New York
Gun makers lose appeal of law that could make them liable for shootings
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York state law holding gun manufacturers potentially liable when their weapons are used in deadly shootings was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court.
The ruling Thursday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan affirmed a decision by an Albany judge.
A three-judge appeals panel said the 2021 New York state law was not unconstitutional or vague. The opinion written by Circuit Judge Eunice C. Lee said a lawsuit seeking to stop the law’s implementation did not show that the law was “unenforceable in all its applications.”
The law requires the gun industry to create reasonable controls to prevent unlawful possession, use, marketing or sale of their products in New York and allows them to be sued for unlawful acts that create or contribute to threats to public health or safety.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association of firearms manufacturers that ships firearms into New York, had sued over the law, saying it was pre-empted by the federal 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which blocks litigation that could destroy the firearms industry.
In May 2022, Judge Mae A. D’Agostino threw out the lawsuit, rejecting arguments that the law’s language did not adequately explain what was prohibited. She said the law closely tracked the language of New York’s general public nuisance law, which has been “good law since 1965.”
Lawyers for the gun manufacturers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a release that the decision was a “massive victory for public safety and the rule of law and will help us continue to fight the scourge of gun violence to keep our communities safe.”
Eric Tirschwell, executive director of the nonprofit Everytown Law, praised the ruling. He said the law creates “a new pathway for victims and their families to hold bad actors in the gun industry accountable for their role in fueling the epidemic of gun violence that is ravaging communities across the Empire State.”
Everytown Law and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence were among gun violence protection groups that filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the new law “simply does not create the free-for-all” that gun makers predicted.
Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs concurred in the ruling, despite some reservations. He wrote that New York had “contrived a broad public nuisance statute that applies solely to ‘gun industry members’ and is enforceable by a mob of public and private actors.”
And he added: “The intent of Congress when it closes a door is not for States to thus jimmy a window.”
Jacobs, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling, said he agrees with the other two judges on the panel that the law could be applied consistent with the federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
But he also wrote that the New York gun law is “nothing short of an attempt to end-run” the federal law, noting that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when he signed it that it would “right the wrong” done by the federal law.
“There is some legitimate reach to the law, which suffices for us to affirm the dismissal of this facial challenge. Just how limited that reach is must await future cases,” Jacobs said.
Hawaii
Native Hawaiian man faces longer prison term for hate crime against white man
HONOLULU (AP) — A Native Hawaiian man who was convicted of a hate crime against a white man must be re-sentenced, a U.S. appeals court ruled Thursday, and the result could be several more years in prison.
Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in 2023 by a judge in Honolulu after a jury found him and another Native Hawaiian man guilty.
The jury found that Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him in 2014 for trying to move into their remote Maui village.
Alo-Kaonohi appealed the conviction, and prosecutors cross-appealed, challenging the judge’s conclusion that he could not apply the hate crime enhancement to the sentence.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also ruled Thursday to affirm Alo-Kaonohi’s conviction.
It was unclear exactly how much more time Alo-Kaonohi could get, but based on sentencing guidelines and the judge’s previous sentence, it could be up to three additional years, said Alexander Silvert, a retired federal defender in Honolulu who was not involved in the case.
Alo-Kaonohi’s attorneys and prosecutors did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the ruling.
Aki’s appeal, along with prosecutors’ cross-appeal of Aki’s sentence of about four years, were voluntarily dismissed, according to court records.
Kunzelman’s wife, Lori Kunzelman, told AP Thursday that she is glad prosecutors pushed for a lengthier sentence.
The Kunzelmans purchased a dilapidated, oceanfront house there sight-unseen for $175,000 because they wanted to leave Arizona after Lori Kunzelman’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
“We had vacationed on Maui year after year — loved, loved, loved Maui,” she said, adding that they saw the home as an affordable opportunity that her husband could fix up.
She said the beating of her husband “destroyed my marriage” and his brain injuries led them to go through a divorce. She said her husband was traveling in Europe and unavailable to comment on the ruling.
They still own the property, she said, and do not know what to do with it. “The families there won’t allow anybody to step foot on that property,” she said. “There’s so much animosity.”
The case highlighted struggles between Native Hawaiians who are adamant about not having their culture erased and people who move to the islands without knowing or considering its history and nuanced racial dynamics.
Central to the case was the use of the word, “haole,” a Hawaiian word with meanings that include foreigner and white person. Dennis Kunzelman testified that the men called him “haole” in a derogatory way.
Attorneys for Aki and Alo-Kaonohi said it was not Kunzelman’s race that provoked them but his entitled and disrespectful attitude.
The Hawaii Innocence Project plans to take up the case, according to Kenneth Lawson, the organization’s co-director. It intends to argue that an ineffective defense did not present for the jury the history of the word “haole” in Hawaii and show it is not a derogatory term.
“I just don’t believe that it’s a hate crime,” Lawson said.
He also said the defense should have called as witnesses white, non-Hawaiian residents who would have testified that they lived in the village without any racial problems.
New York
Retired police sergeant gets 6 months in prison for Taser attack on man in mental health crisis
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A retired police sergeant in a New York suburb has been sentenced to six months in prison and six months of home confinement for repeatedly firing a Taser gun at a man suffering a health crisis.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas told the retired Mount Vernon police sergeant, Mario Stewart, that it was necessary “to send a clear message” to law enforcement that although policing is a “really hard,” there are rules and “where the line is clear, you cannot cross it.”
“The people of Mount Vernon have to know that they will not be themselves victims of their law enforcement officers,” Karas said.
Stewart, 46, of Brooklyn was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty in January to depriving an individual of his civil rights by using excessive force against a 20-year-old civilian in 2019. He worked several more years before retiring in 2023.
Prosecutors said Stewart tased the man seven times in approximately two minutes while his hands were cuffed behind his back and his legs were secured in a restraint bag.
The stun gun caused the man to convulse and scream. Prosecutors said he had traveled by train from the Bronx to Mount Vernon with several friends and his then-girlfriend when symptoms of a psychotic episode worsened and he removed his clothing and warned friends to stay away.
Stewart notified his dispatcher after the victim was restrained that “all is under control,” but then he began tasing the man after the victim grabbed a strap on the restraint bag with a cuffed hand and wouldn’t let go, prosecutors said.
The police department’s Taser Policy barred using a taser in a punitive or coercive manner or on a handcuffed or secured prisoner unless assaultive behavior cannot be dealt with any other way, the government noted.
Stewart’s lawyer, Kevin Conway, wrote in a presentence submission to the judge that Stewart believed the six police officers on the scene with him and emergency medical staff faced an escalating safety risk if the Taser gun was not deployed.
Conway quoted his client as saying “in my heart, I was not trying to hurt him.”
New?York
Chemical maker DuPont agrees to $27M settlement
HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — Chemical maker DuPont has agreed to a $27 million settlement to resolve a nearly decade-long lawsuit over the contamination of an upstate New York village's water supply.
The deal was announced Wednesday by lawyers representing residents of Hoosick Falls, located northwest of Albany, just as the case was headed to trial in federal court this week.
The settlement brings the total recovered in the class action suit brought in 2016 to more than $90 million, lawyers for Rochester-based firm Faraci Lange said.
Three other companies — Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, Honeywell International and 3M —settled for a total of more than $65 million in 2021. DuPont was the last remaining defendant.
"We are gratified to have reached what we believe will be the final resolution of this case that will provide significant added benefit to the residents of Hoosick Falls and the Town of Hoosick," said Stephen Schwarz.
A spokesperson for Delaware-based DuPont didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday.
The DuPont settlement, which must still be approved by a federal judge, also includes another $6 million in funding for an existing medical monitoring program for exposed residents, according to attorneys.
In their class action suit, Hoosick Falls residents claimed that a local Teflon fabric coating facility operated by Saint-Gobain and Honeywell caused local drinking water to become contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
DuPont, which made Teflon materials used at the facility, and 3M, which made the PFOA used by DuPont in its products, were added as defendants to the lawsuit in 2018.
PFOA was once widely used in certain industrial processes but is now considered a harmful "forever chemical" because it can persist in the environment for decades without decomposing.
It has been linked to a number of serious illnesses including kidney and testicular cancer and has recently been classified as a carcinogen.
Gun makers lose appeal of law that could make them liable for shootings
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York state law holding gun manufacturers potentially liable when their weapons are used in deadly shootings was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court.
The ruling Thursday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan affirmed a decision by an Albany judge.
A three-judge appeals panel said the 2021 New York state law was not unconstitutional or vague. The opinion written by Circuit Judge Eunice C. Lee said a lawsuit seeking to stop the law’s implementation did not show that the law was “unenforceable in all its applications.”
The law requires the gun industry to create reasonable controls to prevent unlawful possession, use, marketing or sale of their products in New York and allows them to be sued for unlawful acts that create or contribute to threats to public health or safety.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association of firearms manufacturers that ships firearms into New York, had sued over the law, saying it was pre-empted by the federal 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which blocks litigation that could destroy the firearms industry.
In May 2022, Judge Mae A. D’Agostino threw out the lawsuit, rejecting arguments that the law’s language did not adequately explain what was prohibited. She said the law closely tracked the language of New York’s general public nuisance law, which has been “good law since 1965.”
Lawyers for the gun manufacturers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a release that the decision was a “massive victory for public safety and the rule of law and will help us continue to fight the scourge of gun violence to keep our communities safe.”
Eric Tirschwell, executive director of the nonprofit Everytown Law, praised the ruling. He said the law creates “a new pathway for victims and their families to hold bad actors in the gun industry accountable for their role in fueling the epidemic of gun violence that is ravaging communities across the Empire State.”
Everytown Law and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence were among gun violence protection groups that filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the new law “simply does not create the free-for-all” that gun makers predicted.
Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs concurred in the ruling, despite some reservations. He wrote that New York had “contrived a broad public nuisance statute that applies solely to ‘gun industry members’ and is enforceable by a mob of public and private actors.”
And he added: “The intent of Congress when it closes a door is not for States to thus jimmy a window.”
Jacobs, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling, said he agrees with the other two judges on the panel that the law could be applied consistent with the federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
But he also wrote that the New York gun law is “nothing short of an attempt to end-run” the federal law, noting that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when he signed it that it would “right the wrong” done by the federal law.
“There is some legitimate reach to the law, which suffices for us to affirm the dismissal of this facial challenge. Just how limited that reach is must await future cases,” Jacobs said.
Hawaii
Native Hawaiian man faces longer prison term for hate crime against white man
HONOLULU (AP) — A Native Hawaiian man who was convicted of a hate crime against a white man must be re-sentenced, a U.S. appeals court ruled Thursday, and the result could be several more years in prison.
Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in 2023 by a judge in Honolulu after a jury found him and another Native Hawaiian man guilty.
The jury found that Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him in 2014 for trying to move into their remote Maui village.
Alo-Kaonohi appealed the conviction, and prosecutors cross-appealed, challenging the judge’s conclusion that he could not apply the hate crime enhancement to the sentence.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also ruled Thursday to affirm Alo-Kaonohi’s conviction.
It was unclear exactly how much more time Alo-Kaonohi could get, but based on sentencing guidelines and the judge’s previous sentence, it could be up to three additional years, said Alexander Silvert, a retired federal defender in Honolulu who was not involved in the case.
Alo-Kaonohi’s attorneys and prosecutors did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the ruling.
Aki’s appeal, along with prosecutors’ cross-appeal of Aki’s sentence of about four years, were voluntarily dismissed, according to court records.
Kunzelman’s wife, Lori Kunzelman, told AP Thursday that she is glad prosecutors pushed for a lengthier sentence.
The Kunzelmans purchased a dilapidated, oceanfront house there sight-unseen for $175,000 because they wanted to leave Arizona after Lori Kunzelman’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
“We had vacationed on Maui year after year — loved, loved, loved Maui,” she said, adding that they saw the home as an affordable opportunity that her husband could fix up.
She said the beating of her husband “destroyed my marriage” and his brain injuries led them to go through a divorce. She said her husband was traveling in Europe and unavailable to comment on the ruling.
They still own the property, she said, and do not know what to do with it. “The families there won’t allow anybody to step foot on that property,” she said. “There’s so much animosity.”
The case highlighted struggles between Native Hawaiians who are adamant about not having their culture erased and people who move to the islands without knowing or considering its history and nuanced racial dynamics.
Central to the case was the use of the word, “haole,” a Hawaiian word with meanings that include foreigner and white person. Dennis Kunzelman testified that the men called him “haole” in a derogatory way.
Attorneys for Aki and Alo-Kaonohi said it was not Kunzelman’s race that provoked them but his entitled and disrespectful attitude.
The Hawaii Innocence Project plans to take up the case, according to Kenneth Lawson, the organization’s co-director. It intends to argue that an ineffective defense did not present for the jury the history of the word “haole” in Hawaii and show it is not a derogatory term.
“I just don’t believe that it’s a hate crime,” Lawson said.
He also said the defense should have called as witnesses white, non-Hawaiian residents who would have testified that they lived in the village without any racial problems.
New York
Retired police sergeant gets 6 months in prison for Taser attack on man in mental health crisis
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A retired police sergeant in a New York suburb has been sentenced to six months in prison and six months of home confinement for repeatedly firing a Taser gun at a man suffering a health crisis.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas told the retired Mount Vernon police sergeant, Mario Stewart, that it was necessary “to send a clear message” to law enforcement that although policing is a “really hard,” there are rules and “where the line is clear, you cannot cross it.”
“The people of Mount Vernon have to know that they will not be themselves victims of their law enforcement officers,” Karas said.
Stewart, 46, of Brooklyn was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty in January to depriving an individual of his civil rights by using excessive force against a 20-year-old civilian in 2019. He worked several more years before retiring in 2023.
Prosecutors said Stewart tased the man seven times in approximately two minutes while his hands were cuffed behind his back and his legs were secured in a restraint bag.
The stun gun caused the man to convulse and scream. Prosecutors said he had traveled by train from the Bronx to Mount Vernon with several friends and his then-girlfriend when symptoms of a psychotic episode worsened and he removed his clothing and warned friends to stay away.
Stewart notified his dispatcher after the victim was restrained that “all is under control,” but then he began tasing the man after the victim grabbed a strap on the restraint bag with a cuffed hand and wouldn’t let go, prosecutors said.
The police department’s Taser Policy barred using a taser in a punitive or coercive manner or on a handcuffed or secured prisoner unless assaultive behavior cannot be dealt with any other way, the government noted.
Stewart’s lawyer, Kevin Conway, wrote in a presentence submission to the judge that Stewart believed the six police officers on the scene with him and emergency medical staff faced an escalating safety risk if the Taser gun was not deployed.
Conway quoted his client as saying “in my heart, I was not trying to hurt him.”
New?York
Chemical maker DuPont agrees to $27M settlement
HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — Chemical maker DuPont has agreed to a $27 million settlement to resolve a nearly decade-long lawsuit over the contamination of an upstate New York village's water supply.
The deal was announced Wednesday by lawyers representing residents of Hoosick Falls, located northwest of Albany, just as the case was headed to trial in federal court this week.
The settlement brings the total recovered in the class action suit brought in 2016 to more than $90 million, lawyers for Rochester-based firm Faraci Lange said.
Three other companies — Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, Honeywell International and 3M —settled for a total of more than $65 million in 2021. DuPont was the last remaining defendant.
"We are gratified to have reached what we believe will be the final resolution of this case that will provide significant added benefit to the residents of Hoosick Falls and the Town of Hoosick," said Stephen Schwarz.
A spokesperson for Delaware-based DuPont didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday.
The DuPont settlement, which must still be approved by a federal judge, also includes another $6 million in funding for an existing medical monitoring program for exposed residents, according to attorneys.
In their class action suit, Hoosick Falls residents claimed that a local Teflon fabric coating facility operated by Saint-Gobain and Honeywell caused local drinking water to become contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
DuPont, which made Teflon materials used at the facility, and 3M, which made the PFOA used by DuPont in its products, were added as defendants to the lawsuit in 2018.
PFOA was once widely used in certain industrial processes but is now considered a harmful "forever chemical" because it can persist in the environment for decades without decomposing.
It has been linked to a number of serious illnesses including kidney and testicular cancer and has recently been classified as a carcinogen.
