National Roundup

Florida
911 call for ride to Hooters ended with trip to jail
MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man wanted to go to Hooters so badly that authorities say he told 911 dispatchers he needed a ride to the restaurant because his grandmother had just suffered a stroke in the parking lot.

Instead, 28-year-old Jonathan Hinkle got a ride to the Brevard County Jail Tuesday night after deputies searched for three hours for his grandmother. When they finally found her at another location, she said she hasn’t had a stroke or asked anyone for help.

News outlets say Hinkle told the dispatcher he’d pay responders to take him to the Hooters on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

Hinkle was arrested on charges of misusing 911. He was released on bond Wednesday night and records don’t list an attorney for him.

Washington
Suit filed in case of architects of interrogations
Attorneys have filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to compel two architects of CIA interrogation tactics to provide information to Polish officials who are investigating a former CIA jail in Poland.

The lawsuit was filed late last month in federal court in eastern Washington state and was announced Wednesday by the London-based human rights group Reprieve. The suit details what it describes as the torture of Abu Zubaydah, who was held in the CIA black site, or secret interrogation facility, in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland, from Dec. 5, 2002-Sept. 22, 2003.

Zubaydah, described in official U.S. documents as a “facilitator” for al-Qaida, has been held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since September 2006.

The lawsuit says James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, because of their role in the interrogation program and their presence at the site, have information relevant to the investigation being carried out by the Organized Crimes Division of the Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow, Poland. They are investigating whether Polish officials facilitated the existence or operation of the CIA black site.

Henry Schuelke, an attorney in Washington who represents Mitchell and Jessen, told The Associated Press over the phone that he was familiar with the lawsuit, but declined to comment on it.

U.S. Justice Department officials filed a statement with the court saying “the proposed subpoenas and categories of information sought in this action raise important and complex questions regarding the United States’ national security and foreign policy interests.”

Consequently, the U.S. government could file a statement of interest in the case by the end of June, or advise that it will not participate in the case, the officials said.

Colorado
Court: Neighbors can sue pot grower for smells
DENVER (AP) — A pot farm’s neighbor can sue them for smells and other nuisances that could harm their property values, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling revives a lawsuit between a Colorado horse farm and a neighboring marijuana-growing warehouse.

The horse farm’s owners, the Reillys, sued in 2015, claiming that the pot-growing warehouse would diminish their land’s value by emitting “noxious odors” and attracting unsavory visitors. A federal district court dismissed the Reillys’ claim, and the pot warehouse opened in 2016.

The horse farm owners appealed, and a three-judge appeals panel agreed Wednesday that their claims should be heard. But the judges said the Reillys can’t sue Colorado to force the state to enforce federal drug law and not allow the pot warehouse in the first place.

The southern Colorado horse-vs-pot case is interesting because the horse farm owners are trying to use a 1970 federal law crafted to fight organized crime. The Reillys say that federal racketeering laws entitle them to collect damages from the pot farm, even though the pot farm is legal under state law.

“The landowners have plausibly alleged at least one (racketeering) claim,” the judges wrote.

Pot opponents say the racketeering strategy gives them a possible tool to break an industry they oppose. It could give private citizens who oppose pot legalization a way to sue the industry out of business, even as federal officials have so far declined to shut down most pot businesses operating in violation of federal drug law.

“This is a tremendous victory for opponents of the marijuana industry,” said Brian Barnes, a Washington-based lawyer who represents the Reillys on behalf of the anti-crime nonprofit group Safe Streets Alliance.

Owners of the pot warehouse, owned by a company called Alternative Holistic Healing, did not immediately return a call for comment Wednesday. An attorney representing them in the case could not be reached, either.

The case now goes to back to a federal district court that had earlier dismissed it.

The appeals panel handed pot opponents a defeat on another case Wednesday, however. The judges ruled that a lower court was right to dismiss a claim from a group of sheriffs in Colorado, Nebraska and Oklahoma, who had asked the federal court to block Colorado’s pot law.

South Carolina
Woman ticketed after 6 dogs die in hot car
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina woman has been ticketed after six dogs died in her hot car.

North Charleston police told news outlets a Summerville woman was cited after she left the dogs in her car at an animal clinic Saturday.

The unnamed woman said she took the dogs to the clinic but put them back in her car because there were aggressive dogs there. A police report said she left the car’s air conditioner on and returned about 45 minutes to find it off and the dogs in distress. She didn’t know why the car stopped.

She faces up to $1,100 in fines or 30 days in jail for each dog for confining the dogs in a vehicle when weather could lead to heat stress. Police say it was 84 degrees inside.

Texas
Sex expo files federal appeal challenging ban
DALLAS (AP) — Lawyers for a sex exposition have filed a federal court appeal seeking to overturn a decision by Dallas officials to ban the expo from being held at a city-owned convention center.

Exxxotica filed the appeal Tuesday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals less than a month after a federal judge dismissed its lawsuit against the city.

The suit was filed last year after the City Council voted to ban the expo from returning to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.

The Dallas Morning News reports the judge most recently ruled that the wrong corporate arm of Exxxotica had sued the city.

Dallas so far has spent $675,000 litigating the matter.