National Roundup

Oregon
Settlement talks fail in youths’ anti-U.S. climate suit

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon-based youth climate activists say settlement talks with the U.S. Department of Justice have failed six years after they first filed a landmark federal lawsuit that attempted to hold the nation’s leadership accountable for its role in global warming.

The development, announced by the plaintiffs’ attorney on Monday, comes as world leaders, including President Joe Biden, meet in Scotland to grapple with climate change.

The plaintiffs now want a judge to allow an amended version of the case, known as Juliana v. the United States, to go to trial.

“These 21 young people have been stonewalled, delayed, and obstructed by their own government for six years now,” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Julia Olson, said in a statement. “These young people have been waiting six years to have their evidence heard and the issues determined by a court of law. When will our government act like the global leaders they claim to be and let these youth be heard?”

The youth plaintiffs alleged in the original 2015 lawsuit that they have a constitutional right to a climate that sustains life and that the U.S. government’s actions have encouraged a fossil fuel economy despite scientific warnings about global warming.

In a major victory, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled the following year that the plaintiffs had a case and that it could proceed to trial, but the lawsuit has been  challenged repeatedly in federal court by the Obama and Trump administrations, which sought to get it dismissed.

A three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 dismissed the case after finding that Aiken lacked the power to order  or design a climate recovery plan in the high-profile climate change lawsuit.

They noted that such a remedy should be made by the nation’s politicians or voters.

The plaintiffs then filed an amended complaint in March and asked the judge to change their lawsuit to seek a different ruling: that the nation’s fossil fuel-based energy system is unconstitutional.

In May, Aiken ordered a settlement conference with U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin, who came out of retirement to oversee the process.

The youth plaintiffs are now between the ages of 13 and 25.

Louisiana
Sentencing set for trumpeter in charity fraud

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Irvin Mayfield, the jazz trumpet player who became a symbol of New Orleans resilience after Hurricane Katrina, was scheduled to be sentenced in federal court Wednesday for steering charity money meant for public libraries to his personal use.

Mayfield and his musical and business partner, pianist Ronald Markham, each pleaded guilty in November of last year to a single charge of conspiracy to commit fraud. Prosecutors alleged they steered more than $1.3 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation to themselves, largely by funneling it through the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, which Mayfield founded.

“Book One,” an album by Mayfield and the Jazz Orchestra, won a Grammy in 2010. But the library foundation scandal led to his resignation as artistic director of the orchestra in 2016 while scrutiny of his role with the library grew following investigative reports by WWL-TV.

Markham and Mayfield each faced a possible 5-year prison sentence.

Mayfield was among musicians who took a high-profile role in promoting New Orleans after levee failures and catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mayfield’s father died in the floodwaters.

Mayfield was also a founding member of the Afro-Caribbean jazz ensemble Los Hombres Calientes.

Prosecutors said that in addition to orchestra operating expenses and salaries for Mayfield and Markham, library foundation money went into Mayfield’s personal bank accounts and toward the purchase of a gold-plated trumpet.
Prosecutors said the men also took steps to mislead the library foundation and others about their money transfers, including falsifying foundation board meeting minutes.

Prior to his indictment and guilty plea, Mayfield had outlined grand plans for the city’s libraries in an AP interview in 2008.

“A library is democracy inside four walls, the freedom to information,” he said then. “Jazz is democracy we hear.”

Missouri
High court weigh part of rape victims’ rights law

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Supreme Court judges on Tuesday heard arguments over whether parts of a sexual assault victims rights law are unconstitutional.

The Legislature in 2020 passed the law, also known as the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights. Part of the law requires defense attorneys to remind their clients’ alleged victims of their right to have a support person present while being questioned.

Missouri State Public Defender Director Mary Fox and several other public defenders sued, claiming that provision constitutes compelled speech and violates their freedom of speech. A lower court judge ruled that part of the law must not be followed, and the state appealed in defense of the law.

Jeff Esparza, who represented public defenders in court, told Supreme Court judges during arguments that the requirement also creates a conflict of interest as it forces defense attorneys to look out for the interests of their clients and those raising claims against them.

“The defense attorney is one of the few people in the system that is dedicated to protecting the rights of the accused, and this statute requires that defense attorney to no longer be solely dedicated to that purpose,” he said.

He also said that since the circuit judge blocked that section of the law, no one has suffered because of it, particularly because police and prosecutors also remind assault victims of their rights.

“Sitting here, as a defense attorney, it makes me cringe a little bit to think that I have to walk into a room and give my client’s accuser a warning of that nature,” Esparza said.

Deputy Solicitor General Jeff Johnson, who is defending the law in court, told judges that sexual assault victims can be retraumatized by repeated interviews while their case plays out in court. He said that’s why the law directs defense attorneys to remind them of their rights during questioning.

But Judge Mary Russell questioned the constitutionality of requiring defense lawyers to give survivors those warnings.

“It’s specific speech that’s required to be given,” Russell she told Johnson. “Sounds like compelled speech.”

Judges did not indicate when they might rule.