Court Digest

Florida
Judge favors pre-dawn partying in South Beach
MIAMI (AP) — A South Florida judge has sided with the Clevelander hotel in a lawsuit over a new Miami Beach law that sets a 2 a.m. closing time in the South Beach entertainment district.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Circuit Judge Beatrice Butchko said in a hearing on Monday that the city commission’s vote to approve the law wasn’t properly executed. The new law aimed at curbing the late-night partying on South Beach went into effect May 22 for a period of seven months. The entertainment district had been serving alcohol until 5 a.m.

“It was arbitrary, it is a violation of local ordinances, and that was unlawful,” Butchko ruled. The judge said the ordinance was presented as a general ordinance that requires a simple majority, but should have been pitched as a land-development regulation that requires broader commission support, the Miami Herald reported.

Mayor Dan Gelber, who led the move to overhaul the South Beach party scene following a rowdy spring break, said in a statement that the city will appeal. The mayor said the early-morning alcohol sales and unregulated music have encouraged a lawless party atmosphere that extends onto the streets.

“Our residents should not be held prisoner to a business model that promotes the all-night hard partying that has generated an unsafe atmosphere in our city,” Gelber wrote. “We will appeal as it makes no sense, legal or otherwise, that the courts would force our residents to endure this kind of misconduct and disorder.”

Attorney Kendall Coffey, who represented the Clevelander, told the newspaper that the 2 a.m. policy won’t officially be revoked until he drafts an order for the city to review, which will then go to the judge for approval. Meanwhile, he said they hope the city won’t enforce it in view of the judge’s order.

The commission voted to add a citywide voter referendum to the November ballot that would make the restrictions permanent. A second vote is needed to put the issue on the ballot.

The judge ruled that the Clevelander, which has an outdoor bar along Ocean Drive, has a right to play music above ambient levels, but said the city and the hotel should reach an agreement about the noise levels.

“It is a very serious, widely respected venue, that has as a part of its brand outdoor entertainment,” Coffey said during the hearing. Without the outdoor party, he said, “there’s really no Clevelander as any kind of identifiable shape or form.”

Coffey also said the Clevelander has been unfairly blamed for the behavior of some tourists. The 2 a.m. last call and noise limits would hurt the hotel’s bottom line, Coffey said. The closure of Ocean Drive to traffic as a COVID-19 emergency measure already hurts business, he said.

The judge didn’t order Ocean Drive reopened, but encouraged the hotel and city to work on a plan to allow access for hotel guests.

Missouri
Kansas City man gets lengthy prison term for killing 2 women
HARRISONVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City man convicted of killing two women a decade apart was sentenced Monday to life in prison for one of the killings and 15 years behind bars for the other, with the terms to run consecutively.

Kylr Yust, 32, was convicted in April of second-degree murder in the death of Jessica Runions, 21, of Raymore, and voluntary manslaughter in the death of Kara Kopetsky, 17, of Belton.

The Cass County jury that convicted him recommended life in prison for Runions’ death and 15 years in Kopetsky’s death, and Cass County Circuit Judge William Collins followed those recommendations. Collins also denied Yust’s motion for a new trial.

Yust’s attorney, Sharon Turlington, said in court that an appeal is planned. She had asked that the sentences run concurrently.

Prosecutors told jurors in April that Yust killed the women because they rejected him. Turlington said no physical evidence connected him to either death.

The two women were both seen with Yust before they disappeared. Runions left a party with him before she went missing in September 2016. Kopetsky had taken out a protection order against Yust a month before she was last seen leaving Belton High School in April 2007.

A mushroom hunter found their bodies near each other in a Cass County field south of Kansas City in April 2017. Runions’ remains were identified quickly but Kopetsky’s remains weren’t positively identified  until August of that year.

Yust testified during his trial that he didn’t kill either woman and suggested that his half-brother, Jessep Carter, was responsible for the deaths. Carter died by suicide in 2018 while being held in the Jackson County jail on a charge of second-degree arson.

Yust was originally charged in October 2017 with two counts of first-degree murder but the jury found him guilty of the lesser charges.


West Virginia
Police probe clears officer in shooting of man with cleaver
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia police officer who fatally shot a man who charged at him with a meat cleaver has been cleared in an internal investigation and returned to regular duty, his chief said.

Parkersburg Police Chief Joe Martin identified the officer Monday as Patrolman M.E. Stewart, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel  reported.

A separate investigation by the West Virginia State Police is continuing, and Martin said he expects the shooting to be presented to a future Wood County grand jury.

Stewart had been called on May 23 to the Oakwood Village apartments, where Rufus James Ramsey III, 34, had forced his way into a neighbor’s apartment and stabbed the 60-year-old woman multiple times, the chief said. The woman then staggered outside and a neighbor with a dog went out to check on her until Ramsey confronted them and sliced the dog’s leash, he said.

Stewart ordered Ramsey to drop the meat cleaver and he did, but then he picked it back up and rushed at the officer, who fired his gun once, the chief said.

“We’ve completed the internal investigation and found no policy errors,” Martin said.

Mississippi
State getting first Black female chief federal judge
GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) — A Black woman, for the first time, will become a chief federal judge in Mississippi.

Court officials said in a news release Monday that U.S. District Judge Debra M. Brown will become the chief judge of the state’s northern judicial district during a ceremony Friday in Greenville.
She will receive the gavel from U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, who remains on the federal bench but is ending a seven-year term in the top spot in the district.

Brown was nominated to the federal bench in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama. She will be the first Black woman to serve as a chief judge in either of the state’s two federal court districts.

Maryland
Lawyer disbarred who told clients to skip hearing, lied to judges
BALTIMORE (BridgeTower Media Newswires) — Maryland’s top court has unanimously disbarred an attorney who advised two asylum applicants against appearing at their scheduled immigration court hearings and then falsely told the judges she did not know where they were.

Alisha Ann Portillo, who was admitted to the Maryland bar in 2014, also lied to the Office of Bar Counsel during its investigation of the clients’ complaints about the attorney’s unethical advice, which resulted in court orders of deportation when they failed to attend the hearings, the Court of Appeals stated in its 7-0 decision.

In stripping Portillo of her law license, the high court found she had violated Maryland Attorneys’ Rules of Professional Conduct governing competence, candor toward the court, cooperation with bar counsel and misconduct. Due to Portillo’s “serious misconduct,” the Court of Appeals disbarred her in a brief order on March 26 and explained why in its opinion issued May 27.

“Ms. Portillo’s advice to both clients that they consider not appearing for their individual hearings was an egregious dereliction of Ms. Portillo’s duty as an officer of the court,” Judge Jonathan Biran wrote for the high court.

“Of course, if a client is ill or there are other extenuating circumstances that prevent a client from attending a hearing, an attorney can and should seek a waiver of the client’s presence (if appropriate) or a postponement,” Biran added. “But an attorney should never advise a client that it is permissible or, even worse (as Ms. Portillo implied to both of her clients) preferable for the client to willfully fail to appear for a hearing.”

Portillo, who practiced from an office in Woodbridge, Virginia, dispensed the unethical advice to two El Salvadoran immigrants after she concluded their claims for asylum in the United States were weak and orders of deportation likely.

In one case, Portillo told the immigration judge in August 2018 that she had lost contact with the client and did not know the whereabouts of the client — identified in court papers as M.R. — when in fact she did, the Court of Appeals said, citing the findings of the Montgomery County Circuit Court judge it had appointed to hold a hearing in the attorney disciplinary proceeding.

In the other case, Portillo told the immigration judge in December 2018 that the client – identified in court papers as M.D. — had returned to El Salvador, even though they had met with each other that morning, the hearing judge, Joan E. Ryon, found.

Both immigration judges, citing the clients’ failure to appear at the hearings, ordered their removal from the United States. The clients, whom Ryon said could have been arrested and deported at any time under the orders, filed complaints with bar counsel, who investigated.

During the investigation, Portillo knowingly and intentionally failed to tell bar counsel of her lies to the immigration judges about what she knew of her clients’ whereabouts, Ryon found.

“Advising clients that failing to appear for a scheduled immigration hearing is something they should consider, because it may allow them to stay in the United States longer than they ordinarily would, is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” Biran wrote. “When Ms. Portillo then lied to the immigration court about the circumstances that led to the clients’ failure to appear, she compounded her already prejudicial and disreputable conduct.”

New York
NYC’s law department targeted by cyberattack
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s law department has been hit with a cyberattack that has forced officials to take the 1,000-lawyer agency offline while they investigate, officials said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that he believes no information was compromised in the hack.

“We’re still tracking down exactly who was behind it,” de Blasio said on TV station NY1. The mayor added, “so far, we believe the defenses have held and the law department information was not compromised.”

City officials said they disconnected the law department’s computers from the city’s network on Sunday after discoverying the cyberattack.

“As the investigation remains ongoing, the City has taken additional steps to maintain security, including limiting access to the Law Department’s network at this time,” de Blasio spokesperson Laura Feyer said in a statement.

Cyberattacks targeting government agencies as well as private companies have become an increasing threat, including last month’s ransomware attack against Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline, which caused widespread gasoline shortages.

Iowa
State to pay $5.7M to settle public university claims
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Iowa has agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle eight separate discrimination and negligence claims at its public universities.

Those payments include $3.5 million to an Iowa City couple who accused UI Hospitals and Clinics doctors of negligence during the birth of their daughter, leaving the baby with permanent brain damage.

Another $1.8 million will be paid to a Massachusetts sound technician hurt while working a Luke Bryant concert at the University of Northern Iowa in 2018. The state also agreed to pay a total of $150,000 to three former UI police offers who sued in 2018 accusing the institution and its administrators of age and disability discrimination.

A payment of $25,000 will go to a woman who was a University of Iowa student in 2018 when she lost control and crashed her motorized scooter after the bike slipped on diesel fuel that had spilled from a campus bus. The crash caused injuries to the student’s neck, shoulder and hand and damage to her moped.

State officials agreed to the payments on Monday, the Gazette reported.

Because the settlements include claims of medical negligence at the UI Hospitals and Clinics, the UI Physicians group is paying $2.7 million of the $5.7 million total. The state general fund will cover the remaining $3 million.