, Texas

Texas executes girl's sex slayer

A former plumbing-supply salesman was executed Tuesday for strangling and raping a 7-year-old girl whose body he hid in his attic.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Eric Nenno, 47, replied, "No, warden."

Nicole Benton's father and grandfather were among the witnesses, but Nenno did not acknowledge them.

Nenno was the 13th Texas inmate executed this year and the fourth this month in the nation's most active death-penalty state. Another execution is scheduled for Thursday.

Also

Safe haven: A 15-year-old girl was abandoned by her father Tuesday night at an Omaha hospital, bringing to 22 the number of children left under the state's unique safe-haven law since it took effect in July.

Elder abuse: Michael Alfinez, 18, of West Palm Beach, Fla., was sentenced to 18 months in juvenile detention Tuesday for coaxing his senile grandmother, 85, into holding a gun and threatening to shoot "all the pigs" in a homemade "gangster rap" video. He had pleaded guilty to elder-abuse charges.

Seattle Times news services