Court Digest

Louisiana
2 men exonerated in separate cases on same day
CHALMETTE, La. (AP) — Two men were exonerated in separate cases on the same day in Louisiana, allowing them to be released from prison after serving a combined 35 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit.

Jarvis Ballard and Darvin Castro Santos had their convictions overturned Aug. 2, according to Innocence Project New Orleans, which represented both men.

The nonprofit legal office said this is the first time it has exonerated two people in different cases simultaneously — and the first time that anyone has been exonerated in St. Bernard Parish.

“As far as we can tell, it’s unprecedented,” staff attorney Charell Arnold told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. “We’re always happy to get innocent people out of prison. We’re even happier when we can have two exonerations at the same time.”

District Attorney Perry Nicosia agreed to remedy the wrongful convictions after new evidence supported both men’s innocence claims.

Ballard and two others were convicted of breaking into a 60-year-old woman’s home and raping her in 1998, according to the news outlet. Ballard, 18 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to life without parole.

But his appellate attorneys said only the two other men’s DNA was found at the scene. Ballard’s trial attorney also never received key sheriff’s office reports that could have helped to disprove the state’s theory that there were three robbers, according to an affidavit. He was released after more than 23 years, Innocence Project New Orleans said.

Castro Santos was convicted of leading a botched armed robbery at a diner in 2009, the news outlet reported. He received a 40-year sentence and spent nearly 12 years behind bars.

Timesheets from a Houston job site placed him in Texas 18 hours before the crime, and an alternate suspect’s cellphone records showed the man traveling toward the restaurant with another convicted robber while Castro Santos was still working. His trial attorney failed to enter those records into evidence, however.

DNA testing after the trial found that zip ties and a money bag used during the robbery were touched by other people but not by Castro Santos.

“Our office will always protect the public and prove guilt when evidence of guilt exists,” Nicosia said in a statement. “However, when proof of innocence is shown I will follow through with administering justice and correcting past errors.”

North Carolina
Woman found dead in concrete had dismissed live-in caretaker
NEWLAND, N.C. (AP) — A woman whose body was found buried in concrete in the basement of her western North Carolina home had fired her caretaker in June, but neighbors said the former caretaker was still living in the woman’s home until late July, according to court documents.

Search warrants state Elizabeth Carserino, 53, of Goose Creek, South Carolina, was hired by family to be Lynn Keene’s live-in caretaker earlier this year after the 70-year-old fell and suffered a traumatic brain injury, WSOC-TV reported.

Relatives reported Keene missing in July from her home in Linville Falls, which is located in the mountains about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. They said they had last spoken to Keene on June 14.

Keene’s home was secured and her car was missing when Avery County detectives first checked there. Cherokee police later reported the car was found there. Investigators traced Carserino’s cellphone to the area where the car was found, according to court documents.

When detectives searched Keene’s home, they found blood evidence on the walls, ceiling and floor of a bathroom as well as Keene’s remains entombed in concrete in the basement.

Court documents state Keene was strangled with a belt and struck in the head. Investigators have not said when Keene died.

On Sunday, Avery County Sheriff Kevin Frye announced Carserino was taken into custody and charged with murder, identity theft, larceny of motor vehicle and financial card theft. Carserino was held at Avery County jail on secured bond of more than $1.6 million, the sheriff said.


California
Army veteran convicted of plotting to bomb Long Beach rally
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Army veteran who plotted to bomb a white supremacist rally in Southern California was convicted Wednesday of federal charges that could send him to prison for life.

A jury found Mark Steven Domingo, 28, guilty of providing material support to terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, the U.S. attorney’s office said. He is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 1.

Domingo schemed to bomb a planned April 2019 rally in Long Beach before he was arrested, prosecutors said.

Domingo, a former combat infantryman, had recently converted to Islam and over several months discussed several plots to kill scores of people in Southern California in revenge for the March 2019 attacks on two New Zealand mosques that left 50 people dead, prosecutors said.

Domingo posted one online message saying “America needs another Vegas event,” an apparent reference to the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people, documents show. He said it would spark civil unrest to weaken “America by giving them a taste of the terror they gladly spread all over the world.”

The terror plot was foiled by the FBI and police using an undercover officer and informant Domingo thought were his accomplices.

Military records show Domingo served about 16 months in the Army, including a four-month stint in Afghanistan in fall 2012. A U.S. official told The Associated Press in 2019 that Domingo was demoted and discharged before completing his enlistment contract for committing an unspecified serious offense.

He left with a rank of private, the lowest possible grade.

Oklahoma
Federal judge says death penalty lawsuit can proceed
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal judge in Oklahoma City ruled Wednesday a lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocols can proceed to trial, making it likely Oklahoma’s de facto moratorium on executions will extend into a seventh year.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot agreed in his order to consider at trial whether Oklahoma’s current three-drug protocol risks subjecting inmates to unconstitutional pain and suffering.

“Plaintiffs are pleased that the court agreed that the merits of their Eighth Amendment claim need to be heard in a full trial,” said assistant federal public defender Dale Baich, who represents some of the 32 death row inmates who are plaintiffs in the case. “We look forward to presenting our evidence in court.”

Oklahoma announced last year it planned to resume executions using a three-drug lethal injection protocol and that a source for the drugs has been secured. The three drugs are: midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

Friot’s ruling applies to 26 of the 32 Oklahoma death row inmates who agreed to provide the court with an alternative method of execution, including the use of different drug combinations or firing squad. According to a table included in the judge’s order, 19 of the 32 inmates proposed firing squad as an alternative method of execution. Firing squad is currently one of several execution methods authorized under Oklahoma law.

A spokesman for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday its attorneys were still reviewing the judge’s order.

Friot rejected some of the inmate’s claims, including a right to know more information about the lethal drugs, to have access to attorneys during the execution and a claim that they would be subject to constitutionally impermissible human experimentation.

The judge indicated a trial could be held early next year, making it likely Oklahoma’s current moratorium on execution will extend into a seventh year. The state once had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers, but a moratorium on capital punishment has been in place since 2015 following three consecutive flawed executions. The lead plaintiff in the case, Richard Glossip, was just hours away from being executed in 2015 when prison officials realized they received the wrong lethal drug.

Mississippi
Disability advocates sue state over prison conditions
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — An advocacy group for the disabled is suing Mississippi’s Department of Corrections, alleging disabled prisoners are suffering inhumane conditions at the state’s prisons.

Disability Rights Mississippi filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday against the department and the state prisons’ health provider, Vitalcore Health Strategies LLC, The Clarion Ledger reported.

The complaint names MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain as a defendant. It cites severe and barbaric conditions at state prisons that put prisoners at risk of imminent and substantial harm.

The allegations range from guards encouraging inmates to commit suicide to denying them access to toilets and showers, according to the lawsuit. Some inmates weren’t receiving their prescribed medications. One other, who used a feeding tube, wasn’t given the supplies necessary to clean their tube. Another inmate was denied a wheelchair despite a severe spinal injury.

“For individuals with disabilities, incarceration in an MDOC facility can equate to a death sentence,” Polly Tribble, executive director of Disability Rights Mississippi, said in a statement. “The appalling conditions and treatment occurring inside MDOC facilities are a human rights crisis.”

The nonprofit filed the lawsuit after extensive monitoring at three facilities: South Mississippi Correctional Institution, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Mississippi State Penitentiary or Parchman Prison Farm.

Leo Honeycutt, a spokesman for the state’s corrections department, said Wednesday the state does not comment on pending litigation.

This is not the first time the state department of corrections has been sued for poor conditions in its prisons. In January 2020, rappers Jay-Z and Yo Gotti sued the department for inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at Parchman. That lawsuit is ongoing.

Washington
Lawsuit targets Seattle measure on homelessness
SEATTLE (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington is trying to keep a proposed Seattle charter amendment that would change how the city handles homelessness off the November ballot.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court, the ACLU, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness and the Transit Riders Union said the “Compassion Seattle” measure, officially known as Charter Amendment 29, is beyond the scope of local initiative power and violates state law on how local governments can address homelessness.

The measure, which recently qualified for the ballot, directs the city to provide 2,000 units of emergency or permanent housing within a year and requires the city to ensure that parks, playgrounds, sidewalks and other public spaces remain clear of encampments.

The pro-amendment campaign called the lawsuit “another blatant tactic to preserve and protect the status quo”

“This group has dictated City of Seattle policy on homelessness for the last decade, with no accountability, all while the crisis has only gotten worse,” Compassion Seattle said in a written statement.

According to the lawsuit, state law gives local legislative bodies — city and county councils — the exclusive authority to develop plans targeting homelessness. Further, it says, the amendment would undermine the city’s binding agreement with King County creating a regional homelessness authority and would unlawfully waive land-use regulations to speed the development of emergency and permanent housing.

“State law provides multiple avenues for constituents to influence homelessness policies and practices, but the initiative process at the city level is not one of them,” ACLU attorney Breanne Schuster said in a news release.

Proposed Charter Amendment 29 has received mixed feedback. Seattle’s mayoral candidates were almost evenly split on it in this month’s primary; of the top-two vote-getters who advanced to the general election, former City Council member Bruce Harrel supports it, saying the city must act with more urgency on the issue, while City Council President Lorena González opposes it, calling it an unfunded mandate that could lead to cuts in vital services.

Some homeless nonprofit leaders and advocates have spoken in favor of it, but others have started a campaign called House Our Neighbors to encourage voters to oppose it.