The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld the murder conviction of Matthew Ecker in the shooting death of his girlfriend at her St. Paul apartment.

In a unanimous decision filed Monday, a three-judge panel rejected Ecker’s argument that his conviction should be reversed because the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he shot 32-year-old Alexandra Pennig in December 2022. Ecker claimed the circumstantial evidence supported a reasonable hypothesis that Pennig died by suicide.

Alexandra Lee Pennig (Courtesy of Pennig’s family)

A Ramsey County jury in February 2024 convicted the 46-year-old emergency room practitioner of second-degree intentional murder, not premeditated. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The state alleged during trial that Ecker shot Pennig in the head during a struggle at the door to the bathroom in Pennig’s apartment. Ecker maintained that Pennig took her own life after locking herself in the bathroom.

Attorney Robert Richman, who represented Ecker in his appeal, declined to comment on Monday’s decision. A petition to the state Supreme Court is being discussed, he said, adding that “it’s too early to say.”

Ecker, who lived in Fergus Falls with his wife and four children, had been in a romantic relationship with Pennig for about two years. It was revealed during his trial that Pennig, a former nurse, struggled with addiction and mental-health issues and had previously attempted suicide by taking too many medications. Ecker had prescribed Pennig multiple medications and had given her approximately $28,000 over the course of their relationship.

Undetermined manner of death

Ecker called 911 at 2:50 a.m. Dec. 16, 2022, from the Lofts at Farmers Market apartment at 260 E. Fifth St. and reported that Pennig had shot herself with his handgun. He told dispatch that he called four minutes after she pulled the trigger. He said that he had a permit to carry a firearm.

Officers found Pennig lying on her back in the bathroom with a gunshot wound to the left side of her head. “Ecker said it was weird since (Pennig) is right-handed,” the criminal complaint said.

Matthew Phillip Ecker (Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Ecker told police they had been drinking at downtown bars. After Pennig shot herself, he said, he ran to the bathroom and broke the door down with his shoulder to get inside. Officers found Pennig’s feet straddling the door and a piece of the door’s lock underneath her, which, the prosecution argued, showed the door was open and not closed when she fell to the ground.

Ecker’s trial attorney, Bruce Rivers, told jurors the medical examiner and a forensic pathologist hired by the defense both agreed that Pennig’s manner of death “is undetermined.” Ecker, who waived his right to testify, had no motive to kill Pennig, Rivers said, adding that he cared for her and even loved her.

Prosecutors pointed out to jurors they did not have to prove motive to secure a guilty conviction. They offered one up anyway: Ecker had been financially supporting Pennig and she planned to live with her new boyfriend, who punched Ecker in the face at a bar about an hour before the killing.

‘Inference of guilt’

The appellate judges considered “whether a reasonable inference of guilt can be drawn from the circumstances proved, viewed as a whole.”

The position of Pennig’s legs in relation to the bathroom door and the door’s metal latch piece underneath Pennig’s body “are consistent with the state’s theory that Ecker slammed into the door before (Pennig) was shot and that the door was open when she died,” the decision read.

The gun, which was Ecker’s, was located in Pennig’s left hand, but she was right-handed, the decision noted.

Ecker said he washed his hands after attempting to stop the bleeding, but there was no blood on the sink handles and the sink was dry. Ecker denied cleaning the gun, yet despite his admission that he transferred the gun from the bathroom to the suitcase and back to the bathroom, his DNA was not on his gun.

“Perhaps most significantly, Ecker admitted that he moved the gun, first to his suitcase and then back to the bathroom, where he positioned it underneath (Pennig’s) left hand on her chest,” the decision read.

Although Dr. Kelly Mills, chief medical examiner for Ramsey County, could not determine a manner of death, she testified that she had never seen a suicide where the decedent’s romantic partner repositioned the gun in the way Ecker said he did, the decision said. It also noted that Mills believed the evidence was inconsistent with suicide.

Ecker’s primary contention in his appeal was that, even if the circumstances support a reasonable inference of guilt, they supported the equally reasonable inference that Pennig died by suicide. To support his argument, Ecker relied heavily on the evidence of Pennig’s prior suicide attempt and a Dec. 13 text message she sent to Ecker in which she wrote she did not feel hopeful about life.

“But in determining the reasonableness of inferences,” the decision read, “we must consider the circumstances proved not in isolation, but as a whole.”

Planning her future

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The ruling noted that Pennig was actively planning for the future: She was interviewing for jobs, arranging for ongoing payment of rent and refills of prescription medication and making plans to attend a wedding the following summer. In addition, Pennig did not like, or have familiarity with, firearms, and multiple witnesses testified about the unlikelihood that she would use a firearm to end her life.

In his appeal, Ecker also pointed to physical and forensic evidence as being inconsistent with guilt. He argued the nature of the gunshot wound, lack of obvious defensive wounds, absence of blood or gunshot residue on his hands or clothing and the presence of Pennig’s DNA on his holster support the inference that she died by suicide.

“Again, though, Ecker’s argument relies on isolated circumstances,” the decision read, adding additional circumstances proved include Pennig’s clean hands, a clean gun, dry sink, coagulating blood and officer testimony that the crime scene was inconsistent with suicide.

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

Many Americans were forced to postpone cancer screenings — colonoscopies, mammograms and lung scans — for several months in 2020 as COVID-19 overwhelmed doctors and hospitals.

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But that delay in screening isn’t making a huge impact on cancer statistics, at least none that can be seen yet by experts who track the data.

Cancer death rates continue to decline, and there weren’t huge shifts in late diagnoses, according to a new report published Monday in the journal Cancer. It’s the broadest-yet analysis of the pandemic’s effect on U.S. cancer data.

In 2020, as the pandemic began, a greater share of U.S. cancers were caught at later stages, when they’re harder to treat. But in 2021, these worrisome diagnoses returned to prepandemic levels for most types of cancer.

“It is very reassuring,” said lead author Recinda Sherman of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. “So far, we haven’t seen an excess of late-stage diagnoses,” which makes it unlikely that there will be higher cancer death rates tied to the pandemic.

Similarly, the number of new cancer cases dropped in 2020, but then returned to prepandemic levels by 2021. The size of the 2020 decline in new cancers diagnosed was similar across states, despite variations in COVID-19 policy restrictions. The researchers note that human behavior and local hospital policies played more of a role than state policy restrictions.

Late-stage diagnoses of cervical cancer and prostate cancer did increase in 2021, but the shifts weren’t large. The data analysis goes only through 2021, so it’s not the final word.

“We didn’t see any notable shifts,” Sherman said. “So it’s really unlikely that people with aggressive disease were not diagnosed during that time period.”

The report was produced by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By ISABEL DEBRE

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The faithful in Pope Francis’ hometown lit candles in the church where he found God as a teenager, packed the cathedral where he spoke as archbishop and prayed Monday in the neighborhoods where he earned fame as the “slum bishop.”

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For millions of Argentines, Francis — who died Monday at 88 — was a source of controversy and a spiritual north star whose remarkable life traced their country’s turbulent history.

Conservative detractors of the first Latin American pope criticized his support for social justice as an affinity for leftist leaders.

They pointed to his warm meetings with former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a divisive left-leaning populist figure whose unbridled state spending many Argentines blame for the nation’s economic decline. They compared their enthusiastic encounters to an unusually stern-faced Francis meeting center-right former President Mauricio Macri for a curt 22 minutes in 2016.

“Like every Argentine, I think he was a rebel,” said 23-year-old Catalina Favaro, who had come to pay her respects at the downtown cathedral. “He may have been contradictory, but that was nice, too.”

Kirchner on Monday paid tribute to her bond with Francis, saying he was “the face of a more humane church” and recalling their shared love of a prominent Argentine novelist who lionized the country’s populist left-leaning Peronist movement and its efforts to upend class structure in the 1940s and 50s.

Macri called Francis “a stern politician” but overall “a good pastor” whose name deserves “admiration and respect.”

Dedication to the needy

At his regular 8:30 a.m. Mass, Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva recalled Francis’ dedication to the less fortunate.

“The pope of the poor, of the marginalized, of those excluded, has passed away,” García Cuerva announced. Alluding to Francis’ contested legacy, he added: “He was the Pope the Argentines, whom we didn’t always understand, but whom we loved.”

Vatican observers have long described Francis’ decision never to visit his homeland after becoming pontiff as an aversion to his country’s polarizing politics.

Tensions reached a head under current libertarian President Milei, who insulted Francis as a “filthy leftist” and “the representative of the evil one on earth” before he took office in December 2023.

They appeared to reconcile during a meeting in Rome last year. But when Argentine police lashed out at retirees protesting for better pensions in Buenos Aires, Francis broke his customary silence to chide Milei on the impact of his government’s austerity program: “Instead of paying for social justice, they paid for pepper spray,” he said.

Milei couched his condolences with a nod to those tensions.

“Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honor for me,” he wrote on social media.

Never traveled home as pope

Francis traveled the world — and even to neighboring Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay — but never set foot in his homeland after his election in March 2013, much to the chagrin of his compatriots.

“That’s a political decision, there’s no doubt,” Alejandra Renaldo, 64, said from Francis’ childhood church in the scruffy, middle-class neighborhood of Flores, less than half a mile from his first home.

“Can you believe he never went to his own land? I much prefer John Paul II, he went to Poland, his country, right after becoming pope. He didn’t have any political ideas.”

At the cathedral where Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became archbishop in 1998, worshippers bowed their heads in silent prayer. Some wept, ashen. They left flowers and handwritten notes on the steps and affixed stickers for Francis’ favorite local soccer team, San Lorenzo, on the stone columns.

In Flores, where Bergoglio was born to an Italian immigrant father and a mother of Italian descent, Argentines stopped to gather around the confessional in the church where, at 16, Bergoglio had said he first heard the call to the priesthood.

“He was a father to us in Flores,” said Gabriela Lucero, 66, as she rose for morning Mass in the Basilica of San Jose de Flores. “His primary philosophy was that those church doors remain open to everyone, immigrants, the poor, the struggling, everyone.”

Grief in poor Argentine neighborhoods

With Milei declaring a week of mourning and lowering flags to half-staff, there was a strong sense of grief across the country. But nowhere was it more apparent than in the hardscrabble neighborhoods where Francis focused his outreach as archbishop.

His legacy can still be seen in the cadre of priests who have continued working, living and helping the poor in these districts long neglected by successive governments, where garbage spills onto sidewalks and the stench of sewage wafts over rutted dirt streets.

Residents of Villa 21-24, a neighborhood in southern Buenos Aires, grew emotional as they remembered Francis visiting regularly to share yerba maté, Argentina’s traditional herbal drink, with pious mothers and recovering cocaine addicts alike.

They said he led religious processions barefoot in the streets and helped grow their ramshackle church into a place of prayer and spiritual contemplation, a vibrant community center with a garden and a school.

‘Most humble person in Buenos Aires’

“He was the most humble person in all of Buenos Aires. We’ll never see a pope like him again,” said Sara Benitez Fernandez, 57, a devout member of the congregation in the district. She choked on her tears as she recalled how he always took the subway and walked, never arriving in a car.

“I have no words, it hurts so much, so much,” she said.

The leader of the church, the Rev. Lorenzo de Vedia, a charismatic, disheveled priest known to most simply as Padre Toto, said the death of his close friend and mentor on Monday left him with a swell of sorrow and whirlwind of other feelings.

“It’s a day of pain, but we’re not losing the spirit,” he said, as squealing children chased each other outside the rectory. “We carry on and we fulfill his legacy. We’re going ahead with the mission that he entrusted to us.”

Associated Press videojournalist Victor Caivano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.

By MEAD GRUVER

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming’s only abortion clinic is resuming abortions after a judge on Monday suspended two state laws.

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One suspended law would require clinics providing surgical abortions to be licensed as outpatient surgical centers. The other would require women to get an ultrasound before a medication abortion.

Wyoming Health Access in Casper had stopped providing abortions Feb. 28, the day after Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed the licensing requirement into effect.

The result: At least some women seeking abortions had to travel out of state. Now, women will once again be able to get abortions in central Wyoming while the two laws continue to be contested in court, Wellspring Health Access founder and president Julie Burkhart said Monday.

“We are immediately shouting it from the rooftop to make sure our patients know,” Burkhart said following the ruling. “We are back to seeing patients the way we were on Feb. 27.”

An abortion opponent questioned the need to contest the laws if the clinic was safe.

“The abortion business here in Casper could prove that they are providing safe services by complying with laws. Would that not make their point?” Ross Schriftman, president of Natrona County Right to Life, said in an email statement Monday.

Abortion has remained legal in Wyoming despite bans passed since 2022. The bans include the nation’s first explicit ban on abortion pills.

A judge in Jackson blocked the bans then struck them down in November on the grounds that abortion is allowed by a 2012 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of competent adults to make their own health care decisions.

The Wyoming Supreme Court heard arguments in that case Wednesday and is unlikely to rule for at least several weeks.

Meanwhile, the same people challenging the bans — Wellspring Health Access, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund, and four women, including two obstetricians — have sued to block Wyoming’s most recent two abortion laws.

The surgical center licensing requirement would require costly renovations to make Wellspring Health Access compliant, the clinic said in its lawsuit.

Gordon vetoed the requirement for an ultrasound at least 48 hours before a pill abortion, calling it onerous in cases of abuse, rape, or when a woman’s health is at risk. State lawmakers voted to override the veto on March 5.

The ultrasound requirement did not significantly affect clinic operations but Wellspring Health Access also suspended offering pill abortions to avoid legal complications. The law stands to add to the cost and complications for women getting pill abortions.

Opponents call laws like Wyoming’s requirements “targeted restrictions on abortion providers” because they can regulate clinics and abortion access out of existence even if abortion remains legal.

In blocking the laws while the lawsuit proceeds, District Judge Thomas Campbell in Casper ruled that they too stand to violate the constitution.

Despite the new restrictions, Wellspring Health Access has remained open to consult with patients and provide hormone replacement therapy for transgender patients. The clinic opened in 2023, almost a year late after heavy damage from an arson attack.