Christine Trial as covered in Roseburg,
Oregon by-
|
Christine Sentencing
May 28, 2002
By Dan
Bain
It's twelve and a-half years in prison for Brian Christine, seven and a-half for his wife Ruth. The Christines were sentenced Tuesday morning in a Douglas County court in Roseburg. The parents took their three daughters, by gunpoint, from state welfare workers. Earlier this month, a jury convicted the couple of custodial interference and unlawful use of a motor vehicle. They were acquitted of kidnapping charges. The prison terms are mandatory under Measure 11 guidelines. Brian Christine gets the longer time for using a gun during the crime. Officials found the family in Montana shortly after the children were taken last August. The Christines' daughters now live with their grandparents. |
| Christine Trial Update May 9, 2002 Roseburg - Photographs and testimony from friends portray the Christine family as generally happy and healthy during the early summer of 2000. Only weeks later, the pictures and the family had somehow changed, sending three young girls to the hospital and their parents into a spiral of desperation. |
 |
| Testimony Begins
May 3, 2002 Roseburg- Testimony began Friday in the trial of Ruth and Brian Christine, accused of taking their three children at gunpoint from state child welfare workers. Eric Reppert, of Grants Pass, testified that he met the couple back during the summer of 2000, when their motor home broke down, and he gave them a shady place to park on his property while they fixed it. Reppert identified the .357-Magnum revolver allegedly used to threaten the child welfare workers as one he had traded to Brian Christine along with an army surplus rifle and an old car in return for the bus Christine had converted into a motor home. Read the whole story at KPIC 4- Roseburg
|
|
| Update: Christine Trial
May 2, 2002 Roseburg- A judge ruled Thursday that Ruth and Brian Christine cannot use a "choice of evils" defense against charges they took their three daughters at gunpoint from state child welfare workers, and the prosecution can offer evidence the girls were malnourished. Judge William Lasswell said the threat to the Christines' three young daughters from being in foster care did not exceed the threat posed by the crimes the Christines are accused of. "I do not believe this case as I have heard it so far ... meets that test," Lasswell said of Steele's planned "choice of evils" defense. "The children's services department was acting in a lawful way." Read the whole story at KPIC 4- Roseburg
|
 |
Gunpoint Kidnapping
May 1, 2002
Roseburg-
Brian and Ruth Christine's daughters told police that their father hit one of them in the head, causing her to fall down steps in the converted city bus they called home and cut her forehead, spreading "blood all over," a detective testified Wednesday.
Asked why he hadn't taken his daughter Lydia, then 3, to the hospital, Brian Christine "told me he was an Eagle Scout and he knew how to treat an injury," testified Grants Pass police detective Dan Evans.
"He told me his children were God's children, and if God chose to strike them down with lightning, that was his choice," Evans said.
The testimony came during a hearing on a defense motion to suppress evidence gathered when police first contacted the Christines in their bus on July 31, 2000, while it was parked at the library in Grants Pass in the course of their travels around the country.
Read the whole story at KPIC 4- Roseburg
| More Charges Against Ruth Christine
April 23, 2002 Grants Pass- Ruth Christine, awaiting trial on charges she and her husband kidnapped three of their daughters from state social workers, was arraigned Tuesday on a new indictment alleging she withheld medical treatment from one of the girls. Wearing a blue sweater and light capri pants for the appearance in Josephine County Circuit Court, Christine, 29, did not enter a plea to the secret indictment on a felony charge of criminal mistreatment handed up by a grand jury last July. The indictment alleges Christine did not seek medical treatment for her second-oldest daughter, Lydia, now 5, during July 2000, when the family stopped over in Grants Pass while traveling from their home state of Indiana in a converted city bus. The indictment did not specify the medical condition, but Lydia's father, Brian Christine, faces a charge of assault for allegedly hitting her in the head for wetting the bed during the same time period. |
|
df