A Colorado judge on Nov. 3 rejected the plea deal of a funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 decaying bodies in a bug-infested building after family members of the deceased argued that the deal's 15- to 20-year sentence was too lenient. Carie Hallford and her husband, Jon Hallford, owned Return to Nature Funeral Home and are accused of dumping the bodies in a building in a rural town between 2019 and 2023, giving families fake ashes and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000. Both pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse last year, and State District Court Judge Eric Bentley has now rejected both of their plea deals after family members asked for a more severe punishment. A judge rejecting a plea deal is unusual, and Carie Hallford can now either withdraw her guilty plea or continue without the deal, meaning she could get a higher sentence. Jon Hallford withdrew his guilty plea and is scheduled for trial. After the discovery of the bodies, families learned that their relatives’ remains were not in the urn or the ashes they ceremonially spread but instead were languishing with nearly 190 other bodies. Some said they had nightmares of what their loved one must have looked like in that building; others wondered about their relatives' souls.

A faculty adviser for Indiana University's student newspaper filed a federal lawsuit Thursday arguing his free speech and due process rights were violated when he was fired for refusing to ensure no news stories appeared in the homecoming print edition earlier this month. A lawyer for the adviser, Jim Rodenbush, said it's a case seeking “to have a court state that the First Amendment still matters.” Rodenbush, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, seeks reinstatement to his job and monetary damages. He was dismissed Oct. 14 for his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university's direction for the Student Media Plan," according to David Tolchinsky, dean of the university's media school, who also ended the newspaper's print product. “The question is if a university doesn't like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Rodenbush's attorney, Jonathan Little, said. Phone and email messages were left for university spokespersons. The school issued a statement earlier this month saying it was shifting publication from print to digital platforms for educational and financial purposes. Editors of the Indiana Daily Student announced Thursday that the university backtracked on its decision to cut future print editions for the rest of the school year. Chancellor David Reingold authorized the paper to use its established printing budget through June 30, 2026. The next issue is scheduled to print Nov. 20. Reingold said Thursday in a letter to the editors of the student paper that he recognizes the university “has not handled recent decisions as well as we should have.” The chancellor noted that the “personnel matter” and the budget-related decision to pause printing fueled a perception that the school was trying to censor editorial content. He reminded editors that the paper is “not immune to the financial realities of this campus.” “Let me be clear: my decision had nothing to do with editorial content of the IDS," Reingold said. “And contrary to what has been posted on social media and published, Indiana University has never attempted to censor editorial content, period.” In their own letter Thursday, student editors Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller disagreed with the chancellor, saying the administration’s actions constituted censorship. Subsidized by $250,000 a year because of dwindling ad revenue, the Indiana Daily Student, regularly honored as among the nation's best collegiate news organizations, had its weekly print editions reduced to seven special sections a year. Rodenbush said this fall, administrators questioned why the special sections still had hard news content. “Telling student journalists what they can and cannot include in a newspaper is censorship of ‘editorial content’ by any definition,” wrote Hilkowitz and Miller. Rodenbush told Tolchinsky editorial decisions belonged to the student staff alone before Tolchinsky fired him and terminated future print editions. The dismissal came days before the scheduled publication of the paper's homecoming edition, which would have greeted tens of thousands of alumni returning to Bloomington to celebrate the undefeated Hoosiers football team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally. “In a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, IU fired James Rodenbush when he refused the directive to censor student work in the campus newspaper and print only fluff pieces about the upcoming homecoming festivities,” the complaint reads.

A federal judge disqualified acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Southern California from several cases after concluding Tuesday that the Trump appointee has stayed in the temporary job longer than allowed by law. U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright disqualified Essayli from supervising the criminal prosecutions in three cases, siding with defense lawyers. Essayli has been unlawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California since July 29, Seabright wrote. But he may continue to serve as a First Assistant United States Attorney, Seabright ruled, effectively leaving him as the office's top prosecutor. “Nothing is changing,” Essayli wrote in a social media post Tuesday evening, saying he looked forward to advancing President Donald Trump's agenda. The decision represents another setback to the Trump administration’s effort to extend handpicked acting U.S. attorneys beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law. A judge ruled in September that acting U.S. attorney of Nevada, Sigal Chattah, was serving in her position illegally. Another judge disqualified acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Alina Habba, in August. Essayli is a former federal prosecutor turned Republican California Assemblymember, where he took up conservative causes and criticized the state’s COVID-19 restrictions. He has been outspoken against California policies to protect immigrants living in the country illegally, and he has aggressively prosecuted people who protest Trump’s ramped up immigration enforcement across Southern California. Under federal law, if a permanent U.S. attorney is not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate within 120 days, judges of the federal district court can appoint an interim until the vacancy is filled. Essayli has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate —something that generally requires a degree of bipartisan support. California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla have criticized Essayli’s appointment. Essayli was appointed as interim U.S. attorney in March, several months after former President Joe Biden's appointee to the job resigned. Just shy of the 120-day mark, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed him as First Assistant U.S. Attorney and said he would have the authority to serve as acting U.S. attorney upon a vacancy in the role. He then resigned as interim U.S. attorney. The government has argued that he can do so under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which Congress passed specifically to regulate the temporary filling of executive branch vacancies that require presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Seabright, however, said that provision of the law only applies if the previous U.S. Attorney dies, resigns, or is otherwise incapacitated. The lawsuit seeking to disqualify Essayli was brought by three men facing federal firearms charges. They sought to have their indictments dismissed. Seabright ruled the indictments can proceed. In Nevada, the same judge that disqualified Chattah ruled last week that he was pausing his earlier ruling while a federal appellate court weighed an appeal from the U.S. Department of Justice, allowing her to remain temporarily involved in the cases being prosecuted by her office. An appellate court heard arguments on Monday regarding Habba’s appointment as well, questioning government lawyers on their maneuvers to keep Habba in place.