Court Digest

Nebraska
Teen father charged with abuse in infant daughter’s death
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A 17-year-old Nebraska man has been charged with felony child abuse in the death of his 6-month-old daughter.

Chief Deputy Douglas County Attorney Brenda Beadle said the girl suffered significant injuries, including retinal hemorrhaging, while her father was caring for her on June 3, and the injuries don’t appear to be accidental.

Beadle said the teen took his daughter to a neighbor’s apartment in northeast Omaha after she became unresponsive and the neighbor called 911. The girl was rushed to a hospital where she died two days later.

Beadle said the charges against the father may be upgraded after prosecutors receive the results of some additional testing that was done as part of the girl’s autopsy.

Louisiana
Judge overturns murder conviction over juror-selection bias
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana judge has overturned a Black man’s murder conviction after prosecutors agreed with defense attorneys that it was unlikely that earlier prosecutors struck possible Black jurors by chance.

The Times-Picayune ‘ The New Orleans Advocate reports Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Rhonda Goode overturned the murder conviction of Jabari Williams last week. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 had ordered further review of the case because of problems with the jury selection.

Prosecutors must now decide whether to retry Williams, who is accused of shooting Selvin Gonzales, a Honduran laborer, in 2011. Prosecutors allege Williams was trying to sell drugs to Gonzales and followed him down the street to shoot him.

Before Goode ruled, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams agreed with defense lawyers who said there was a 1-in-1,000 chance that the prosecutors accidentally struck 12 Black people from the jury pool.

Williams attacked former District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro for how the case was handled, while Cannizzaro blamed Williams for not keeping the conviction from being overturned.

Williams’s office has joined with defense attorneys to agree to overturn multiple disputed convictions.

Jason Williams is not related to the suspect, Jabari Williams.

Jabari Williams confessed, but claims he shot the man in self-defense. His lawyers questioned whether the defendant was improperly pressured to confess, and also noted that the star witness, Gonzales’ roommate, said he had trouble telling Black people apart. Jurors voted unanimously to convict Williams of second-degree murder.

Both the judge overseeing the case and the lead prosecutor were Black. But Williams’ lawyers said the selection process was biased.

The lawyers claimed there was no other reason to explain why prosecutors struck Black people out of the jury pool, while keeping white people who gave near-identical responses to questions about whether defendants could falsely confess.

Cannizzaro’s appellate lawyers said race had nothing to do with it. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the state Supreme Court said a judge needed to have a special hearing to reconstruct what happened during the 2012 trial.

But the hearing never happened. Instead attorneys in Williams’ new Civil Rights Division agreed that the conviction should be tossed. On Tuesday, they agreed to many of the defense claims, and argued that reconstructing what happened at trial would be impossible so many years later.

The division also cited a statistical analysis offered by defense attorneys Michael Admirand and Patrick Mulvaney, of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Those lawyers said that in the six months leading up to Jabari Williams’ trial, New Orleans prosecutors used 78% of their discretionary strikes against Black prospective jurors, at a rate more than three times that of white people.

Last year, Williams promised that he would root out wrongful convictions, and in a lengthy statement, he blasted Cannizzaro’s “previous administration” for its handling of the trial.

But Cannizzaro has accused Williams of allowing convictions to be overturned for political reasons.

“No court, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, ever found racial discrimination in the jury selection process of this case,” Cannizzaro said in a statement. “This DA’s office took it upon itself to manipulate the ruling of the Supreme Court in order to further its own personal agenda at the expense of the victim’s family and public safety.”


Connecticut
Casinos sue insurer over COVID-19 losses
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — The Native American tribe that owns Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino is suing its insurance carrier over what it says was the denial of claims for millions of dollars in losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Day in New London reports that the lawsuit filed Friday by the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority is similar to one the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, owner of the Foxwoods Resort Casino, brought against the same insurer in February.

The insurer Factory Mutual Insurance Co., based in Johnston, Rhode Island, said in a court filing in Mashantucket case the that losses caused by viruses and contamination are specifically excluded from the casino’s policy.

Factory Mutual is seeking to have the Mashantucket tribe’s lawsuit dismissed. A hearing in that case is scheduled for Aug. 2. A message seeking comment on the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority’s lawsuit was left with Factory Mutual.

The Mashantuckets say in their lawsuit that more than $76 million in losses caused by pandemic-related closures at Foxwoods and other properties they own, including a spa, museum and golf course, should be covered under its “all risk” policy with Factory Mutual.

The Mohegan authority, in its lawsuit, claimed its pandemic-related losses were in the millions of dollars.


New York
AG: Town agrees to end biased housing practices
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Letitia James said Friday she’s reached an agreement with a Hudson Valley town and county to end discriminatory housing practices she says were designed to keep Hasidic Jewish families from moving in.

James said the agreement require Orange County and the town of Chester to comply with the Fair Housing Act and to take preventative measures to ensure equitable housing practices moving forward.

“The discriminatory and illegal actions perpetrated by Orange County and the Town of Chester are blatantly anti-Semitic, and go against the diversity, inclusivity, and tolerance that New York prides itself on,” James said in a statement.

But a representative for Orange County said the agreement cost the county “nothing.”

“We simply agreed to follow a law we were already following, agreed to do a training that had already been done, and agreed to fund a study that was already being done before her office was even engaged,” said county spokesperson Justin Rodriguez in an email.

The town of Chester said in a statement that the attorney general’s suit “ended with a whimper” after the developer complied with the law and the town gave out the building permits.

The agreement comes two years after James intervened in a developer’s lawsuit against the town and county governments over their handling of plans for a 431-home community in the town about 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of midtown Manhattan.

Government officials said they had legitimate concerns about the Greens at Chester project regarding infrastructure and building codes, but James said that was an excuse for “a concerted, systematic effort” to stop the project and keep Hasidic Jewish families out.

Indiana
Cities opting out of lawsuits against opioid makers
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Several Indiana cities have opted out of the state’s pending lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors, reasoning that they will likely see more cash from their own litigation filed in response to the nation’s opioid epidemic.

The suburban Indianapolis cities of Fishers and Noblesville recently joined Indianapolis, South Bend, Lafayette and other municipalities in deciding to forgo potential payments from the lawsuits filed by Indiana’s attorney general’s office.

Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second-largest city, gave preliminary approval Tuesday to doing the same, with its city council expected to vote on the matter Tuesday.

Noblesville city attorney Lindsey Bennett said if the city north of Indianapolis had continued as part of the attorney general’s lawsuits it would have to drop its own suits. That would likely result in it receiving less money than through its own suits against opioid makers and distributors, she said.

“We would not be able to recover that money from the several lawsuits we’ve filed on our own. And it is unlikely we would recover as much money in the state’s lawsuit,” Bennett said.

A state law signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb this year requires cities and counties that want to pursue their own legal action to “opt out” of the attorney general’s lawsuits by June 30.

About half of Indiana’s cities and counties have filed lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, distributors and dispensers, seeking to recover funds they have spent on police, fire, treatment programs and prevention in response to opioid abuse, The Indianapolis Star reported.

Those municipalities sued more opioid-related companies than the state did and they have said they believe they’ll get better settlements on their own. Indianapolis, for example, sued 20 companies.

Cory Voight, director of complex litigation for the attorney general’s office, said Indiana has filed suits against four defendants and may participate in a fifth: Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, and the Sackler family, the company’s owners; Cardinal Health; McKesson; AmerisourceBergen; and Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Under Indiana’s plan, the state will receive 15% of any settlement, localities will split 15% and the Family and Social Services Administration will get 70% to distribute around the state, with local governments deciding how to spend about half of it.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that it was hopeful the dissenting cities would reconsider and rejoin the state’s lawsuits.

“Our goal from the beginning has been to partner with cities, towns and counties by splitting the proceeds evenly between the state and local communities,” the office said in the statement.


Missouri
Suburban police chief resigns over new gun law
O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A suburban St. Louis police chief has resigned over concerns about a new Missouri law that would ban police from enforcing federal gun rules.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports  that Philip Dupuis, who had been the police chief of the city of O’Fallon since October 2020, cited the “poor wording” and “unintended consequences” of the high-profile bill.
Signed into law just last week, it allows officers to be sued if they try to enforce federal gun laws. Dupuis said that makes officers vulnerable during “good faith, justified seizures of firearms.”

In a letter  sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice Department officials pointed out that federal law trumps state law under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. But Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote that they still plan to enforce the new law.

Dupuis joined the O’Fallon Police Department after a 10-year stint as police chief in a suburb of Houston. He was the city’s second new police chief in as many years.

He said in a statement that the law also would “decrease public safety and increase frivolous lawsuits designed to harass and penalize good, hard-working law enforcement agencies.”

Minnesota
Defendants unlikely to pay for torching precinct
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Legal experts say it’s unlikely that the four men convicted and ordered to pay for setting fire to a Minneapolis police station during protests over the death of George Floyd will meet their financial obligations.

Four defendants have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in starting the fire. They were also ordered to collectively pay $12 million in restitution to the city of Minneapolis.

Experts say they are unlikely to foot the entire bill, the Star Tribune reported.

“I doubt that the judge expects that any one of these defendants has $12 million lying around,” said Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

The U.S. Department of Justice recovers only $1 out of every $10 owed per year, making restitution sometimes symbolic or a mere formality in a criminal sentence, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

Even so, big-dollar restitutions may serve to force the defendant to come to grips with the harm they caused, said Steve Schleicher, former assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota who helped secure a murder conviction for former officer Derek Chauvin. He said it may cause someone else to think twice before committing a similar crime.