Minnesota
Appeals court upholds Myon Burrell’s conviction in gun and drug case
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An appeals court Monday upheld the conviction of a Minnesota man in a gun and drug case that put him back in legal trouble following the commutation of his life sentence in a high-profile murder case.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that a search that followed a traffic stop and led to Myon Burrell’s conviction on the gun and drug charges was legal.
The court rejected defense arguments that police lacked probable cause to expand their investigation beyond the scope of an initial traffic stop into an impaired driving investigation, and that the ensuing search of his vehicle without a warrant was therefore illegal.
Burrell was 16 when he was arrested for the 2002 death of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, a Minneapolis girl who was hit by a stray bullet. He maintained his innocence. The Associated Press and APM Reports in 2020 uncovered new evidence and serious flaws in that investigation, leading to the creation of an independent legal panel to review the case.
Burrell was freed in 2020 after 18 years behind bars. The state pardons board commuted his sentence to time served, after he had spent more than half his life in prison, but denied his request for a full pardon.
Then police in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale found drugs and a handgun in his SUV during a traffic stop in 2023. Since his conviction for first-degree murder remained on his record, it was still illegal for him to have a gun. He was convicted on the gun and drug charges last year and later sentenced to five years. Minnesota inmates typically serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and one-third on
supervised release.
The arresting officer testified he saw Burrell driving erratically, and that when he stopped Burrell, smoke came out of the window and that he smelled a strong odor of burnt marijuana. Burrell failed field sobriety tests. The search turned up a handgun and pills, some of which field tested positive for methamphetamine and ecstasy.
The defense argued that the officer’s testimony was not credible because no smoke could be seen on his body camera or dashboard camera videos. But the appeals court said it found that argument to be unconvincing, and that it would defer to the trial court’s finding that the officer’s testimony was credible.
The three-judge panel similarly rejected Burrell’s challenges to the officer’s statements that Burrell’s eyes were bloodshot and his pupils were dilated, and that he saw marijuana residue on the SUV’s console.
Arizona
Driver who crashed into bicyclists, killing 2, gets year in jail
PHOENIX (AP) — A driver who crashed into a group of bicyclists in suburban Phoenix, killing two of them and injuring several others, was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail.
Pedro Quintana-Lujan pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by moving vehicle and 10 counts of causing serious injury by moving vehicle — all misdemeanors — stemming from the Feb. 25, 2023, crash. His attorney, Jason Karpel, did not respond to a request for comment, and city prosecutors declined to comment.
Quintana-Lujan was driving a pickup hauling a trailer on a busy highway when the vehicle crashed into a group of bicyclists on the Cotton Lane Bridge in Goodyear about 19 miles (30 kilometers) west of Phoenix. Killed in the crash were Karen Malisa, 61, of Goodyear, Arizona; and David Kero, 65, who was visiting from Michigan.
Nearly everyone in the 20-person cycling group was injured.
Quintan-Lujan remained at the scene, and prosecutors found no indication he had been speeding or was under the influence of alcohol. He told investigators he had smoked marijuana the night before, and tests revealed he had a small amount of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, in his system.
According to a charging document released by police, Quintana-Lujan told officers he was driving in the left of two northbound lanes when his steering locked and he drifted into the vacant right lane, then into the adjacent bike lane where he heard “a sound similar to metal.”
A reconstruction of the collision determined that when Quintana-Lujan entered the bike lane, he also struck the concrete barrier that separates the roadway from a sidewalk, leaving black tire marks halfway up the wall and striking several cyclists.
Quintana-Lujan’s jail sentence will be followed by three years of probation. His driver’s license also will be suspended for 180 days, and he was ordered to complete 60 hours of community service and pay a $2,500 fine.
Massachusetts
Man’s death while restrained by police was a homicide, medical examiner says
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — The death of a Massachusetts man this summer outside a fish market was attributed to an abnormal heartbeat caused by cocaine and alcohol intoxication and efforts by police to restrain him, the prosecutor’s office said Friday.
The July 11 death of Francis Gigliotti was deemed to be a matter of homicide in the medical examiner’s findings provided to Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker office Thursday, the Salem-based prosecutor said in a statement.
Tucker’s office is investigating “whether the actions of the police officers were justified,” according to the statement.
Seven officers in Haverhill, north of Boston near the New Hampshire line, were put on paid leave after the handcuffed man became unresponsive and died as he was restrained in a prone position. Gigliotti had been walking into traffic during what his fiancee described as a mental health crisis.
The officers were not wearing body cameras, but video captured by witnesses showed officers holding Gigliotti face down as he cried out. It was unclear how long he was restrained or when he became unresponsive.
The U.S. Department of Justice has warned police officers for decades to roll suspects off their stomachs as soon as they are handcuffed because of the danger of positional asphyxia. Many policing experts agree that someone can stop breathing if pinned on their chest for too long or with too much weight because it can compress the lungs and put stress on the heart.
Arizona
Legal aid group sues to preemptively block US from deporting Honduran children
A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.
The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.
In a statement, FIRRP said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”
The organization did not immediately provide The Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.
The Justice Department on Saturday provided what is perhaps its most detailed account of a chaotic Labor Day weekend involving the attempted deportation of 76 Guatemalan children. Its timeline was part of a request to lift a temporary hold on their removal.
Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.
Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.
The government initially identified 457 Guatemalan children for possible deportation, according to Saturday’s filing. None could have a pending asylum screening or claim, resulting in the removal of 91. They had to have parents or legal guardians in Guatemala and be at least 10 years old.
In the end, 327 children were found eligible for deportation, including 76 who boarded planes early Sunday in what the government described as a first phase, according to a statement by Angie Salazar, acting director of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. All 76 were at least 14 years old and “self-reported” that they had a parent or legal guardian in Guatemala but none in the United States.
The Justice Department said no planes took off, despite a comment by one of its attorneys in court Sunday that one may have taken off but returned.
Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor, usually a relative.
Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.
Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.
Justice Department lawyers said federal law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to “repatriate” or “reunite” children by taking them out of the U.S., as long as the child hasn’t been a victim of “severe” human trafficking, is not at risk for becoming so if he or she is returned to their native country and does not face a “a credible fear” of persecution there. The child also cannot be “repatriated” if he or she has a pending asylum claim.
The FIRRP lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.
Some children have parents who are already in the United States.
The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.
Appeals court upholds Myon Burrell’s conviction in gun and drug case
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An appeals court Monday upheld the conviction of a Minnesota man in a gun and drug case that put him back in legal trouble following the commutation of his life sentence in a high-profile murder case.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that a search that followed a traffic stop and led to Myon Burrell’s conviction on the gun and drug charges was legal.
The court rejected defense arguments that police lacked probable cause to expand their investigation beyond the scope of an initial traffic stop into an impaired driving investigation, and that the ensuing search of his vehicle without a warrant was therefore illegal.
Burrell was 16 when he was arrested for the 2002 death of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, a Minneapolis girl who was hit by a stray bullet. He maintained his innocence. The Associated Press and APM Reports in 2020 uncovered new evidence and serious flaws in that investigation, leading to the creation of an independent legal panel to review the case.
Burrell was freed in 2020 after 18 years behind bars. The state pardons board commuted his sentence to time served, after he had spent more than half his life in prison, but denied his request for a full pardon.
Then police in the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale found drugs and a handgun in his SUV during a traffic stop in 2023. Since his conviction for first-degree murder remained on his record, it was still illegal for him to have a gun. He was convicted on the gun and drug charges last year and later sentenced to five years. Minnesota inmates typically serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and one-third on
supervised release.
The arresting officer testified he saw Burrell driving erratically, and that when he stopped Burrell, smoke came out of the window and that he smelled a strong odor of burnt marijuana. Burrell failed field sobriety tests. The search turned up a handgun and pills, some of which field tested positive for methamphetamine and ecstasy.
The defense argued that the officer’s testimony was not credible because no smoke could be seen on his body camera or dashboard camera videos. But the appeals court said it found that argument to be unconvincing, and that it would defer to the trial court’s finding that the officer’s testimony was credible.
The three-judge panel similarly rejected Burrell’s challenges to the officer’s statements that Burrell’s eyes were bloodshot and his pupils were dilated, and that he saw marijuana residue on the SUV’s console.
Arizona
Driver who crashed into bicyclists, killing 2, gets year in jail
PHOENIX (AP) — A driver who crashed into a group of bicyclists in suburban Phoenix, killing two of them and injuring several others, was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail.
Pedro Quintana-Lujan pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by moving vehicle and 10 counts of causing serious injury by moving vehicle — all misdemeanors — stemming from the Feb. 25, 2023, crash. His attorney, Jason Karpel, did not respond to a request for comment, and city prosecutors declined to comment.
Quintana-Lujan was driving a pickup hauling a trailer on a busy highway when the vehicle crashed into a group of bicyclists on the Cotton Lane Bridge in Goodyear about 19 miles (30 kilometers) west of Phoenix. Killed in the crash were Karen Malisa, 61, of Goodyear, Arizona; and David Kero, 65, who was visiting from Michigan.
Nearly everyone in the 20-person cycling group was injured.
Quintan-Lujan remained at the scene, and prosecutors found no indication he had been speeding or was under the influence of alcohol. He told investigators he had smoked marijuana the night before, and tests revealed he had a small amount of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, in his system.
According to a charging document released by police, Quintana-Lujan told officers he was driving in the left of two northbound lanes when his steering locked and he drifted into the vacant right lane, then into the adjacent bike lane where he heard “a sound similar to metal.”
A reconstruction of the collision determined that when Quintana-Lujan entered the bike lane, he also struck the concrete barrier that separates the roadway from a sidewalk, leaving black tire marks halfway up the wall and striking several cyclists.
Quintana-Lujan’s jail sentence will be followed by three years of probation. His driver’s license also will be suspended for 180 days, and he was ordered to complete 60 hours of community service and pay a $2,500 fine.
Massachusetts
Man’s death while restrained by police was a homicide, medical examiner says
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — The death of a Massachusetts man this summer outside a fish market was attributed to an abnormal heartbeat caused by cocaine and alcohol intoxication and efforts by police to restrain him, the prosecutor’s office said Friday.
The July 11 death of Francis Gigliotti was deemed to be a matter of homicide in the medical examiner’s findings provided to Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker office Thursday, the Salem-based prosecutor said in a statement.
Tucker’s office is investigating “whether the actions of the police officers were justified,” according to the statement.
Seven officers in Haverhill, north of Boston near the New Hampshire line, were put on paid leave after the handcuffed man became unresponsive and died as he was restrained in a prone position. Gigliotti had been walking into traffic during what his fiancee described as a mental health crisis.
The officers were not wearing body cameras, but video captured by witnesses showed officers holding Gigliotti face down as he cried out. It was unclear how long he was restrained or when he became unresponsive.
The U.S. Department of Justice has warned police officers for decades to roll suspects off their stomachs as soon as they are handcuffed because of the danger of positional asphyxia. Many policing experts agree that someone can stop breathing if pinned on their chest for too long or with too much weight because it can compress the lungs and put stress on the heart.
Arizona
Legal aid group sues to preemptively block US from deporting Honduran children
A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.
The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.
In a statement, FIRRP said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”
The organization did not immediately provide The Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.
The Justice Department on Saturday provided what is perhaps its most detailed account of a chaotic Labor Day weekend involving the attempted deportation of 76 Guatemalan children. Its timeline was part of a request to lift a temporary hold on their removal.
Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.
Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.
The government initially identified 457 Guatemalan children for possible deportation, according to Saturday’s filing. None could have a pending asylum screening or claim, resulting in the removal of 91. They had to have parents or legal guardians in Guatemala and be at least 10 years old.
In the end, 327 children were found eligible for deportation, including 76 who boarded planes early Sunday in what the government described as a first phase, according to a statement by Angie Salazar, acting director of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. All 76 were at least 14 years old and “self-reported” that they had a parent or legal guardian in Guatemala but none in the United States.
The Justice Department said no planes took off, despite a comment by one of its attorneys in court Sunday that one may have taken off but returned.
Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor, usually a relative.
Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.
Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.
Justice Department lawyers said federal law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to “repatriate” or “reunite” children by taking them out of the U.S., as long as the child hasn’t been a victim of “severe” human trafficking, is not at risk for becoming so if he or she is returned to their native country and does not face a “a credible fear” of persecution there. The child also cannot be “repatriated” if he or she has a pending asylum claim.
The FIRRP lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.
Some children have parents who are already in the United States.
The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.
