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An Iowa law allowing people to use lethal force to defend themselves doesn’t apply to defendants who engaged in criminal activity prior to the perceived threat, the state Supreme Court ruled today.
The ruling reverses an Iowa Court of Appeals’ order in May issuing a new trial to Miguel Angel Lorenzo Baltazar, 21, of Des Moines. He is serving life in prison for the July 2017 shooting death of 23-year-old Jeffrey Mercado. Baltazar maintains he feared Mercado had a weapon and was acting in self-defense under the state’s Stand Your Ground law.
An Iowa State University grain quality specialist says the state’s unharvested cornfields aren’t necessarily a loss. Charles Hurburgh says some growers are choosing to leave corn in the fields because the kernels’ moisture content is too high for safe storage.
"It’s probably not going to be moldy. After standing a while, it’ll probably come out of the field at seventeen to eighteen percent moisture, somewhat in that area."
The latest update.earlier this week.estimates.about twenty-percent of Iowa’s statewide corn crop is still in the field. But in northeast Iowa….corn harvest is only about one-half complete.
After months of extraordinarily high releases from upstream dams, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Saturday finally begins cutting back.
The releases have contributed to high levels on the Missouri River along the Nebraska-Iowa border southward. And those high levels have kept water from draining from still flooded and damaged portions of the valley.
