PHILADELPHIA: Suspect pleads guilty in Liberty Bell case
A man who struck the Liberty Bell with a small sledgehammer pleaded guilty Friday to damaging an archaeological resource.
Mitchell A. Guilliatt, 27, entered the plea before a federal judge via video conference from his mother's home in Boise, Idaho, where he has been confined and electronically monitored since June. He faces up to six months in prison when he's sentenced April 23.
Prosecutors dropped a charge of attempting to injure federal property.
In the April 6 incident, Guilliatt pulled the sledgehammer from a backpack and struck the bell four times, shouting, "God lives." A National Park Service ranger tackled him.
The 2,080-pound bell sits on a pavilion outside Independence Hall. It was rung most famously to announce the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 8, 1776.
It has been rung rarely since a crack formed in the 1840s. Park officials have said Guilliatt's hammer dented and chipped the bell's surface.
Dallas: Second of six escapees convicted of murder
A jury deliberated less than 45 minutes Friday before convicting Donald Keith Newbury of capital murder in the death of an Irving, Tex., police officer after a prison escape in 2000.
Newbury, 39, will face either the death penalty or life in prison after the punishment phase of the trial, which begins Wednesday. He is the second of six prison escapees from the Connally prison unit to go on trial for killing Officer Aubrey Hawkins. The group's leader, George Rivas, was sentenced to death in August.
Newbury admitted in a statement to police that he helped in the robbery, but said he only fired three shots and those were at an accomplice he mistook for a police officer.
Prosecutors said it's likely that Newbury did shoot Hawkins, and argued that even if he didn't, he could be convicted because he took part in the robbery that led to the officer's death.
The convicts escaped from the Connally prison unit in south Texas on Dec. 13, 2000, after they overpowered prison workers and stole a cache of prison-issue weapons.
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