Browning Law News Blog

On July 5, 2020, Texas police discovered the body of Spc. Vanessa Guillen. Actually, they discovered her "remains," as she had been cut to pieces by her murderer and his girlfriend.  Ms. Guillen had gone missing April 22, 2020, from her post at Ft. Hood, Texas.  According to police reports, 20 year old Specialist Aaron Robinson bludgeoned her to death with a hammer on that date.  July 1, 2020, as police approached Robinson, he committed suicide. In the days that followed, police arrested Robinson's girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar.  Ms. Aguilar, the estranged wife of another soldier at Ft. Hood, was charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence.  After questioning, she admitted she helped her boyfriend cut up the body of Spc. Guillen and put the pieces into a box.  The couple then took the box to a remote location in the county, dumped the remains into three holes in the ground and covered over the holes.  Aguilar was able to tell the police where the holes were located.

I have the pleasure of announcing the Idaho Supreme Court has found in favor of my client in its August 3, 2020 decision,  Packer v. Riverbend Communications , 2020 Ida LEXIS 167 (2020).  This was actually the third consecutive Supreme Court case I have argued and won, the other two being    Nelson v. Kaufman 458 P.3d 139 (2020) and  Gallagher v. Best Western Cottontree Inn , 161 Idaho 542 (2017).  In each instance, the district court judge had dismissed my client's case, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision on appeal.  Life is good.   More information about the case can be found here :  https://law.justia.com/cases/idaho/supreme-court-civil/2020/46964.html

Los Angeles business executive Stephen Semprevivo was sentenced to four months in federal prison for paying $400,000 to get his son admitted to Georgetown University as a fake tennis recruit. He is the third parent sentenced in the college admissions scandal, and seems to have made the largest payment to the ring leader of the scheme, Rick Singer. The U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani made the pattern of having harsher punishments for the parents who paid more money to get their kids' SAT or ACT scores fixed. Semprevivo was also sentenced to two years of supervised release, 500 hours of community service, and a fine of $100,000.  Semprevivo's attorneys stand by the belief that Semprevivo and the 35 other parents were simply victims of Rick Singer.  Semprevivo's sentencing is a couple days after Judge Talwani gave Los Angeles businessman Devin Sloane 4 months in prison for paying $250,000 to get his son to be a false recruit for the water polo team at the Univ