Iowa Sex Offender Cohabitant Law Upheld: An AP story by Michael Crumb reports that the Iowa Supreme Court, in a split opinion, upheld a law that bars single parents from living with convicted sex offenders. The case involves a Coralville woman found guilty of child endangerment and sentenced to one year probation because she lived with a convicted sex offender and let her children stay with the man - so long as they were supervised by her mother or her sister - while she was at work. In her appeal, Holly Mitchell argued that her equal protection rights were violated because the Iowa Legislature decided to distinguish between married and unmarried people, subjecting only unmarried people to criminal charges for engaging in the same behavior as married people.

Ohio Man Faces Execution Wednesday: A story from Chillicothe Gazette reports that a man whose arrest in one killing led to a death sentence for another killing will face execution Wednesday. Gregory Bryant-Bey has been on death row for 16 years, and is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1992 killing of Toledo collectibles store owner Dale Pinkelman. Pinkelman's murder went unsolved for more than three months. It was not until detectives noted similarities in the killing of Peter Mihas, owner of The Board Room restaurant in downtown Toledo, that they began to suspect Bryant-Bey in Pinkelman's murder. Bryant-Bey faced two death penalty trials for each killing. He was given a life sentence for Mihas' slaying and the death penalty for Pinkelman's killing.

Baby Killer Gets Baby Sentence: A Kentucky man originally charged with murder for beating his 8-month-old stepdaughter to death agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charges of manslaughter and criminal abuse, and will serve 10 years for the crimes. A story by writer Julia Hunter in the Kentucky New Era reports that Robert Curlee received his sentence last week for killing little Jillian Niles on October 10, 2004. At the time of the child's death Curlee was being investigated for child abuse after it was discovered that she had fractured ribs. Curlee's wife, Megan Niles-Curlee, was also charged with murder and first-degree criminal abuse. Last week, she pleaded guilty to lesser charge of endangering the welfare of a minor, a misdemeanor, on the criminal abuse charge. She was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation.