Virginia
Man pleads guilty in case testing use of geofence warrant
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Richmond man has pleaded guilty to federal bank robbery charges in a closely watched case that tested the constitutionality of broad search warrants that use Google location history to find people who were near crime scenes.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports Okello Chatrie pleaded guilty Monday to armed robbery and use of a firearm in the 2019 robbery of the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian.
Chatrie’s lawyers argued the use of a “geofence warrant” to identify people who were near the scene of the robbery violated their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches. Federal prosecutors argued Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy since he voluntarily opted in to Google’s Location History.
U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck ruled in March that the warrant violated the Constitution by gathering the location history of people near the bank without having any evidence they had anything to do with the robbery. Geofence warrants seek location data on every person within a specific location over a certain period of time.
“The warrant simply did not include any facts to establish probable cause to collect such broad and intrusive data from each of these individuals,” Lauck wrote in her ruling.
Privacy advocates said the ruling — believed to be the first time a federal district court judge has ruled on the constitutionality of a geofence warrant — could make it more difficult for police to continue using a popular investigative technique that has helped lead them to suspects in a list of crimes around the country.
Lauck’s ruling did not help Chatrie because she denied his motion to suppress the evidence produced by the warrant, finding the detective had acted in good faith by consulting with prosecutors before applying for the warrant and relied on his past experience in obtaining three similar warrants.
The judge said she was not ruling on whether geofence warrants can ever satisfy the Fourth Amendment. She urged legislative action on the issue, noting there is currently no law prohibiting Google and other companies from collecting and using vast amounts of data from their customers.
In a legal brief filed in the case, Google said geofence requests jumped 1,500% from 2017 to 2018, and another 500% from 2018 to 2019. Google now reports that geofence warrants make up more than 25% of all the warrants Google receives in the U.S., the judge wrote in her ruling.
Chatrie’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an emailed request seeking comment on his guilty plea.
Lauck scheduled sentencing for Aug. 2. In a plea agreement, prosecutors have agreed they will not argue for a sentence above nearly 13 years in prison, while Chatrie’s lawyers have agreed to argue for no less than just under 11 years.
Mississippi
Ex-paramedic pleads guilty to sexual assaults in ambulances
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi paramedic has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting patients in ambulances as they were being taken to hospitals.
The Sun Herald reported James Lavelle Walley, 57, of Leakesville, also admitted to fondling two children, ages 5 to 7. Walley pleaded guilty Monday to three counts of sexual battery and two counts of touching a child for lustful purposes.
District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said Walley committed the crimes between 2016 and 2019 while working as a certified paramedic for ASAP Ambulance. The company serves patients in Alabama and Mississippi, and it fired him.
Circuit Judge Robert Krebs will set sentencing later. Walley faces up to 30 years in prison on each sexual battery charge and 15 years on each molestation charge.
Each time the assaults occurred in an ambulance, Walley was in the back, the ambulance drivers did nothing to intervene and they denied knowledge of the attacks, court records showed.
Walley had no criminal history before his arrest.
More details were revealed in civil lawsuits filed on behalf of at least adults who said Walley assaulted them during emergency trips to south Mississippi hospitals. The civil cases have been settled and dismissed.
“When we get in an ambulance, we expect to be taken care of, not sexually assaulted,” attorney Joe Beard, who represented some of the plaintiffs in the civil suits, said Monday after hearing Walley had pleaded guilty to criminal charges.
In each criminal case, victims are described as vulnerable adults because they had a medical condition that required emergency care when Walley attacked them.
Wisconsin
Man accused of killing toddler faces 18 counts
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors filed a new criminal complaint Monday alleging 18 charges against a man accused of killing and sexually assaulting a toddler last month in Madison.
The charges against Marshawn Giles, 23, include first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree child sexual assault and substantial battery. Giles is being held on $1 million cash bond.
Authorities say the 20-month-old girl died from blunt force injuries to her head, leaving her with multiple skull fractures. The autopsy also noted blunt force injuries elsewhere that were consistent with sexual assault, WISC-TV reported.
Dane County Court Commissioner Brian Asmus said during Giles’ initial appearance on Monday that he likely hasn’t seen anything as serious in his 22-year career.
The complaint spans events that are alleged to have happened on six separate dates in April, involving multiple victims.
Giles’ attorney, Kathleen Chung, did not immediately respond Monday evening to an email request from The Associated Press.
Missouri
Woman charged with hospital death from 2002
CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — A former respiratory therapist who worked at a northern Missouri hospital where nine people died under suspicious circumstances 20 years ago has been charged in one of the deaths.
Jennifer Anne Hall, 41, was charged last week with first-degree murder in the 2002 death of Fern Franco, who was one of nine people who died of cardiac collapse between Dec. 16, 2001, and May 18, 2002, at Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, KCUR reported.
The Livingston County Sheriff’s office said Tuesday authorities continue to search for Hall, who might be using the name Semaboye.
Hall worked as a respiratory therapist at the 49-bed hospital when the patients died. Doctors and nurses at the hospital viewed the numbers of deaths as “medically suspicious,” according to a law enforcement record supporting the probable cause for her arrest.
The case was revived after an analysis of Franco’s tissue samples found succinylcholine and morphine, which were not prescribed or ordered for her by her doctors, according to a probable cause statement by Chillicothe Police Officer Brian Schmidt.
Some staff at the hospital believed Hall was responsible because of her proximity to the stricken patients, her access to deadly pharmaceuticals, and because she notified staff of every patient’s cardiac emergency, according to the probable cause.
She was placed on administrative leave on May 21, 2002, three days after Franco’s death.
An overdose of succinylcholine causes slow suffocation. At least nine suspicious deaths and 18 suspicious medical emergencies at Hedrick Medical Center during that time period were suspected overdoses of succinylcholine or other drugs.
Hall denied involvement in the deaths during an interview with the Kansas City Star in 2015.
Matthew O’Connor, a Kansas City attorney who represented Hall in the past, said the murder charge was based on “conjecture and speculation.”
“This isn’t lawyer talk — there aren’t facts in support of it because Ms. Hall did not commit these acts,” he said.
Before she worked at Hedrick Medical Center, Hall was convicted of setting fire to Cass Medical Center in Harrisonville, Missouri, where she was hired as a respiratory therapist. She spent a year in prison before an appeals court vacated her conviction because she received ineffective counsel at trial. A jury acquitted her at a subsequent retrial.
The families of five of the nine patients who died during that period filed wrongful death lawsuits against the hospital in 2010, claiming the hospital covered up possible foul play in their relatives’ deaths. An appeal filed in 2013 alleged that employees at the hospital believed they would be fired if they raised suspicions about the deaths.
In 2019, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out the lawsuits, ruling that the families had filed their actions after the statute of limitations had run out.
Massachusetts
Judge weighing verdict in Batali sexual misconduct case
BOSTON (AP) — Celebrity chef Mario Batali’s fate in his Boston sexual misconduct trial now rests in a judge’s hands.
Lawyers for both the defense and prosecution rested their cases on Tuesday, the second day of the swiftly moving trial in which the former Food Network star waived his right to have a jury decide the verdict.
The case being heard in Boston Municipal Court is centered on a woman who says Batali kissed and groped her while she attempted to take a selfie at a Boston bar in 2017.
In his closing statements, Batali’s lawyer Antony Fuller portrayed the victim as an “admitted liar” who is financially motivated, as she’s seeking more than $50,000 in damages from Batali in a separate lawsuit.
“In her world, truth is a flexible concept,” he said, referencing the woman’s recent admission of attempting to avoid jury service by claiming to be clairvoyant, which was a focus on Monday’s hearing.
Fuller also said the multiple photos the woman took with Batali suggest an “entirely consensual encounter” in which she doesn’t appear to show any unease.
“Photos and video don’t lie. They don’t have a financial motivation,” he said. “But she does. “
Prosecutor Nina Bonelli countered in her closing statement that Batali’s lawyers were trying to “demonize” the woman, when it was in fact their client on trial over his conduct.
She argued it was “absolutely undeniable” from the photos that Batali was drunk and aggressively kissing the woman’s face. What’s not shown, she said, is what was happening off camera as he also grabbed her private areas.
Bonelli said the woman had tried to “de-escalate” the unwanted touching from the powerful celebrity by simply “smiling it off.”
“The kissing, the groping. She never asked for it. She never consented to it,” she said. “She just wanted a selfie.”
The court session is expected to resume in the afternoon, when Judge James Stanton could potentially deliver his verdict.
The accuser, a 32-year-old software company worker, testified Monday that she’d felt confused, powerless and embarrassed to share her story until other women stepped forward to share similar encounters with Batali.
Batali, who pleaded not guilty to indecent assault and battery, could face up to 2 1/2 years in jail and be required to register as a sex offender if convicted.
The 61-year-old, who was once a fixture on shows like “Molto Mario” and “Iron Chef America,” is among a number of high-profile men who have faced a public reckoning during the #MeToo social movement against sexual abuse and harassment in recent years.
