Germany
Berlin court sentences a doctor to life for murdering 15 patients under palliative care
BERLIN (AP) — A Berlin court on Wednesday convicted and sentenced a German doctor to life in prison on charges of murdering 15 of his patients who were under palliative care, in a case involving allegations he torched the homes of victims to try to cover up the crimes.
The 41-year-old doctor, who has only been identified as Johannes M. in line with Germany’s privacy rules, went on trial nearly a year ago at a Berlin state court.
Part of an end-of-life care team at a nursing service in Berlin, he was initially suspected of the deaths of four patients. Prosecutors eventually accused him of the deaths of 15 people between September 2021 and July 2024.
The Berlin court found the physician administered a lethal mixture of various medications to 12 women and three men, German news agency dpa reported.
Murder charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison in Germany. A ruling of particularly severe guilt — which prosecutors had sought — would mean he wouldn’t be eligible for release.
The ruling also aligned with the prosecutors’ request for a finding of serious guilt and a call for him to face a lifetime ban from practicing medicine.
After months of silence, the doctor confessed last month to killing a dozen seriously ill patients during home visits, dpa reported. He claimed he had convinced himself he was doing the right thing and sparing patients suffering and illness.
At the close of the trial, he apologized again to the bereaved families, the dpa report said.
The doctor allegedly administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxer to the patients without their knowledge or consent. The drug cocktail then allegedly paralyzed the respiratory muscles. Respiratory arrest and death followed within minutes, prosecutors said.
The victims’ ages ranged from 25 to 94. Most died in their own homes. The suspect was taken into custody in August 2024, and the trial ran from last July through the end of January this year.
A special investigation team of police and prosecutors initially investigated 395 cases. In 95, initial suspicion was confirmed and preliminary proceedings began. In five cases, the initial suspicion wasn’t substantiated.
The public prosecutor’s office has said it is still investigating 76 other cases and expects another indictment this year.
In 2019, a German nurse who murdered 87 patients by deliberately bringing about cardiac arrests was given a life sentence.
New York
Judge orders E. Jean Carroll be paid $5.8M in Trump sex abuse, defamation case
NEW YORK (AP) — Writer E. Jean Carroll can collect $5.8 million awarded to her after a jury found that President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed her, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed to stop the payment.
The president has already deposited the money in an account. The U.S. Supreme Court recently let the 2023 civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to release the money. The initial $5 million award has grown with interest.
The jury found Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store, and defamed her after she talked publicly about it in a 2019 memoir, during his first term as president.
Trump’s attorneys said Wednesday they would continue to challenge the verdicts, and accused his political opponents of using the legal system against him. They have appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Carroll’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The jury had reached its verdict — in a trial that Trump did not attend — after Carroll testified that a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the luxury department store turned violent. Trump repeatedly insisted that he never knew Carroll, now 82.
He also accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives.
Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a January 2024 trial at which Trump briefly testified.
At that trial, Kaplan required the jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and only determine how much money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for comments he made about her as president.
Trump’s lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from telling the jury that the encounter with Carroll never happened.
Washington
Judges deny request to return Trump’s name to Kennedy Center pending an appeal
A three-judge panel on Wednesday denied a request from the Kennedy Center’s board to restore President Donald Trump’s name to the institution while the board appeals an earlier ruling that dubbed the name change illegal and had it rescinded.
It’s another setback for the board of trustees, of which Trump is chairman, in a saga that began earlier this year when the Kennedy Center became: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
The conspicuous addition, and ensuing legal battle, became symbolic of Trump’s broader push to imprint his legacy — and, in this case, his actual name — on the nation’s capital in his final term.
The panel of judges wrote Wednesday that the board of trustee’s request “failed to show how they will be irreparably injured” if Trump’s name remains off the building through the appeal process.
The board had argued that the removal “threatens to impede” fundraising efforts, but the judges found that claim came without the support of “specific facts or evidence.”
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
“His name no longer desecrates this sacred memorial, which belongs to the American people,” said U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio who filed the lawsuit. “Now it is time for the Trump administration to accept this, comply with the law, and take the tarps down.”
She was referring to tarps hung on scaffolding that had obscured the removal of Trump’s name, and which still veil that part of the building’s marble facade.
When Trump first took office in 2025, he replaced the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, who then named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building. A federal judge then ruled that the name change was illegal, prompting the ensuing legal battle.
Mississippi
Family of dead teen retains noted lawyer Ben Crump
The family of an 18-year-old who was found dead after a July 4 boat trip to an island off the Gulf Coast has retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump amid an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance.
Nolan Xavier Wells’ body was discovered Monday off the coast of Horn Island, Mississippi, where he was last seen with a group of friends Saturday afternoon, officials said.
In a statement released Tuesday, Crump said the family is searching for answers about the events leading up to his death.
“We will not rest until every fact about what happened to Nolan on Horn Island is brought into the light, and we call on investigators to pursue this case with the urgency and transparency this family deserves,” said Crump, who also was recently retained by the family of a Mississippi 1-year-old who was killed when police fired into a moving car.
Wells traveled by boat with friends to the island Saturday but did not return with them that afternoon, according to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter.
Wells was reported missing that night by his mother. A rescue team found his body the following morning, the family said. An autopsy was set to be completed Tuesday.
Ledbetter said Wells’ friends were cooperating with the investigation.
“From the people we’ve talked to, it sounds like he chose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else,” Ledbetter told The Associated Press.
In a social media post, his mother, Christine Wonsley, said the family is seeking videos and other documentation from the island.
California
Charges against dad who drove family off cliff dropped after mental health treatment
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — All charges against a radiologist accused of trying to kill his family in 2023 by driving his car off a cliff along the Northern California coast have been dismissed by a judge following his completion of a mental health program.
Prosecutors charged Dharmesh Patel, 45, with attempted murder after he drove his Tesla off a 250-foot (76-meter) cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway known as “Devil’s Slide,” injuring his wife and two young children. All four survived the Jan. 2, 2023, crash in what one official called an “absolute miracle.”
A San Mateo County judge dismissed the charges on Monday after Patel completed a two-year mental health diversion program with a Stanford University psychiatrist and a family therapist this week, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
“The judge was required by the law to dismiss the charges,” Wagstaffe said.
In 2024, a different judge ruled Patel would receive mental health treatment instead of standing trial after his defense attorneys argued he was going through episodic major depression with hallucinations when he drove his family off the cliff and qualified for mental health diversion under California law that went into effect in 2023.
“If the person who’s given mental health diversion follows the treatment plan, there’s nothing that can be done and at the end of the two years he gets it wiped out of his record.” Wagstaffe said.
San Mateo prosecutors unsuccessfully opposed diversion for Patel.
Wagstaffe and other California district attorneys have argued that attempted murder should be excluded from eligibility for mental health diversion, and they are working with lawmakers to amend the law.
Patel, of Pasadena, was on a family road trip in the Bay Area at the time of the crash. He told a psychiatrist after his arrest that he was depressed and had delusions that his children, ages 4 and 7 at the time, would be trafficked by kidnappers, Wagstaffe said.
Patel was in jail without bail until he was released in 2024 to complete a mental health outpatient treatment program. He then moved in with his parents in San Mateo County and was monitored through a GPS bracelet. He had to surrender his driver’s license and passport, and had to check with the court weekly.
Wagstaffe said Patel’s wife and children also moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and the court eventually allowed him to spend time with his family and take them out on drives.
Patel’s wife testified that she had forgiven her husband and did not want him to be prosecuted. She said her children missed their father and they wanted him back home.
After the charges were dismissed Monday, Patel walked to the courtroom gallery where his wife was waiting and the two left the building together, the Mercury News reported.
Months after his arrest, the Medical Board of California barred Patel from practicing medicine while he faced attempted murder charges. The board said Tuesday that Patel surrendered his California medical license in December.
Berlin court sentences a doctor to life for murdering 15 patients under palliative care
BERLIN (AP) — A Berlin court on Wednesday convicted and sentenced a German doctor to life in prison on charges of murdering 15 of his patients who were under palliative care, in a case involving allegations he torched the homes of victims to try to cover up the crimes.
The 41-year-old doctor, who has only been identified as Johannes M. in line with Germany’s privacy rules, went on trial nearly a year ago at a Berlin state court.
Part of an end-of-life care team at a nursing service in Berlin, he was initially suspected of the deaths of four patients. Prosecutors eventually accused him of the deaths of 15 people between September 2021 and July 2024.
The Berlin court found the physician administered a lethal mixture of various medications to 12 women and three men, German news agency dpa reported.
Murder charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison in Germany. A ruling of particularly severe guilt — which prosecutors had sought — would mean he wouldn’t be eligible for release.
The ruling also aligned with the prosecutors’ request for a finding of serious guilt and a call for him to face a lifetime ban from practicing medicine.
After months of silence, the doctor confessed last month to killing a dozen seriously ill patients during home visits, dpa reported. He claimed he had convinced himself he was doing the right thing and sparing patients suffering and illness.
At the close of the trial, he apologized again to the bereaved families, the dpa report said.
The doctor allegedly administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxer to the patients without their knowledge or consent. The drug cocktail then allegedly paralyzed the respiratory muscles. Respiratory arrest and death followed within minutes, prosecutors said.
The victims’ ages ranged from 25 to 94. Most died in their own homes. The suspect was taken into custody in August 2024, and the trial ran from last July through the end of January this year.
A special investigation team of police and prosecutors initially investigated 395 cases. In 95, initial suspicion was confirmed and preliminary proceedings began. In five cases, the initial suspicion wasn’t substantiated.
The public prosecutor’s office has said it is still investigating 76 other cases and expects another indictment this year.
In 2019, a German nurse who murdered 87 patients by deliberately bringing about cardiac arrests was given a life sentence.
New York
Judge orders E. Jean Carroll be paid $5.8M in Trump sex abuse, defamation case
NEW YORK (AP) — Writer E. Jean Carroll can collect $5.8 million awarded to her after a jury found that President Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed her, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed to stop the payment.
The president has already deposited the money in an account. The U.S. Supreme Court recently let the 2023 civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to release the money. The initial $5 million award has grown with interest.
The jury found Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store, and defamed her after she talked publicly about it in a 2019 memoir, during his first term as president.
Trump’s attorneys said Wednesday they would continue to challenge the verdicts, and accused his political opponents of using the legal system against him. They have appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Carroll’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The jury had reached its verdict — in a trial that Trump did not attend — after Carroll testified that a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the luxury department store turned violent. Trump repeatedly insisted that he never knew Carroll, now 82.
He also accused her of trying to sell books at his expense and having political motives.
Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a January 2024 trial at which Trump briefly testified.
At that trial, Kaplan required the jury to accept the findings of the previous jury and only determine how much money, if any, Trump owed Carroll for comments he made about her as president.
Trump’s lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from telling the jury that the encounter with Carroll never happened.
Washington
Judges deny request to return Trump’s name to Kennedy Center pending an appeal
A three-judge panel on Wednesday denied a request from the Kennedy Center’s board to restore President Donald Trump’s name to the institution while the board appeals an earlier ruling that dubbed the name change illegal and had it rescinded.
It’s another setback for the board of trustees, of which Trump is chairman, in a saga that began earlier this year when the Kennedy Center became: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
The conspicuous addition, and ensuing legal battle, became symbolic of Trump’s broader push to imprint his legacy — and, in this case, his actual name — on the nation’s capital in his final term.
The panel of judges wrote Wednesday that the board of trustee’s request “failed to show how they will be irreparably injured” if Trump’s name remains off the building through the appeal process.
The board had argued that the removal “threatens to impede” fundraising efforts, but the judges found that claim came without the support of “specific facts or evidence.”
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
“His name no longer desecrates this sacred memorial, which belongs to the American people,” said U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio who filed the lawsuit. “Now it is time for the Trump administration to accept this, comply with the law, and take the tarps down.”
She was referring to tarps hung on scaffolding that had obscured the removal of Trump’s name, and which still veil that part of the building’s marble facade.
When Trump first took office in 2025, he replaced the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, who then named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building. A federal judge then ruled that the name change was illegal, prompting the ensuing legal battle.
Mississippi
Family of dead teen retains noted lawyer Ben Crump
The family of an 18-year-old who was found dead after a July 4 boat trip to an island off the Gulf Coast has retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump amid an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance.
Nolan Xavier Wells’ body was discovered Monday off the coast of Horn Island, Mississippi, where he was last seen with a group of friends Saturday afternoon, officials said.
In a statement released Tuesday, Crump said the family is searching for answers about the events leading up to his death.
“We will not rest until every fact about what happened to Nolan on Horn Island is brought into the light, and we call on investigators to pursue this case with the urgency and transparency this family deserves,” said Crump, who also was recently retained by the family of a Mississippi 1-year-old who was killed when police fired into a moving car.
Wells traveled by boat with friends to the island Saturday but did not return with them that afternoon, according to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter.
Wells was reported missing that night by his mother. A rescue team found his body the following morning, the family said. An autopsy was set to be completed Tuesday.
Ledbetter said Wells’ friends were cooperating with the investigation.
“From the people we’ve talked to, it sounds like he chose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else,” Ledbetter told The Associated Press.
In a social media post, his mother, Christine Wonsley, said the family is seeking videos and other documentation from the island.
California
Charges against dad who drove family off cliff dropped after mental health treatment
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — All charges against a radiologist accused of trying to kill his family in 2023 by driving his car off a cliff along the Northern California coast have been dismissed by a judge following his completion of a mental health program.
Prosecutors charged Dharmesh Patel, 45, with attempted murder after he drove his Tesla off a 250-foot (76-meter) cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway known as “Devil’s Slide,” injuring his wife and two young children. All four survived the Jan. 2, 2023, crash in what one official called an “absolute miracle.”
A San Mateo County judge dismissed the charges on Monday after Patel completed a two-year mental health diversion program with a Stanford University psychiatrist and a family therapist this week, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
“The judge was required by the law to dismiss the charges,” Wagstaffe said.
In 2024, a different judge ruled Patel would receive mental health treatment instead of standing trial after his defense attorneys argued he was going through episodic major depression with hallucinations when he drove his family off the cliff and qualified for mental health diversion under California law that went into effect in 2023.
“If the person who’s given mental health diversion follows the treatment plan, there’s nothing that can be done and at the end of the two years he gets it wiped out of his record.” Wagstaffe said.
San Mateo prosecutors unsuccessfully opposed diversion for Patel.
Wagstaffe and other California district attorneys have argued that attempted murder should be excluded from eligibility for mental health diversion, and they are working with lawmakers to amend the law.
Patel, of Pasadena, was on a family road trip in the Bay Area at the time of the crash. He told a psychiatrist after his arrest that he was depressed and had delusions that his children, ages 4 and 7 at the time, would be trafficked by kidnappers, Wagstaffe said.
Patel was in jail without bail until he was released in 2024 to complete a mental health outpatient treatment program. He then moved in with his parents in San Mateo County and was monitored through a GPS bracelet. He had to surrender his driver’s license and passport, and had to check with the court weekly.
Wagstaffe said Patel’s wife and children also moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and the court eventually allowed him to spend time with his family and take them out on drives.
Patel’s wife testified that she had forgiven her husband and did not want him to be prosecuted. She said her children missed their father and they wanted him back home.
After the charges were dismissed Monday, Patel walked to the courtroom gallery where his wife was waiting and the two left the building together, the Mercury News reported.
Months after his arrest, the Medical Board of California barred Patel from practicing medicine while he faced attempted murder charges. The board said Tuesday that Patel surrendered his California medical license in December.
