INDIANOLA, Iowa [KCCI-TV] — A Norwalk mother accused of killing her newborn baby has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, a week before she was set to go to trial for first-degree murder. Megan Staude was arrested in March 2023 after she and her father, Rodney Staude, allegedly placed the baby in a trash bag and left it in a ditch the month before. Both were charged with first-degree murder.

Megan Staude’s trial was scheduled to start July 9, but on Wednesday, she entered a plea of guilty to second-degree murder. A status conference is scheduled for Aug. 26. Rodney Staude’s case is currently on hold while he undergoes a mental evaluation.

(Radio Iowa) – Libertarian Party candidates have been nominated in three of Iowa’s four congressional districts. Lone Tree City Councilman Nicholas Gluba is the Libertarian candidate in Iowa’s first district. Gluba, a U-S Marine Corps veteran, says Iowans are tired of U-S involvement in Ukraine and Israel. “I don’t want my children and my constituents’ children to have to fight in another war because I saw that first hand. Nobody else needs to ever see that again,” Gluba says. “…The United States has people here who need money that need the United States to be backing them and not backing foreign wars.”

Gluba says he’s running on a platform of accountable government, economic opportunity and personal freedom. “Libertarians, we come from a very, very wide base,” Gluba says. “If you are on your property or in your home, do what you need to do to make your life better, so long as it does not hurt anyone else.” Gluba is running in the district where Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Davenport is seeking reelection and Christina Bohannan of Iowa City is the Democratic Party’s nominee.

Libertarian Marco Battaglia of Des Moines is the party’s candidate in the third congressional district. Battaglia says voters should have a choice beyond Republican Congressman Zach Nunn and Democrat Lanon Baccam.  “You know, there’s just a few glaringly red or blue issues that they would vote differently on,” Battaglia says, “but I think in terms of like, continuing to spend more and more money, they’re gonna vote, they’ve consistently voted the same.”

Battaglia says it’s time to cut spending on foreign conflicts in places like Ukraine and Israel and spend that money to solve domestic issues. “We basically have to get our own house and our own budget in order before we even consider sending money to other countries,” Battaglia says. Battaglia was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 2022 and ran for attorney general in 2018.

The Libertarian Party has nominated Charles Aldrich of Clarion to run in the fourth district, where Republican Congressman Randy Feenstra is running for reelection and Democrat Ryan Melton of Nevada is running a second time. Aldrich, an enginer who served in the Marines for four years, ran for a U-S House seat in 2018 and ran for the U-S Senate in 2016. He ran for a seat in the state legislature in 2022.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled it was unconstitutional to let two children testify remotely against an alleged abuser. The children were in the judge’s office and their testimony was shown in the courtroom, but four Iowa Supreme Court justices ruled that violated the defendant’s right to confront his accusers. Professor Emily Hughes teaches criminal law at the University of Iowa Law School. She says if the video connection had given the children a view of the defendant in the courtroom, the opinion MAY have been different.

“The opinion itself doesn’t say that a two-way video is sufficient,” Hughes says, “so the dissent points out it’s not exactly decided by the court whether a two-way video would suffice or whether the person has to be in the room with the defendant.”

In FEDERAL courts, judges have authority to let children testify in child abuse cases by one-way, closed circuit video. Hughes says the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling makes clear their decision rests on the IOWA Constitution, not the U-S Constitution.”The Iowa Supreme Court has said that under Article I, Section 10 of the Iowa Constitution, which is what people kind of talk about as the ‘confrontation clause,’ that confrontation means face-to-face and face-to-face means that the defendant can see the witness and the witness is able to see the defendant,” Hughes says.

Iowa Judicial Branch Bldg.

“…They are the people who get to decide what the state constitution means and how to apply it, so that is a pretty powerful part of that opinion because the whole case rested on the Iowa Constitution.” State Senator Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines, says the ruling is outrageous and she may sponsor a bill to make it clear children could testify against an abuser via a two-way video connection. “I’ve been talking with civil rights attorneys and experts in child protection just to get their take on the ruling,” Petersen says, “just wanting to make sure that if we pursue legislation that would actually work with the current Supreme Court that Iowa has.”

Petersen says her concern is prosecutors may not be able to pursue some cases when the child is the only witness to the abuse. “Kids that feel unsafe testifying in front of their abuser who may not decide not to move forward with the (criminal) case, they’ll also be barred from the civil court room by their 19th birthday,” Petersen says. “Iowa has to address our horrible laws that protect predators and not children.”

Under current Iowa law, a lawsuit against an alleged abuser must be filed in civil court before the victim turns 19. An Illinois law passed in 2023 gives Illinois judges the discretion to let children under 13 testify outside the courtroom when warranted. Last year Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled prosecutors may use outside-the-courtroom testimony from older children, even if the defendant is accused of abuse or assault.