Free Republic

<p>CANANDAIGUA — The Phelps man whose trial included protests by gun-rights advocates is going to prison.</p> <p>On Monday in Ontario County Court, Judge Craig Doran sentenced Shane Bennett, 35, to 4 and 1/2 years in prison followed by five years of parole.</p>

he was 18 years old, a freshman, and had been on campus for just two weeks when one Saturday night last September her friends grew worried because she had been drinking and suddenly disappeared. Around midnight, the missing girl texted a friend, saying she was frightened by a student she had met that evening. “Idk what to do,” she wrote. “I’m scared.” When she did not answer a call, the friend began searching for her. In the early-morning hours on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in central New York, the friend said, he found her — bent...

ROCHESTER—A state appeals court has overturned sex abuse charges against an Ontario County man and ordered a new trial. In doing so, the court also admonished the Ontario County District Attorney’s office for improper comments made during trial. In a decision released Friday (April 1), the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, ruled that Richard M. Wildrick’s rights were violated when the Ontario County Court refused to issue subpoenas for the school records of one of his alleged victims, an underage boy. That refusal, the court held, denied Wildrick his right to a fair trial because the prosecution had...