New York
Man pleads guilty in 2002 killing of Jam Master Jay
NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly a quarter-century after rap star Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC was shot to death, a man admitted in court Monday to a role in a killing that stymied investigators for decades.
Jay Bryant pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge, telling a judge that he helped other people get into a recording studio to ambush the DJ, born Jason Mizell.
“I knew a gun was going to be used to shoot Jason Mizell,” Bryant told a federal magistrate. “I knew that what I was doing was wrong and a crime.”
Bryant’s admission brings some closure — but also adds complexity — to a knotty case.
Bryant didn’t name the other people with whom he acted. But a jury in 2024 convicted two other men, Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington, yet a judge subsequently cleared Jordan.
Washington has also challenged his conviction. His lawyer, Susan Kellman, noted Monday that evidence against Bryant included his DNA on a hat at the crime scene and witness testimony that Bryant once claimed he fired the gun himself. Jordan’s lawyers declined to comment.
Bryant, 52, is expected to face a sentence somewhere between 15 and 20 years in prison for the killing plus unrelated drug and gun charges, to which he pleaded guilty earlier. No sentencing date has been set.
He gave a thumbs-up to someone in the audience before leaving court. The person declined to comment afterward, as did Bryant’s attorneys.
Prosecutors had no immediate comment.
Mizell handled the turntables in Run-DMC, a pathbreaking trio he formed with friends Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Joseph Simmons, known as DJ Run and Rev. Run.
With such 1980s hits as “It’s Tricky,” “My Adidas,” and a version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” they helped rap climb the ladder from an urban genre into mainstream popularity. Run-DMC was the first rap group with gold- and platinum-selling albums, a Rolling Stone cover, and a video on MTV. The trio was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Mizell also mentored other hip-hop artists, including a young 50 Cent.
At 37, Mizell was gunned down in his studio in the Queens neighborhood where he’d grown up. His October 2002 death followed the late 1990s killings of two other hip-hop greats, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Authorities struggled with all three cases for years.
Jordan and Washington — Mizell’s godson and old friend, respectively — were arrested in 2020. Prosecutors said the men were bitter about losing out on a piece of a failed cocaine deal that Mizell had tried to line up. Though Run-DMC was known for its anti-drug message, prosecutors and a trial witness said the DJ moonlighted in the cocaine trade in his later years to cover his bills and keep being generous to friends after music money dried up somewhat.
According to prosecutors and trial witnesses, Jordan shot Mizell while Washington blocked the door during the shooting and ordered one of Mizell’s aides to get on the ground. Both men denied the allegations.
Jordan’s attorneys said he was at his girlfriend’s home when the DJ was shot, and Washington’s lawyers said he had no incentive to kill the famous friend who helped him financially.
Nearly three years after their arrests, prosecutors abruptly brought Bryant into their picture of the killing.
Saying that Bryant’s DNA had been found on a hat in the studio and that he’d been seen entering the building, prosecutors added him to the murder indictment. He was already jailed on the drug and gun case.
Bryant knew someone in common with Jordan and Washington, according to testimony at their trial. But unlike them, Bryant had little, if any, connection to Mizell.
Bryant said in court Monday that he was connected with people who were involved in a cocaine deal with the DJ and that he “helped them kill Jason Mizell by helping them gain entry to the recording studio.”
Bryant’s uncle has said his nephew told him he shot Mizell after the artist reached for a gun. But no one else testified that Bryant even entered the studio.
Instead, prosecutors contended that Bryant was enlisted to make his way into the studio building and open a back fire door, allowing Washington and Jordan to walk in without buzzing up and alerting Mizell they were coming.
While neither Jordan’s nor Washington’s DNA was on the cap, then-prosecutor Artie McConnell suggested one of them had accidentally left it behind, and that Bryant had simply touched it at some point beforehand.
Utah
Man charged with murder in shooting outside church in Salt Lake City
Prosecutors in Utah are seeking the extradition of a man from California on murder charges in connection with a deadly shooting in January at a church parking lot in Salt Lake City that left two people dead, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Law enforcement took 32-year-old John Vea Uasike Jr. into custody on April 14 in connection with six felony charges including two counts of murder and weapons violations, the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office said in a news release.
It was unclear if Uasike has an attorney who could comment on his behalf. The shooting took place Jan. 7 in the back parking lot of a place of worship for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.
Investigators had said the gunfire broke out from a dispute between people who knew each other and were attending a funeral. All the victims were adults. Police have previously said they do not believe the violence was connected to animus toward a particular faith.
The church mostly serves Tongan congregants, its website says. In the 1890s, LDS missionaries brought their faith to Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific. More than 25% of the U.S. Tongan population resides in Utah, the headquarters of the church.
The men who died in the shooting have been identified as Vaea Tulikihihifo, 46, and Sione Vatuvei, 38.
Witnesses saw Uasike get a gun from a black sport utility vehicle and point it at a man’s head, according to the newly unsealed charging information in the case.
Others tried to calm Uasike down and, while they held up his hand with the gun, Uasike fired twice into the air causing the others to duck then scatter, alleges the information written by Salt Lake City police detective Steven Bigelow.
Uasike then went around the SUV and allegedly fired toward the church and funeral attendees, killing two and striking others, Bigelow wrote.
A witness said someone returned fire and Uasike, who was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound, went to California after being treated, according to Bigelow.
In February, a federal grand jury indicted two other men on firearms charge s in connection with the shootings, which also left six people injured.
Wyoming
Judge blocks law that bans all but earliest abortions
A Wyoming judge has blocked a new state law that bans abortions beyond the earliest stages of pregnancy while a lawsuit challenging the provision moves ahead.
It’s the first court ruling affecting the legal status of abortion in Wyoming since the state Supreme Court struck down sweeping abortion and abortion pill bans in January, finding that the laws violated the state constitution.
The new law, which would ban abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, is likely to be overturned on similar grounds, Natrona County District Judge Dan Forgey wrote in granting a temporary restraining order against it Friday.
Wyoming’s lone abortion clinic, Wellspring Health Access, and others challenging the new law welcomed the latest ruling after they successfully got the blanket abortion bans overturned.
“For nearly two months, this deeply harmful abortion ban has greatly reduced our ability to provide care to people in Wyoming,” Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement.
Currently 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with rare exceptions. Four others – Iowa, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina – have bans that kick in at either six weeks’ gestation or when cardiac activity can be detected. That’s often before women realize they’re pregnant.
The state bans have been allowed to be enforced since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a nationwide right to abortion. Since then, the court battles on state bans and restrictions have focused on language in state constitutions.
The Wyoming Supreme Court found that recent abortion bans passed by the state Legislature violated a voter-approved state constitutional amendment from 2012 that says competent adults have the right to make their own healthcare decisions.
The Republican-dominated Legislature responded with the ban on abortion after detection of embryonic cardiac activity. Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, signed it into law in March.
Wyoming should be able to uphold the latest law by “proving a compelling interest to protect human life,” Gordon said in a statement Monday.
He called for lawmakers to nonetheless pass a state constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go to voters to consider.
Washington
Judges: Pentagon can require reporters to be escorted during appeal process
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department can require journalists to be escorted on Pentagon grounds while the Trump administration appeals a judge’s decision to block its enforcement of a press access policy challenged by The New York Times, an appeals court ruled Monday.
The ruling by a divided three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit isn’t the final decision in the newspaper’s lawsuit over a new Pentagon press credential policy. But the panel’s majority opinion said the administration is likely to succeed in showing that the policy’s escort requirement is legally valid.
The panel granted the government’s request to suspend an April 9 decision by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who ruled that the Defense Department was violating his earlier order to restore access to the Pentagon for reporters.
Circuit Judges Justin Walker, J. Michelle Childs and Bradley Garcia heard the case, with Childs dissenting from the 2-1 majority.
“Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders,” Childs wrote.
Friedman found that the Pentagon’s new credential policy violated journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. He said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team had tried to evade his March 20 ruling by putting in new rules that expel all reporters from the building unless guided by escorts.
Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell said it welcomes the panel’s decision and looks forward to arguing the merits of its “full case” before the same panel. In a statement posted on social media, Parnell said unescorted access to the Pentagon has led to the “regular unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified national defense information.”
“Since implementing the current access policy, the Department has seen a meaningful reduction in these unauthorized disclosures, which when they occur can endanger the lives of service members, intelligence personnel, and our allies,” he wrote.
Theodore Boutrous, an attorney for The Times, said the panel’s ruling is “a narrow, preliminary one” and “casts no doubt” on the strength of the newspaper’s constitutional arguments.
“We look forward to defending the full scope of the district court’s rulings in The Times’s favor in this appeal,” Boutrous said in a statement.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated Walker. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Garcia and Childs. Friedman was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Man pleads guilty in 2002 killing of Jam Master Jay
NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly a quarter-century after rap star Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC was shot to death, a man admitted in court Monday to a role in a killing that stymied investigators for decades.
Jay Bryant pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge, telling a judge that he helped other people get into a recording studio to ambush the DJ, born Jason Mizell.
“I knew a gun was going to be used to shoot Jason Mizell,” Bryant told a federal magistrate. “I knew that what I was doing was wrong and a crime.”
Bryant’s admission brings some closure — but also adds complexity — to a knotty case.
Bryant didn’t name the other people with whom he acted. But a jury in 2024 convicted two other men, Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington, yet a judge subsequently cleared Jordan.
Washington has also challenged his conviction. His lawyer, Susan Kellman, noted Monday that evidence against Bryant included his DNA on a hat at the crime scene and witness testimony that Bryant once claimed he fired the gun himself. Jordan’s lawyers declined to comment.
Bryant, 52, is expected to face a sentence somewhere between 15 and 20 years in prison for the killing plus unrelated drug and gun charges, to which he pleaded guilty earlier. No sentencing date has been set.
He gave a thumbs-up to someone in the audience before leaving court. The person declined to comment afterward, as did Bryant’s attorneys.
Prosecutors had no immediate comment.
Mizell handled the turntables in Run-DMC, a pathbreaking trio he formed with friends Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Joseph Simmons, known as DJ Run and Rev. Run.
With such 1980s hits as “It’s Tricky,” “My Adidas,” and a version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” they helped rap climb the ladder from an urban genre into mainstream popularity. Run-DMC was the first rap group with gold- and platinum-selling albums, a Rolling Stone cover, and a video on MTV. The trio was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Mizell also mentored other hip-hop artists, including a young 50 Cent.
At 37, Mizell was gunned down in his studio in the Queens neighborhood where he’d grown up. His October 2002 death followed the late 1990s killings of two other hip-hop greats, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Authorities struggled with all three cases for years.
Jordan and Washington — Mizell’s godson and old friend, respectively — were arrested in 2020. Prosecutors said the men were bitter about losing out on a piece of a failed cocaine deal that Mizell had tried to line up. Though Run-DMC was known for its anti-drug message, prosecutors and a trial witness said the DJ moonlighted in the cocaine trade in his later years to cover his bills and keep being generous to friends after music money dried up somewhat.
According to prosecutors and trial witnesses, Jordan shot Mizell while Washington blocked the door during the shooting and ordered one of Mizell’s aides to get on the ground. Both men denied the allegations.
Jordan’s attorneys said he was at his girlfriend’s home when the DJ was shot, and Washington’s lawyers said he had no incentive to kill the famous friend who helped him financially.
Nearly three years after their arrests, prosecutors abruptly brought Bryant into their picture of the killing.
Saying that Bryant’s DNA had been found on a hat in the studio and that he’d been seen entering the building, prosecutors added him to the murder indictment. He was already jailed on the drug and gun case.
Bryant knew someone in common with Jordan and Washington, according to testimony at their trial. But unlike them, Bryant had little, if any, connection to Mizell.
Bryant said in court Monday that he was connected with people who were involved in a cocaine deal with the DJ and that he “helped them kill Jason Mizell by helping them gain entry to the recording studio.”
Bryant’s uncle has said his nephew told him he shot Mizell after the artist reached for a gun. But no one else testified that Bryant even entered the studio.
Instead, prosecutors contended that Bryant was enlisted to make his way into the studio building and open a back fire door, allowing Washington and Jordan to walk in without buzzing up and alerting Mizell they were coming.
While neither Jordan’s nor Washington’s DNA was on the cap, then-prosecutor Artie McConnell suggested one of them had accidentally left it behind, and that Bryant had simply touched it at some point beforehand.
Utah
Man charged with murder in shooting outside church in Salt Lake City
Prosecutors in Utah are seeking the extradition of a man from California on murder charges in connection with a deadly shooting in January at a church parking lot in Salt Lake City that left two people dead, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Law enforcement took 32-year-old John Vea Uasike Jr. into custody on April 14 in connection with six felony charges including two counts of murder and weapons violations, the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office said in a news release.
It was unclear if Uasike has an attorney who could comment on his behalf. The shooting took place Jan. 7 in the back parking lot of a place of worship for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.
Investigators had said the gunfire broke out from a dispute between people who knew each other and were attending a funeral. All the victims were adults. Police have previously said they do not believe the violence was connected to animus toward a particular faith.
The church mostly serves Tongan congregants, its website says. In the 1890s, LDS missionaries brought their faith to Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific. More than 25% of the U.S. Tongan population resides in Utah, the headquarters of the church.
The men who died in the shooting have been identified as Vaea Tulikihihifo, 46, and Sione Vatuvei, 38.
Witnesses saw Uasike get a gun from a black sport utility vehicle and point it at a man’s head, according to the newly unsealed charging information in the case.
Others tried to calm Uasike down and, while they held up his hand with the gun, Uasike fired twice into the air causing the others to duck then scatter, alleges the information written by Salt Lake City police detective Steven Bigelow.
Uasike then went around the SUV and allegedly fired toward the church and funeral attendees, killing two and striking others, Bigelow wrote.
A witness said someone returned fire and Uasike, who was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound, went to California after being treated, according to Bigelow.
In February, a federal grand jury indicted two other men on firearms charge s in connection with the shootings, which also left six people injured.
Wyoming
Judge blocks law that bans all but earliest abortions
A Wyoming judge has blocked a new state law that bans abortions beyond the earliest stages of pregnancy while a lawsuit challenging the provision moves ahead.
It’s the first court ruling affecting the legal status of abortion in Wyoming since the state Supreme Court struck down sweeping abortion and abortion pill bans in January, finding that the laws violated the state constitution.
The new law, which would ban abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, is likely to be overturned on similar grounds, Natrona County District Judge Dan Forgey wrote in granting a temporary restraining order against it Friday.
Wyoming’s lone abortion clinic, Wellspring Health Access, and others challenging the new law welcomed the latest ruling after they successfully got the blanket abortion bans overturned.
“For nearly two months, this deeply harmful abortion ban has greatly reduced our ability to provide care to people in Wyoming,” Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement.
Currently 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with rare exceptions. Four others – Iowa, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina – have bans that kick in at either six weeks’ gestation or when cardiac activity can be detected. That’s often before women realize they’re pregnant.
The state bans have been allowed to be enforced since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a nationwide right to abortion. Since then, the court battles on state bans and restrictions have focused on language in state constitutions.
The Wyoming Supreme Court found that recent abortion bans passed by the state Legislature violated a voter-approved state constitutional amendment from 2012 that says competent adults have the right to make their own healthcare decisions.
The Republican-dominated Legislature responded with the ban on abortion after detection of embryonic cardiac activity. Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, signed it into law in March.
Wyoming should be able to uphold the latest law by “proving a compelling interest to protect human life,” Gordon said in a statement Monday.
He called for lawmakers to nonetheless pass a state constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go to voters to consider.
Washington
Judges: Pentagon can require reporters to be escorted during appeal process
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department can require journalists to be escorted on Pentagon grounds while the Trump administration appeals a judge’s decision to block its enforcement of a press access policy challenged by The New York Times, an appeals court ruled Monday.
The ruling by a divided three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit isn’t the final decision in the newspaper’s lawsuit over a new Pentagon press credential policy. But the panel’s majority opinion said the administration is likely to succeed in showing that the policy’s escort requirement is legally valid.
The panel granted the government’s request to suspend an April 9 decision by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who ruled that the Defense Department was violating his earlier order to restore access to the Pentagon for reporters.
Circuit Judges Justin Walker, J. Michelle Childs and Bradley Garcia heard the case, with Childs dissenting from the 2-1 majority.
“Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders,” Childs wrote.
Friedman found that the Pentagon’s new credential policy violated journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. He said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team had tried to evade his March 20 ruling by putting in new rules that expel all reporters from the building unless guided by escorts.
Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell said it welcomes the panel’s decision and looks forward to arguing the merits of its “full case” before the same panel. In a statement posted on social media, Parnell said unescorted access to the Pentagon has led to the “regular unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified national defense information.”
“Since implementing the current access policy, the Department has seen a meaningful reduction in these unauthorized disclosures, which when they occur can endanger the lives of service members, intelligence personnel, and our allies,” he wrote.
Theodore Boutrous, an attorney for The Times, said the panel’s ruling is “a narrow, preliminary one” and “casts no doubt” on the strength of the newspaper’s constitutional arguments.
“We look forward to defending the full scope of the district court’s rulings in The Times’s favor in this appeal,” Boutrous said in a statement.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated Walker. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Garcia and Childs. Friedman was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
