State News-Friday, Jan. 12th

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) - Attorneys representing a soldier charged with killing two superior officers in Iraq will get access to the government's electronic data, including classified evidence. Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez faces two counts of premeditated murder in the deaths of Captain Phillip Esposito of Suffern, New York, and First Lieutenant Louis Allen of Milford, Pennsylvania. Prosecutors say Martinez, of the New York Army National Guard, set off grenades and a mine in a room where Esposito and Allen were staying in June 2005. The military judge ordered the access yesterday, saying that the government must allow access to both unclassified and classified data collected in the case. He also ordered the government to provide a computer expert to the defense lawyers.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to traveling across state lines to have sexual contact with a 14-year-old Connecticut girl he met through the social networking site MySpace.com. Forty-year-old Stephen Letavec of Elrama was charged in Connecticut last year with molesting a girl in his car, in one of the first federal sex cases involving the popular site. The F-B-I says Letavec made several visits to see the girl from the summer of 2005 and early last year. The F-B-I says the girl signed onto MySpace as an 18-year-old, but told Letavec she was 14 before he visited. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, yesterday To one count of using the Internet to persuade a minor to engage in sexual activity, and one count of traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of attempting to have and having illicit sexual conduct with a minor. Letavec is to be sentenced April ninth. He faces a mandatory minimum term of five years in prison and a maximum term of up to 60 years and up to a 500-thousand dollar fine.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Jurors resume deliberations today in the case of a man charged in the death of his girlfriend, who plunged from the window of his high-rise apartment last year. Kevin Eckenrode's trial ended yesterday morning after he decided against taking the stand in his own defense. He is charged with third-degree murder in the February death of 23-year-old Rachel Kozlusky. Both were natives of the Scranton area. She fell from the window of his apartment in downtown Harrisburg, and tests showed that both of them had been drinking heavily. Eckenrode's lawyer yesterday called the death an accident for which the defendant shouldn't be convicted. The prosecutor says Eckenrode's actions directly caused her death.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - State transportation officials say that there have been no reports of identity theft stemming from the theft of personal information on more than 11-thousand customers from a driver's license center. The burglars broke into the Wilkes-Barre Driver License Center in Hanover Township on November 28th and got away with computers containing the personal information and equipment to make hundreds of fraudulent licenses. The information on the computers included names, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers and at least partial Social Security numbers -- including complete Social Security
numbers for five thousand-348 customers. Officials say the burglars might have been intent on making fraudulent licenses and didn't realize they had the information on the computers or didn't care. But, officials say it is also possible that identities have been stolen but the victims are not yet aware of it. The theft prompted a review of security at all 97 of the state's photo licensing centers, and officials say a number of changes have been made.

NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) - Authorities say a man severely burned when his house exploded -- in what police alleged was a failed suicide attempt -- is in custody on a parole violation. State probation officers arrested 30-year-old Patrick Henry of New Castle earlier this week after he was discharged from Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh. He remains in custody in the state Regional Correctional Facility in Mercer County. New Castle police say two other people were injured in the explosion after Henry allegedly unscrewed a gas line in the basement. The blast caused more than one-point-three (m) million dollars damage to nearly four dozen houses, and nine of them had to be demolished. According to court records, Henry was on parole after serving time in prison on a 1999 convenience store robbery in Greenville.