Kentucky News Now

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) — A convicted sex offender from southern Kentucky has been ordered to pay $1.8 million to the victim of five years of molestation.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell on Wednesday concluded that 35-year-old Jeffrey Lawan Renfrow of Morgantown made no effort to stop the abuse.

The judgment stems from a civil suit brought by the victim against Renfrow in federal court in Bowling Green.

Russell awarded $850,000 in compensatory damages, $1 million in punitive damages and $46,800 for toward future medical treatment.

Renfrow is serving a 30-year prison sentence after being convicted of three counts of second-degree sodomy and three counts of first-degree sexual abuse.

The plaintiff in the suit is now an adult. The Associated Press does not name the victims of sexual assault.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky death row inmate has lost his bid for a new trial and to overturn his death sentences in the slayings of three people in central Kentucky.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning on Thursday found no errors in the case of 60-year-old Leif Halvorsen that would warrant overturning his convictions.

Halvorsen was sentenced to death Sept. 15, 1983 in Fayette County for the participation in the murder of three people with 55-year-old Mitchell Willoughby, who also faces execution.

Prosecutors say the two men shot to death Jacqueline Greene, Joe Norman and Joey Durham in a Lexington apartment on Jan. 13, 1983.

Prosecutors say that night they attempted to dispose of the bodies by throwing them from the Brooklyn Bridge in Jessamine County.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The Kentucky Supreme Court has suspended a Lexington attorney for five years after she stole money from a client and her law firm.

The justices unanimously agreed on Thursday to hand down the punishment to Adrienne A. Thakur. Chief Justice John D. Minton wrote that Thakur took $8,800 from her law firm and a client in 2010.

After the theft was discovered, Thakar resigned from the law firm. She signed a promissory note in March 2013 and agreed to repay the money within eight months.

Minton noted that Thakar cooperated with investigators, but must undergo ethics training before being allowed to apply for reinstatement to practice in the future.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A northeast Kentucky woman convicted of killing her husband won a new trial after the state Supreme Court concluded that prosecutors improperly played a tape of the defendant remaining silent when asked questions by a detective.

The divided court concluded on Thursday that Pamela Bartley's silence in the face of accusatory questions was improperly used as an indicator of her guilt. Justice Mary Noble also wrote for the majority that guns found in the Bartley house, but not definitively linked to the slaying of Carl Bartley could not be introduced at a retrial.

Justice Bill Cunningham and Justice Will T. Scott dissented, saying "the proof was overwhelming" in the case.

A Rowan County jury convicted Pamela Bartley of shooting her husband in the back of the head in 2007.

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