California
6 charged with plotting to smuggle arsenal to drug cartel
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Six men have been charged with plotting to smuggle assault weapons and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, including .50-caliber armor piercing bullets, to one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, authorities announced Monday.
The alleged ringleader of the scheme, Marco Antonio Santillan Valencia, 51, of Whittier, California, and three other men were arrested last week while a fifth is in custody facing separate charges in North Carolina and the sixth is believed to be in Mexico, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The men are accused of conspiracy to violate federal export laws by smuggling weapons into Mexico for the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación. Several also face other smuggling or money laundering charges.
The men used drug money to purchase legally-available weapons in Oregon and Nevada and ammunition from several states, sometimes ordering pallets of bullets for delivery to a “stash location” in Nevada, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.
The operation began in March 2020 and lasted about a year, during which some items were sent to Mexico while authorities seized others, including assault rifles and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, including some 10,000 rounds of .50-caliber armor piercing incendiary ammunition obtained in Arizona, authorities said.
Also seized were assault rifle parts and kits to assemble miniguns, which are six-barrel rotary machine gun capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute, authorities said.
“This case alleges a scheme to provide military-grade firepower to a major drug trafficking organization that commits unspeakable acts of violence in Mexico to further its goal of flooding the United States with dangerous and deadly narcotics,” U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison said in a statement.
The men were indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last month. Santillan and two other Southern California men pleaded not guilty on Jan. 19 in Los Angeles. Santillan’s son, Marco Santillan Jr., 29, of Pahrump, Nevada, was ordered arraigned on Feb. 2. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had an attorney to speak on his behalf.
Ohio
State settles Volkswagen emissions case for $3.5 million
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio has settled an environmental lawsuit with Volkswagen over the company’s 2015 emissions scandal for $3.5 million, state Attorney General Dave Yost announced.
As that scandal unfolded, the automaker was found to have rigged its vehicles to cheat U.S. diesel emissions tests. and ultimately paid more than $33 billion in fines and settlements.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office also sued the company, alleging Volkswagen’s conduct — affecting about 14,000 vehicles sold or leased in Ohio — violated the state’s anti-air pollution law.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in June that the federal Clean Air Act did not preclude Ohio from seeking its own compensation against Volkswagen. In November the U.S. Supreme Court turned away Volkswagen’s appeals.
Yost’s office will split the settlement with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
“These dollars will be put directly toward fighting other environmental cases now and in the future that protect Ohio and its residents,” Yost said last week.
In settling the lawsuit, Volkswagen did not admit liability. “This agreement fully resolves Ohio’s legacy claims and puts this matter behind the company as we focus on building a future of sustainable mobility,” Volkswagen said in a statement.
Oklahoma
Appeals court paves the way for 2 more executions
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal appeals court rejected a request from two Oklahoma death row inmates to temporarily halt their upcoming lethal injections.
A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver denied the inmates’ motion in a ruling on Monday. The decision paves the way for the state to carry out the executions of Donald Grant, 46, on Thursday and Gilbert Postelle, 35, on Feb. 17.
The two have argued that the state’s current three-drug lethal injection protocol that uses midazolam as the first drug will expose them to a constitutionally unacceptable risk of severe pain. But after a daylong hearing on that issue earlier this month, a federal judge in Oklahoma City determined the inmates were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their case and denied their request for a temporary stay of execution.
The judge also determined that Grant and Postelle selected an alternative method of execution, firing squad, too late to be included in a separate lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s lethal injection method as unconstitutional.
Grant was convicted and sentenced to die for killing two Del City hotel workers during a 2001 robbery. Postelle received the death penalty for his role in the Memorial Day 2005 shooting deaths of four people at a home in southeast Oklahoma City.
Missouri
Threat charge refiled against man dressed as The Joker
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — Eastern Missouri prosecutors have refiled a felony terrorist threat charge against a man accused of livestreaming threats to bomb and kill people while he was dressed up as the Batman villain known as The Joker.
St. Louis County prosecutors refiled the charge on Friday against Jeremy Garnier, 50, of University City, a day after a judge dismissed the case because prosecutors could not produce a key witness for the grand jury, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Garnier was arrested in March 2020 in a University City restaurant in the midst of his livestream. In it, prosecutors say, he’s dressed as The Joker and orders a soda in the restaurant, saying: “I can’t be inebriated when I’m planning on, you know, killing a bunch of people.”
Garnier’s costume and alleged threats were reminiscent of a 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people were killed and dozens injured during the showing of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” Shooter James Holmes, who was dressed as The Joker during the shooting, received multiple life sentences after a jury couldn’t agree unanimously on death.
