A former South Carolina sheriff is expected to plead guilty Thursday to federal charges that he stole from his force’s benevolence fund and took pain medication that was supposed to be destroyed as part of a pill take-back program.
Former Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright signed a plea agreement last month with federal prosecutors on charges of conspiring to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and conspiring to commit wire fraud and obtaining controlled substances through misrepresentation. He is scheduled to appear Thursday morning at the federal courthouse in Anderson.
Wright will be at least the 12th sheriff in South Carolina to be convicted or plead guilty to on-duty crimes in the past 15 years for misconduct ranging from extorting drug dealers to having inmates work at their homes to hiring a woman and then pressuring her to have sex.
Sheriffs run the law enforcement organizations in the state’s 46 counties. South Carolina law gives the elected officials wide latitude over how their money is spent, what crimes their agencies concentrate on stopping and who gets hired and fired. They also provide little oversight beyond a vote by the people of each county every four years.
Beyond abusing power, there is little in common among the convicted sheriffs. They’ve been in small rural agencies and big, urban ones. There was a scheme to create false police reports to help clients of a friend’s credit repair business. A sheriff took bribes to keep a restaurant owner’s employees from being deported. One covered up an illegal arrest. And another punched a woman in the face and stole her cellphone.
In Wright’s case, the former sheriff plundered the fund meant to help deputies who face financial difficulties, including once saying he needed cash to send an officer to Washington to honor a deputy killed in the line of duty. Instead the money went in his own pocket, federal prosecutors said.
Most of Wright’s crimes happened as he dealt with an addiction to painkillers. In addition to the drugs he took from pill take-back program, Wright also got a blank check from the benevolence fund and used it to pay for oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, writing it out his dealer, according to court records.
Wright also faces more than 60 charges of ethics violations for using his county-issued credit card for personal expenses. In all, there was more than $50,000 in disputed spending, including more than $1,300 he allegedly spent at Apple’s app store and almost $1,600 he paid for Sirius/XM radio, according to court records.
Wright agreed to plead guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and obtaining controlled substances through misrepresentation. He is scheduled to appear Thursday morning at the courthouse in Anderson.
The maximum penalty for all three counts combined is nearly 30 years, although Wright will likely receive a much lighter sentence. He also will have to pay at least $440,000 in restitution. A sentencing date has not been set.
Todd Lynn Washington, 42, was convicted of reckless endangerment in August, but the Denver jury could not reach a verdict on first-degree murder charges in the case.
Washington’s second trial was held this month, and on Monday, a Denver jury ruled he was guilty of two lesser counts of manslaughter and not guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, court records show.
He was sentenced to six years in the Colorado Department of Corrections by Denver District Court Judge Eric Johnson on Wednesday, with credit for nearly 2 years of time served while his case was ongoing.
Washington was also sentenced to 240 days in jail for two counts of reckless endangerment, both misdemeanors.
Washington’s attorney, Anna Geigle with the Denver law firm Geigle Morales, in a statement thanked the jury and court “for their professionalism and commitment to ensuring that justice was fairly administered.”
“The subject matter of this case was profoundly serious, and we deeply appreciate the time and care each juror devoted to hearing the evidence and reaching a verdict,” Geigle said.
In a statement, Denver District Attorney John Walsh said his office respects the jury’s decision and “are pleased that Todd Washington and Shon McPherson – who was sentenced in September to life in prison for his role in the murders — are being held accountable for their crimes.”
Washington and McPherson, 34, were arrested in November 2023 after police said the pair opened fire outside Hell’s Lovers Motorcycle Club, killing Michael David, 43, and Joshua Batts, 39, and injuring three others.
Washington and McPherson were accused of planning the shooting after a security guard put his hands on Washington’s daughter and she was kicked out of the club.
JUNEAU, Alaska — The Alaska Supreme Court is weighing a case that is expected to determine who can provide abortion care in the state.
The court heard arguments Wednesday in a 2019 case challenging the constitutionality of a law that states only a doctor licensed by the State Medical Board can perform an abortion in Alaska.
The law, dating to the 1970s, was struck down as unconstitutional by Superior Court judge Josie Garton last year, a victory for the group that brought the challenge, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky. The state appealed Garton’s ruling.
Planned Parenthood has argued there is no medical justification for the restriction and that it unfairly burdens those seeking an abortion by limiting the pool of those qualified to provide care. In 2021, Garton granted the group’s request to allow advanced practice clinicians — health care workers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants — to provide medication abortion pending her decision in the underlying case. They have continued to do so and since the 2024 ruling also have been able to provide procedural abortions, Planned Parenthood says.
Advanced practice clinicians routinely provide care similar in risk and complexity to that of providing abortion services, and in 25 states can provide medication abortion, attorneys for Planned Parenthood said in court documents. Planned Parenthood’s advanced practice clinicians seek to provide abortion care in just the first trimester, the attorneys said.
Since Garton’s 2021 decision, advanced practice clinicians have been providing “nearly all” medication abortions in Alaska, and Planned Parenthood clinics in the state have been able to offer medication abortion each day they’ve been open, the attorneys wrote. Before that, doctors hired by Planned Parenthood on a per diem basis — at the clinics on limited days — were able to offer medication abortions perhaps once or twice a week at each clinic, they wrote.
A vital statistics report released by the state earlier this year shows the total number of abortions in Alaska has been fairly consistent — 1,229 in 2021, 1,247 in 2022, 1,222 in 2023 and 1,224 last year.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a federal right to abortion, leaving it up to each state to regulate.
Access to health care has been a longstanding concern in Alaska, with travel — sometimes covering hundreds of miles — required for many residents. Compounding that are ongoing challenges to recruit and keep medical providers.
Most Alaska communities are not connected to the state’s main road system, and health care in many small communities is often limited, requiring residents to fly to larger cities, such as Anchorage or Seattle, for more options or for specialized care. Roundtrip flights can easily cost hundreds of dollars. In remote communities, fog or poor weather can cause flight delays.
Planned Parenthood has two clinics in Alaska, in Anchorage and Fairbanks. It closed its clinic in Juneau last year.
The Alaska Supreme Court has long interpreted the right to privacy in the state’s constitution as encompassing abortion rights.
But attorneys for the state argued in court filings that Planned Parenthood did not show that the law at the center of the legal challenge had “inhibited women in Alaska from exercising their right to choose an abortion.” Planned Parenthood could have hired more doctors but chose not to, wrote the attorneys, including Laura Wolff, an assistant attorney general.
“Even if an occasional patient were prevented from getting an abortion, the physician-only law is not unconstitutional as applied to all women who are not significantly affected by the law because the law has a plainly legitimate sweep,” the filing states.
Wolff and Camila Vega, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood, argued their respective sides in court Wednesday. The court did not indicate when it might rule.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Immigration authorities did not receive word of a court order blocking the removal of a man living in Alabama until after he had been deported to Laos, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday, dismissing claims that officials violated the order.
Chanthila “Shawn” Souvannarath, 44, was deported on Friday, according to his attorneys, a day after a federal judge in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to keep him in the country so that he could present what the judge called a “substantial claim of U.S. citizenship.”
Souvannarath was born in a refugee camp in Thailand but has lived most of his life in the U.S. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the judge’s order keeping him in the country “was not served” to ICE until after Souvannarath had been deported.
“To the media’s chagrin, there was no mistake,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
DHS and ICE did not respond to questions from The Associated Press seeking additional details on the timeline and how officials receive federal court orders.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Souvannarath, asked U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick to order his immediate return to the U.S., calling the deportation “unlawful.”
“ICE has acted in direct opposition to a federal court order, which should disturb everyone,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana.
The deportation comes as Trump administration officials have repeatedly clashed with the courts over their attempts to deport large numbers of immigrants. There have been previous cases of U.S. citizens being deported, including U.S.-born children.
Souvannarath most recently lived in Arab, Alabama. Court records show he was granted lawful permanent residence in the U.S. before his first birthday. His father, a native of Laos, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Souvannarath claims his citizenship derives from that status.
Souvannarath was taken into ICE custody in June following an annual check-in with immigration authorities. Two of his five children were with him when he was detained, his wife told the AP.
McLaughlin said Souvannarath “lost his green card” and was ordered to be deported in 2006 following convictions for “heinous crimes” — assault and unlawful possession of a firearm — and “had no right to be in this country.” It was not clear why Souvannarath was not previously taken into ICE custody.
In 2004, Souvannarath was convicted of unlawful firearm possession and assault against his then-girlfriend in King County, Washington. He had also been convicted of a misdemeanor assault against the same woman several years before, court records show.
“20 years later, he tried a Hail Mary attempt to remain in our country by claiming he was a U.S. citizen,” McLaughlin wrote in her statement. “I know its shocking to the media — but criminal illegal aliens lie all the time.”
Souvannarath’s wife, Beatrice, described him as a hard worker and loving father who stayed out of trouble since his run-ins with the law two decades ago. He’s mostly worked installing air conditioners and heaters, she said. “He doesn’t even drink,” she said.
His wife said she received word last week that he was being deported and, days later, that he was in custody in Laos, a country he had not previously visited.
Representing himself in court, Souvannarath filed an emergency motion seeking to halt his deportation. The judge, appointed by President Barack Obama, cited the “irreparable harm that would be caused by immediate deportation” in issuing a temporary restraining order pausing the deportation for 14 days.
Before his deportation, Souvannarath had been detained at a newly opened ICE facility at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
__ Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio contributed from Seattle, Washington.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday approved energy company Enbridge’s plans to encase a segment of an aging oil pipeline that runs beneath a Great Lakes channel, pushing past its own findings that construction could ruin the environmentally sensitive area.
The corps initially planned to issue a permitting decision early next year. The agency fast-tracked the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to identify energy projects for expedited emergency permitting.
“The approval of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute application is a great success and will advance the President’s energy dominance agenda for America,” Adam Telle, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, said in a statement.
The corps released an environmental analysis in May that concluded tunnel construction would protect the pipeline but the work could destroy wetlands and archeological sites, harm bat habitats, disturb aquatic life, mar lake vistas and potentially trigger an underwater explosion.
The corps still issued Enbridge a permit, saying Wednesday that the application complied with all applicable federal laws and regulations.
Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Enbridge now needs only a permit from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy to begin the $500 million-plus project. Environmentalists have been pressuring the state to deny the application.
Enbridge has been using the Line 5 pipeline to transport crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Roughly 4 miles (6 kilometers) of the pipeline runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, a channel linking Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Concerns about the segment rupturing and causing a catastrophic spill have been growing since 2017, when Enbridge officials revealed that engineers had known about gaps in the segment’s coating for three years. A boat anchor damaged the line in 2018, further stoking fears.
Enbridge officials maintain the segment is structurally sound. Still, they reached a deal with then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration in 2018 calling for the company to build a protective tunnel around the segment.
Conservationists and a number of Native American tribes have balked at the proposal, calling it too risky and demanding Enbridge simply shut down the pipeline. The project has become entangled in multiple lawsuits.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sued in 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Enbridge to operate the pipeline in the straits. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the case belongs in federal or state court.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, ordered her regulators in 2020 to revoke the easement allowing the segment to operate in the straits. Enbridge filed a federal lawsuit that same year seeking to invalidate the order. Trump has inserted himself into that dispute, too. His administration filed briefs in September arguing Whitmer interfered with U.S. foreign policy when she revoked the easements.
The Michigan Public Service Commission issued permits in 2023, prompting another lawsuit from environmental groups and tribes. A Michigan appeals court upheld the permits this past February.
AP reporter Steve Karnowski contributed to this story.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A pair of court rulings declaring some of Florida’s gun restrictions unconstitutional are creating some confusion in the notoriously firearm-friendly state — and fueling activists’ calls for Republican legislators to take action to update state statutes so they abide by the new legal landscape.
Despite Florida’s history of being a gun-supporting climate, Florida’s GOP-dominated state Legislature took steps to restrict gun laws in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Since the day the measure was signed into law, gun rights advocates have been pushing to unravel it.
Now, activists say recent court rulings are fueling their push to expand gun rights in the state, emboldened by U.S. Supreme Court’s updated standards for evaluating gun laws based on the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
“Leaving unconstitutional laws on the books creates nothing but confusion,” said Sean Caranna, executive director of the advocacy group Florida Carry.
Here’s what to know.
A ruling by a circuit court judge in Broward County, home to Fort Lauderdale, found that Florida’s prohibition against people under the age of 21 from carrying a concealed firearm is unconstitutional, at least as it relates to the case in question.
Last week, Judge Frank Ledee tossed out the conviction of 19-year-old Joel Walkes, who was charged with a third-degree felony for carrying a concealed handgun. Florida statutes currently allow people between the age of 18 and 20 to possess a firearm, if they legally receive it as a gift or an inheritance, but they are barred from purchasing guns or carrying them concealed.
Ledee found the state’s prohibition is incompatible with the Supreme Court’s historical test, and inconsistent with a recent appeals court ruling that found a state law banning the open carrying of firearms is unconstitutional. In his decision, the judge pointed to the Legislature’s role in codifying and clarifying the changes.
“Distilling these inconsistencies into a framework of firearm regulations compatible with the guarantee to bear arms pursuant to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is best left to the wisdom of legislative debate,” Ledee wrote.
Florida’s First District Court of Appeal issued its ruling last month in a case stemming from the July 4, 2022, arrest of a man who stood at a major intersection in downtown Pensacola carrying a visible, holstered pistol and a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
The decision legalizes open carry, though there are preexisting limitations against carrying in a threatening manner or in certain restricted spaces like government meetings, schools and bars. The ruling has prompted some Florida sheriffs to urge caution among gun owners and seek clarity from lawmakers.
Legalizing open carry has long been a major focus of gun rights activists in the state, who oppose the slate of restrictions that Florida’ lawmakers implemented in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, which killed 17 people and injured 17 others. Among the law’s provisions was raising the legal gun-buying age to 21.
Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said the recent court decisions put more onus on lawmakers to enact state statutes that line up with recent judicial rulings.
“I would not be surprised if in the next session the Florida Legislature doesn’t just take care of this by amending the statute to say, ‘clean it up.’ And then that’ll end all these lawsuits and possible lawsuits,” Jarvis said of the age-related prohibition. “And that’s really now what should happen.”
In the years since the 2018 Parkland shooting, lawmakers’ efforts to lower the gun-buying age to 18 have advanced in the Florida House but ultimately failed in the state Senate.
Now some advocates say the recent court rulings should force the hand of legislators who have opposed expanding gun rights in the past.
“We’ve been telling the Legislature since 2010 that this was going to be a problem for them if they didn’t act. And they chose not to act,” Caranna said.
“I hope that given some of the recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court and the Florida courts, that they will finally see that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” he added.
Representatives for Florida’s House speaker and Senate president did not immediately respond to inquiries Wednesday.
___
Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
A cash-strapped school district that’s looking to unload a shuttered elementary school.
A nonprofit human services agency that’s in need of a bigger home as it serves more than 60,000 households a year.
And a judge who’s telling Colorado’s fifth-largest city not to make any moves on the whole situation — a complex deal that would allow the agency to move into the school — until she can determine whether everything is on the up and up.
That’s the strange nexus at which Lakewood, Jeffco Public Schools and The Action Center have found themselves after their proposed real estate deal was challenged in court by a former Lakewood city councilwoman who thinks the whole arrangement is “taking place in secret.”
“Government should have to do this in a way that’s transparent and above board — and includes the public in this kind of decision-making,” said Anita Springsteen, who’s also an attorney. “I think it’s unethical. I think it’s wrong.”
The deal on the table calls for Lakewood to purchase Emory Elementary — which closed three years ago because of declining enrollment — from Jeffco Public Schools for $4 million. At the same time, the city would buy The Action Center’s existing facility on West 14th Avenue for $4 million.
The Action Center, in turn, would buy Emory from the city for $1 million when the organization, which for more than a half-century has provided free clothing and food, family services and financial assistance to those in need, moves to its new home in the former school on South Teller Street.
The core problem, Springsteen says, is that Lakewood did not properly announce two September 2024 executive sessions during which officials discussed details of the deal in private. In a lawsuit, she accused the city of violating Colorado’s open meetings law, which requires governments to state, in advance and “in as much detail as possible,” what will be discussed behind closed doors “without compromising the purpose for the executive session.”
Jefferson County District Judge Meegan Miloud had enough questions last week about how Lakewood gave public notice of its executive sessions that she imposed a temporary restraining order on the City Council — forbidding it from voting on three ordinances that would authorize the deal to move forward.
The council had been scheduled to consider the measures Monday night.
Miloud said the city’s executive session notices on the council’s September 2024 agendas were “so vague that the public has no way of identifying or discerning what is being negotiated or what property is being assessed.”
On Tuesday morning, the judge conducted a hearing on the matter but did not make a ruling. She called another hearing for next Monday and said in a new order that her injunction remains in effect.
The fast-moving situation has Lakewood playing defense. A special council meeting that had been set for Wednesday night — to once again put the ordinances up for a council vote — will now have to be rescheduled, city spokeswoman Stacie Oulton said.
Lakewood, she contended, has been open throughout the process.
“The public process has included updates from the city manager during public City Council meetings, and the city has followed the public notification process for these agenda items,” she told The Denver Post in an email this week. “Additionally, the proposed end user of the property, the Action Center, has had several public community meetings about its proposal.”
Anita Springsteen, a lawyer and former Lakewood city councilwoman, is leading a challenge to a complex land deal between the City of Lakewood, Jeffco Public Schools and The Action Center that would bring the humans services nonprofit to the former Emory Elementary School in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. She posed for a portrait outside the former school. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Questions about meetings, market value
Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said it was “unusual” for a judge, via a temporary restraining order, to preempt a city council from casting a vote.
But case law, he said, makes it clear that governing bodies in Colorado must provide as much detail as possible when they announce closed-door sessions — short of disclosing or jeopardizing strategies and positions that are crucial in real estate negotiations.
“In general, an announcement that doesn’t give any indication of the topic is not enough information for the public,” Roberts said. “In most cases — and that’s why it’s in the law — you must tell the public what the executive session is about.”
That standard, he said, was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals in 2020, when it ruled that the Basalt Town Council violated the state’s open meetings law several times in 2016 by not properly announcing the topic of private deliberations it would be having regarding a former town manager.
In the Lakewood school matter, the alleged open meetings violations are not the only thing that bothers Springsteen. She objects to the structure of the proposed real estate transaction, saying it would be a sweetheart deal for The Action Center and a waste of money for taxpayers.
“They are stealing money out of our pockets,” said Springsteen, who served on City Council from 2019 to 2023.
Lakewood, she said, would be underpaying for the 17-acre Emory Elementary School parcel, overpaying for The Action Center’s current facility and basically giving the school property away to the nonprofit.
“For the city to not intend to own the property, but to buy it on behalf of a nongovernmental organization — when did we become an agent for other agencies?” Springsteen said.
According to the Jefferson County assessor’s site, The Action Center’s buildings on West 14th Avenue have a total value of about $2 million, while the city has proposed purchasing them for double that. The assessor’s office lists Emory Elementary as having a total value of up to $12 million.
Springsteen said she is flummoxed by the Jeffco school district’s willingness to sell the elementary school to Lakewood for a third of that valuation.
“What bothers me most is the way Jeffco schools is handling this,” she said. “The district didn’t even have a school resource officer at Evergreen High School because of budgetary issues.”
A spokesperson for Jeffco schools said a decision on whether to sell Emory Elementary to Lakewood hadn’t been made yet. That vote, by the district’s school board, is expected Nov. 13.
Raven Price picks out food at The Action Center’s food bank in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
‘We need to bring this into our community’
Pam Brier, the CEO of The Action Center, said property values don’t tell the full story.
“There are many instances locally and nationally of municipalities helping to support the affordable acquisition of properties for organizations like The Action Center — who are serving such a critical need in our community,” she said, “and ultimately saving taxpayer money by helping to meet people’s basic needs.”
On Wednesday, she provided The Denver Post a May 2024 appraisal done by Centennial-based Masters Valuation Services that valued the organization’s current facility — made up of a 14,960-square-foot building and a 15,540-square-foot building — at $4 million.
Her organization, Brier said, serves 300 households a day. It provides a free grocery and clothing market, financial assistance, free meals, family coaching, skills classes and workforce support to people who are down on their luck.
“As public dollars dwindle, our work is more important than ever,” she said. “Without organizations like The Action Center to provide food, clothing and other critical support, individuals and families fall into crisis, needing assistance that will cost taxpayers and cities so much more.”
Oulton, the Lakewood city spokeswoman, said it was not unusual for cities and counties across metro Denver to “provide financial support in a variety of ways to nonprofits that serve their communities.”
“Additionally, Jeffco Public Schools has clearly communicated to the city that the district views the value of this project in more than the dollars involved, because the district’s priority has been to see former schools used in a way that will continue providing services and support to Jeffco Public Schools students and their families,” Oulton said.
Diana Losacco, a 48-year resident of Lakewood who lives about a mile from the Emory site, was one of more than three dozen people who urged the city to pursue the purchase and sale of the school to The Action Center on the Lakewood Speaks website.
Raven Price and her 4-year-old son, Gabriel Luna, head home with a wagon full of food they selected from The Action Center’s food bank in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“This will provide opportunities to people to become self-sufficient, which will provide significant financial savings for our community,” Losacco told The Post in an interview. “We need to bring this into our community. It needs to be in a neighborhood.”
But not her neighborhood, said Katherine Byrne. Byrne has owned Stockton Pet Hospital on South Wadsworth Boulevard for six years. The business, which was founded in 1964, sits just a few hundred feet west of Emory Elementary.
There are enough challenges with assaults, shots fired and drug dealing in the vicinity, especially along the nearby bike path, Byrne said. Because The Action Center won’t be providing overnight shelter space at its new location for people who are homeless, she worries about where people using the organization’s services might go once the doors close.
And she wonders why the city didn’t look at wealthier areas of Lakewood for potential sites to relocate The Action Center.
“It’s just a ridiculous, unsavory plan to put this center in the middle of a neighborhood that didn’t know it was coming,” Byrne said.
Arapahoe County District Court Judge Darren Louis Vahle sentenced Brian Vondersmith, 38, on Friday to 12 years in prison for leaving the scene of an accident involving death, court records show.
Vondersmith pleaded guilty to that charge, a felony, in a deal that dropped four additional charges from his case: manslaughter, reckless driving, first-degree assault with extreme indifference and vehicular homicide, according to court records.
Officers found a downed motorcyclist on the highway, identified by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office as 38-year-old Matthew Bouchard of Aurora, police said. Bouchard died from his injuries before officers arrived.
Witnesses told investigators that Bouchard and Vondersmith appeared to be racing when Vondersmith swerved his pickup truck into Bouchard’s motorcycle, knocking the motorcyclist into a guardrail.
NEW YORK — A plot to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad at her Brooklyn home came “chillingly near success,” prosecutors told a judge who will sentence two purported Russian mobsters.
Prosecutors are seeking 55-year prison terms for Rafat Amirov, 46, and Polad Omarov, 41, at their sentencing on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors said Amirov, of Iran, and Omarov, of Georgia, were crime bosses in the Russian mob.
Lawyers for Amirov say he should not spend more than 13 years behind bars. Omarov’s attorneys called for a 10-year prison sentence.
The men were convicted in a two-week March trial that featured dramatic testimony from a hired gunman and Alinejad, an author, activist and contributor to Voice of America.
Alinejad said in a message to supporters Tuesday that she planned to be in court to face the men prosecutors say were high-ranking members of the Gulici, a faction of the Russian Mob that carried out murders, assaults, extortions, kidnappings, robberies, and arsons in the United States and abroad.
“They’ll receive their sentence, and I’ll speak my truth in my impact statement,” she said.
Alinejad, 49, led online campaigns encouraging women in Iran to record videos of themselves exposing their hair to protest edicts for head coverings in public.
Prosecutors said Iranian intelligence officials first plotted in 2020 and 2021 to kidnap Alinejad in the U.S. and move her to Iran to silence her criticism.
Iran offered $500,000 in a July 2022 attempt to kill Alinejad after efforts to harass, smear and intimidate her failed, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said in court documents that Alinejad was targeted by the Iranian government after she “dedicated her life to exposing the cruelty, corruption, and tyranny of the Islamic Republic.”
When Alinejad, Amirov and Omarov were offered the $500,000 bounty, they “appeared completely incurious about who they were plotting to murder and why,” prosecutors wrote.
“Amirov and Omarov were interested in one thing only: their own power and wealth,” they said.
Prosecutors said the plot “came chillingly near success,” interrupted only by the luck that Alinejad was out of town while a hired gunman tried persistently to locate her and because of the “diligence and tenacity of American law enforcement, which detected and disrupted the plot in time.”
Lawyers for Amirov said in court documents ahead of sentencing that no one was physically hurt and their client’s involvement in the plot was “minimal, if not non-existent.”
Lawyers for Omarov said he deserved leniency because his life had been threatened after a relative who was a reputed leader of the “thieves-in-law” criminal organization in Russia and Azerbaijan was killed in 2020. Omarov was extradited to the U.S. in February 2024, a year after he was detained in the Czech Republic.
Alinejad testified at the March trial that she came to the United States in 2009 after she was banned from covering Iran’s disputed presidential election and the newspaper where she worked was shut down.
Establishing herself in New York City, she built an online audience of millions and launched her “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign to encourage Iranian women to expose their hair when the morality police were not around.
Prosecutors have kept the investigation open. In October 2024, they announced charges against a senior Iranian military official and three others, none of whom are in custody.
Alinejad said she has moved nearly two dozen times since the assassination plot was discovered.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a landmark decision in West Virginia that had rejected attempts by an opioid-ravaged area to be compensated by U.S. drug distributors for a influx of prescription pain pills into the region.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that a lower court judge erred when he said West Virginia’s public nuisance law did not apply to the lawsuit involving the distribution of opioids.
“West Virginia law permits abatement of a public nuisance to include a requirement that a defendant pay money to fund efforts to eliminate the resulting harm to the public,” the 4th Circuit wrote. “West Virginia has long characterized abatement as an equitable remedy.”
The ruling sends the case back to U.S. District Court in Charleston for “further proceedings consistent with the principles expressed in this opinion.”
Thousands of state and local governments have sued over the toll of opioids. The suits relied heavily on claims that the companies created a public nuisance by failing to monitor where the powerful prescriptions were ending up. Most of the lawsuits were settled as part of a series of nationwide deals that could be worth more than $50 billion. But there wasn’t a decisive trend in the outcomes of those that have gone to trial.
In July 2022, U.S. District Judge David Faber ruled in favor of three major U.S. drug distributors who were accused by Cabell County and the city of Huntington of causing a public health crisis by distributing 81 million pills over eight years in the county. AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. also were accused of ignoring the signs that Cabell County was being ravaged by addiction.
Faber said West Virginia’s Supreme Court had only applied public nuisance law in the context of conduct that interferes with public property or resources. He said to extend the law to cover the marketing and sale of opioids “is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance.”
Last year the federal appeals court sent a certified question to the state Supreme Court, which states: “Under West Virginia’s common law, can conditions caused by the distribution of a controlled substance constitute a public nuisance and, if so, what are the elements of such a public nuisance claim?”
The state justices declined to answer. That 3-2 opinion in May returned the case to the federal appears court.
“We hold that West Virginia’s highest court would not exclude as a matter of law any common law claim for public nuisance caused by the distribution of a controlled substance,” the 4th Circuit wrote Tuesday. “Therefore, we necessarily conclude that the district court erred when it held that a public nuisance claim based on the distribution of opioids was per se legally insufficient under West Virginia law.”
During arguments earlier this year before the state Supreme Court over the certified question, Steve Ruby, an attorney for the companies, called “radical” the plaintiffs’ arguments to extend the public nuisance law to opioid manufacturers. If allowed, he said, that would “create an avalanche of activist litigation.”
The appeals court previously noted that the West Virginia Mass Litigation Panel, which works to resolve complex cases in state court, has concluded in several instances that opioid distribution “can form the basis of a public nuisance claim under West Virginia common law.”
In his 2022 decision, Faber also said the plaintiffs offered no evidence that the defendants distributed controlled substances to any entity that didn’t hold a proper registration from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or the state Board of Pharmacy. The defendants also had suspicious monitoring systems in place as required by the Controlled Substances Act, he said.
But the 4th Circuit Court found Tuesday that the lower court “misconstrued the distributors’ duties” under the Controlled Substances Act.
In 2021 in Cabell County, an Ohio River county of 93,000 residents, there were 1,059 emergency responses to suspected overdoses — significantly higher than each of the previous three years — with at least 162 deaths.
SUGAR LAND, Texas — Former NFL running back Adrian Peterson was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated and unlawfully carrying a weapon after police found him asleep behind the wheel of his SUV at a suburban Houston gas station, according to court records.
Police in Sugar Land found Peterson around 9 a.m. on Sunday asleep as his vehicle was running and parked near a gas pump, according to a probable cause affidavit. No one else was in the vehicle.
“I interviewed Mr. Peterson, and detected the odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from his person. I also observed Mr. Peterson had blood shot glossy eyes and slurred speech,” according to the affidavit. “I asked Mr. Peterson where he was coming from, and he stated a poker game in Houston.”
Peterson told an officer he didn’t know where he was and had been trying to get to his home in nearby Missouri City. Peterson told the officer he had consumed two to three shots of a Vodka mix several hours earlier, according to the affidavit.
“I asked Mr. Peterson from a scale of 0 being completely sober to 10 being intoxicated to the point of blacking out where he would rate himself. Mr. Peterson stated he was a 2,” according to the affidavit.
The officer conducted a field sobriety test on Peterson, who had to use his arms to keep his balance and swayed, according to the affidavit.
During a search of Peterson’s SUV, the officer found a Glock handgun in the glove compartment.
It’s the second DWI arrest in seven months for the 2012 NFL MVP and three-time league rushing champion.
Peterson was released from the Fort Bend County Jail on Monday after posting bonds totaling $3,000.
Court records did not list an attorney who could speak on Peterson’s behalf.
The 40-year-old Peterson was a high school football star in East Texas and has lived in the Houston area. He played at Oklahoma before spending the first 10 years of his NFL career with Minnesota, which drafted him No. 7 overall in 2007.
Peterson is one of nine running backs to rush for 2,000 yards in a season. He had 2,097 yards for the Vikings in his MVP season of 2012 and finished with 14,918 yards and 120 touchdowns over 15 seasons. He played for six teams during his final five seasons.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — The ex-wife of a Los Angeles Angels employee at the center of the overdose death of one of the team’s star pitchers will face more cross examination Tuesday after testifying she saw players and clubhouse attendants passing pills and alcohol while partying on the team plane.
Camela Kay told jurors in a Southern California courtroom on Monday she had traveled on the Angels team plane with her then-husband Eric Kay, who was convicted of providing drugs that led to the 2019 death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs. She said she had seen players partying, playing card games, gambling and drinking.
“They’re treated like kings,” Camela Kay said of her observations on the plane. “I had seen them passing out pills or drinking alcohol excessively.”
The testimony came in a trial for a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family contending the Angels should be held responsible for letting Eric Kay, then the team’s communications director, stay on the job and access players while he was addicted to and dealing drugs. The Angels have said team officials did not know Skaggs was taking drugs and that any drug activity involving him and Eric Kay happened on their own time and in the privacy of the player’s hotel room.
Camela Kay testified she told an Angels employee that her then-husband may have been intending to sell drugs to Skaggs on at least one occasion. That was based on information Eric Kay told his sister during a hospital stay for a drug overdose, she said. Camela Kay said the sister then told her, and she told an Angels employee.
Defense attorneys for the Angels began their cross examination of Camela Kay on Monday and questioned her direct knowledge of Eric Kay’s interactions with Skaggs.
Camela Kay said she was concerned that her then-husband had a drug problem after observing his erratic behavior, and family members mounted an intervention with him in 2017. The next day, she said, two team officials came over to speak with him and one of them pulled a series of plastic baggies containing white pills from the bedroom, which fueled her concerns that Eric Kay was not only struggling with substance abuse but selling drugs to make money.
“Him being in the clubhouse with the players, my guess would be he is supplying to them,” she said.
Camela Kay also described how her then-husband was driven home by an Angels employee after he was dancing in his office, shirtless, at the stadium in 2019. After he got home, she found a bottle with blue pills inside and called police to press him to go to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed an overdose involving six different drugs, she said.
He was hospitalized for three days and then went to rehab, which was communicated in text messages between Camela Kay and team officials shown to jurors.
She said her sister-in-law told her after visiting Eric Kay in the hospital that he told her the pills were for Skaggs. She said she found text messages on his phone about him getting his “candy” at the stadium and relayed the information about both to Angels officials.
She said she was concerned about Eric Kay heading on the road with the Angels after completing a six-week stint in rehab, adding he was still acting erratic and she suspected he was abusing a drug meant to treat opioid addiction.
After Skaggs’ death, Camela Kay filed for divorce, according to Orange County court records.
The trial comes more than six years after Skaggs, then 27, was found dead in the suburban Dallas hotel room where he was staying as the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers. A coroner’s report said Skaggs choked to death on his vomit and a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.
Eric Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing Skaggs with a counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five MLB players who said they received oxycodone from him at various times from 2017 to 2019, the years he was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to Angels players.
Skaggs had been a regular in the Angels’ starting rotation since late 2016 and struggled with injuries repeatedly during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Skaggs’ family is seeking $118 million in lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.
After Skaggs’ death, the MLB reached a deal with the players association to start testing for opioids and to refer those who test positive to the treatment board.
The brick row house sits just steps from Washington Square Park, in plain view of any passersby from New York University. In 2021, it was rented, the New York Postreported in its wall-to-wall coverage of an unmissable sports betting spectacle, to Travis Scott over the period when he was dating Kylie Jenner—a glancing connection that suggested no wrongdoing. It was not a New York landmark, exactly, but in its simultaneous accessibility and status, it brought out some essential, familiar character of its monied Greenwich Village vicinity.
As federal prosecutors claimed in an indictment unsealed on Thursday, the building was later where “Flappy,” “the Wrestler,” and “Juice,” among other evocatively nicknamed alleged members of the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese, and Genovese New York mafia families, assembled to carry out a Hollywood-ready scheme that rigged poker games with card-reading contact lenses and X-ray tables and used the attendance of an active NBA coach, Chauncey Billups, as bait for their marks. In a separate but simultaneous indictment, prosecutors alleged that an active and a former player, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones, provided insider information on NBA games to bettors and, in Rozier’s case, manipulated his performance to the gambler’s benefit. (All the defendants in the two cases—which include Billups, Rozier, Jones, and alleged organized-crime affiliates—who have entered a plea thus far have pleaded not guilty on fraud, money laundering, extortion, and gambling charges.)
Perhaps, as alleged, the set-up was even stranger than fiction, a relic from a bygone era when Gottis in courthouses dominated the tabloid pages, or when betting scandals rocked professional baseball several times over.
And yet, in some sense, the alleged behavior was taking place right under our noses. Vanity Fair spoke with veterans of the gambling and mafia underworlds to help situate the relative absurdity—and predictability—of the scandal that has ricocheted across sports, business, and politics.
The new sports gambling landscape
“What did anyone think was going to happen?” New York sports radio host Craig Carton asked me on Friday.
Carton’s career as a leading local drive time personality was upended in 2017 when he was arrested for running a ticket reselling Ponzi-like scheme in order to cover millions of dollars in gambling debts. He was sentenced to 42 months of prison for fraud, ultimately serving about a year, at what was a fairly quaint time by the standards of today’s gambling industry.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — The ex-wife of a Los Angeles Angels employee is expected to testify in a trial over whether the MLB team should be held responsible for the drug overdose death of one of its star pitchers.
Camela Kay is expected to take the stand Monday to speak about her ex-husband, Angels’ communication director Eric Kay, who was convicted of providing a fentanyl-laced pill that led to the death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs. He was later sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.
After Skaggs’ death, Camela Kay filed for divorce, according to Orange County court records.
The testimony is expected in a civil trial for a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family contending the Angels should be held responsible for letting a drug-addicted and dealing employee stay on the job and access its players. The Angels say team officials did not know Skaggs was taking drugs and that any drug activity involving him and Kay happened on their own time and in the privacy of the player’s hotel room.
The trial comes more than six years after Skaggs, then 27, was found dead in the suburban Dallas hotel room where he was staying as the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers. A coroner’s report said Skaggs choked to death on his vomit and a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.
Eric Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing Skaggs with a counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five MLB players who said they received oxycodone from him at various times from 2017 to 2019, the years he was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to Angels players.
Skaggs had been a regular in the Angels’ starting rotation since late 2016 and struggled with injuries repeatedly during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Skaggs’ family is seeking $118 million in lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.
After Skaggs’ death, the MLB reached a deal with the players association to start testing for opioids and to refer those who test positive to the treatment board.
The trial is expected to take weeks and has included testimony from Angels outfielder Mike Trout.
NEW YORK (AP) — For nearly three years, JPMorgan Chase has picking up the legal tab of Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar, the two convicted fraudsters who sold their financial aid startup Frank to the bank.
But the two have racked up an astronomical, nine-figure legal bill that far exceeds any reasonable amount the two may have needed for their defense, the bank said in a court filing late Friday. Chase shouldn’t have to pay and its agreement as part of the startup purchase to shoulder the costs should end, the bank argued.
According to the filing, Javice’s team of lawyers across five law firms have billed JPMorgan approximately $60.1 million in legal fees and expenses, while Amar’s lawyers have billed the bank roughly $55.2 million in fees.
In total, the bank alleges Javice and Amar’s lawyers have racked up legal fees of $115 million, with one law firm receiving $35.6 million in reimbursements alone. In comparison, Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors in the Theranos case, reportedly ended up with a legal bill of roughly $30 million.
The bank would be “irreparably injured” if the court does not put an end to “abusive billing,” the bank said. Javice and her lawyers have treated the process “like a blank check,” Chase said.
Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Amar was convicted of the same charges.
Early in the case, a Delaware court ruled that the bank was required to advance Javice and Amar for any legal fees, which was part of the bank’s agreement when Frank was acquired in 2021.
Part of Javice’s legal team is Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who is also the lawyer who has previously represented Elon Musk. Spiro did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
A law firm representing Amar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The legal fees sought by Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar are patently excessive and egregious. We look forward to sharing details of this abuse with the court in coming weeks,” said Pablo Rodriguez, a spokesman for the bank
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A commercial truck driver who is charged with killing three people in a deadly crash in Florida in August had failed a commercial driver’s license test 10 times in the span of two months in 2023 in Washington state, before he was ultimately issued a license, according to a senior official in the Florida Attorney General’s Office.
Florida is using the case of Harjinder Singh, who is accused of being in the country illegally, to urge the nation’s highest court to permanently bar some states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses or CDLs to people who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
In a separate case, another semitruck driver accused of being in the country illegally was charged with the killings of three people in a crash on a southern California freeway this week, renewing federal officials’ criticisms of immigrant drivers and concerns about who should be able to obtain CDLs.
Here’s what to know.
Florida’s investigation of Harjinder Singh has revealed that the trucker failed a written test to receive a CDL in Washington state 10 times between March 10, 2023, and April 5, 2023, a senior official for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier who was briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press. The official is not authorized to comment publicly about an ongoing investigation and provided the information on the condition of not being identified.
Singh, who is from India, lived in California and was originally issued a CDL in Washington before California also issued him one. He was carrying a valid California CDL at the time of the crash, according to court filings.
A spokesperson for Washington’s Department of Licensing said no one was immediately able to respond to questions Friday. In California, all commercial truck drivers must pass a written test but may be allowed to skip the driving test if they have an out-of-state license with equivalent classification, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicle’s website. State officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for more information.
He is accused of attempting an illegal U-turn from the northbound lanes of Florida’s Turnpike near Fort Pierce on Aug. 12. A minivan that was behind Singh’s big rig couldn’t stop and crashed into the truck, killing its driver and two passengers. Singh and a passenger in the truck were not injured.
Singh is currently being held without bond in the St. Lucie County Jail, not far from where the crash occurred. His next court date is scheduled for Nov. 13.
Florida is now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its case against the states of California and Washington, and urging the high court to bar states from issuing CDLs to people who are in the country illegally.
Florida’s petition filed this month argues the Western states have demonstrated “open defiance of federal immigration laws” and a failure to enforce public safety, which Florida is urging the court to declare a “public nuisance.” That’s a type of legal claim that’s typically used to address local concerns like blighted homes, illegal drug-dealing or dangerous animals, but has also been directed at pharmacies for their role in the opioid crisis.
If the court accepts the case, Florida officials hope it could lead to a new legal precedent for states’ abilities to issue CDLs to people who are not citizens or legal permanent residents. A ruling could also have a downstream effect on how or if conventional driver’s licenses are issued to immigrants, the senior Florida official said.
In a separate case, Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday’s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that killed three people and left four others injured.
Singh, who also is from India, is accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing the fiery crash. According to the California Highway Patrol, westbound traffic on Interstate 10 near San Bernardino had slowed Tuesday afternoon when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash.
Singh, of Yuba City, entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X.
The U.S. Transportation Department took steps to tighten CDL requirements for noncitizens in September, following a series of fatal crashes this year that officials say were caused by immigrant truck drivers.
This week’s deadly crash in California and the assertion that Jashanpreet Singh entered the country illegally has renewed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s concerns about who should be able to obtain CDLs.
Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since the deadly Florida crash in August.
Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Duffy said there were “multiple failures” that allowed Harjinder Singh to obtain his commercial driver’s license.
“The truth is I think we have a lot of abuse in the commercial driver’s license issuing space,” Duffy said. He noted that Singh didn’t speak English and maintained that he couldn’t read road signs.
“So the question becomes … how in the heck can you ever pass a test for a commercial driver’s license? You can’t do it but for fraud,” Duffy said.
The new rules announced last month make getting commercial driver’s licenses extremely hard for immigrants because only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible. States will also have to verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. These licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner than that.
___
Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
NEW YORK — For nearly three years, JPMorgan Chase has picking up the legal tab of Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar, the two convicted fraudsters who sold their financial aid startup Frank to the bank.
But the two have racked up an astronomical, nine-figure legal bill that far exceeds any reasonable amount the two may have needed for their defense, the bank said in a court filing late Friday. Chase shouldn’t have to pay and its agreement as part of the startup purchase to shoulder the costs should end, the bank argued.
According to the filing, Javice’s team of lawyers across five law firms have billed JPMorgan approximately $60.1 million in legal fees and expenses, while Amar’s lawyers have billed the bank roughly $55.2 million in fees.
In total, the bank alleges Javice and Amar’s lawyers have racked up legal fees of $115 million, with one law firm receiving $35.6 million in reimbursements alone. In comparison, Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors in the Theranos case, reportedly ended up with a legal bill of roughly $30 million.
The bank would be “irreparably injured” if the court does not put an end to “abusive billing,” the bank said. Javice and her lawyers have treated the process “like a blank check,” Chase said.
Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Amar was convicted of the same charges.
Early in the case, a Delaware court ruled that the bank was required to advance Javice and Amar for any legal fees, which was part of the bank’s agreement when Frank was acquired in 2021.
Part of Javice’s legal team is Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who is also the lawyer who has previously represented Elon Musk. Spiro did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
A law firm representing Amar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The legal fees sought by Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar are patently excessive and egregious. We look forward to sharing details of this abuse with the court in coming weeks,” said Pablo Rodriguez, a spokesman for the bank
Exxon Mobil Corporation is suing the state of California over a pair of 2023 climate disclosure laws that the company says infringe upon its free speech rights, namely by forcing it to embrace the message that large companies are uniquely to blame for climate change.
The oil and gas corporation based in Texas filed its complaint Friday in the U.S. Eastern District Court for California. It asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year.
In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state’s new reporting requirements.
The company would have to use “frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil” for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states.
Under Senate Bill 253, large businesses will have to disclose a wide range of planet-warming emissions, including both direct and indirect emissions such as the costs of employee business travel and product transport.
ExxonMobil takes issue with the methodology required by the state, which would focus on a company’s emissions worldwide and therefore fault businesses just for being large as opposed to being efficient, the complaint states.
The second law, Senate Bill 261, requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose the financial risks that climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address them.
The company said in its complaint that the law would require it to speculate “about unknowable future developments” and post such speculations on its website.
A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”
NBA coach and Hall of Fame member Chauncey Billups is charged with luring high-stakes poker players to games he knew were fixed, while veteran NBA forward Terry Rozier is accused of faking an injury and sitting on the bench to help bettors win thousands of dollars in 2023.
But do prosecutors have strong cases against them?
Proving those separate cases in New York federal court will require evidence of criminal intent by the two, not just unflattering allegations, legal experts told The Associated Press after reviewing blockbuster indictments released Thursday.
The indictment against Billups, 49, reads like a movie script, outlining how poker games were played on tables with hidden X-ray capability to read cards and rigged shuffling machines. The court document, however, doesn’t say how much money, if any, he pocketed or how he might have communicated with poker fixers.
His lawyer has questioned why Billups — nicknamed Mr. Big Shot when he played for the Detroit Pistons — would risk it all when he was already a multimillionaire.
Rozier, 30, left a game early against New Orleans late in the 2022-23 season and didn’t play again for Charlotte in the final eight games that followed. His attorney said Rozier confided in several people that he was genuinely injured.
“The public needs to be aware: Having an indictment doesn’t mean there’s been a determination of guilt,” said attorney John Lauro, who represented a disgraced NBA referee in a gambling scandal in 2007.
Here’s what lawyers say about the challenges for the government and the defense teams:
By far the biggest name is Billups, a five-time All-Star as a player who just last year was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers is charged with taking part in high-stakes poker games that were fixed with sophisticated cheating devices to fleece unsuspecting gamblers out of millions.
Not spelled out in the indictment is what evidence there is that Billups would have known the poker games were rigged, said former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner. “Even if he received money to help bring high-stakes people to the games, that’s not illegal” he said.
What prosecutors must prove, Epner said, is that Billups knew the games were fixed and profited from being there.
Former federal prosecutor Evan Gotlob suspects that investigators would have emails, text messages or even witnesses that connect Billups with the scheme.
“When a white collar case like this takes a couple years to develop, they usually have cooperating witnesses. Or as the mob calls them, ‘snitches,’” said Gotlob, who now works on white-collar crime.
The best evidence in these types of cases is communication between people, likely text messages, he said. “We may find out they had wiretaps,” he said.
“They’re not going to charge someone like Chauncey Billups, a Hall of Fame player, unless they have a strong case,” Gotlob said. “You don’t want to ruin someone’s life without really good evidence.”
One possible defense that Billups’ attorneys might pursue is to question why someone who’s made more than $100 million over his career and built a solid reputation would put it in jeopardy for a relatively small payout.
“If he was living the high-life and still has a lot of money, that is a viable defense,” said Rocco Cipparone Jr., a New Jersey defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. “If he blew it all, it makes more sense.”
Fake injury rained cash, feds say
Rozier is accused of telling a friend that he would leave a game early in March 2023, nonpublic information that was spread to others who placed more than $250,000 in prop bets on his weak 5-point performance for the Charlotte Hornets and raked in winnings, according to the indictment.
The court filing lists many unnamed co-conspirators who placed bets and could become key witnesses.
“It’s going to make defense of the case much harder,” said Brian Legghio, a Detroit-area lawyer who represented a gambler in a University of Toledo basketball point-shaving scandal in 2006.
Lauro said prosecutors typically try to build a conspiracy case around unindicted co-conspirators, people who have not been charged but admit wrongdoing.
“A big part of that is to get the communications in (at trial) between the target defendant and the unindicted co-conspirators, more likely text messages,” Lauro explained. “The government clearly is loading up.”
But Lauro said he wouldn’t be discouraged.
Text messages, the New York defense lawyer added, are “not necessarily clear on their face and you don’t always have a full context.”
The indictment says Rozier’s boyhood pal, Deniro Laster, used text messages to share information with others about the player’s plan to leave the game. In exchange, the indictment states, Laster would get a cut of the winnings.
Anyone wagering that Rozier would perform under the scoring line set by oddsmakers was in the green.
Laster drove to Rozier’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and together they “counted the money” a week later in the early morning hours, the indictment says. The document doesn’t say that Rozier got a cut.
“When you go into that level of detail, prosecutors could know because someone in the room knew it. It sure is a sign of strength,” said Steve Dollear, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago.
Defense attorney Jim Trusty said Rozier was cleared during an earlier NBA investigation.
“That has no evidentiary value,” Lauro said. “As a defense lawyer or as a prosecutor, I really wouldn’t care what the NBA did.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A commercial truck driver who is charged with killing three people in a deadly crash in Florida in August had failed a commercial driver’s license test 10 times in the span of two months in 2023 in Washington state, before he was ultimately issued a license, according to a senior official in the Florida Attorney General’s Office.
Florida is using the case of Harjinder Singh, who is accused of being in the country illegally, to urge the nation’s highest court to permanently bar some states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses or CDLs to people who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Driver in Florida crash failed driving test repeatedly
Florida’s investigation of Harjinder Singh has revealed that the trucker failed a written test to receive a CDL in Washington state 10 times between March 10, 2023, and April 5, 2023, a senior official for Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier who was briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press. The official is not authorized to comment publicly about an ongoing investigation and provided the information on the condition of not being identified.
Singh, who is from India, lived in California and was originally issued a CDL in Washington before California also issued him one. He was carrying a valid California CDL at the time of the crash, according to court filings.
A spokesperson for Washington’s Department of Licensing said no one was immediately able to respond to questions Friday. In California, all commercial truck drivers must pass a written test but may be allowed to skip the driving test if they have an out-of-state license with equivalent classification, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicle’s website. State officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for more information.
He is accused of attempting an illegal U-turn from the northbound lanes of Florida’s Turnpike near Fort Pierce on Aug. 12. A minivan that was behind Singh’s big rig couldn’t stop and crashed into the truck, killing its driver and two passengers. Singh and a passenger in the truck were not injured.
Singh is currently being held without bond in the St. Lucie County Jail, not far from where the crash occurred. His next court date is scheduled for Nov. 13.
Florida goes to the Supreme Court
Florida is now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its case against the states of California and Washington, and urging the high court to bar states from issuing CDLs to people who are in the country illegally.
Florida’s petition filed this month argues the Western states have demonstrated “open defiance of federal immigration laws” and a failure to enforce public safety, which Florida is urging the court to declare a “public nuisance.” That’s a type of legal claim that’s typically used to address local concerns like blighted homes, illegal drug-dealing or dangerous animals, but has also been directed at pharmacies for their role in the opioid crisis.
If the court accepts the case, Florida officials hope it could lead to a new legal precedent for states’ abilities to issue CDLs to people who are not citizens or legal permanent residents. A ruling could also have a downstream effect on how or if conventional driver’s licenses are issued to immigrants, the senior Florida official said.
A deadly crash in California
In a separate case, Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday’s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that killed three people and left four others injured.
Singh, who also is from India, is accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing the fiery crash. According to the California Highway Patrol, westbound traffic on Interstate 10 near San Bernardino had slowed Tuesday afternoon when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash.
Singh, of Yuba City, entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X.
Trump administration cracks down
The U.S. Transportation Department took steps to tighten CDL requirements for noncitizens in September, following a series of fatal crashes this year that officials say were caused by immigrant truck drivers.
This week’s deadly crash in California and the assertion that Jashanpreet Singh entered the country illegally has renewed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s concerns about who should be able to obtain CDLs.
Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since the deadly Florida crash in August.
Speaking to Fox News on Friday, Duffy said there were “multiple failures” that allowed Harjinder Singh to obtain his commercial driver’s license.
“The truth is I think we have a lot of abuse in the commercial driver’s license issuing space,” Duffy said. He noted that Singh didn’t speak English and maintained that he couldn’t read road signs.
“So the question becomes … how in the heck can you ever pass a test for a commercial driver’s license? You can’t do it but for fraud,” Duffy said.
The new rules announced last month make getting commercial driver’s licenses extremely hard for immigrants because only three specific classes of visa holders will be eligible. States will also have to verify an applicant’s immigration status in a federal database. These licenses will be valid for up to one year unless the applicant’s visa expires sooner than that.
Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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