NATIONAL SECURITY

Joint Base Andrews has bomb scare

A bomb scare temporarily put Joint Base Andrews, a major military facility outside Washington, on lockdown on Thursday, base officials said.

In a series of messages on Twitter, Andrews staff said that a woman entered the base’s visitor center shortly after 5 p.m. and said she had a bomb secured to her chest. Authorities put the area around the main gate, just one entrance to the sprawling military compound, on lockdown.

President Obama and other senior officials use Andrews, located about 14 miles from downtown Washington, for official flights.

Ninety minutes later, the base announced the incident had been resolved. “Once emergency responders arrived, the individual was apprehended and an [explosives disposal] team determined no explosive device was on-scene,” the base said in another message.

The base commander, Col. Brad Hoagland, said the incident had been a false alarm. It was not known whether the suspect was handed over to police.

Former New York Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, center, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison. (Seth Wenig/AP)

— Missy Ryan

NEW YORK

Onetime Senate leader gets 5 years in prison

Former state Senate majority leader Dean Skelos was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison, the second time in 10 days that a powerful legislative leader faced incarceration after a crackdown on state capital corruption.

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan imposed the penalty on Skelos, 68, and also sentenced Adam Skelos, his 33-year-old son, to 6½ years in prison after their convictions in December on charges of extortion, fraud and bribe solicitation.

Prosecutors had sought a prison term approaching 12½ to 152/3 years for Dean Skelos, who was ordered to pay a $500,000 fine. He and his son were also ordered to forfeit an additional $334,120.

The former senator received less than half of the 12 years in prison that his counterpart in the State Assembly, former speaker Sheldon Silver, received this month for collecting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks.

— Reuters

ALABAMA

Court delays execution over killer’s fitness

Hours before an Alabama inmate was set to die by lethal injection, a federal appeals court Thursday agreed to delay the execution to let authorities consider arguments about his competency.

Adam Skelos, son of former New York state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, was also sentenced to 6½ years in prison following their convictions in December on charges of extortion, fraud and bribe solicitation. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)

Vernon Madison was found guilty and sentenced to death for killing Julius Schulte, a police officer in Mobile, Ala., in 1985. According to police, Schulte, a 22-year veteran of the department, was responding to a domestic complaint involving a missing child when he was shot.

Madison’s case has stretched on for decades, through multiple convictions and reversals. Alabama officials had planned to execute him by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday, but a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said in an order Thursday morning that it would allow him to press his case in court.

State Attorney General Luther Strange filed a motion Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to vacate that stay.

Attorneys for Madison say that because of “a series of strokes and other serious medical conditions,” Madison suffers from dementia and has “an inability to rationally understand why the state of Alabama is seeking to execute him.”

The appeals court said that the filing it considered was the first chance that a state or federal court had to consider whether Madison was fit to be executed under the Eighth Amendment. Oral arguments were set for June 23 in Atlanta.

Madison’s attorneys had sought another avenue to avoid the execution, arguing in a filing to the Supreme Court on Thursday morning that his death sentence may be unconstitutional.

— Mark Berman