NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
FORT MYERS Middle school tech worker uses CPR skills to save pickleball player’s life It was the right place, at the right time, and that right place was near the pickleball court.
EVERGLADES Big Sugar’s lawsuit for control over Lake Okeechobee water A local non-profit is calling one lawsuit a battle for who controls the water in the State of Florida. Three major sugar companies filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the design and intended use of the Everglades Agriculture Area (EAA) Reservoir.
NAPLES Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day program returns to Jewish Federation of Greater Naples Sunday was a day to remember the six million men, women and children lost in the Holocaust.
NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
FORT MYERS Middle school tech worker uses CPR skills to save pickleball player’s life It was the right place, at the right time, and that right place was near the pickleball court.
EVERGLADES Big Sugar’s lawsuit for control over Lake Okeechobee water A local non-profit is calling one lawsuit a battle for who controls the water in the State of Florida. Three major sugar companies filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the design and intended use of the Everglades Agriculture Area (EAA) Reservoir.
NAPLES Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day program returns to Jewish Federation of Greater Naples Sunday was a day to remember the six million men, women and children lost in the Holocaust.
MGN Online DENVER (AP) – The time has come for jurors to hear whether James Holmes should be executed for killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. But even if they choose death, Holmes could spend the rest of his life in prison awaiting capital punishment that never happens. Colorado has executed only one person in nearly half a century, and just three people sit on the state’s death row. The man closest to seeing his death sentence carried out was granted an indefinite reprieve in 2013 by the state’s Democratic governor, who said he had doubts about the fairness of the state’s death penalty system. “Capital punishment is on life support in Colorado,” Denver attorney Craig Silverman said. As a prosecutor, Silverman secured a death sentence in 1986 against a man for kidnapping and killing a woman. Sixteen years later, Frank Rodriguez died on death row from hepatitis C complications. “If you want a case that never dies, seek capital punishment and get a death verdict, and you’ll be working on it for the next 20 years,” Silverman said. The same jurors who convicted Holmes of 165 counts of murder, attempted murder and other charges in his July 20, 2012, theater attack must soon decide whether he should pay with his life. The sentencing phase of his trial begins Wednesday. The district attorney who prosecuted Holmes, George Brauchler, said that if any crime should be punished by death, it is this one: Holmes opened fire on an audience of more than 400 defenseless strangers in a darkened theater during a Batman movie premiere, killing 12 and injuring 70 others. But many obstacles stand between Holmes and execution. Death row inmates in almost every state spend decades in prison as mandatory appeals play out in court. But Colorado has adopted a unique system for such appeals, requiring those sentenced to death to file post-conviction claims before a higher court reviews their case. It was supposed to speed up the process, but “it actually slowed it down exponentially,” said Hollis Whitson, a Denver defense attorney who specializes in appellate law. Nationally, death row inmates spend an average of 15 1/2 years in prison before they’re executed, said Michael Radelet, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has long studied the death penalty. It’s impossible to say how Colorado compares because the state has executed just one man since 1967 – Gary Lee Davis, who was put to death in 1997 after a 10-year wait. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and shooting a woman 14 times with a .22-caliber rifle. The other two on Colorado’s death row – Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray – were sentenced to death more than five years ago for the same double murder, but their appeals still haven’t been heard. Whitson’s study of capital punishment in Colorado from 1999-2010 found that the vast majority of death penalty prosecutions result in life sentences, pleas to lesser offenses or acquittals. Another study, in 2013, found that only 0.6 percent of first-degree murder cases resulted in death sentences. “The cost of death prosecutions in Colorado is high, and the execution yield is extraordinarily low,” Whitson’s study determined. Holmes’ appeals could be even more complex because of his mental illness. Doctors testified that he suffers from schizophrenia. If his mental state deteriorates while he is on death row, he may never be executed, Radelet said. “If he is sent to death row, we’re going to need dump trucks full of money to pay the mental health experts who will continue to argue this for the next 20 years,” Radelet said. “Even if Holmes is sane today, there will be inevitable questions about his sanity at the time of execution.” Part of the issue is Colorado’s uneasy relationship with the death penalty. The state abolished it in 1897, only to restore it in 1901, embarrassed by an outbreak of lynchings. The state’s lower legislative house voted to repeal the death penalty in 1999, but the effort stalled in the Senate. Lawmakers’ attempts to eliminate it again failed in 2009 and 2013. “You have this odd combination here for ambivalence on the part of prosecutors and juries and a statute that permits the imposition of death in most murders,” said Sam Kamin, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law who worked on the study. “In some cases it was lack of resources, in some cases it was the belief that a jury wouldn’t impose it” or the victims’ families didn’t want it. Colorado’s lonely death row is not necessarily for lack of support. Nonpartisan Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli says support for the death penalty in Colorado polls has generally tracked those in national ones for decades. In 2013, a Quinnipiac University Poll indicated that 69 percent of Colorado voters backed capital punishment.