Court Digest

Iowa
Man accused of shooting flare gun at courthouse
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A Cedar Rapids man accused of shooting a flare gun at the city’s federal courthouse and igniting a small fire has been charged with several federal counts in the case.

John Miller, 39, has been charged with malicious damage to federal property, violent threats to a federal official and interstate communications with intent to injure, The Gazette reported.

Miller made his first court appearance of the charges on Tuesday. Prosecutors have said Miller fired two flares at the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids on Nov. 19 from a parking lot across the street. One flare ignited a traffic barrier outside the building that had to be extinguished. Officials say police later found two flare guns in Miller’s possession after the incident and say he left threatening messages on social media for a federal prosecutor in a message that also mentioned a probation officer, a federal marshal and a federal judge.

Miller remained jailed pending a detention hearing.

Alabama
Prisons agency says federal suit ignores progress
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A Justice Department  lawsuit over conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men ignores progress the state has made to improve the lockups, the Department of Corrections said.

The agency said it disagrees with Trump administration allegations that the men’s prisons violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

“The complaint filed by the DOJ plainly ignores the years’ worth of information provided by the ADOC regarding the substantial and impactful reforms it continues to undertake,” said a state prison system statement released Thursday night.

The Justice Department lawsuit, filed on the heels of two scathing reports, said Alabama prisons are plagued with inmate-on-inmate violence, a pattern of excessive force by staff and an indifference by state officials to address the problems.

The prisons agency acknowledged past problems, but said the Justice Department “continues to mischaracterize these limited instances as sweeping patterns. “

“The piecemeal anecdotes outlined in the Complaint do not reflect the hard work and important service provided by our correctional staff,” the agency’s statement said.

Alabama said it had been negotiating with federal officials to settle their concerns, but the Justice Department filed the suit without warning.

“Further, the tone and tenor utilized in the Complaint and in the DOJ’s press release run counter to the DOJ’s approach throughout our ongoing negotiations, implying a certain level of inappropriate public posturing,” the state agency said.

A Justice Department report released last year described a culture of violence in state prisons for men, with frequent rapes, beatings and fatal stabbings at the hands of fellow prisoners, and a management system that undercounts homicides and fails to protect prisoners even when warned. A second report  issued in July said Alabama had a pattern of staff using excessive force on inmates.

The Justice Department investigation was launched in 2016 in the closing days of the Obama administration. The lawsuit filed Wednesday was signed by Attorney General William Barr.

The department has blamed inadequate staffing and dilapidated prison conditions for many of the problems and said it has made “real strides” to recruit more prison workers.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey administration is negotiating with companies to build three, 3,000-inmate prisons that would be leased by the state.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday maintains that since 2016, prisons have become more crowded, rates of violence and sexual abuse remain “unacceptably and dangerously high” and prisons are “still dangerously and critically understaffed.”

“Defendants have been aware of the dangerous conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men for many years, but have not seriously addressed the problems,” the lawsuit read.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified improvements. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Wednesday that the Justice Department demands go “beyond what federal law requires” and are thus unenforceable. His office declined to specify the changes that the Justice Department is seeking, saying that will be listed in the state’s response to the lawsuit in court.

New York
Another delay granted for Harvey Weinstein extradition
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Convicted former movie producer Harvey Weinstein will remain in a New York prison for now after his lawyers and prosecutors agreed Friday to postpone efforts to send him to California to face sexual assault charges.

Weinstein appeared via video from prison before Erie County Court Judge Kenneth Case, who, because of the worsening pandemic, agreed to postpone Weinstein’s extradition hearing until April 9.

Seated at a table at the maximum-security Wende Correctional Facility east of Buffalo, Weinstein, wearing a maroon polo shirt and face mask, spoke only briefly in response to a series of questions from the judge. He waved his hand and shook his head in objection to a news station’s request to allow a television camera in the courtroom. The judge kept the camera out but allowed media to record the video proceedings.

“We’re not looking for publicity, judge,” Weinstein’s attorney, Norman Effman, said.

Weinstein, 68, is serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted in New York City earlier this year on charges of rape and sexual assault against two women.

He faces similar charges involving five women in California, stemming from alleged assaults in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013.

Because Weinstein is imprisoned in New York, a judge must sign off on transferring him to the custody of Los Angeles authorities to be tried there.

Effman cited Weinstein’s health in supporting the continued delay of the extradition proceedings originally scheduled for August.

Weinstein survived a bout with the coronavirus in March at the prison. His lawyers said he experienced symptoms of COVID-19 again in mid-November but did not test positive for the disease at that time.

“Obviously, the pandemic has become worse rather than better,” Effman said. “The issues pertaining to transportation of someone from New York to California, and specifically with respect to Mr. Weinstein’s own very serious health conditions, remains the same.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office agreed to the first delay because of the pandemic as well.

Massachusetts
Boston pastor who sold drugs out of church sentenced
BOSTON (AP) — A Boston church pastor who continued to sell drugs even after he made bail following his initial narcotics arrest has been sentenced to up to five years in prison, prosecutors say.

Willie Wilkerson, 62, of the city’s Dorchester neighborhood, was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty to multiple drug charges and other offenses, according to the office of Suffolk District Attoney Rachael Rollins.

“That this coward used his church to mask and hide his criminal behavior is awful,” Rollins said in a statement. “His actions inflicted harm on the community and the church congregation he was supposed to be serving.”

Wilkerson was arrested in 2017 after police received information that he was selling drugs out of his home and the Mission Church. Search warrants executed at the church and his home yielded cocaine, oxycodone, fentanyl and prescription medicines, authorities said.

He made bail and was arrested again late last year after police executing search warrants found more drugs as well as .32 caliber ammunition at his home, the church and on his person, prosecutors said.

South Carolina
Jury: Black bikers’ race was a factor, but city won’t pay
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was motivated by race when it created a traffic plan designed to “suck the fun” out of Black Bike Week, a federal jury has found. But the same jury sided against the bikers, saying the city probably would have imposed the plan anyway.

Civil rights groups accused the city of racially discriminating against the Black tourists by treating them differently than white bikers who attend Harley Week earlier each May, and who are responsible for many of the same public nuisances, from binge drinking to noise complaints.

The Black bikers have been particularly frustrated by a 23-mile (37-kilometer) one-way no-exit traffic chute that funnels them out of town during the peak nights of Atlantic Beach Bikefest, otherwise known as Black Bike Week. The city also puts up barricades and increases its police presence in ways that don’t apply to the mostly white bikers during their event, their attorneys said.

The jurors - five Black and four white — deliberated for more than three hours before delivering their verdict on Thursday. They agreed that “race was a motivating factor,” but they also found that Myrtle Beach “would have made the same decision anyway, even if it had not considered race in its official actions regarding Black Bike Week.”

The decision means the city won’t have to change its traffic plan for now. The city also won’t owe damages to the plaintiffs, which include the local NAACP branch and several festival attendees.

Attorneys for the city had argued that precautions were made in the name of public safety after a spate of shootings and robberies during Memorial Day weekend six years ago, and that “different traffic control strategies” apply to each festival.

“The jury’s decision confirmed that the safety plan was the right plan for the event, given the number of people, vehicles and pedestrians and the violence and other safety challenges which arose through the years,” Myrtle Beach spokesman Mark Kruea wrote in an emailed statement following the verdict. “The public’s safety always has been and will continue to be the city’s top priority.”

Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told The Associated Press that the plaintiffs are pleased that “the jury agreed race was a factor” and would “look carefully at our options” following the verdict.

During the trial, attorneys for the NAACP presented evidence such as emails from city leadership suggesting the loop could “suck the fun out of the event” and traffic camera footage to show the loop didn’t relieve congestion, news outlets reported.

The NAACP has tussled in court with the city, as well as local restaurants and a hotel, over their responses to the Black bikers for nearly two decades. The city eventually settled with the NAACP after a federal judge found that a 5-mile-long (8-kilometer-long) traffic plan established in the mid-2000s for Bike Fest was racially motivated. That settlement expired in 2015, when the new traffic plan was established.


Alabama
Court nixes judgment for family of slain man
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A Jefferson County court erred when it ruled the city of Birmingham should have to pay benefits to relatives of a city worker who was shot to death while cutting grass, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals ruled Friday.

The five-member court, in an unsigned opinion, overturned a decision in favor of Keishana Jenkins and her three children, who were listed as the survivors of Grady Jenkins, who worked for the city’s horticulture department.

Jenkins, 51, was at work on Nov. 1, 2017, when he was found shot to death atop a riding lawn mower while cutting an overgrown lot that was being cleaned up by the city in a high-crime area, the decision said. No one was arrested and the killing remains unsolved.

A claim for workers compensation benefits was denied by an outside administrator who ruled Jenkins’ killing didn’t arise from his work as a city laborer, so Keishana Jenkins filed suit. A judge ruled in favor of the family without a trial, and the city appealed.

The appeals court ruled the lower court was mistaken to side with Jenkins’ survivors since there were unanswered questions about who killed him and why. The decision sends the case back to a county judge for more work.

Washington
Man pleads guilty to reduced charge in pipeline break-in
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) — An Oregon man awaiting a new trial after a court of appeals overturned a burglary conviction for breaking into a Kinder Morgan oil pipeline facility in Western Washington has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge.

Kenneth Ward, 64, of Corbett, Oregon, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Skagit County Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of second-degree criminal trespassing, The Skagit Valley Herald reported.

Ward was found guilty of felony burglary in 2017 after an October 2016 incident in which he allegedly broke into the facility west of Burlington and attempted to shut off the pipeline.

In April 2019, a state appeals court overturned Ward’s conviction, saying the trial court had erred by not allowing Ward to present a “necessity defense,” which would have asserted that a criminal act was necessary on his behalf to avoid harm, and no legal alternative was available.

“Although Mr. Ward maintains his sincere belief in the viability of that defense, he has elected to resolve the case,” Ward’s lawyers said in a sentencing memorandum filed in Skagit County Superior Court.

After his 2017 conviction, Ward was sentenced to two days in jail and 30 days of community service in Skagit County. He completed both, and received no additional sentence for his plea to trespassing.