Court Roundup

 Florida

Palm Beach jury awards woman $10M for bad tire 
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Palm Beach County jury has ordered a tire maker to pay almost $10 million to a woman critically injured in a 2009 accident.
The Palm Beach Post reported Friday that the jury found Continental Tire responsible for Tracey Parker’s injuries.
The 39-year-old Parker is a wife and the mother of three children. She was injured when the tire flew off the rim of her Chevrolet Cobalt, causing it to flip three times. Parker suffered severe injuries and was in a coma for a month. She has undergone 17 surgeries and racked up $1.5 million in hospital bills.
Her lawyers showed that the tire had somehow not been inspected before it left Continental’s plant.
Continental argued that the tire had not been properly inflated. It is expected to appeal.
 
Ohio
State announces alternative lethal injection drug 
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio prison officials are keeping their primary lethal injection drug in place despite the state’s supply expiring, but they’ve added a second drug option for executioners to address the shortage.
The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said Friday that pentobarbital will remain Ohio’s primary method of administering the death penalty. Spokeswoman JoEllen Smith says a second, alternative intravenous drug has been added as an option because of difficulties in obtaining pentobarbital.
The agency’s announcement Friday came just a few days after its last supplies of pentobarbital expired.
The drug’s original manufacturer, Denmark-based Lundbeck Inc., said in 2011 that it was putting the drug off-limits for executions. It required that prohibition remain when it sold the product to Lake Forest, Ill.-based Akorn Inc.
 
Arizona
Civil lawsuit over race, sex abortion ban dismissed 
PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed two civil rights groups’ lawsuit challenging an Arizona law banning abortions based on the race or sex of the child.
U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell’s ruling Thursday says the NAACP’s Maricopa County branch and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum don’t have legal standing to sue.
The law makes it a felony to knowingly provide a sex- or race-based abortion.
The groups contended that the law unconstitutionally singles out Asian and black women based on stereotypes and the sponsors’ beliefs that Asian and black women may choose an abortion because of race or the baby’s sex.
Supporters of the 2011 legislation that became the law said it was intended to prevent discrimination.
 
New York
Suburban paper sues for pistol permit records 
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A suburban New York newspaper has sued Putnam County to compel it to release its pistol permit records.
The Journal News says it sued Thursday after the county denied two Freedom of Information requests and a subsequent appeal.
The newspaper first requested information from Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties following the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre. It made another request after the state passed a gun control law allowing permit holders to apply to keep their names and addresses private.
Putnam County officials declined to comment on the lawsuit because they had not yet been served with the papers. But County Executive MaryEllen Odell told the newspaper she’s confident the county will prevail.
Westchester and Rockland counties provided the information to the newspaper, which published a clickable map on its website identifying residents there with handgun permits.
 
Florida
Home returned to estate of slain lottery winner 
BARTOW, Fla. (AP) — The million-dollar Florida home of a murdered lottery winner has been stripped from his convicted killer and returned to his estate.
The Ledger of Lakeland reports Friday that Circuit Judge J. Dale Durrance ruled that Dorice Moore never paid Abraham Shakespeare. A lawyer representing Shakespeare’s estate said it will be sold to benefit his two sons.
Shakespeare won a $17 million lump-sum in 2006 but he lost most of his money. During Moore’s trial last year, prosecutors showed she befriended Shakespeare to take control of his remaining wealth, including his home. He disappeared in April 2009 and his body was found nine months later under a slab behind a home owned by Moore. He had been shot twice.
Moore was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

New York
Mom who killed 3 kids wants cut of their $350K estate 
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — Leatrice Brewer drowned her three young children in 2008 believing she was saving them from the deadly effects of voodoo. Afterward she tried to commit suicide twice, but failed.
Now the 33-year-old suburban New York woman who was found not guilty because of mental disease or defect in the deaths of her children, ages 1, 5 and 6, wants a portion of the children’s $350,000 estate. Her attorneys say she shouldn’t be subject to laws that bar convicts from profiting from their crimes.
Nassau County Surrogate’s Court Judge Edward McCarty ruled Thursday that Brewer be taken from an upstate psychiatric facility to testify about her request next month.
Although the case would establish a precedent in New York if Brewer succeeds, she’s not expected to see any money because of a $1.2 million lien against her for psychiatric counseling and other services she has received since her arrest, attorneys said.
Brewer admitted she drowned the children in the bathtub of her apartment in New Cassel, on Long Island about 20 miles east of New York City, in February 2008. She later placed the children’s bodies on a bed and tried to kill herself by swallowing a concoction of household cleaning chemicals. When that suicide bid failed, she jumped out her second-story window but again survived.
Instead of facing trial on three murder counts in the children’s deaths, Brewer pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect. Psychiatrists had determined she suffered a major depressive disorder and believed she killed the children to save them from the potentially fatal effects of voodoo.
Brewer is being kept at a state psychiatric hospital until psychiatrists determine she’s no longer mentally ill.
New York’s Son of Sam Law, named for the 1970s serial killer and amended in 2001, was designed to prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes, such as by selling their stories to book publishers or moviemakers. The judge in Brewer’s case, though, has noted the unique aspect — that Brewer wasn’t convicted.
The case drew attention to Nassau County’s social services agency, whose caseworkers visited Brewer’s apartment two days before the killings and found no one home but neglected to schedule an immediate follow-up visit. Two social workers were later suspended.