Court Digest

Florida
Dentist gets life in prison in death of his ex-brother-in-law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A judge sentenced a South Florida dentist to life in prison on Tuesday in the shooting death of his former brother-in-law, a prominent professor at Florida State University, following a bitter custody battle.

Charlie Adelson, 47, was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation last month in the 2014 killing of Dan Markel, who was gunned down in his car outside his Tallahassee home. Prosecutors contended that Adelson paid to have Markel killed, and jurors took just three hours to find him guilty.

“I would just like to say that I maintain my innocence,” a stoic Adelson told the judge, who also sentenced him to 30 consecutive years on the lesser counts.

Prosecutors laid out a case of wire taps and secretly recorded conversations that implicated Adelson during the eight-day trial.

Markel’s father, Phil Markel, said he and his family have “suffered tremendously” adding that he not only lost his son, but also lost a relationship with his grandsons, who were 3 and 4 years old when their father was killed.

Their mother — Adelson’s sister Wendi Adelson, who has denied involvement and has not been charged — shared custody of the boys since her divorce from Markel. She wanted to move from Tallahassee to South Florida to be closer to her family, but a judge had ruled that she couldn’t relocate without Markel’s consent, and he refused because he didn’t want the children to move so far away.

Prosecutors told jurors that Adelson used his girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua, to hire the father of her two children, Sigfredo Garcia, to commit the murder. They said Garcia in turn enlisted the help of his childhood friend, Luis Rivera.
Magbanua and Garcia are now serving life sentences for first-degree murder, and Rivera is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for testifying against them.

Adelson testified that prosecutors got the facts of the case wrong. He told jurors that he felt a sense of relief to finally tell the public that he was a victim of extortion and not the mastermind of a murder plot.

In a twist, the 73-year-old matriarch of the Adelson family was arrested at Miami International Airport on charges of orchestrating the hit-man murder of her ex-son-in-law, one week after her son was convicted in Tallahassee. Donna Adelson was about to use one-way tickets to board a flight to Dubai and Vietnam, countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

She remained held without bond in the Leon County Jail on Tuesday. Jail records don’t list an attorney for her. She faces the same charges her son was convicted on.

Alabama
Lawsuit challenges inmate labor system as ‘modern day slavery’
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Current and former inmates announced a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Alabama’s prison labor program as a type of “modern day slavery,” saying prisoners are forced to work for little pay — and sometimes no pay — in jobs that benefit government entities or private companies.

The class action lawsuit also accuses the state of maintaining a discriminatory parole system with a low release rate that ensures a supply of laborers while also generating money for the state.

“The forced labor scheme that currently exists in the Alabama prison system is the modern reincarnation of the notorious convict leasing system that replaced slavery after the Civil War,” Janet Herold, the legal director of Justice Catalyst Law, said Tuesday.

The Alabama Department of Corrections and the Alabama attorney general’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses the state of violating the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, anti-human trafficking laws and the Alabama Constitution.

The lawsuit contends that the state maintains a “forced labor scheme” that coerces inmates into work. The lawsuit said those jobs include unpaid prison jobs where inmates perform tasks that help keep the facilities running. Inmates in work release might perform jobs where businesses pay minimum wage or more, but the prison system keeps 40% of a prisoner’s gross pay to defray the cost of their incarceration and also deducts fees for transportation and laundry services.
The lawsuit referred to the state’s 40% reduction as a “labor-trafficking fee.”

LaKiera Walker, who was previously incarcerated for 15 years, said she worked unpaid jobs at the prison including housekeeping and unloading trucks. She said she later worked on an inmate road crew for $2 a day and then a work release job working 12-hour shifts at a warehouse freezer for a food company. She said she and other inmates felt pressured to work even if sick.

“If you didn’t work, you were at risk of going back to the prison or getting a disciplinary (infraction),” Walker said.

Almireo English, a state inmate, said trustworthy prisoners perform unpaid tasks that keep prisons running so that the prison administrators could dedicate their limited staff to other functions.

“Why would the slave master by his own free will release men on parole who aid and assist them in making their paid jobs easier and carefree,” English said.

While the state did not comment Tuesday, the state has maintained prison and work release jobs prepare inmates for life after incarceration.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery but it still allows forced labor “as a punishment for crime.” States set a variety of wages for inmate laborers, but most are low. A report from the American Civil Liberties Union research found that the average hourly wage for jobs inside prisons is about 52 cents.

The plaintiffs included two labor unions. The lawsuit said the supply of inmate labor puts downward pressure on wages for all workers and interferes with unions’ ability to organize workers.

Lawsuits and initiatives in other states have also questioned or targeted the use of inmate labor. Men incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary in September filed a lawsuit contending they have been forced to work in the prison’s fields for little or no pay, even when temperatures soar past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius).


California
Football player dropped from woman’s rape lawsuit and won’t sue for defamation
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Former Buffalo Bills punter Matt Araiza is being dropped from a lawsuit filed by a woman who alleged she was raped by San Diego State University football players in 2021, it was announced Tuesday.

The woman agreed to dismiss Araiza from the lawsuit she filed last year, while Araiza agreed to dismiss his defamation countersuit against her, his attorneys said in a statement.

He’ll be removed from the suit in the next week, won’t pay any money to the woman and reserves the right to sue her attorney for harm caused, the statement said, terming the agreement “bittersweet.”

“Matt has been forced to defend himself for the last sixteen months against false accusations and a campaign to ruin his career in the NFL. He will never get this time in his life back,” attorneys Dick Semerdjian and Kristen Bush said.

“Thankfully, there was extensive evidence that was key to securing Matt’s voluntary dismissal from this lawsuit,” the statement added. “Matt was and has always been innocent. The case is over, and Matt has prevailed.”

Araiza intends to return to the NFL, his lawyers said.

The defamation lawsuit against the woman, described in court documents only as Jane Doe, was “legally baseless,” but her first legal bill topped $20,000 and she “simply cannot afford to defend herself,” her attorney, Dan Gilleon, said in a statement reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“Plus she has been beat down by Araiza’s PR campaign and is frankly over it,” he said in a text, the news outlet reported.

The lawsuit against four other former San Diego State University players will continue.

An email from The Associated Press seeking comment from Gilleon wasn’t immediately answered Tuesday night.

Araiza was nicknamed the “Punt God” and honored as a consensus All-American in 2021 for his booming kicks that helped SDSU to a school-best 12-2 season in his senior year. He was selected by the Bills in the sixth round of the 2022 NFL draft but released two days after the filing of the lawsuit.

The woman alleged that she was 17 and attending an off-campus party in October 2021 when Araiza, then 21, had sex with her in a side yard at an off-campus house before bringing her into a bedroom where a group of men took turns raping her. She reported the alleged assault to San Diego police the next day.

Araiza has said he stayed in the backyard and never entered the home during the party and that he left nearly a half-hour before the alleged raping occurred.

He and most of the other players the woman is suing have said their encounters with her were consensual.

After a monthlong police investigation, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office announced in December that it would not file criminal charges. Several media outlets obtained an audio recording of a meeting between prosecutors and the woman in which deputy District Attorney Trisha Amador said she concluded, based on a witness statement, that Araiza “wasn’t even at the party anymore” when the alleged raping could have occurred and wasn’t visible in videos that were recovered.

Earlier this year, the New York Jets hosted Araiza for a workout at the team’s facility, six days after a San Diego State investigation found no wrongdoing by him in connection with the alleged rape.

Iowa
Former deputy pleads guilty in hot-vehicle death of police dog
AMES, Iowa (AP) — A former Iowa deputy has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge after a police dog under his care died inside a hot police truck.

Dallas Wingate was a sergeant for the Boone County Sheriff’s Department in September 2022 when investigators said the police dog named Bear was left inside Wingate’s truck for 22 hours. In an agreement with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor animal neglect with serious injury or death, the Des Moines Register reported Monday. A felony charge was dropped.

The plea agreement recommends 18 months of probation and an $855 fine.

Wingate found Bear dead on the evening of Sept. 2, 2022. He told investigators he had put the dog in his truck around 10 p.m. Sept. 1 because the dog was barking at a deer, according to documents related to a search warrant.

Wingate said he only remembered doing so after he went outside to feed his other dogs around 8 p.m. the next night and didn’t see Bear among them.

The high temperature on Sept. 2 was 89 degrees Fahrenheit (31.7 degrees Celsius), which would have sent the temperature inside the truck well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius).

Wingate was placed on administrative leave after the dog’s death, and he resigned Sept. 8, 2022.