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Tag: Juries

  • ‘Dances With Wolves’ actor Nathan Chasing Horse convicted on sexual assault charges

    LAS VEGAS — A Nevada jury on Friday convicted “Dances With Wolves” actor Nathan Chasing Horse of sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls in a case that sent shock waves through Indian Country.

    The jurors in Las Vegas found Chasing Horse guilty of 13 of the 21 charges he faced. Most of the guilty verdicts centered on Chasing Horse’s conduct with a victim who was 14 when he began assaulting her. He was acquitted of some sexual assault charges when the main victim was older and lived with him and his other companions.

    Chasing Horse, 49, faces a minimum of 25 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for March 11.

    He has also been charged with sex crimes in other states as well as Canada. British Columbia prosecutors said Friday that once Chasing Horse has been sentenced and any appeals are finished in the U.S., they will assess next steps in their prosecution.

    Friday’s verdict marked the climax of a yearslong effort to prosecute Chasing Horse after he was first arrested and indicted in 2023. Prosecutors said Chasing Horse used his reputation as a Lakota medicine man to prey on Indigenous women and girls.

    As the verdict was read, Chasing Horse stood quietly. Victims and their supporters cried and hugged in the hallway while wearing yellow ribbons. The main victim declined to comment.

    William Rowles, the Clark County chief deputy district attorney, thanked the women who had accused Chasing Horse of assault for testifying.

    “I just hope that the people who came forward over the years and made complaints against Nathan Chasing Horse can find some peace in this,” he said.

    Defense attorney Craig Mueller said he will file a motion for a new trial and told The Associated Press he was confused and disappointed in the jury’s verdict. He said he had some “meaningful doubts about the sincerity of the accusations.”

    Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation. He is widely known for his portrayal of Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning film.

    “Dances With Wolves” was one of the most prominent films featuring Native American actors when it premiered in 1990.

    His trial came as authorities have responded more in recent years to an epidemic of violence against Native women.

    During the 11-day trial, jurors heard from three women who said Chasing Horse sexually assaulted them, some of whom were underage at the time. The jury returned guilty verdicts on some charges related to all three.

    Deputy District Attorney Bianca Pucci said in her closing argument Wednesday that for almost 20 years, Chasing Horse “spun a web of abuse” that caught many women.

    Mueller said in his closing argument that there was no evidence, including from eyewitnesses. He questioned the main accuser’s credibility, calling her a “scorned woman.”

    Prosecutors said sexual assault cases rarely have eyewitnesses and often happen behind closed doors.

    The main accuser was 14 in 2012 when Chasing Horse allegedly told her the spirits wanted her to give up her virginity to save her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer. He then sexually assaulted her and told her that if she told anyone, her mother would die, Pucci said. The sexual assaults continued for years, Pucci said.

    “Today’s verdict sends a clear message that exploitation and abuse will not be tolerated, regardless of the defendant’s public persona or claims of spiritual authority,” said Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, who came in to the Las Vegas court room to hear the verdict, in a statement.

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  • ‘Dances With Wolves’ actor Nathan Chasing Horse convicted on sexual assault charges

    LAS VEGAS — A Nevada jury on Friday convicted “Dances With Wolves” actor Nathan Chasing Horse of sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls in a case that sent shock waves through Indian Country.

    The jurors in Las Vegas found Chasing Horse guilty of 13 of the 21 charges he faced. Most of the guilty verdicts centered on Chasing Horse’s conduct with a victim who was 14 years old when he began assaulting her. He was acquitted of some sexual assault charges when the main victim was older and described as a wife. His sentencing is scheduled for March 11.

    The verdict marked the climax of a yearslong effort to prosecute Chasing Horse after he was first arrested and indicted in 2023. Prosecutors said Chasing Horse used his reputation as a Lakota medicine man to prey on Indigenous women and girls.

    As the verdict was read, Chasing Horse stood quietly. Victims and their supporters cried and hugged in the hallway while wearing yellow ribbons.

    William Rowles, the Clark County chief deputy district attorney, thanked the women who had accused Chasing Horse of assault for testifying.

    “I just hope that the people who came forward over the years and made complaints against Nathan Chasing Horse can find some peace in this,” he said.

    Defense attorney Craig Mueller said he will file a motion for a new trial and told The Associated Press he was confused and disappointed in the jury’s verdict. He said he had some “meaningful doubts about the sincerity of the accusations.”

    “Dances With Wolves” was one of the most prominent films featuring Native American actors when it premiered in 1990. After Chasing Horse appeared in the Oscar-winning film, he traveled across North America and performed healing ceremonies.

    His trial came as authorities have responded more in recent years to an epidemic of violence against Native women.

    During the three-week trial, jurors heard from three women who say Chasing Horse sexually assaulted them, some of whom were underage at the time. The jury returned guilty verdicts on some charges related to all three.

    Deputy District Attorney Bianca Pucci said in her closing statements Wednesday that for almost 20 years, Chasing Horse “spun a web of abuse” that caught many women.

    Mueller said in his closing statements that there was no evidence, including eyewitnesses. He questioned the main accuser’s credibility, describing her as a “scorned woman.”

    Prosecutors said sexual assault cases rarely have eyewitnesses and often happen behind closed doors.

    The main accuser was 14 years old in 2012 when Chasing Horse allegedly told her the spirits wanted her to give up her virginity to save her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer. He then sexually assaulted her and told her that if she told anyone, her mother would die, Pucci said during opening statements.

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  • Meta, TikTok and YouTube face landmark trial over youth addiction claims

    Three of the world’s biggest tech companies face a landmark trial in Los Angeles starting this week over claims that their platforms — Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube — deliberately addict and harm children.

    Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum.

    At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury and what damages, if any, may be awarded, said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

    KGM claims that her use of social media from an early age addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Importantly, the lawsuit claims that this was done through deliberate design choices made by companies that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits. This argument, if successful, could sidestep the companies’ First Amendment shield and Section 230, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms.

    “Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue,” the lawsuit says.

    Executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the trial, which will last six to eight weeks. Experts have drawn similarities to the Big Tobacco trials that led to a 1998 settlement requiring cigarette companies to pay billions in healthcare costs and restrict marketing targeting minors.

    “Plaintiffs are not merely the collateral damage of Defendants’ products,” the lawsuit says. “They are the direct victims of the intentional product design choices made by each Defendant. They are the intended targets of the harmful features that pushed them into self-destructive feedback loops.”

    The tech companies dispute the claims that their products deliberately harm children, citing a bevy of safeguards they have added over the years and arguing that they are not liable for content posted on their sites by third parties.

    “Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies,” Meta said in a recent blog post. “But this oversimplifies a serious issue. Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, and trends regarding teens’ well-being aren’t clear-cut or universal. Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research and the many stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges and substance abuse.”

    Meta, YouTube and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

    The case will be the first in a slew of cases beginning this year that seek to hold social media companies responsible for harming children’s mental well-being. A federal bellwether trial beginning in June in Oakland, California, will be the first to represent school districts that have sued social media platforms over harms to children.

    In addition, more than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it is harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. The majority of cases filed their lawsuits in federal court, but some sued in their respective states.

    TikTok also faces similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states.

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  • ‘A Team’ of real estate brokers faces sex crimes trial in New York

    NEW YORK — The brothers operated in the glitz and glamour of the Hamptons and South Beach. Two were high-end real estate brokers dubbed “The A Team.” The third went to law school and ran their family’s private security firm, which caters to heads of state and the rich and famous.

    They frequented nightclubs, cruised on yachts and flew on private jets. One lived alongside celebrities and corporate titans on Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row. The others had multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions in Miami.

    But behind their posh, peripatetic facade, prosecutors say, Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander — known collectively as the Alexander Brothers — were predators who sexually assaulted, trafficked and raped dozens of women from 2008 to 2021, often after incapacitating them with drugs and sometimes recording their crimes on video.

    The brothers met victims at nightclubs, parties and on dating apps, and recruited others for trips to ritzy locales, paying for their flights and lodging at high-end hotels or luxe vacation rentals before drugging and raping them, prosecutors said. In all, dozens of women have accused them of wrongdoing.

    Now, the brothers — Tal, 39, and twins Alon and Oren, 38 — face a reckoning that prosecutors say was more than a decade in the making: a sex-trafficking trial that could put them in prison for the rest of their lives.

    Opening statements are slated for Tuesday in the brothers’ trial in federal court in Manhattan, after they were delayed a day because of heavy snowfall over the weekend in New York.

    Oren and Tal Alexander, the real estate dealers who specialized in high-end properties in Miami, New York and Los Angeles, have pleaded not guilty, along with their brother Alon, who graduated from New York Law School before taking his position with the security firm.

    All three have been held without bail since their December 2024 arrests. They were indicted months after several women filed lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct.

    A spokesperson for the Alexander Brothers said they “categorically deny that anyone was drugged, assaulted, or coerced, and the government has presented no physical evidence, medical records, contemporaneous complaints, or objective proof to establish those claims.”

    “This case highlights a broader concern about how the federal sex-trafficking statute is being applied,” said the spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer. “Congress enacted that law to address force, coercion, and exploitation; not to retroactively criminalize consensual adult relationships through inference or narrative.”

    “As the defense has consistently said, allegations are not evidence,” Engelmayer added.

    The brothers’ attorneys have promised to show the jury of six men and six women that prosecutors have taken innocent romantic and sexual encounters and converted them into criminal activity through clever lawyering.

    Oren Alexander’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has said the defense plans to prove that witnesses have lied to the government and that their testimony can’t be trusted.

    Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who will preside over the trial, has rejected defense requests to toss out the charges or send the case to state court. The Alexanders’ lawyers have said the allegations against them resemble “date rape” crimes more commonly prosecuted in state courts, but Caproni disagreed.

    “That badly misrepresents the nature of the charges,” the judge wrote.

    Agnifilo has said the jury will hear evidence of group sex, threesomes and promiscuity. During jury selection last week, prospective jurors were asked questions related to sexual activity and sex crimes.

    “The case is about sex and sexuality,” said Agnifilo, who represented Sean “Diddy” Combs last year as the hip-hop mogul was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges but convicted on lesser prostitution-related counts.

    In court papers, the Alexander Brothers’ lawyers wrote that among the accusers they expect to testify at trial, they had located evidence “that undermines nearly every aspect of the alleged victims’ narratives.”

    Prosecutors have said their evidence will show that the brothers “have acted with apparent impunity — forcibly raping women whenever they wanted to do so.”

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  • Prosecutor argues New York prison guard’s inaction contributed to inmate’s death

    UTICA, N.Y. — A New York prison guard who failed to intervene as he watched an inmate being beaten to death should be convicted of manslaughter, a prosecutor told a jury Thursday in the final trial of correctional officers whose pummeling, recorded by body-cameras, provoked outrage.

    “For seven minutes — seven gut-churning, nauseating, disgusting minutes — he stood in that room close enough to touch him and he did nothing,” special prosecutor William Fitzpatrick told jurors during closing arguments. The jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon.

    Former corrections officer Michael Fisher, 55, is charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Robert Brooks, who was beaten by guards upon his arrival at Marcy Correctional Facility on the night of Dec. 9, 2024, his agony recorded silently on the guards’ body cameras.

    Fisher’s attorney, Scott Iseman, said his client entered the infirmary after the beating began and could not have known the extent of his injuries.

    Fisher was among 10 guards indicted in February. Three more agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges in return for cooperating with prosecutors. Of the 10 officers indicted in February, six pleaded guilty to manslaughter or lesser charges. Four rejected plea deals. One was convicted of murder and two were acquitted in the first trial last fall.

    Fisher, standing alone, is the last of the guards to face a jury.

    The trial closes a chapter in a high-profile case led to some reforms in New York’s prisons. But advocates say the prisons remain plagued by understaffing and other problems, especially since a wildcat strike by guards last year.

    Officials took action amid outrage over the images of the guards beating the 43-year-old Black man in the prison’s infirmary. Officers could be seen striking Brooks in the chest with a shoe, lifting him by the neck and dropping him.

    Video shown to the jury during closing arguments Thursday indicates Fisher stood by the doorway and didn’t intervene.

    “Did Michael Fisher recklessly cause the death of Robert Brooks? Of course he did. Not by himself. He had plenty of other helpers,” said Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney.

    Iseman asked jurors looking at the footage to consider what Fisher could have known at the time “without the benefit of 2020 hindsight.”

    “Michael Fisher did not have a rewind button. He did not have the ability to enhance. He did not have the ability to pause. He did not have the ability to get a different perspective of what was happening in the room,” Iseman said.

    Even before Brooks’ death, critics claimed the prison system was beset by problems that included brutality, overworked staff and inconsistent services. By the time criminal indictments were unsealed in February, the system was reeling from an illegal three-week wildcat strike by corrections officers who were upset over working conditions. Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed National Guard troops to maintain operations. More than 2,000 guards were fired.

    Prison deaths during the strike included Messiah Nantwi on March 1 at Mid-State Correctional Facility, which is across the road from the Marcy prison. 10 other guards were indicted in Nantwi’s death in April, including two charged with murder.

    There are still about 3,000 National Guard members serving the state prison system, according to state officials.

    “The absence of staff in critical positions is affecting literally every aspect of prison operations. And I think the experience for incarcerated people is neglect,” Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, an independent monitoring group, said on the eve of Fisher’s trial.

    Hochul last month announced a broad reform agreement with lawmakers that includes a requirement that cameras be installed in all facilities and that video recordings related to deaths behind bars be promptly released to state investigators.

    The state also lowered the hiring age for correction officers from 21 to 18 years of age.

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  • ‘Dances with Wolves’ actor Nathan Chasing Horse standing trial in Las Vegas

    LAS VEGAS — The jury trial for Nathan Chasing Horse, the former “Dances with Wolves” actor accused of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls, is expected to begin Tuesday in Las Vegas.

    Prosecutors allege he used his reputation as a spiritual leader and healer to take advantage of his victims over two decades. Chasing Horse has pleaded not guilty to 21 charges, including sexual assault, sexual assault with a minor, first degree kidnapping of a minor and the use of a minor in producing pornography.

    The case sent shock waves across Indian Country when he was arrested and indicted in early 2023. There were many setbacks and delays, but the case finally proceeded to trial after prosecutors added allegations that he filmed himself having sex with a child.

    Best known for portraying the character Smiles A Lot in the 1990 movie “Dances with Wolves,” Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, which is home to the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation.

    After starring in the Oscar-winning film, according to prosecutors, Chasing Horse proclaimed himself to be a Lakota medicine man while traveling around North America to perform healing ceremonies.

    Prosecutors claim Chasing Horse led a cult called The Circle, and his followers believed he could speak with spirits. His victims went to him for medical help, according to a court transcript from a grand jury hearing.

    One victim was 14 years old when she approached him hoping he would heal her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer. Chasing Horse previously had treated the victim’s breathing issues and her mother’s spider bite, according to a court transcript. He allegedly told her the spirits wanted her to give up her virginity in exchange for her mother’s health. He allegedly had sex with her and said her mother would die if she told anyone, according to the victim’s testimony to the grand jury.

    The original indictment was dismissed in 2024 after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled prosecutors abused the grand jury process when they provided a definition of grooming as evidence without any expert testimony.

    The high court, specifying that the dismissal had nothing to do with his innocence or guilt, left open the possibility of charges being refiled. In October 2024, the charges were refiled with new allegations that he recorded himself having sex with one of his accusers when she was younger than 14.

    Prosecutors have said the recordings, made in 2010 or 2011, were found on cellphones in a locked safe inside the North Las Vegas home that Chasing Horse is said to have shared with five wives, including the girl in the videos.

    Jury selection will begin Tuesday. The trial is expected to last four weeks, and prosecutors plan to call 18 witnesses. A week before the trial, Chasing Horse attempted to fire his private defense attorney, saying his lawyer hadn’t come to visit him. Judge Jessica Peterson removed Chasing Horse from the courtroom when he tried to interrupt her, and she denied his request.

    This case is a reminder that violence also occurs within Native communities and is not just something committed by outsiders, said Crystal Lee, CEO and founder of the organization United Natives, which offers services to victims of sexual abuse.

    Chasing Horse’s trial requires hard conversations about Native perpetrators, she said.

    “How do we hold them accountable?” she said. “How do we start these tough conversations?”

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  • Harvey Weinstein says jurors were bullied into convicting him. A judge is set to rule

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein returns to court Thursday, seeking to get his latest sex crime conviction thrown out because anger and apprehensions flared among jurors during deliberations last spring.

    It’s the latest convoluted turn in the former Hollywood honcho’s path through the criminal justice system. His landmark #MeToo-era case has spanned seven years, trials in two states, a reversal in one and a retrial that came to a messy end in New York last year. Weinstein was convicted of forcing oral sex on one woman, acquitted of forcibly performing oral sex on another, and the jury didn’t decide on a rape charge involving a third woman — a charge prosecutors vowed to retry yet again.

    Weinstein, 73, denies all the charges. They were one outgrowth of a stack of sexual harassment and sex assault allegations against him that emerged publicly in 2017 and ensuing years, fueling the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. Early on, Weinstein apologized for “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past,” while also denying that he ever had non-consensual sex.

    At trial, Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the women willingly accepted his advances in hopes of getting work in various capacities in show business, then falsely accused him to net settlement funds and attention.

    The split verdict last June came after multiple jurors took the unusual step of asking to brief the judge on behind-the-scenes tensions.

    In a series of exchanges partly in open court, one juror complained that others were “shunning” one of the panel members; the foreperson alluded to jurors “pushing people” verbally and talking about Weinstein’s “past” in a way the juror thought improper; yet a third juror opined that discussions were “going well.” The foreperson later came forward again to complain to the judge about being pressured to change his mind, then said he feared for his safety because a fellow panelist had said he would “see me outside.” The foreperson eventually refused to continue deliberating.

    In court, Judge Curtis Farber cited the secrecy of ongoing deliberations and reminded jurors not to disclose “the content or tenor” of them. Since the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers have talked with the first juror who openly complained and with another who didn’t.

    In sworn statements, the two said they didn’t believe Weinstein was guilty, but had given in because of other jurors’ verbal aggression.

    One said that after a fellow juror insulted her intelligence and suggested the judge should remove her, she was so afraid that she called two relatives that night and “told them to come look for me if they didn’t hear from me, since something was not right about this jury deliberation process.” All jurors’ identities were redacted in court filings.

    Weinstein’s lawyers contend the tensions amounted to threats that poisoned the process, and that the judge didn’t look into them enough before denying the defense’s repeated requests for a mistrial. Weinstein’s attorneys are asking him to discard the conviction or, at least, conduct a hearing about the jury strains.

    Prosecutors maintain that the judge was presented with claims about “scattered instances of contentious interactions” and handled them appropriately. Jurors’ later sworn statements are belied, prosecutors say, by other comments from one of the same jury members. He told the media right after the trial that there “was just high tension” in the group.

    Prosecutors also said the foreperson’s concerns about discussions of Weinstein’s past were vague and the topic wasn’t entirely off-limits. Testimony covered, for example, 2017 media reports about decades of sexual harassment allegations against him.

    The judge is expected to respond Thursday. He could set the conviction aside, order a hearing or let the verdict stand without any further action. Whatever he decides could be appealed.

    Meanwhile, prosecutors have said they’re prepared to retry Weinstein on the rape charge the jury couldn’t decide last spring. Currently being held in New York, he also is appealing a rape conviction in Los Angeles.

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  • Judge convicted of obstructing immigrant arrest resigns as GOP threatens impeachment

    Embattled Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction last month for helping an immigrant evade federal officers, has sent her resignation letter to the governor.

    The letter was sent Saturday. Republicans had been making plans to impeach her ever since her Dec. 19 conviction. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said his office received Dugan’s letter, and he would work to fill the vacancy without delay.

    Dugan wrote that over the past decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”

    But she said the case against her is too big of a distraction.

    “As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan said in her letter.

    Last April, federal prosecutors accused Dugan of distracting federal officers trying to arrest a Mexican immigrant outside her courtroom and leading the man out through a private door. A federal jury convicted her of felony obstruction.

    The case against Dugan was highlighted by President Donald Trump as he pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats insisted the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

    Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos praised Dugan’s decision.

    “I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.

    Democrat Ann Jacobs, who is chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission board, said she agreed with Dugan that Milwaukee should have a permanent judge in place while this fight plays out.

    “Despite her situation, she is ever the champion of justice, wanting to remove the judiciary from a political battle over her fate. I’m sure this is terribly hard for her but she is true to her faith and her principles,” Jacobs said in a post on X.

    On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

    Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the office of her boss, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

    After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

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  • Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seeks immediate release from prison in appeals argument

    NEW YORK — Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs urged a federal appeals court in New York late Tuesday to order his immediate release from prison and reverse his conviction on prostitution-related charges or direct his trial judge to lighten his four-year sentence.

    The lawyers said in a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was treated harshly at sentencing by a federal judge who let evidence surrounding charges he was acquitted of unjustly influence the punishment.

    Combs, 56, incarcerated at a federal prison in New Jersey and scheduled for release in May 2028, was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking at a trial that ended in July. Combs was convicted under the Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for any sexual crime.

    Lawyers for Combs said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” in October when he sentenced Combs to four years and two months in prison. They said he erred by letting evidence surrounding the acquitted charges influence the sentence he imposed.

    They noted that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn’t require force, fraud, or coercion. They asked the appeals court, which has not yet heard oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his immediate release from prison or direct Subramanian to reduce his sentence.

    “Defendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved,” the lawyers wrote.

    “The judge defied the jury’s verdict and found Combs ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘forced’ his girlfriends to have sex and led a criminal conspiracy. These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant,” the lawyers wrote.

    At sentencing, Subramanian said that when calculating the prison term, he considered Combs’ treatment of two former girlfriends who testified that the Bad Boy Records founder beat them and coerced them into having sex with male sex workers while he watched and filmed the encounters, sometimes masturbating.

    At the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” sex with strangers hundreds of times during their decade-long relationship that ended in 2018. Jurors saw video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”

    The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym “ Jane,” said she was pressured into sex with male workers during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also could last days.

    At sentencing, Subramanian said he “rejects the defense’s attempt to characterize what happened here as merely intimate, consensual experiences, or just a sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll story.”

    He added: “You abused the power and control that you had over the lives of women you professed to love dearly. You abused them physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And you used that abuse to get your way, especially when it came to freak-offs and hotel nights.”

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  • Advocates raise alarms after Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan found guilty of obstruction

    MADISON, Wis. — Defenders of a Wisconsin judge found guilty of felony obstruction for helping a Mexican immigrant evade federal officers raised alarms Friday about judicial independence and said they hope the conviction will be overturned on appeal.

    A jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan guilty on Thursday night after a four-day trial and six hours of deliberation. The jury found her not guilty of a misdemeanor concealment charge. No sentencing date had been set as of Friday morning. She could be sentenced to a maximum five years in prison.

    The verdict was a victory for President Donald Trump, whose administration filed the charges against Dugan and touted her arrest earlier this year, posting photos of her being led away in handcuffs.

    U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche praised the verdict on X, saying nobody is above the law, even judges.

    The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration is trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

    U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, a former Republican Wisconsin attorney general and judge, denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully.

    “Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”

    Dugan’s defense attorney told the jury in closing arguments that the “top levels of government” were involved in bringing charges against Dugan. But prosecutors argued Dugan put her personal beliefs above the law.

    “You don’t have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see this was wrong,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments. “You just have to agree the law applies equally to everyone.”

    Dugan did not testify. Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters.

    Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later said he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same.

    Dugan’s attorneys were expected to appeal the verdict.

    A coalition of 13 advocacy groups, including Common Cause Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters Wisconsin, said “higher courts must carefully review the serious constitutional questions this case raises about due process, judicial authority, and federal overreach.”

    Dugan was suspended as a judge after she was charged and the Wisconsin Constitution bars convicted felons from holding office. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which oversees disciplining of judges in the state, did not respond to a request Friday for information about what happens next in Dugan’s case.

    On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

    Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and after they had left led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

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  • Jury says Johnson & Johnson owes $40M to 2 cancer patients who used talcum powders

    A Los Angeles jury awarded $40 million on Friday to two women who claimed that talcum powder made by Johnson & Johnson caused their ovarian cancer.

    The giant health care company said it would appeal the jury’s liability verdict and compensatory damages.

    The verdict is the latest development in a longstanding legal battle over claims that talc in Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower body power was connected to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer that strikes the lungs and other organs. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling powder made with talc worldwide in 2023.

    In October, another California jury ordered J&J to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma, claiming she developed the cancer because the baby powder she used was contaminated with the carcinogen asbestos.

    In the latest case, the jury awarded $18 million to Monica Kent and $22 million to Deborah Schultz and her husband. “The only thing they did was be loyal to Johnson & Johnson as a customer for only 50 years,’’ said their attorney, Daniel Robinson of the Robinson Calcagnie law firm in Newport Beach, California. “That loyalty was a one-way street.’’

    Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company had won “16 of the 17 ovarian cancer cases it previously tried” and expected to do so again upon appealing Friday’s verdict.

    Haas called the jury’s findings “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming that talc is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.”

    Johnson & Johnson replaced the talc in its baby powder sold in most of North America with cornstarch in 2020 after sales declined.

    In April, a U.S. bankruptcy court judge denied J&J’s plan to pay $9 billion to settle ovarian cancer and other gynecological cancer litiation claims based on talc-related products.

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  • Fugees rapper sentenced to prison over illegal donations to Obama campaign

    WASHINGTON — Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

    Michel, 52, declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him.

    In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington, D.C., included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    Justice Department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, whom they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes.”

    “His sentence should reflect the breadth and depth of his crimes, his indifference to the risks to his country, and the magnitude of his greed,” they wrote.

    Defense attorney Peter Zeidenberg said his client’s 14-year sentence is “completely disproportionate to the offense.” Michel will appeal his conviction and sentence, according to his lawyer.

    Zeidenberg had recommended a three-year prison sentence. A life sentence would be an “absurdly high” punishment for Michel given that it is typically reserved for deadly terrorists and drug cartel leaders, Michel’s attorneys said in a court filing.

    “The Government’s position is one that would cause Inspector Javert to recoil and, if anything, simply illustrates just how easily the Guidelines can be manipulated to produce absurd results, and how poorly equipped they are, at least on this occasion, to determine a fair and just sentence,” they wrote.

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  • Federal jury awards $80 million to estate of NY man wrongfully convicted of murder

    BUFFALO, N.Y. — A federal jury awarded $80 million Wednesday to the estate of a Buffalo man whose conviction in a 1976 murder was overturned after he spent nearly a quarter century in prison.

    Darryl Boyd, one of the group of Black teenagers arrested for the murder of William Crawford sometimes called the Buffalo Five, filed the lawsuit in 2022 seeking damages and alleging Buffalo Police investigators and Erie County prosecutors had failed to disclose more than a dozen pieces of evidence that pointed to other suspects. The lawsuit also alleged investigators coerced witnesses to give false statements pointing to Boyd, and that prosecutors committed summation misconduct — making inappropriate or false comments in their closing arguments.

    “If not for the misdeeds of Defendants, Mr. Boyd would not have been prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned in violation of his constitutional rights, and would not have spent 45 years asserting his innocence and fighting for his liberty in connection with a crime that he did not commit,” Boyd’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

    A spokesman for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the county extends its sympathy to Boyd’s family, but he believes the $80 million award is egregious and the county plans to appeal.

    After a two-and-a-half week trial, the federal jury in the Western District of New York took about an hour to return the massive verdict — billed by attorneys as one of the largest monetary awards for a wrongful conviction case in the U.S.

    After Boyd was released from prison, he spent another two decades on parole before his conviction was vacated by a judge in 2021. The county opted not to retry Boyd or John Walker Jr., whose conviction in the case was also vacated.

    A third man convicted in the killing, Darren Gibson, was released from prison in 2008 and died a year later. One of the other teens was acquitted at trial, and the fifth teen testified against the others, which Boyd’s attorneys said newly released case files show was coerced.

    Both Boyd and Walker had settled their case against the city of Buffalo for about $4.7 million each. Walker won a $28 million verdict against the county earlier this year, which the county has appealed.

    “He lost his whole adult life to this wrongful conviction. The jury heard just how many years he was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things you assume happen in prison, happened in prison,” said Ross Firsenbaum, an attorney with WilmerHale, one of three firms representing Boyd’s estate.

    Firsenbaum said being released on parole was just as hard for Boyd who suffered from PTSD, anxiety and other ailments. He struggled to keep or get jobs because of the conviction and eventually began self-medicating and developed a substance abuse addiction.

    Boyd was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and died in 2023 before the trial could be held. His mother and son attended the trial every day, Firsenbaum said.

    “The (county) argued his substance use was the cause of his problems, not the 27 or so years he spent wrongfully in prison,” Firsenbaum said. “And that’s offensive. And the jury recognized that and responded with this verdict.”

    He added that the attorneys had proven there was a pattern and practice of misconduct at the time of the convictions, not just a misdeed by one employee.

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  • Jurors to hear closing arguments in Ohio trial of officer charged in killing

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Closing arguments in the murder trial of an Ohio officer charged in the shooting death of a pregnant Black mother killed in a supermarket parking lot after being accused of shoplifting are set for Wednesday.

    Prosecutors have told jurors that 21-year-old Ta’Kiya Young wasn’t a threat to anyone at the time she was shot. Defense attorneys for Blendon Township police officer Connor Grubb have emphasized that Young’s vehicle carried deadly force when she accelerated it near the 31-year-old officer, rendering his use of force within the standard of being “objectively reasonable.”

    Grubb is charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault in connection with Young’s death on Aug. 24, 2023. He faces up to life in prison. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David Young, no relation to Ta’Kiya, dropped four of 10 counts against him Tuesday that related to the death of Young’s unborn daughter, agreeing with his attorneys that prosecutors failed to present proof that Grubb knew Young was pregnant when he shot her.

    The prosecution and defense both rested Tuesday after a roughly two-week trial. Jurors were shown the bodycam footage of the shooting on the first day of testimony, with testimony following over the trial’s course including from a use-of-force expert, an accident reconstructionist, the officer who responded to the scene with Grubb and a police policy expert.

    They never heard from Grubb, whose side of the story was contained in a written statement read into the record by a special agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

    Sean Walton, an attorney representing Young’s family, Nadine Young, Ta’Kiya’s grandmother, and an aunt, Michelle White, said they expected Grubb to take the stand.

    “It is curious that he did not testify. But the video speaks for itself and if he wants the video to speak for him, then so be it,” Walton said.

    Young and White appeared emotionally tired while taking questions from reporters Tuesday. White said that the verdict will allow the family “to finally be able to start the healing process.” At various times, Nadine held back tears while talking about the toll of the trial.

    “I just gotta hold on to God and just know, God, he’s in control,” Nadine said.

    In the body camera footage, the officer said he observed Young arguing with his fellow officer and positioned himself in front of her vehicle to provide backup and to protect other people in the parking lot. He said he drew his gun after he heard Young fail to comply with his partner’s commands. When she drove toward him, he said in the statement, he felt her car hit his legs and shins and begin to lift his body off the ground.

    Grubb and another officer approached Young’s car outside a Kroger in suburban Columbus about a report that she was suspected of stealing alcohol from the store. She partially lowered her window, and the other officer ordered her out. Instead, she rolled her car forward toward Grubb, who fired a single bullet through her windshield into her chest, video footage showed.

    The video showed an officer at the driver’s side window telling Young she was accused of shoplifting and ordering her out of the car. Young protested, and both officers cursed at her and yelled at her to get out. Young could be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”

    Then she turned the steering wheel to the right, the car rolled slowly forward and Grubb fired his gun, footage showed. Moments later, after the car came to a stop against the building, they broke the driver’s side window. Police said they tried to save her life, but she was mortally wounded. Young and her unborn daughter were subsequently pronounced dead at a hospital.

    A full-time officer with the township since 2019, Grubb was placed paid administrative leave after the shooting.

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  • Actor Danny Masterson asks for rape convictions to be tossed over lawyer errors

    LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) — “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson filed a petition Monday for his two rape convictions and long prison sentence to be thrown out, saying that his trial lawyer failed to call key witnesses and introduce essential evidence that might have exonerated him.

    The petition for habeas corpus filed with California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal argues that lawyer Philip Cohen did not represent Masterson properly at the 2023 retrial that ended with the actor being convicted of raping two women at his Los Angeles home in 2003. He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.

    The petition also argues that the trial judge demonstrated a bias against the Church of Scientology, allowing an “unconstitutional intrusion” into the church’s doctrine and a misinterpretation of its scripture.

    Masterson is a member of the church, whose practices were a major issue at his trial, and the women are former members.

    The petition says that Cohen spoke to only two of the 20 potential witnesses brought to his attention by his co-counsel and an investigator. It says the witnesses included some who would have testified that the women spoke favorably of the sexual relationships they had with Masterson. And they included psychological and pharmacological experts who would have testified about the effects of alcohol and drugs on memory.

    The court filing says there was “unexpected and unreasonable failure of trial counsel to present any of the mountain of exculpatory evidence” that had been amassed by Masterson’s pretrial attorney Shawn Holley, and the result was a violation of his constitutional rights.

    Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo declined to delay Masterson’s first trial to accommodate Holley’s representation of former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer against his own allegations of sexual misconduct. Cohen then took over as lead attorney.

    Masterson’s first trial ended in a mistrial with a jury unable to reach consensus on any of three rape counts against him. He was promptly retried, and a jury found him guilty of two counts while failing to reach a verdict on the third.

    Cohen did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the petition, nor did an attorney for the women.

    “The unfairness of the second Masterson trial was the result of prosecutorial misconduct, judicial bias, and the failure of defense counsel to present exculpatory evidence,” Eric Multhaup, the attorney who filed the petition for Masterson, said in a statement. “The jury heard only half the story – the prosecution’s side. Danny deserves a new trial where the jury can hear his side as well.”

    The petition says Olmedo erred in allowing the prosecution to negatively cast the Church of Scientology as a force of intimidation. It alleges that Cohen also did not present available evidence that would countered the portrayal.

    Masterson’s new motion is separate from his main appeal to the same court, a process that is pending.

    Masterson, 49, is serving his sentence at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. He will not be eligible for parole for more than 20 years.

    Masterson starred with Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace in “That ’70s Show” from 1998 until 2006. He had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when the Los Angeles Police Department investigation was revealed the following year.

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  • Alleged plot to bribe a juror with $100,000 upends former heavyweight boxer’s NYC drug trial

    NEW YORK — Three men were arrested Monday for allegedly trying to pay up to $100,000 in cash to a juror at the Brooklyn drug trial of a former heavyweight boxer, leading a judge to abruptly dismiss the jury as it was about to hear opening statements.

    John Marzulli, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, said an anonymous jury will be chosen when the trial of Goran Gogic resumes in a month.

    Gogic, of Montenegro, was set to stand trial for allegedly conspiring to smuggle 20 tons (18.1 metric tons) of cocaine to Europe from Colombia through U.S. ports using commercial cargo ships. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Law enforcement officials have described Gogic as a “major drug trafficker” and said he operated on a “mammoth scale.”

    A former heavyweight boxer, Gogic fought professionally in Germany from 2001 to 2012, compiling a 21-4-2 record, according to boxing website Sport & Note. He was listed as 6-foot-5 (1.96 meters) and weighed in at anywhere from 227 pounds (103 kilograms) to 250 pounds (113 kilograms).

    In a criminal complaint in Brooklyn federal court, an FBI agent wrote that the bribery scheme unfolded between Thursday and Sunday.

    According to the court papers, one of the men charged in the plot — Mustafa Fteja — already knew a juror described in the complaint as “John Doe #1” and called him multiple times on his cellphone Thursday before the juror agreed to meet him in Staten Island.

    During the meeting, which took place Thursday, Fteja told the juror that associates in the Bronx were willing to pay him to return a not guilty verdict, the complaint said.

    Two days later, Fteja told the juror during a second meeting that they were willing to pay him between $50,000 and $100,000 to corrupt the trial, the complaint said.

    It was not immediately clear who will represent Fteja and two others accused in the alleged jury tampering scheme when they appear in court later Monday.

    According to the complaint, investigators secured several recorded conversations of the defendants planning the juror corruption plot as the men spoke in Albanian and English.

    At his trial, Gogic is charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

    According to prosecutors, Gogic and his co-conspirators worked with the ships’ crew members to smuggle cocaine in shipping containers, hoisting loads of the drug from speedboats that approached the cargo vessels along their route, including near ports in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

    Three shipments were intercepted by U.S. law enforcement agents, prosecutors said, including 1,437 kilograms (3,168 pounds) of cocaine aboard the MSC Carlotta at the Port of New York and New Jersey in February 2019 and 17,956 kilograms (39,586 pounds) of cocaine — with a street value of over $1 billion — aboard the MSC Gayane at the Port of Philadelphia in June 2019.

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  • Harvey Weinstein prosecutors say defense’s jury misconduct claims are ‘implausible’

    NEW YORK — Prosecutors urged a judge on Wednesday to reject Harvey Weinstein ’s claims that his June sexual assault conviction was marred by threats and bullying among jurors.

    The disgraced movie mogul’s lawyers submitted sworn affidavits last month from two jurors who said they regretted voting to convict Weinstein and only did so because others on the panel bullied them during five contentious days of deliberations.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s office said the jurors’ claims were “inconsistent and implausible” and that they provided no legal basis for Weinstein’s lawyers to challenge his conviction.

    One juror who claimed in an affidavit that he observed “threats” and “intimidation” had told the judge during deliberations that he only saw “playground stuff,” prosecutors said. Immediately after the trial ended, the same juror told reporters, “it’s not like a fight was going to break out. No, obviously not.”

    Weinstein’s bid to overturn his first-degree criminal sex act conviction “utterly fails, on both the law and the facts, to meet the standard necessary to set aside the guilty verdict,” prosecutors Matthew Colangelo, Nicole Blumberg, Shannon Lucey and Becky Mangold wrote.

    They cited a centuries-old rule that the U.S. Supreme Court has said gives “substantial protection to verdict finality” and assures that once a trial is over, jurors won’t be “harassed or annoyed by litigants seeking to challenge the verdict.”

    Judge Curtis Farber said he’ll rule on Dec. 22.

    Prosecutors said they declined to interview any jurors before responding to the defense’s claims because doing so would “cause the very harms” the centuries-old rule was meant to avoid.

    Weinstein’s defense team, led by attorney Arthur Aidala, argued in court papers last month that the verdict was marred by “threats, intimidation, and extraneous bias,” and that Farber failed to properly deal with it at the time.

    The two jurors said in their affidavits that they felt overwhelmed and intimidated by others on the panel who wanted to convict Weinstein on the criminal sex act charge, which accused him of forcing oral sex on TV and film production assistant and producer Miriam Haley in 2006.

    One of the jurors said she was screamed at in the jury room and told, “we have to get rid of you.” The other juror said anyone who doubted Weinstein’s guilt was grilled by other jurors and that if he could have voted by secret ballot, “I would have returned a not guilty verdict on all three charges.”

    “I regret the verdict,” that juror said. “Without the intimidation from other jurors, I believe that the jury would have hung on the Miriam Haley charge.”

    Weinstein, 73, was acquitted on a second criminal sex act charge involving a different woman, Polish psychotherapist and former model Kaja Sokola. The judge declared a mistrial on the final charge, alleging Weinstein raped former actor Jessica Mann, after the jury foreperson declined to deliberate further.

    It was the second time the Oscar-winning producer was tried on some of the charges. His 2020 conviction, a watershed moment for the # MeToo movement, was overturned last year. In addition to seeking to overturn his June conviction, Weinstein’s lawyers are also fighting to avoid yet another retrial on the undecided count.

    Weinstein denies all of the charges. The first-degree criminal sex act conviction carries the potential for up to 25 years in prison, while the unresolved third-degree rape charge is punishable by up to four years — less than he already has served.

    The Oscar-winning producer has been behind bars since his initial conviction in 2020, and he later also was sentenced to prison in a separate California case, which he is appealing.

    Some of what the two jurors said in their affidavits echoed acrimony that spilled into public view during deliberations.

    As jurors weighed charges for five days, one juror asked to be excused because he felt another was being treated unfairly. Later, the foreperson complained that other jurors were pushing people to change their minds and that a juror yelled at him for sticking to his opinion and suggested the foreperson would “see me outside.”

    When jurors came forward with concerns, Farber was strict about respecting the sanctity of deliberations and cautioned them not to discuss the content or tenor of jury room discussions, transcripts show.

    As deliberations were on, Farber reminded jurors that “tension and conflict” is normal in the deliberative process.

    In their affidavits, the two jurors said they didn’t feel the judge was willing to listen to their concerns.

    When jurors were asked if they agreed with the guilty verdict, one of the jurors noted in her affidavit that she paused “to try and indicate my discomfort in the verdict.”

    Afterward, when Farber spoke with jurors, she said she told him, “the deliberations were unprofessional.”

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  • Jury convicts activist who took chickens from Purdue plant

    SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Jurors on Wednesday found animal activist Zoe Rosenberg guilty of trespassing and conspiracy for taking four chickens from a Northern California processing plant, said a spokesperson for a group representing her.

    Rosenberg, 23, did not deny taking the animals but said she was rescuing them from a cruel situation. She faces more than five years in prison. Rosenberg and her attorneys had said they would appeal if she was found guilty, said Lauren Gazzola, spokesperson for Animal Activist Legal Defense Project.

    “Sonoma County spent over six weeks and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to protect a multi-billion-dollar corporation from the rescue of four chickens worth less than $25,” Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s attorney, said in a statement.

    Rosenberg, an activist with Direct Action Everywhere, removed the chickens from Petaluma Poultry in 2023. The company supplies chickens to Perdue Farms, one of the country’s largest poultry providers for major grocery chains.

    Her attorneys argued the case wasn’t about whether she took the chickens — her organization filmed and released footage — but why she did it. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said she engaged in illegal behavior regardless of her motivation.

    She was on trial for two misdemeanor counts of trespassing, a misdemeanor count of tampering with a vehicle and a felony conspiracy charge.

    The trial unfolded in Sonoma County, where agriculture is a major industry. The co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere was convicted two years ago for his role in factory farm protests in Petaluma.

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  • Jury deliberations start in trial of Illinois deputy who killed Sonya Massey

    PEORIA, Ill. — An Illinois jury has begun deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of a sheriff’s deputy who shot Sonya Massey, a Black woman in her home who had called 911 for help and was later killed because of the way she was handling a pan of hot water.

    The eight-woman, four-man jury received the case just after 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. Jurors must decide whether Sean Grayson, 31, is guilty of first-degree murder for fatally shooting Massey in her Springfield home. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 45 years to life in prison. They also have been given the option of considering second-degree murder, which carries a term of four to 20 years.

    Grayson and another deputy answered Massey’s emergency call reporting a prowler outside the 36-year-old woman’s home early on the morning of July 6, 2024.

    In closing arguments, prosecutors characterized Grayson as “an angry man with a gun” whose impatience with Massey, who was suffering a mental health episode, inflamed his temper.

    Defense attorneys argued that when Massey retrieved a pot of steaming water from the stove, Grayson gave clear commands to drop it. They said he only fired when she said, “ I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” and, in the ensuing confusion, picked up the pan again and acted as if she would throw it and scald him.

    Massey’s killing raised new questions about U.S. law enforcement shootings of Black people in their homes. The accompanying publicity, protests and legal action over the incident prompted Judge Ryan Cadagin to move the trial from Springfield, 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, to Peoria, an hour’s drive north of the capital city, because of pre-trial publicity.

    In an unusual step for a defendant in a murder case, Grayson testified in his own defense. Grayson said he considered using a Taser to subdue her but was afraid it wouldn’t work given his distance from Massey and the counter separating them. He said he determined that Massey was a threat and drew his 9 mm pistol only after she uttered her “rebuke” twice — although prosecutors pointed out that was because he didn’t hear her the first time and asked her to repeat it.

    Second-degree murder applies when there is a “serious provocation” which causes “a reasonable person to become impassioned or if an incident can be characterized as ”imperfect self-defense,” in which defendants believe their actions are justified even if that belief is unreasonable.

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  • Jury awards more than $40 million to family of man who died in privately-run jail

    NEW ORLEANS — A federal jury found a private company running a Louisiana jail liable for the 2015 death of a man who died of head injuries he received while in custody, and awarded the family more than $40 million in damages.

    Attorneys representing Erie Moore Sr.’s family say they believe the verdict handed down this week in the Western District of Louisiana is among the highest ever jury awards for an in-custody death in the U.S.

    “For the past 10 years, my sisters and I have been tormented knowing he is not resting easy,” said his son, Erie Moore Jr. “This trial has shined light where there was darkness. It has brought our family truth, justice, and peace.”

    Moore was a 57-year-old mill worker father of three with no criminal history who was arrested on Oct. 12, 2015, for disturbing the peace at a doughnut shop in Monroe, Louisiana.

    Moore became “agitated and noncompliant” while being taken into custody at Richwood Correctional Center, according to court filings. His attorney, Max Schoening, says Moore was “mentally unwell” at the time he was taken into custody.

    Schoening says guards pepper-sprayed him at least eight times during the 36 hours he was in jail.

    Court records, including footage from jail security cameras submitted as evidence and viewed by The Associated Press, show Moore being brought down forcefully by several guards. Other footage shows the guards picking up Moore by his legs and handcuffed hands when one of the guards stumbled, and Moore’s head lands on the ground.

    Moore was then brought to a secluded area of the jail without security cameras. He was kept there, out of sight, for nearly two hours, during which no one called for medical attention, court records show.

    “The jury found the guards continued to use excessive force against Mr. Moore in the camera-less area,” Schoening said. “When sheriffs from another law enforcement agency arrived to pick him up to transport him to another jail they found him unconscious and completely unresponsive.”

    When Moore eventually arrived at the hospital hours he was already in a coma and died about a month later, court records show. The Ouachita Parish coroner ruled Moore’s death a homicide due to the head injuries.

    A federal jury found three guards liable for negligence, battery and excessive force. The jury also found LaSalle Management Co., which runs Richwood Correctional Center, liable for causing the death of Moore due to the negligence of at least one of its guards.

    No one has been criminally charged in Moore’s death, Schoening added.

    The jury ordered LaSalle and Richwood to pay $23.25 million in punitive damages and $19.5 million in compensation to Moore’s three adult children.

    “This is the largest compensatory damage award I have ever heard of,” said Jay Aronson, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and author of “Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It.”

    The city of Monroe contracted the Richwood Correctional Center facility for its jail from 2001 to 2019. LaSalle, which is part of the same business enterprise as Richwood Correctional Center, operates detention facilities across Louisiana and Texas, court filings show.

    The Richwood Correctional Center now serves as a federal immigration detention site. Last year, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency stated that LaSalle is an “important part of ICE’s detention system.”

    LaSalle did not respond to requests for comment sent to its attorneys or a spokesperson. The City of Monroe declined to comment.

    “Erie Moore Sr.’s life was a gift to his family and community. LaSalle Management Co. ended it with utter indifference,” Schoening said. “It is a testament to his children’s love, courage, and resilience that, in the face of enormous obstacles, they obtained justice for their father and a historic victory for civil rights in this country.”

    ___

    Brook 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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