Court Digest

Lansing
Court will take new look at masks in religious schools
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A federal appeals court agreed Wednesday to reconsider a challenge to COVID-19 mask orders affecting students in a Michigan religious school.

The case involves Resurrection School in Lansing. But any result would cover other faith-based schools in Michigan and set a precedent as well in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, three more states in the 6th Circuit.

Resurrection and some parents sued in 2020, saying a state mask order violated the free exercise of religion, among other objections. A federal judge in Kalamazoo, however, turned down a request for an injunction, and a three-judge panel at the appeals court affirmed his opinion in August.

But the full appeals court now has agreed to set aside the panel’s work and start over.

In seeking a new hearing, attorneys for Resurrection said the panel applied the wrong legal standard last summer.

The scene has changed some since the lawsuit was filed. The state health department dropped school mask orders, instead deferring to county health departments. Ingham County, where Resurrection is located, is requiring masks in schools.

The COVID-19 vaccine has also been available for months; kids, ages 5-11, were just added to the list. As a result, some counties are planning to drop mask mandates by early 2022, although schools could adopt their own.

Pennsylvania
Governor loses in court, hands over judicial appointment records
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Details on the 18 lawyers who applied for an appointment to a Commonwealth Court vacancy in 2019 were obtained by a news organization this past week after it won a two-year legal battle against Gov. Tom Wolf.

LNP, The Caucus and Lancaster Online reported Wednesday that Wolf’s office released documents about the vacancy to which the Democratic governor appointed a former state Senate Republican lawyer, Drew Crompton.

The Lancaster news organization won a court decision earlier this year over access to the records.

Wolf had followed a decades-long tradition of keeping judicial applicants a secret and had refused to provide copies of applications and the names of applicants.

The losing applicants included two law school professors, attorneys with the state attorney general’s office and litigators from Pittsburgh, Erie and Harrisburg.

Crompton was sworn in last year to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican.

Crompton in 2019 was the chief of staff and general counsel to then-Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.

He ran for a full 10-year term on the court in last week’s election and is trailing Democrat Lori Dumas, a Philadelphia judge, in unofficial results. State officials are directing a recount.


Mississippi
Appeals court: Trial delays didn’t harm convict’s defense
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — An appeals court in Mississippi has ruled against a man who said he was denied his constitutional right to e speedy trial.

Brian Berryman, 58, was arrested in February of 2017 and was sentenced to life as a habitual offender after being convicted in June 2020 for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a report in the Northeast
Mississippi Daily Journal.

 A majority of seven judges on the Mississippi State Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that, while the case took too long to come to trial, the delay didn’t harm Berryman’s ability to offer a defense.

Attorneys for the state had acknowledged that after his indictment, Berryman was “out of sight, out of mind” for a time after his indictment. The newspaper reported that Berryman was in custody at a south Mississippi prison but not arraigned and formally presented with his indictment for almost 400 days.

Multiple changes of public defenders assigned to Berryman, a judge’s illness and the COVID-19 pandemic were among other causes of trial delays.

Two judges partially dissented, not because of the trial delay but because they said there was merit to an argument that Berryman’s indictment wasn’t clear enough about the penalties he faced.

One judge fully dissented.

“The right to a speedy trial should be treated no less and no more than our sacred rights to speak our minds or to bear arms in defense of our homes, or our right to even have a trial should we be arrested,” Judge David Neil McCarty wrote in his dissent. “We should not allow a constitutional right to be fumbled away by bureaucracy and confusion, as it was in this case. Nor should its deprivation be used to oppress our citizens.”


Minnesota
Supreme Court reinstates wrongful death suit in 2013 killing
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the heirs of a boy whose 2013 killing sparked major child protection reforms in Minnesota.

The lawsuit accuses Pope County and three child protection workers of negligence in Eric Dean’s murder. The 4-year-old boy, who lived in Starbuck, died at the hands of his father’s girlfriend after at least seven reports of suspected child abuse from different sources.

The state Supreme Court reinstated the lawsuit, saying the district court should determine whether the county and the social workers are liable in the boy’s death for failing to notify law enforcement about reports of abuse as required by state law, the Star Tribune reported.

The district court had dismissed the case, saying that the social workers were immune from liability in the screening and handling of suspected child abuse cases. The high court’s 36-page decision found that immunity didn’t apply to the social workers. The justices also said the significance of a failure to report suspected child abuse is something that should be weighed by the district court.

The ruling returned the case to the lower court for further proceedings, including a possible trial.

Eric’s stepmother, Amanda Peltier, was convicted of first-degree murder  in 2014.

New York
Feds: 2 members of extremist Jewish sect convicted
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Two leaders of an extremist Jewish sect were convicted Wednes­day of kidnapping and child sexual exploitation crimes, prosecutors said.

In a release, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced the verdict against Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner.

He said the men “brazenly kidnapped two children from their mother in the middle of the night to return a 14-year-old girl to an illegal sexual relationship with an adult man.”

The charges against the men included conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, which carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life.

Lawyers for the men did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Helbrans, 39, and Rosner, 45, both U.S. citizens and both of Guatemala, had leadership roles in Lev Tahor, an extremist Jewish sect with multiple locations including New York, Israel, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, prosecutors said. They said Helbrans became the sect’s leader in 2017 and Rosner was his top lieutenant.

Prosecutors said Helbrans and his leadership team seized tight control of the group and embraced extreme practices including child marriages and underage sex.

The men were among a group that abducted a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother on Dec. 8 from their home in Woodridge in upstate New York and took them to Mexico, prosecutors said.

The FBI has said that the children’s mother had been a “voluntary member” of Lev Tahor but fled the group’s community in Guatemala in October 2018 after its leadership became increasingly extreme. Authorities said Helbrans is the brother of the kidnapped children’s mother.

After the mother and her children settled in New York, Helbrans and Rosner devised a plan to return the girl to Guatemala to resume a sexual relationship with her then-20-year-old “husband” after a supposed marriage that Helbrans had arranged a year earlier, prosecutors said.

In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman ruled for a second time Wednesday that the alleged marriage was invalid.

As part of the plot, the men kidnapped the girl and her brother in December 2018 and took them through various states and into Mexico, prosecutors said.

After a three-week search, the kidnapping victims were found in the Mexican town of Tenango del Aire and were returned to their mother, prosecutors said.

They added that members of Lev Tahor tried to kidnap the children again in March 2019 and March of this year.


Indiana
Ex-mayor sentenced to year in prison for bribery
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Indiana mayor was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison on federal charges of taking a $5,000 bribe in exchange for steering city projects to a contractor.

Former Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in May to plead guilty to a count of theft of government funds.

In the plea agreement, Tyler admitted to receiving the bribe in 2015 from the business that federal prosecutors said received more than $250,000 in improper city contracts for excavation and demolition work.

Tyler, 78, told U.S. District Judge James Sweeney that his actions “left a stain” on a career that included 42 years as a city firefighter, The Star Press reported. Tyler, a Democrat, was Muncie’s mayor for eight years, first winning election in 2011 after seven years as a state legislator.

“I stand before you so ashamed, sorry and absolutely scared to death for what might happen next,” Tyler told the judge before the sentence was imposed.

Tyler did not seek reelection in 2019 and was indicted in the bribery case just weeks before his term ended.

Six other people charged after a federal probe of corruption in the Muncie Sanitary District and Tyler’s administration have reached plea agreements and are awaiting sentencing. Tyler’s city building commissioner, Craig Nichols, was sentenced to two years in prison in January 2019 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges.

Tyler’s defense attorney, James Voyles, urged the judge to consider sentencing the former mayor to home detention or community service.

Federal prosecutors, however, sought at least a year in prison for Tyler because of the seriousness of public corruption.

“Mr. Tyler chose to serve himself and the interests of insiders who were willing to buy their way into a rigged system,” prosecutors said in a court filing. “He now joins a dishonorable list of corrupt politicians who have contributed to the growing erosion of public trust and confidence in government.”

The judge also ordered three years of supervised release for Tyler following his prison term and that he pay $15,250 in restitution.

Tyler’s sentencing follows a former northwestern Indiana mayor getting a 21-month prison term last month after he was found guilty of taking a $13,000 bribe from a trucking company in return for steering about $1.1 million in city contracts to the company.

Former Portage Mayor James Snyder, a Republican, has maintained his innocence, testifying during his trial that the money was payment for consulting work that he declared on his income tax returns.