Court Digest

Virginia
Law firm chosen for civil rights probe at VMI
LEXINGTON CITY, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s coordinating body for higher education has chosen a national law firm to investigate the Virginia Military Institute following media reports that described Black cadets and alumni facing “relentless racism” at the school, according to the state’s online procurement system.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia posted a notice of intent Tuesday to award the contract to Barnes & Thornburg, whose clients include other colleges and universities, The Roanoke Times reported. The council’s Procurement and Fiscal Specialist Jennifer Brooks said the contract will be awarded at the end of the 10-day notice period.

State officials ordered the investigation in October after The Washington Post published a story that described an “atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity” at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college. The story described incidents such as lynching threats and a white professor reminiscing in class about her father’s Ku Klux Klan membership. The Roanoke Times had also reported months ago on Black alumni speaking out about racism at the school.

The school’s superintendent resigned a week after the probe was ordered, but the school’s Board of Visitors President John William Boland pushed back in a letter. Boland wrote that the school welcomed the review, “However, systemic racism does not exist here and a fair and independent review will find that to be true.”

On Monday, VMI removed a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson that until recently, freshman cadets were required to salute. “VMI does not define itself by this statue and that is why this move is appropriate,” said Interim Superintendent Cedric Wins, a retired U.S. Army major general and the first African American to lead the school.

During Tuesday’s Board of Visitors meeting, Wins said he wants to bring the school “into more of an inclusive environment” and “an environment that embraces diversity,” the newspaper reported.

“I think we need to take off any type of armor, any type of resistance that we have to having a discussion and dialogue about race, about racism, about those types of things for the betterment of the Corps of Cadets,” Wins said.

The council had sought an independent contractor to look into the school’s culture, policies and practices; identify any civil rights violations; compare VMI to other higher education institutions in Virginia; and recommend any necessary reforms.

The investigator is “strongly encouraged” to provide preliminary findings by year’s end, submit an interim report on or before Feb. 10 and deliver its final report before June 2021, a proposal request said.

Washington
Man who took a hostage during robbery gets life
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A 34-year-old man has been sentenced to life without parole for a robbery involving hostages at a used car dealership in Parkland.

Jurors found Randy Smith guilty last week in Pierce County Superior Court of robbery, attempted robbery, kidnapping, six counts of assault and two counts of unlawful gun possession related to a 2018 incident, The News Tribune reported. The verdict was Smith’s third strike under the state’s three-strikes law, meaning a life sentence was mandatory.

Deputy prosecutor Kawyne Lund told the court Tuesday it didn’t give the state pleasure to recommend life without parole, adding that Smith had put others at “grave risk.”

Defense attorney Mark Quigley also expressed that sentiment, noted Smith’s difficult upbringing and said Smith went to prison as a young man and had been involved with the juvenile justice system.

“In some respects, Mr. Smith never really had a chance,” Quigley said.

Should the state’s three-strikes law be reconsidered by the Legislature in the future, Quigley said, he’d like to think his client could “be given some hope” at release one day.

Smith apologized to the court and said he believes missing surveillance footage “could have changed aspects of this trial.”

Judge Jack Nevin said it gave him “no satisfaction” to impose the sentence.

On Sept. 6, 2018, Smith carried a bag with a rifle, handgun and ammunition as he tried to steal vehicles from businesses, according to charging papers. People at the first business fled.

At the next business, the declaration for determination of probable cause said Smith demanded a car with gas, pointing a handgun at four individuals saying “he would kill them if they didn’t cooperate.”

Some victims fled, but Smith held one hostage for a time who eventually also fled, documents said. As sheriff’s deputies approached the business, shots were fired through the front and through the ceiling.

“Later the defendant, who had on body armor, was shot by deputies,” the probable cause statement said.

Some of Smith’s prior convictions include robbery while armed with knives, court records show, and he had most recently been released from prison about six months before the Parkland incident.

Washington
Judge dismisses Flynn case following pardon from Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed the criminal case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn but pointedly noted that a pardon Flynn received from the president last month does not mean that he is innocent.

The order from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan was expected in light of the pardon from President Donald Trump that wiped away Flynn’s conviction for lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation. Sullivan acknowledged in his 43-page order that the president’s broad pardon powers required dismissal and that the decision to pardon him is a political, rather than legal, one.

But he also stressed that a pardon, by itself, did not mean that Flynn was innocent of a crime he had twice pleaded guilty to committing. He dismissed as “dubious to say the least” the Justice Department’s stated rationales for seeking to drop the case — a request that was still pending at the time the pardon was issued — and noted the president’s own personal interest in this case.

 “The history of the Constitution, its structure, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the pardon power make clear that President Trump’s decision to pardon Mr. Flynn is a political decision, not a legal one,” he wrote. “Because the law recognizes the President’s political power to pardon, the appropriate course is to dismiss this case as moot.”

However, he added, “a pardon does not necessarily render ‘innocent’ a defendant of any alleged violation of the law. Indeed, the Supreme Court has recognized that the acceptance of a pardon implies a ‘confession’ of guilt.”

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said, “Dismissal is, of course, the correct result.” Trump himself congratulated Flynn on the judge’s decision, writing in a tweet, “He and his incredible family have suffered greatly!”

The order brings to an end the yearslong saga involving Flynn, who was ousted from his White House job just weeks into his tenure.

He twice admitted guilt during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to lying to the FBI about conversations he had during the presidential transition period with the-then Russian ambassador to the United States. Those talks involved sanctions that the Obama administration had just imposed on Russia for election interference.

But the Justice Department last spring abruptly moved to dismiss the case, despite Flynn’s own guilty plea, arguing that there was insufficient basis for the FBI to have questioned him in the first place and that the statements he made during the interview were immaterial to the underlying investigation into whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia.

Sullivan had resisted the department’s request to dismiss the case and appointed a former federal judge from New York to argue against its motion. He defended his stance on Tuesday even as he dismissed the prosecution, writing that “many of the government’s reasons for why it has decided to reverse course and seek dismissal in this case appear pretextual, particularly in view of the surrounding circumstances.”

New York
Judge: US must provide limited info on Khashoggi death tape
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government must provide limited information about its withholding from the public a tape of the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi and a CIA report on his death in a Freedom of Information Act case, a judge said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said public statements, including by President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency have made clear that the items exist.

They are being sought as part of a FOIA lawsuit brought two years ago in Manhattan by the Open Society Justice Initiative, the legal team for the Open Society Foundations, created by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, was not seen alive after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018. Trump called the killing “horrible” but said Saudi Arabia has “been a terrific ally.”

In a written ruling, Engelmayer said the case remained in an early stage and the limited disclosure of information about the items “will not reveal as-yet unrevealed information” pertaining to foreign relations or activities by the United States or its agencies’ intelligence sources and methods.

He said Trump “literally admitted” that U.S. intelligence agencies had reviewed the tape and that the U.S. government has it. He said Pence had acknowledged that the CIA had the tape at the time of its investigation, even if the agency now tried to disclaim possession of the tape “as a fact not publicly known.”

A message for comment was sent to the U.S. Justice Department.

In its lawsuit, the Justice Initiative said disclosure of the records, including the tape, was necessary for the public to evaluate the federal government’s response to the killing.

“Today’s court order is a crucial victory in addressing the Trump administration’s shameful cover-up of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder,” Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the Justice Initiative, said in a statement. “The Court’s judgment is a vital step towards ending impunity for the murder.”

North Carolina
Publisher handcuffed while objecting to lack of court access
GRAHAM, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina newspaper publisher was handcuffed and ordered out of a courtroom Tuesday as he objected to a decision to block reporters from attending a plea hearing for a white woman accused of driving her pickup truck at two 12-year-old Black girls.

Tom Boney Jr., publisher of The Alamance News, was delivering a document requesting a hearing on whether it’s appropriate to close the court to the news media, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Journalists from other outlets had already been told they were not allowed inside the Alamance County Courthouse, where Judge Fred Wilkins presided over the case against the woman accused of driving her car at the girls.

The week before, reporters had been kept from attending a court hearing involving the leader of a march in which police had pepper-sprayed protesters.

On Tuesday, the reporters each asked for a hearing before the judge, but were told by deputies that Wilkins had already made his decision.

Boney had hand-delivered a letter to Senior Resident Superior Court Judge D. Thomas Lambeth and Chief District Court Judge Bradley Reid Allen Jr. on Tuesday asking that they remind other judges that courtrooms must remain open to the public despite COVID-19 safety precautions.

Wilkins said that if Boney was not a defendant, a victim or an attorney, he could not be in the courtroom, the publisher said.

Wilkins said he would hold Boney in contempt of court after Boney tried to explain his objection. Wilkins later did not pursue the contempt charge, but still ordered him to be handcuffed and to leave the courthouse. As Boney got outside of the building, the handcuffs were taken off and Boney walked back to his office, accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy who happened to be nearby and who was not associated with the hearing.

“It’s one of the most egregious examples I’ve seen of a judge who is absolutely unwilling to follow the law, or to even hear about the law or to hear anything connected to it,” Boney said from his office Tuesday evening.

Sandra Warren Brazee, 52, of Burlington, was charged in August with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. The girls had just bought snacks at a convenience store when the incident occurred.

The Alamance News reported Tuesday that the hearing was to announce a plea agreement in which Brazee pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon. She was given two consecutive 60-day sentences which were suspended and a $1,000 fine, the newspaper said.