Indicted officer faces new conspiracy count

An Oklahoma City police officer charged with concealing a federal crime and lying to investigators looking into an interstate theft ring now faces an additional charge of conspiracy.

An indictment filed Tuesday says a grand jury added the conspiracy count against 25-year-old Weston Slater.

Slater is one of six people charged with stealing various vehicles in Texas, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska and bringing them to Oklahoma to sell.

The police officer has pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges and is on unpaid leave from the department.

A message left with his attorney Thursday wasn’t immediately returned.

The indictment alleges Slater used a police computer to determine whether a pickup had been stolen in Texas, warned a co-defendant of the law enforcement investigation and lied to the FBI during the investigation.

Appeals court upholds murder conviction

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the murder and kidnapping convictions and life sentence of a Tulsa man in the death of a Talala man.

The court on Thursday rejected appeals by 30-year-old Vernon Leemountel Smith, who was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The appeals included insufficient evidence, improper hearsay testimony, prosecutorial misconduct and that the jury should have been instructed to consider lesser offenses, such as second-degree murder.

Smith is one of four men convicted in connection with the June 2015 death of 27-year-old Chazz Holly. Prosecutors said Holly had cerebral palsy and delayed cognitive reasoning.

Prosecutors said Holly died after he was kept inside the covered bed of his father’s truck for