Florida
Matriarch sentenced to life in prison for hired killing of her ex-son-in-law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Donna Adelson, the matriarch of a wealthy South Florida family who was convicted in the hired killing of her former son-in-law, was sentenced Monday to life in prison for her role in the 2014 murder-for-hire of Daniel Markel.
A prominent Florida State University law professor, Markel was locked in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, Adelson’s daughter, when he was gunned down in 2014 at his home in Tallahassee.
Adelson, 75, was found guilty last month of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation after a weekslong trial. She was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the murder charge, with an additional 30 years for the other two counts, to be served consecutively. Adelson has pledged to appeal.
In an emotional statement ahead of the sentencing in a Tallahassee courtroom, Adelson swore she was innocent and cast her trial as a miscarriage of justice, overseen by a jury she said was unduly swayed by years of negative media coverage.
Circuit Judge Stephen Everett interrupted Adelson multiple times, warning her the statements showed what he termed an “utter lack of remorse” for the crime.
Shackled and dressed in a purple jail jumpsuit, Adelson stood attentively while Everett handed down the sentence. “You certainly can choose to deny your involvement and maintain innocence. The court finds the evidence in this case is clear,” Everett said.
The case had captivated people in Florida for more than a decade amid sordid details of a messy divorce, tensions with wealthy in-laws and custody fights leading to the killing.
Adelson was the fifth person sentenced for what prosecutors say was a plot to kill Markel. Among those already serving a life sentence for the killing is Adelson’s son, Charles Adelson.
At trial, prosecutors had painted Donna Adelson as the calculated and controlling matriarch of an affluent South Florida family with the means and motive to orchestrate the killing of the ex-son-in-law she “hated.”
Defense attorneys insisted the state didn’t have sufficient evidence to link the aging grandmother to the murder plot, instead emphasizing the roles played by others and casting suspicion on two of Adelson’s adult children. Wendi Adelson denied involvement in the killing and has not been charged.
Washington
Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’ appeal of $1.4B defamation judgment in Sandy Hook shooting
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and left in place the $1.4 billion judgment against him over his description of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as a hoax staged by crisis actors.
The Infowars host had argued that a judge was wrong to find him liable for defamation and infliction of emotional distress without holding a trial on the merits of allegations lodged by relatives of victims of the shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut.
The justices did not comment on their order, which they issued without even asking the families of the Sandy Hook victims to respond to Jones’ appeal. An FBI agent who responded to the shooting also sued.
Jones filed for bankruptcy in late 2022, and his lawyers told the justices that the “plaintiffs have no possible hope of collecting” the entire judgment.
He is separately appealing a $49 million judgment in a similar defamation lawsuit in Texas after he failed to turn over documents sought by the parents of another Sandy Hook victim.
In the Connecticut case, the judge issued a rare default ruling against Jones and his company in late 2021 because of what she called Jones’ repeated failure to abide by court rulings and to turn over certain evidence to the Sandy Hook families. The judge convened a jury to determine how much Jones would owe.
The following year, the jury agreed on a $964 million verdict and the judge later tacked on another $473 million in punitive damages against Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, which is based in Austin, Texas.
In November, the satirical news outlet The Onion was named the winning bidder in an auction to liquidate Infowars’ assets to help pay the defamation judgments. But the bankruptcy judge threw out the auction results, citing problems with the process and The Onion’s bid.
The attempt to sell off Infowars’ assets has moved to a Texas state court in Austin. Jones is now appealing a recent order from the court that appointed a receiver to liquidate the assets. Some of Jones’ personal property is also being sold off as part of the bankruptcy case.
Arizona
Another mobile home park sued over ‘deadly’ conditions
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing another manufactured home park and its owners in her latest effort to bring accountability to an industry that has long had little concrete oversight.
Mayes filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Palo Verde Mobile Home Park, LLC; Landon Asset Management, LLC, the owner of 18 homes at the park; and Landon Management Services PC, the property company managing the park, according to a state attorney general announcement Thursday.
The suit alleges the businesses failed to inform residents that the park’s “electrical system was extremely dangerous, unreliable, and overloaded.”
“It may feel like there’s no one to call to help, but my office CAN and WILL intervene to protect consumers when landlords fail to live up to their end of the bargain,” Mayes said. “A/C and electricity outages in Arizona aren’t just dangerous, they’re deadly.”
Palo Verde is one of a handful of parks where Mayes has stepped into a mobile home-related dispute on behalf of consumers with little recourse to challenge park owners and managers over substandard living conditions. She stressed the extreme heat these vulnerable communities endured. “Park residents suffered from unacceptable regular electrical outages, leaving them unable to air condition their homes as temperatures in Tucson routinely spike to triple digits,” the statement said.
Mayes also cited an Arizona Luminaria analysis of data provided by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner that showed mobile home heat deaths account for a disproportionate number of total heat deaths in the county. Mayes said that under the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act, “owners and operators of mobile home parks must disclose to prospective residents” any inadequate electrical systems that fail to support cooling requirements necessary for safe, habitable housing.
Landon Asset Management, LLC did not respond to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the lawsuit’s allegations. Over the past year, Arizona Luminaria has published in-depth coverage of the experiences of people living in Pima County manufactured home parks.
Residents spoke of a tragedy during an electricity outage. The impacts of a broken utility bill system. Their personal stories gave voice to an analysis of high heat death rates in manufactured homes.
That work has coincided with an increase in organizing efforts by mobile home residents in Pima County, including plans to help ensure safety during power outages and a fight against high or fraudulent utility bills despite fears of eviction.
Mayes has also ordered the owner of a park on the north side of Tucson to credit residents who were overcharged by up to $1,000 for water and issued a consumer alert, warning parks against illegal overcharges and explaining how residents can protect themselves.
Rhode Island
Judge accuses Homeland Security of bullying states into accepting conditions to get FEMA money
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of trying to “bully” states into accepting conditions that require them to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions to get disaster funding after he ruled earlier that those actions were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Smith, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, issued a summary judgment last month ruling that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t impose the conditions.
Despite the September ruling, a coalition of 20 state Democratic attorneys general argued the agency still attached the conditions to the grants along with language suggesting they would apply if the case was “stayed, vacated, or extinguished.”
Smith ordered Homeland Security to permanently stop enforcing those conditions against plaintiff states. The judge also said the agency must amend documents to states within seven days to remove language related to complying with federal immigration law as well as the conditional language related to the ruling being stayed or vacated.
Smith accused the agency of doing exactly what his order forbids, adding that the “fig leaf conditional nature of the requirement makes little difference.”
“Defendants’ new condition is not a good faith effort to comply with the order,” Smith wrote. “It is a ham-handed attempt to bully the states into making promises they have no obligation to make at the risk of losing critical disaster and other funding already appropriated by Congress.”
In their complaint, the states argued that for decades they counted on federal funding to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. But they argued conditions put forward by the Trump administration requiring them to commit state resources to immigration enforcement put at risk funding for everything from mitigating earthquake and flood risks to managing active wildfires.
The Department of Homeland Security seeks “to upend this emergency management system, holding critical emergency preparedness and response funding hostage unless States promise to devote their scarce criminal enforcement resources, and other state agency resources, to the federal government’s own task of civil immigration enforcement beyond what state law allows,” the plaintiffs wrote.
They argued successfully that this not only was unconstitutional but that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
Plaintiffs argued that the agency was simply cutting and pasting language that the judge had rejected as part of a condition to get grant funds. “Such relief is necessary to prevent defendants from coercing the States’ local jurisdictions to comply with unlawful conditions that are contrary to the States’ own decision making in this area,” they wrote.
The government had argued that the challenge was moot since it had already decided to exclude 12 of the 18 programs from having to comply with the immigration requirements. For the remaining programs, the government argued that this was a contract dispute that should be resolved in the Court of Federal Claims.
The government said the agency was well within its right to warn states of conditions, given it could see the ruling overturned on appeal. “Plaintiffs should not be allowed to prevent lawful enforcement at that point by anticipatorily preventing inclusion of the conditions within the grant terms,” the government wrote.
Matriarch sentenced to life in prison for hired killing of her ex-son-in-law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Donna Adelson, the matriarch of a wealthy South Florida family who was convicted in the hired killing of her former son-in-law, was sentenced Monday to life in prison for her role in the 2014 murder-for-hire of Daniel Markel.
A prominent Florida State University law professor, Markel was locked in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, Adelson’s daughter, when he was gunned down in 2014 at his home in Tallahassee.
Adelson, 75, was found guilty last month of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation after a weekslong trial. She was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the murder charge, with an additional 30 years for the other two counts, to be served consecutively. Adelson has pledged to appeal.
In an emotional statement ahead of the sentencing in a Tallahassee courtroom, Adelson swore she was innocent and cast her trial as a miscarriage of justice, overseen by a jury she said was unduly swayed by years of negative media coverage.
Circuit Judge Stephen Everett interrupted Adelson multiple times, warning her the statements showed what he termed an “utter lack of remorse” for the crime.
Shackled and dressed in a purple jail jumpsuit, Adelson stood attentively while Everett handed down the sentence. “You certainly can choose to deny your involvement and maintain innocence. The court finds the evidence in this case is clear,” Everett said.
The case had captivated people in Florida for more than a decade amid sordid details of a messy divorce, tensions with wealthy in-laws and custody fights leading to the killing.
Adelson was the fifth person sentenced for what prosecutors say was a plot to kill Markel. Among those already serving a life sentence for the killing is Adelson’s son, Charles Adelson.
At trial, prosecutors had painted Donna Adelson as the calculated and controlling matriarch of an affluent South Florida family with the means and motive to orchestrate the killing of the ex-son-in-law she “hated.”
Defense attorneys insisted the state didn’t have sufficient evidence to link the aging grandmother to the murder plot, instead emphasizing the roles played by others and casting suspicion on two of Adelson’s adult children. Wendi Adelson denied involvement in the killing and has not been charged.
Washington
Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’ appeal of $1.4B defamation judgment in Sandy Hook shooting
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and left in place the $1.4 billion judgment against him over his description of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as a hoax staged by crisis actors.
The Infowars host had argued that a judge was wrong to find him liable for defamation and infliction of emotional distress without holding a trial on the merits of allegations lodged by relatives of victims of the shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut.
The justices did not comment on their order, which they issued without even asking the families of the Sandy Hook victims to respond to Jones’ appeal. An FBI agent who responded to the shooting also sued.
Jones filed for bankruptcy in late 2022, and his lawyers told the justices that the “plaintiffs have no possible hope of collecting” the entire judgment.
He is separately appealing a $49 million judgment in a similar defamation lawsuit in Texas after he failed to turn over documents sought by the parents of another Sandy Hook victim.
In the Connecticut case, the judge issued a rare default ruling against Jones and his company in late 2021 because of what she called Jones’ repeated failure to abide by court rulings and to turn over certain evidence to the Sandy Hook families. The judge convened a jury to determine how much Jones would owe.
The following year, the jury agreed on a $964 million verdict and the judge later tacked on another $473 million in punitive damages against Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, which is based in Austin, Texas.
In November, the satirical news outlet The Onion was named the winning bidder in an auction to liquidate Infowars’ assets to help pay the defamation judgments. But the bankruptcy judge threw out the auction results, citing problems with the process and The Onion’s bid.
The attempt to sell off Infowars’ assets has moved to a Texas state court in Austin. Jones is now appealing a recent order from the court that appointed a receiver to liquidate the assets. Some of Jones’ personal property is also being sold off as part of the bankruptcy case.
Arizona
Another mobile home park sued over ‘deadly’ conditions
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing another manufactured home park and its owners in her latest effort to bring accountability to an industry that has long had little concrete oversight.
Mayes filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Palo Verde Mobile Home Park, LLC; Landon Asset Management, LLC, the owner of 18 homes at the park; and Landon Management Services PC, the property company managing the park, according to a state attorney general announcement Thursday.
The suit alleges the businesses failed to inform residents that the park’s “electrical system was extremely dangerous, unreliable, and overloaded.”
“It may feel like there’s no one to call to help, but my office CAN and WILL intervene to protect consumers when landlords fail to live up to their end of the bargain,” Mayes said. “A/C and electricity outages in Arizona aren’t just dangerous, they’re deadly.”
Palo Verde is one of a handful of parks where Mayes has stepped into a mobile home-related dispute on behalf of consumers with little recourse to challenge park owners and managers over substandard living conditions. She stressed the extreme heat these vulnerable communities endured. “Park residents suffered from unacceptable regular electrical outages, leaving them unable to air condition their homes as temperatures in Tucson routinely spike to triple digits,” the statement said.
Mayes also cited an Arizona Luminaria analysis of data provided by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner that showed mobile home heat deaths account for a disproportionate number of total heat deaths in the county. Mayes said that under the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act, “owners and operators of mobile home parks must disclose to prospective residents” any inadequate electrical systems that fail to support cooling requirements necessary for safe, habitable housing.
Landon Asset Management, LLC did not respond to Arizona Luminaria’s request for comment on the lawsuit’s allegations. Over the past year, Arizona Luminaria has published in-depth coverage of the experiences of people living in Pima County manufactured home parks.
Residents spoke of a tragedy during an electricity outage. The impacts of a broken utility bill system. Their personal stories gave voice to an analysis of high heat death rates in manufactured homes.
That work has coincided with an increase in organizing efforts by mobile home residents in Pima County, including plans to help ensure safety during power outages and a fight against high or fraudulent utility bills despite fears of eviction.
Mayes has also ordered the owner of a park on the north side of Tucson to credit residents who were overcharged by up to $1,000 for water and issued a consumer alert, warning parks against illegal overcharges and explaining how residents can protect themselves.
Rhode Island
Judge accuses Homeland Security of bullying states into accepting conditions to get FEMA money
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of trying to “bully” states into accepting conditions that require them to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions to get disaster funding after he ruled earlier that those actions were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Smith, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, issued a summary judgment last month ruling that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t impose the conditions.
Despite the September ruling, a coalition of 20 state Democratic attorneys general argued the agency still attached the conditions to the grants along with language suggesting they would apply if the case was “stayed, vacated, or extinguished.”
Smith ordered Homeland Security to permanently stop enforcing those conditions against plaintiff states. The judge also said the agency must amend documents to states within seven days to remove language related to complying with federal immigration law as well as the conditional language related to the ruling being stayed or vacated.
Smith accused the agency of doing exactly what his order forbids, adding that the “fig leaf conditional nature of the requirement makes little difference.”
“Defendants’ new condition is not a good faith effort to comply with the order,” Smith wrote. “It is a ham-handed attempt to bully the states into making promises they have no obligation to make at the risk of losing critical disaster and other funding already appropriated by Congress.”
In their complaint, the states argued that for decades they counted on federal funding to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. But they argued conditions put forward by the Trump administration requiring them to commit state resources to immigration enforcement put at risk funding for everything from mitigating earthquake and flood risks to managing active wildfires.
The Department of Homeland Security seeks “to upend this emergency management system, holding critical emergency preparedness and response funding hostage unless States promise to devote their scarce criminal enforcement resources, and other state agency resources, to the federal government’s own task of civil immigration enforcement beyond what state law allows,” the plaintiffs wrote.
They argued successfully that this not only was unconstitutional but that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
Plaintiffs argued that the agency was simply cutting and pasting language that the judge had rejected as part of a condition to get grant funds. “Such relief is necessary to prevent defendants from coercing the States’ local jurisdictions to comply with unlawful conditions that are contrary to the States’ own decision making in this area,” they wrote.
The government had argued that the challenge was moot since it had already decided to exclude 12 of the 18 programs from having to comply with the immigration requirements. For the remaining programs, the government argued that this was a contract dispute that should be resolved in the Court of Federal Claims.
The government said the agency was well within its right to warn states of conditions, given it could see the ruling overturned on appeal. “Plaintiffs should not be allowed to prevent lawful enforcement at that point by anticipatorily preventing inclusion of the conditions within the grant terms,” the government wrote.
