Hawaii
2 civilians indicted for role in a Pearl Harbor fuel spill that sickened 6,000 people in 2021
HONOLULU (AP) — A grand jury has indicted two civilian workers on charges they caused the Navy to provide the Hawaii Department of Health with false information about jet fuel that spilled from a Pearl Harbor storage facility before it later seeped into drinking water and sickened 6,000 people over Thanksgiving in 2021.
The indictments are the first to result from the fuel spill that angered Hawaii residents, lawmakers and military service members and their families. The military decided to close the aging World War II-era fuel tanks after the spill.
A Navy investigation in 2022 found shoddy management and human error caused the leak at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. The Defense Department’s inspector general last year found Navy officials lacked sufficient understanding of the risks of maintaining massive fuel storage tanks on top of a Pearl Harbor drinking water well. The Navy issued written reprimands to three retired military officers for their roles in the fuel spill.
The indictment returned Thursday alleges John Floyd and Nelson Wu provided the Navy with inaccurate information about a May 2021 spill that occurred six months before the fuel got in the drinking water. The indictment says they caused the Navy to mislead the Hawaii Department of Health about how much fuel leaked from one of the tanks and reassured officers that their information was accurate.
This caused the Navy to tell the department in the months after May that 1,618 gallons (6,125 liters) leaked instead of 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) and failed to report that it was unable to find 18,000 gallons (68,000 liters), prosecutors say. The indictment alleges Floyd and Wu redacted data from records provided. Floyd and Wu were each indicted on one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements.
Floyd was the Fuels Department deputy director at Red Hill while Wu was the Fuels Department supervisory engineer.
The federal public defender’s office, which is representing Floyd, didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Wu’s attorney, Alen Kaneshiro, said he didn’t have a comment at this time.
The Navy’s investigation found fuel gushed from a ruptured pipe on May 6, 2021. Most of it flowed into a fire suppression drain system, where it sat unnoticed for six months until a cart rammed a sagging line holding the liquid and caused fuel to pour out. Crews believed they mopped up most of this fuel, but they failed to get it all and some flowed into a drain and drinking water well that supplied water to 90,000 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Wayne Tanaka, the director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, said culpability extended beyond the alleged actions of the two civilians. He said in a statement the Navy’s own investigation showed officials knew some 20,000 gallons were unaccounted for after the May incident and yet it didn’t inform the community or regulators. He said Navy leaders sidelined a whistleblower who sounded alarms about the mismanagement of Red Hill.
Fuel leaks at Red Hill had occurred before, including in 2014, prompting the Sierra Club of Hawaii and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply to ask the military to move the tanks to a place where they wouldn’t threaten Oahu’s water. But the Navy refused, saying the island’s water was safe.
California
Man sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for making racist threats against pregnant Black woman
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A California man was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison for making racist threats against a pregnant Black woman after prosecutors appealed an earlier, lighter sentence, officials said.
Tyson Mayfield, 49, pleaded guilty in a court-offered deal in 2019 to get a five-year sentence that the Orange County District Attorney’s office opposed and later appealed.
An appeals panel rejected the decision, and Mayfield was retried and convicted of making criminal threats with an enhancement for a hate crime.
“Over the last six years we have fought and fought and fought for justice in this case,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Justice was finally served today against a man who spent decades hating others, and now he will spend decades behind bars where he belongs.”
A message was left at the public defender’s office seeking comment.
Mayfield was accused of threatening and yelling racial slurs at a woman who was eight months pregnant at a bus stop in Fullerton in 2018, prompting her to use pepper spray to protect herself and run for help.
Authorities said Mayfield, who is white and has a swastika tattoo, had prior convictions for attacking bystanders, including punching a man outside a supermarket while yelling a racist slur.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins made the offer to Mayfield in 2019, noting no weapon was used or injury caused during the crime. Prosecutors and community advocates said Mayfield shouldn’t have been eligible for the deal because of his prior convictions.
Utah
State Supreme Court blocks execution of prisoner with dementia who chose to die by firing squad
The impending execution of a man by firing squad in Utah was blocked by the state’s Supreme Court on Friday after his attorneys argued he should be spared because he has dementia.
Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was set to be executed Sept. 5 for abducting and killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When given a choice decades ago, Menzies selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would have become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.
Lawyers for Menzies had launched a new push beginning in early 2024 to free him of his death sentence, arguing that the dementia their client had developed during his 37 years on death row is so severe that he uses a wheelchair, is dependent on oxygen and can’t understand why he is facing execution.
The Utah Supreme Court said Menzies adequately alleged a substantial change of circumstances and raised a significant question on his fitness to be executed, concluding a lower court must reevaluate Menzies’ competency.
“We acknowledge that this uncertainty has caused the family of Maurine Hunsaker immense suffering, and it is not our desire to prolong that suffering. But we are bound by the rule of law,” the court said in the order.
A defense attorney for Menzies said his dementia had significantly worsened since he last had a competency evaluation more than a year ago.
“We look forward to presenting our case in the trial court,” attorney Lindsey Layer said.
In a statement to media outlets, Hunsaker’s family members said they “are obviously very distraught and disappointed at the Supreme Court’s decision” and asked for privacy.
The Associated Press left phone and email messages Friday with a spokesperson for the Utah Attorney General’s Office seeking comment on the ruling.
Menzies is not the first person to receive a dementia diagnosis while awaiting execution.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 blocked the execution of a man with dementia in Alabama, ruling Vernon Madison was protected against execution under a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Madison, who killed a police officer in 1985, died in prison in 2020.
That case followed earlier Supreme Court rulings barring executions of people with severe mental illness. If a defendant cannot understand why they are dying, the Supreme Court said, then an execution is not carrying out the retribution that society is seeking.
Medical experts brought in by prosecutors during hearings into Menzies’ competency said he still has the mental capacity to understand his situation.
Experts brought in by the defense said he does not.
Hunsaker was abducted from a store Feb. 23, 1986. She later called her husband to say she had been robbed and kidnapped but that she would be released by her abductor that night.
Two days later, a hiker found her body at a picnic area about 16 miles (25 kilometers) away in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Hunsaker had been strangled, her throat slashed.
Utah’s last execution played out by lethal injection a year ago. The state hasn’t used a firing squad since the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner. Earlier this year, South Carolina executed two prisoners by firing squad.
Washington
EPA should not have been blocked from terminating ‘green bank’ funds, court says
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration was handed a win by a federal appeals court on Tuesday in its effort to freeze billions of dollars and terminate contracts for nonprofits to run a “green bank” aimed at financing climate-friendly projects.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency had blasted the Biden-era program as a waste of taxpayer money, tried to claw back its funding and accused the nonprofits of mismanagement.
A lower court said the EPA couldn’t support Administrator Lee Zeldin’s accusations and that the agency was wrong to try and end contracts with the nonprofits without substantiating allegations against them. On Tuesday, a divided federal appeals court ruled 2-1 in the agency’s favor, saying the EPA should not have been blocked from terminating the grants and that the arguments by the climate groups have no place in federal district court.
Instead, the case should be heard in a federal claims court that hears contract disputes, the appeals court ruled in a decision written by U.S. Appeals Court Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term. The decision was a major loss for the groups who said they can only seek monetary damages in district court. The groups in this case were seeking an order allowing them immediate access to their funds, which total about $16 billion.
“In sum, district courts have no jurisdiction to hear claims that the federal government terminated a grant agreement arbitrarily or with impunity. Claims of arbitrary grant termination are essentially contractual,” Rao wrote in a decision supported by Judge Gregory Katsas, also a Trump appointee.
The appeals court ruling said the nonprofits’ arguments belong in federal claims court because they dealt chiefly with the underlying contracts the groups held with the federal government, not matters of law or the Constitution.
Climate United Fund and other groups sued the EPA, Zeldin and Citibank, which held the grant money on behalf of the agency, saying they had illegally denied the groups access to funds awarded last year. They wanted access to those funds again, saying the freeze had paralyzed their work and jeopardized their basic operations.
In order to provide the parties with an opportunity to appeal, the decision won’t go into effect immediately.
Climate United CEO Beth Bafford said in a statement, “This is not the end of our road.”
“While we are disappointed by the panel’s decision, we stand firm on the merits of our case: EPA unlawfully froze and terminated funds that were legally obligated and disbursed,” Bafford said.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, said in her dissent that the groups provided evidence that the EPA disagreed with the program’s goals and tried to end it, while throwing around allegations against the groups that it couldn’t substantiate.
The EPA has damaged the green bank program “without presenting to any court any credible evidence or coherent reason that could justify its interference with plaintiffs’ money and its sabotage of Congress’s law,” Pillard wrote.
2 civilians indicted for role in a Pearl Harbor fuel spill that sickened 6,000 people in 2021
HONOLULU (AP) — A grand jury has indicted two civilian workers on charges they caused the Navy to provide the Hawaii Department of Health with false information about jet fuel that spilled from a Pearl Harbor storage facility before it later seeped into drinking water and sickened 6,000 people over Thanksgiving in 2021.
The indictments are the first to result from the fuel spill that angered Hawaii residents, lawmakers and military service members and their families. The military decided to close the aging World War II-era fuel tanks after the spill.
A Navy investigation in 2022 found shoddy management and human error caused the leak at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. The Defense Department’s inspector general last year found Navy officials lacked sufficient understanding of the risks of maintaining massive fuel storage tanks on top of a Pearl Harbor drinking water well. The Navy issued written reprimands to three retired military officers for their roles in the fuel spill.
The indictment returned Thursday alleges John Floyd and Nelson Wu provided the Navy with inaccurate information about a May 2021 spill that occurred six months before the fuel got in the drinking water. The indictment says they caused the Navy to mislead the Hawaii Department of Health about how much fuel leaked from one of the tanks and reassured officers that their information was accurate.
This caused the Navy to tell the department in the months after May that 1,618 gallons (6,125 liters) leaked instead of 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) and failed to report that it was unable to find 18,000 gallons (68,000 liters), prosecutors say. The indictment alleges Floyd and Wu redacted data from records provided. Floyd and Wu were each indicted on one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements.
Floyd was the Fuels Department deputy director at Red Hill while Wu was the Fuels Department supervisory engineer.
The federal public defender’s office, which is representing Floyd, didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Wu’s attorney, Alen Kaneshiro, said he didn’t have a comment at this time.
The Navy’s investigation found fuel gushed from a ruptured pipe on May 6, 2021. Most of it flowed into a fire suppression drain system, where it sat unnoticed for six months until a cart rammed a sagging line holding the liquid and caused fuel to pour out. Crews believed they mopped up most of this fuel, but they failed to get it all and some flowed into a drain and drinking water well that supplied water to 90,000 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Wayne Tanaka, the director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, said culpability extended beyond the alleged actions of the two civilians. He said in a statement the Navy’s own investigation showed officials knew some 20,000 gallons were unaccounted for after the May incident and yet it didn’t inform the community or regulators. He said Navy leaders sidelined a whistleblower who sounded alarms about the mismanagement of Red Hill.
Fuel leaks at Red Hill had occurred before, including in 2014, prompting the Sierra Club of Hawaii and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply to ask the military to move the tanks to a place where they wouldn’t threaten Oahu’s water. But the Navy refused, saying the island’s water was safe.
California
Man sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for making racist threats against pregnant Black woman
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A California man was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison for making racist threats against a pregnant Black woman after prosecutors appealed an earlier, lighter sentence, officials said.
Tyson Mayfield, 49, pleaded guilty in a court-offered deal in 2019 to get a five-year sentence that the Orange County District Attorney’s office opposed and later appealed.
An appeals panel rejected the decision, and Mayfield was retried and convicted of making criminal threats with an enhancement for a hate crime.
“Over the last six years we have fought and fought and fought for justice in this case,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Justice was finally served today against a man who spent decades hating others, and now he will spend decades behind bars where he belongs.”
A message was left at the public defender’s office seeking comment.
Mayfield was accused of threatening and yelling racial slurs at a woman who was eight months pregnant at a bus stop in Fullerton in 2018, prompting her to use pepper spray to protect herself and run for help.
Authorities said Mayfield, who is white and has a swastika tattoo, had prior convictions for attacking bystanders, including punching a man outside a supermarket while yelling a racist slur.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins made the offer to Mayfield in 2019, noting no weapon was used or injury caused during the crime. Prosecutors and community advocates said Mayfield shouldn’t have been eligible for the deal because of his prior convictions.
Utah
State Supreme Court blocks execution of prisoner with dementia who chose to die by firing squad
The impending execution of a man by firing squad in Utah was blocked by the state’s Supreme Court on Friday after his attorneys argued he should be spared because he has dementia.
Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was set to be executed Sept. 5 for abducting and killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When given a choice decades ago, Menzies selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would have become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.
Lawyers for Menzies had launched a new push beginning in early 2024 to free him of his death sentence, arguing that the dementia their client had developed during his 37 years on death row is so severe that he uses a wheelchair, is dependent on oxygen and can’t understand why he is facing execution.
The Utah Supreme Court said Menzies adequately alleged a substantial change of circumstances and raised a significant question on his fitness to be executed, concluding a lower court must reevaluate Menzies’ competency.
“We acknowledge that this uncertainty has caused the family of Maurine Hunsaker immense suffering, and it is not our desire to prolong that suffering. But we are bound by the rule of law,” the court said in the order.
A defense attorney for Menzies said his dementia had significantly worsened since he last had a competency evaluation more than a year ago.
“We look forward to presenting our case in the trial court,” attorney Lindsey Layer said.
In a statement to media outlets, Hunsaker’s family members said they “are obviously very distraught and disappointed at the Supreme Court’s decision” and asked for privacy.
The Associated Press left phone and email messages Friday with a spokesperson for the Utah Attorney General’s Office seeking comment on the ruling.
Menzies is not the first person to receive a dementia diagnosis while awaiting execution.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 blocked the execution of a man with dementia in Alabama, ruling Vernon Madison was protected against execution under a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Madison, who killed a police officer in 1985, died in prison in 2020.
That case followed earlier Supreme Court rulings barring executions of people with severe mental illness. If a defendant cannot understand why they are dying, the Supreme Court said, then an execution is not carrying out the retribution that society is seeking.
Medical experts brought in by prosecutors during hearings into Menzies’ competency said he still has the mental capacity to understand his situation.
Experts brought in by the defense said he does not.
Hunsaker was abducted from a store Feb. 23, 1986. She later called her husband to say she had been robbed and kidnapped but that she would be released by her abductor that night.
Two days later, a hiker found her body at a picnic area about 16 miles (25 kilometers) away in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Hunsaker had been strangled, her throat slashed.
Utah’s last execution played out by lethal injection a year ago. The state hasn’t used a firing squad since the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner. Earlier this year, South Carolina executed two prisoners by firing squad.
Washington
EPA should not have been blocked from terminating ‘green bank’ funds, court says
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration was handed a win by a federal appeals court on Tuesday in its effort to freeze billions of dollars and terminate contracts for nonprofits to run a “green bank” aimed at financing climate-friendly projects.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency had blasted the Biden-era program as a waste of taxpayer money, tried to claw back its funding and accused the nonprofits of mismanagement.
A lower court said the EPA couldn’t support Administrator Lee Zeldin’s accusations and that the agency was wrong to try and end contracts with the nonprofits without substantiating allegations against them. On Tuesday, a divided federal appeals court ruled 2-1 in the agency’s favor, saying the EPA should not have been blocked from terminating the grants and that the arguments by the climate groups have no place in federal district court.
Instead, the case should be heard in a federal claims court that hears contract disputes, the appeals court ruled in a decision written by U.S. Appeals Court Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term. The decision was a major loss for the groups who said they can only seek monetary damages in district court. The groups in this case were seeking an order allowing them immediate access to their funds, which total about $16 billion.
“In sum, district courts have no jurisdiction to hear claims that the federal government terminated a grant agreement arbitrarily or with impunity. Claims of arbitrary grant termination are essentially contractual,” Rao wrote in a decision supported by Judge Gregory Katsas, also a Trump appointee.
The appeals court ruling said the nonprofits’ arguments belong in federal claims court because they dealt chiefly with the underlying contracts the groups held with the federal government, not matters of law or the Constitution.
Climate United Fund and other groups sued the EPA, Zeldin and Citibank, which held the grant money on behalf of the agency, saying they had illegally denied the groups access to funds awarded last year. They wanted access to those funds again, saying the freeze had paralyzed their work and jeopardized their basic operations.
In order to provide the parties with an opportunity to appeal, the decision won’t go into effect immediately.
Climate United CEO Beth Bafford said in a statement, “This is not the end of our road.”
“While we are disappointed by the panel’s decision, we stand firm on the merits of our case: EPA unlawfully froze and terminated funds that were legally obligated and disbursed,” Bafford said.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, said in her dissent that the groups provided evidence that the EPA disagreed with the program’s goals and tried to end it, while throwing around allegations against the groups that it couldn’t substantiate.
The EPA has damaged the green bank program “without presenting to any court any credible evidence or coherent reason that could justify its interference with plaintiffs’ money and its sabotage of Congress’s law,” Pillard wrote.
