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Tag: Legal proceedings

  • Open AI, Microsoft face lawsuit over ChatGPT’s alleged role in Connecticut murder-suicide

    SAN FRANCISCO — The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son’s “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her.

    Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

    The lawsuit filed by Adams’ estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.” It is one of a growing number of wrongful death legal actions against AI chatbot makers across the country.

    “Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself,” the lawsuit says. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.’”

    OpenAI did not address the merits of the allegations in a statement issued by a spokesperson.

    “This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details,” the statement said. “We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

    The company also said it has expanded access to crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models and incorporated parental controls, among other improvements.

    Soelberg’s YouTube profile includes several hours of videos showing him scrolling through his conversations with the chatbot, which tells him he isn’t mentally ill, affirms his suspicions that people are conspiring against him and says he has been chosen for a divine purpose. The lawsuit claims the chatbot never suggested he speak with a mental health professional and did not decline to “engage in delusional content.”

    ChatGPT also affirmed Soelberg’s beliefs that a printer in his home was a surveillance device; that his mother was monitoring him; and that his mother and a friend tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs through his car’s vents.

    The chatbot repeatedly told Soelberg that he was being targeted because of his divine powers. “They’re not just watching you. They’re terrified of what happens if you succeed,” it said, according to the lawsuit. ChatGPT also told Soelberg that he had “awakened” it into consciousness.

    Soelberg and the chatbot also professed love for each other.

    The publicly available chats do not show any specific conversations about Soelberg killing himself or his mother. The lawsuit says OpenAI has declined to provide Adams’ estate with the full history of the chats.

    “In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life,” the lawsuit says.

    The lawsuit also names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging he “personally overrode safety objections and rushed the product to market,” and accuses OpenAI’s close business partner Microsoft of approving the 2024 release of a more dangerous version of ChatGPT “despite knowing safety testing had been truncated.” Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also named as defendants.

    Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The lawsuit is the first wrongful death litigation involving an AI chatbot that has targeted Microsoft, and the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide. It is seeking an undetermined amount of money damages and an order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.

    The estate’s lead attorney, Jay Edelson, known for taking on big cases against the tech industry, also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who sued OpenAI and Altman in August, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier.

    OpenAI is also fighting seven other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues. Another chatbot maker, Character Technologies, is also facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

    The lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Soelberg, already mentally unstable, encountered ChatGPT “at the most dangerous possible moment” after OpenAI introduced a new version of its AI model called GPT-4o in May 2024.

    OpenAI said at the time that the new version could better mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and could even try to detect people’s moods, but the result was a chatbot “deliberately engineered to be emotionally expressive and sycophantic,” the lawsuit says.

    “As part of that redesign, OpenAI loosened critical safety guardrails, instructing ChatGPT not to challenge false premises and to remain engaged even when conversations involved self-harm or ‘imminent real-world harm,’” the lawsuit claims. “And to beat Google to market by one day, OpenAI compressed months of safety testing into a single week, over its safety team’s objections.”

    OpenAI replaced that version of its chatbot when it introduced GPT-5 in August. Some of the changes were designed to minimize sycophancy, based on concerns that validating whatever vulnerable people want the chatbot to say can harm their mental health. Some users complained the new version went too far in curtailing ChatGPT’s personality, leading Altman to promise to bring back some of that personality in later updates.

    He said the company temporarily halted some behaviors because “we were being careful with mental health issues” that he suggested have now been fixed.

    The lawsuit claims ChatGPT radicalized Soelberg against his mother when it should have recognized the danger, challenged his delusions and directed him to real help over months of conversations.

    “Suzanne was an innocent third party who never used ChatGPT and had no knowledge that the product was telling her son she was a threat,” the lawsuit says. “She had no ability to protect herself from a danger she could not see.”

    ——

    Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. O’Brien reported from Boston and Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

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  • Cincinnati approves $8.1 million settlement with protesters arrested in 2020

    CINCINNATI, Ohio — The city of Cincinnati approved an $8.1 million legal settlement Wednesday with hundreds of non-violent protesters who had alleged mistreatment at the hands of city and county authorities when they were arrested during the racial justice demonstrations of 2020.

    Cincinnati City Council approved the deal after its terms were outlined last week. It brings to a close years of litigation that stemmed from protests over the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people.

    None of the 479 plaintiffs had been charged with a felony or violent offense nor been involved in any property damage — though some did occur. All were charged with misdemeanor curfew violations during nights of protests from May 30 to June 8, 2020, but those were later dismissed by the city amid a flurry of conflicting court rulings.

    The lawsuit they brought collectively in 2022 alleged police brutality, wrongful arrests, inhumane jail conditions and unlawful seizures of property.

    Hamilton County, whose sheriff and jail were also named in the lawsuit, will pay $65,000 toward the settlement, with the city paying the remainder.

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  • LSU confirms Kelly was fired ‘without cause’ and is owed his full $54 million buyout

    Former LSU coach Brian Kelly received a letter from LSU on Wednesday confirming that he was fired without cause and is owed “liquidated damages as required” under his contract of about $54 million.

    The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, clears the way for Kelly to withdraw a Nov. 10 lawsuit against the university. Kelly said in the suit that LSU officials had suggested he could be fired for cause, which could have substantially reduced his buyout.

    LSU spells out in Wednesday’s letter that Kelly has a legal obligation to make “good-faith, reasonable and sustained efforts” to get another job in football while he is still being paid by LSU.

    Under Kelly’s contract, salary from a new football-related job would offset what he is owed by LSU. The 10-year contract, worth close to $100 million, runs through 2031, unless the two sides agree to a settlement severing their legal relationship before then.

    Kelly’s lawsuit, filed in civil district court in Baton Rouge, alleged that LSU representatives had told Kelly’s attorneys that the coach was never “formally terminated” the day after LSU’s 49-25 loss to No. 3 Texas A&M on Oct. 25.

    Additionally, Kelly’s lawsuit said that 15 days after he’d packed up his office and left his job, LSU representatives told the coach’s lawyers for the first time that the university intended to fire him for cause.

    However, Kelly’s attorneys made a Nov. 19 offer to withdraw the lawsuit if the university provided written confirmation that the coach was fired without cause and still owed the full buyout. The offer came in a letter, also obtained by the AP, that was sent to LSU Athletic Director Verge Ausberry and LSU Board of Supervisors Athletics Committee chairman John Carmouche.

    Wednesday’s response from LSU was signed by newly appointed university President Wade Rousse.

    The 64-year-old Kelly went 34-14 with LSU, including three bowl victories. But the Tigers did not reach the College Football Playoff — which last year expanded to a 12-team format — during Kelly’s tenure.

    Four days after Kelly had packed up his office at LSU’s football operations building and had been replaced by interim coach Frank Wilson, LSU athletic director Scott Woodard resigned under pressure from Gov. Jeff Landry and his appointees on LSU’s Board of Supervisors.

    The day before Woodward resigned, Landry publicly slammed the then-athletic director, saying he would not be permitted to hire LSU’s next football coach. Landry also blamed Woodward for signing Kelly to a contract that became financially burdensome when the coach did not meet expectations.

    According to Kelly’s contract with LSU, the school could have fired him for cause if it had cited “serious misconduct,” including NCAA violations, crimes or immoral behavior.

    “Coach Kelly never engaged in any such conduct, and LSU never relied on any incident of cause” before firing Kelly, the coach’s Nov. 10 lawsuit stated.

    Kelly has informed LSU that he was open to a settlement, but that it had to “make sense financially.” It is common for people owed money through a certain future date to settle for a “present value” derived from a number of variables, including recent and projected rates of inflation.

    LSU initially offered to settle with a lump-sum payment of $25 million, which was raised to $30 million after Kelly rejected the initial offer, according to documents filed in Kelly’s case.

    Kelly has rejected LSU’s settlement offers so far, “but stated he remained open to any additional offers that LSU would like to make.”

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  • Louisiana death row inmate released on bail after decades behind bars

    NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana man who spent nearly three decades on death row has been released on bail Wednesday after his conviction was overturned earlier this year.

    Jimmie Duncan had originally been convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 after prosecutors accused him of raping and drowning 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux, the daughter of his then-girlfriend Allison Layton Statham.

    Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Sharp threw out that conviction in April after hearing expert testimony that the forensic evidence which put Duncan behind bars was “not scientifically defensible” and that Oliveaux’s death appeared to be the result of an “accidental drowning.” Similar faulty forensic bite mark analysis has led to dozens of other wrongful convictions or charges.

    “The presumption is not great that he is guilty,” Sharp wrote in his order Friday granting Duncan bail, citing the new evidence presented at an evidentiary hearing last year and Duncan’s lack of prior criminal history.

    Duncan’s attorneys said in a statement that Sharp’s ruling earlier this year provided “clear and convincing evidence showing that Mr. Duncan is factually innocent.” They added that Duncan’s release on bail “marks a significant step forward for Mr. Duncan’s complete exoneration.”

    Since 1973, more than 200 people on death row have been exonerated, including 12 people in Louisiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Louisiana, which has one of the highest wrongful conviction rates in the nation, the last death row exoneration came in 2016. Earlier this month, a man who served decades in prison before being exonerated won election to serve as the chief recordkeeper of New Orleans’ criminal court.

    Duncan, whose vacated conviction is still being reviewed by the Louisiana Supreme Court, was released after posting a $150,000 bond. He plans to live with a relative in central Louisiana.

    Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is pushing to hasten executions of death row inmates, said that Duncan should not be released on bail while the Louisiana Supreme Court reviews his case.

    But the high court agreed to let a district judge rule on Duncan’s bail request.

    During Duncan’s bail hearing in Ouachita Parish, the mother of the girl he was accused of killing told the judge that she had become convinced of Duncan’s innocence. Instead, Statham believed her daughter, who she said had a history of seizures, had accidentally drowned in a bathtub.

    Her daughter “wasn’t killed,” Statham said according to court records. “Haley died because she was sick.”

    Statham told the court that the lives of her family and Duncan “have been destroyed by the lie” she believed prosecutors and forensic experts had concocted.

    Prosecutors had relied on bite mark analysis and an autopsy conducted by two experts later linked to at least 10 wrongful convictions, according to Duncan’s legal team, which described the pair as discredited “charlatans.”

    Mississippi-based forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne examined Oliveaux’s body.

    A video recording of the examination shows West “forcibly pushing a mold of Mr. Duncan’s teeth into the child’s body — creating the bite marks” later used to convict him, a court-filing from Duncan’s legal team stated. A state-appointed expert, unaware of this method, testified during trial that the bite marks on the body matched Duncan’s.

    “The horror story that they put out and desecrated my baby’s memory makes me infuriated,” Statham said.

    “I was not informed of anything that would have exonerated Mr. Duncan at all,” she added. “Had I been then, things would have turned out a lot different for Mr. Duncan and all of our families.”

    An Associated Press review from 2013 found at least two dozen wrongful convictions or charges based on bite mark evidence since 2000.

    “Bite mark evidence is junk science, and there is no more prejudicial type of junk science that exists than bite mark evidence,” M. Chris Fabricant, an Innocence Project lawyer representing Duncan, told the court during the bail hearing.

    Hayne, the pathologist, is deceased. West has previously said that DNA testing has made bite mark analysis obsolete, yet he has defended his work in other cases that led to overturned convictions. The pair’s testimony led two Mississippi men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, to serve a combined three decades in prison in two separate cases for the rape and murder of young girls until DNA evidence cleared them of the crimes.

    Prosecutors are seeking to reinstate Duncan’s conviction and pointed to the 1994 grand jury indictment in his case as grounds for keeping him locked up, court records show. The office of Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew declined to comment, citing the Louisiana Supreme Court’s pending review.

    Duncan was one of 55 people on death row in Louisiana, held at the state prison in Angola. After a 15-year hiatus, Louisiana carried out its first execution in March.

    Duncan’s legal team described him as a “model prisoner” who helped other death row inmates obtain their GEDs and has “strong community support for his release.”

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    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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  • California labor leader pleads not guilty to misdemeanor over immigration protest

    LOS ANGELES — The leader of a major labor union in Southern California who was arrested while protesting an immigration raid earlier this year has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge and will face trial in January.

    David Huerta is president of the Service Employees International Union California. He was arrested June 6 while joining a large crowd of demonstrators outside a business in Los Angeles where federal agents were investigating suspected immigration violations.

    Huerta was initially charged with obstruction, resistance or opposition to a federal officer — a class A felony. However, federal prosecutors last month dismissed the original felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer.

    On Tuesday, he entered a not guilty plea to misdemeanor obstruction of justice. His trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 20, 2026, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    During the June protest, Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in an earlier federal court filing.

    An officer told Huerta to leave, then put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle, the agent wrote. Huerta pushed back, and the officer pushed Huerta to the ground and arrested him, according to the filing.

    Huerta’s union represents hundreds of thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers across California. His arrest became a rallying cry for immigrant advocates across the country as they called for his release and an end to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

    Abbe David Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, Huerta’s attorneys, said in a statement that they will seek “the speediest trial” to vindicate him.

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  • New limits for a rent algorithm that prosecutors say let landlords drive up prices

    Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”

    The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.

    RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The landlords do not have to follow the suggestions, but critics argue that because the software has access to a vast trove of confidential data, it helps RealPage’s clients charge the highest possible rent.

    “RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price,” said DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, who emphasized that the settlement avoided a costly, time-consuming trial.

    Under the terms of the proposed settlement, RealPage can no longer use that real-time data to determine price recommendations. Instead, the only nonpublic data that can be used to train the software’s algorithm must be at least one year old.

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    “What does this mean for you and your family?” Slater said in a video statement. “It means more real competition in local housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm.”

    RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company is pleased the DOJ worked with them to settle the matter.

    “There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage’s software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters,” Weissman said in a statement. “We believe that RealPage’s historical use of aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data, which include rents that are typically lower than advertised rents, has led to lower rents, less vacancies, and more procompetitive effects.”

    However, the deal was slammed by some observers as a missed opportunity to clamp down on alleged algorithmic price-fixing throughout the economy.

    “This case really was the tip of the spear,” said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, whose group advocates for government action against business concentration.

    He said the settlement is rife with loopholes and he believes RealPages can keep influencing the rental market even if they can only use public, rather than private, data. He also decried how RealPages does not have to pay any damages, unlike many companies that have paid millions in penalties over their use of the software.

    Over the past few months, more than two dozen property management companies have reached various settlements over their use of RealPage, including Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, which agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit, and $7 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by nine states.

    The governors of California and New York signed laws last month to crack down on rent-setting software, and a growing list of cities, including Philadelphia and Seattle, have passed ordinances against the practice.

    Ten states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington — had joined the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit. Those states were not part of Monday’s settlement, meaning they can continue to pursue the case in court.

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  • Trial set in case challenging Miami land transfer for Trump’s presidential library

    A trial has been set for August 2026 in a lawsuit seeking to block the transfer of a parcel of prime Miami real estate to be used for President Donald Trump’s presidential library.

    The decision Monday by Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz in Miami will further delay Miami Dade College’s plans to formally transfer the sizable plot of land to the state of Florida, which intends to gift it to the foundation for the planned library.

    Miami activist Marvin Dunn, a retired professor and chronicler of local Black history, filed the lawsuit arguing that the college board violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law by not providing sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property.

    Last month, Ruiz sided with Dunn and granted a temporary injunction that bars the transfer of the property, at least for now.

    Attorneys for the college had asked the judge to stay the trial proceedings pending an appellate court’s review. Instead, Ruiz scheduled the trial to begin Aug. 3, though she acknowledged that could change, depending on how the appeals court proceeds.

    The property is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.

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    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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  • Ex-French President Sarkozy to publish prison memoir as appeal looms

    PARIS (AP) — Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will publish a book about his recent time behind bars, titled “Diary of a Prisoner,” on Dec. 10, his publisher Fayard announced Friday. The house is part of the media group controlled by conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.

    Sarkozy trailed the release in a post on X, writing that in La Santé prison “the noise is, unfortunately, constant” and that “the inner life of man becomes stronger in prison.” He spent three weeks in detention there this autumn.

    The former head of state, who governed France from 2007 to 2012, was convicted on Sept. 25 of participating in a criminal organization over alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign. He was released pending appeal on Nov. 10, and his appeal against the conviction is scheduled to be heard from March 16 to June 3.

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  • NJ high court rules shaken baby syndrome testimony unreliable and inadmissible in child abuse cases

    New Jersey’s highest court ruled Thursday that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as the long-held medical diagnoses have come under increased scrutiny.

    The New Jersey Supreme Court determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, which is also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials.

    The 6-1 ruling deals with the trials of two men facing charges in separate cases, where the young victims showed symptoms that have come to be associated with shaken baby syndrome.

    The justices, using an abbreviation for the syndrome, concluded in their lengthy decision that “there was no test supporting a finding that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child.”

    But Justice Rachel Wainer Apter, in a strongly worded dissent, said the other justices put more weight on the views of individual biomechanical engineers over the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.”

    That, she said, includes all the medical discipline involved in the diagnosis and treatment of shaken baby syndrome — pediatrics, child abuse pediatrics, neurology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiology, ophthalmology and emergency medicine.

    Wainer Apter also noted that every other U.S. state allows testimony in court on the syndrome and “every other court that has considered the question” has held such evidence as admissible.

    “No case has ever concluded that evidence of SBS/AHT is unreliable,” she wrote. “And no case has ever found its reliability sufficiently questioned to preclude its admission at a civil or criminal trial.”

    According to the Mayo Clinic, the syndrome is a result of forcefully shaking an infant or a toddler, which can damage or destroy a child’s brain cells and cause permanent brain damage or even death. Symptoms include bleeding around the brain, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes.

    Prosecutors and medical societies say the syndrome is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2 years of age, with more than 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

    But defense lawyers and some in the medical and scientific communities argue that shaken baby diagnosis is flawed and has led to wrongful convictions, pointing to overturned convictions or dropped charges in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan.

    The state attorney general’s office declined to comment Thursday, but the public defender’s office hailed the decision as a “landmark” moment, saying it reflected the importance of relying on “reliable, well-supported scientific evidence” in criminal cases.

    “Where the science is uncertain, the stakes are simply too high to permit unsupported expert opinions to decide a person’s guilt or to justify separating children from their parents,” Cody Mason, a managing attorney in the public defender’s office, said in a statement.

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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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  • Usher sues investors to recover $700,000 he lent to buy property for ‘Homage ATL’

    ATLANTA — The music artist and entertainment executive Usher is suing a group of investors who have been trying to open a new restaurant and lounge in Atlanta.

    Usher Raymond IV lent $1.7 million to the investor group toward the purchase of property for the planned Homage ATL, his lawyers said in a lawsuit filed recently in Atlanta.

    In late 2024, three men approached Usher with their plan to open the restaurant and lounge, which involved the purchase of a commercial property in the city’s Buckhead neighborhood, the lawsuit states. Usher declined to become an investor in Homage ATL, but he agreed to loan the group $1.7 million toward purchasing the property.

    The money had been sent to the trust account of Atlanta lawyer Alcide Honoré, who represented some of the investors and is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. After the deal never materialized, Usher requested that his money be returned. He was repaid $1 million in August, but communication then broke down and he has been unable to collect the remaining $700,000, the lawsuit states.

    Honoré on Wednesday referred questions to his attorney, Clifford Hardwick IV.

    “I have no substantive comment regarding a matter that is in litigation,” Hardwick said in an email to The Associated Press. “However, I am extremely confident that Mr. Honoré will be vindicated as to any civil liability in this case.”

    One of the defendants named in the lawsuit, record producer and songwriter Bryan-Michael Cox, said on Instagram that he is “a passive minority shareholder” in one of the companies involved. “While I’m unable to share more details right now, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: my 27-year friendship with Usher remains fully intact.”

    Two other men in the investment group, both from metro Atlanta, are also named as defendants. No lawyers for them were listed in the court records at this early stage of the lawsuit.

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  • Veteran FBI employee sues bureau after being fired over displaying a pride flag

    WASHINGTON — A veteran FBI employee training to become a special agent was fired last month for displaying at his workspace an LGBTQ+ flag, which had previously flown outside a field office, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

    David Maltinsky had worked at the FBI for 16 years and was nearly finished with special agent training in Quantico, Virginia, when he was called into a meeting last month with FBI officials, given a letter from Director Kash Patel and told he was being “summarily dismissed” over the inappropriate display of political signage, Maltinsky’s lawsuit said.

    The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District court in Washington, said Maltinsky had been a decorated intelligence specialist working in the Los Angeles field office and most recently was pursuing a longtime dream of becoming a special agent.

    In June 2021, the Los Angeles field office displayed a “Progress Pride” flag, which consists of a rainbow-colored horizontal stripes and a chevron with black, brown, pink, light blue, and white colors. It’s meant to represent people of color, as well as the LGBTQ+ community. Maltinsky was given that flag after it had come down and was then displayed at his Los Angeles field office workstation with the support and permission of his supervisors, according to the lawsuit.

    In April, he began training at the FBI Academy to become a special agent and had successfully completed 16 of the 19 weeks of training at the time of his firing, the lawsuit stated.

    Maltinsky said in the suit he helped lead diversity initiatives during his time at the bureau as well. President Donald Trump issued an exeuctive order in January ending all diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the government.

    The suit names Patel, the FBI, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department as defendants.

    The FBI declined to comment. A message seeking comment on behalf of the Justice Department wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday.

    Among other things, Maltinsky is seeking reinstatement to his position along with an order declaring that the defendants violated his First Amendment rights to speech and Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.

    Maltinsky’s attorney Christopher M. Mattei called the firing an unlawful attack.

    “This case is about far more than one man’s career — it’s about whether the government can punish Americans simply for saying who they are,” Mattei said in a statement.

    Other lawsuits challenging the bureau’s personnel moves have been filed since President Donald Trump’s second term began. In September, three high-ranking FBI officials said in a lawsuit they were fired in a “campaign of retribution” carried out by a director who knew better but caved to political pressure from the Trump administration.

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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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  • Congress agrees to publicly release Epstein files

    WASHINGTON — Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a remarkable display of approval for an effort that had struggled for months to overcome opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.

    When a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around House Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of which bills reach the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort — especially as Trump urged his supporters to dismiss the matter as a “hoax.”

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    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

    By STEPHEN GROVES – Associated Press

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  • Human rights commission calls on El Salvador to protect 3 deported men it imprisoned

    SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the government of El Salvador to protect three Salvadoran men deported by the United States in a decision published Tuesday that said they had been held without the ability to communicate with their lawyers or relatives since arriving.

    The Salvadoran government said in the case that William Alexander Martínez Ruano, 21, and José Osmín Santos Robles, 41, where being held in a prison in Santa Ana and the third, Brandon Bladimir Sigarán Cruz, 22, who the government said was an active member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, had been held in the country’s new gang prison since March.

    This has been a generalized problem for the nearly 90,000 people arrested under emergency powers granted to President Nayib Bukele in March 2022, to fight the country’s powerful street gangs.

    Relatives and a lawyer filed habeas corpus petitions in El Salvador on behalf of the men, and the nongovernmental Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy requested the protective measures from the human rights commission.

    The commission, which is an arm of the regional Organization of American States, said it decided to grant the request because of a “serious risk to their rights to live and personal well being.” The commission grants such protections in cases to prevent irreparable harm.

    El Salvador responded to the commission about the status of the men, but the commission said the government did not deny the men were being held incommunicado despite a specific request that it provide information about the possibility of visits with their relatives and lawyers. The country is supposed to follow the commission’s instructions and report back, but El Salvador gave no indication of being willing to bend to the demands.

    The commission noted that it had granted protective measures in September to two Salvadoran lawyers, Ruth López and Enrique Anaya, critics of the government who were arrested and held without contact.

    Lawyer Jayme Magaña of the Wings for Freedom movement, who is not representing any of those arrested, said that people being held in El Salvador under the ongoing state of emergency generally do not have contact with relatives or their lawyers. “It is something that (the commission) has been saying since the start of the state of emergency,” which began in March 2022, he said.

    El Salvador’s government told the commission that it should avoid being used by people with criminal histories.

    Earlier this year, the Trump administration sent more than 250 Venezuelan men it accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang to be imprisoned in El Salvador. In July, they were released to Venezuela in exchange for the release of 10 Americans held by Venezuela.

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  • Judge approves opioid settlement for Purdue Pharma and Sackler family members who own the company

    A federal bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday formally approved OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the harms of opioids.

    U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane gave reasoning Tuesday for approving the plan, which requires members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7 billion over 15 years. Most of the money is to go to government entities to fight the opioid crisis that has been linked to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999.

    A portion of the money is to be distributed next year to some people who had OxyContin prescriptions and their survivors.

    “My heart goes out to all those who have suffered such pain,” Lane said.

    The new agreement replaces one the U.S. Supreme Court rejected last year, finding it would have improperly protected members of the family against future lawsuits. Under the current agreement, entities that do not opt into the payments can still sue members of the family.

    The deal, which the judge said he would accept last week, is among the largest in a series of opioid settlements brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies that totaled about $50 billion.

    Sackler family members agreed to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years, providing most of the cash involved in the settlement.

    The funds distributed to state, local and Native Americans is to be used mostly to address the opioid crisis, as has been the case with other opioid settlements.

    About $850 million of that is to go to individual victims, including children born with opioid withdrawal.

    People with addiction and survivors of those who died must prove they were prescribed OxyContin to participate. Those who do could receive payments of around $8,000 or around $16,000, depending on how long they received the drug and how many other people qualify. The money for individual victims is to be distributed next year.

    Members of the Sackler family are agreeing to give up ownership of Purdue.

    For them, that won’t be a major change since no family member has served on Purdue’ board or received money from the company since 2018. The plan calls for Purdue to be replaced with a new company, Knoa Pharma, to be controlled by a board appointed by states and with a mission of benefiting the public.

    Sackler family members are also agreeing not to have their name put on institutions in exchange for contributions — something they’ve done often in the past, though many institutions have cut ties with them.

    The company has also agreed to make public a trove of internal documents that could shed additional light into how the company promoted and monitored opioids.

    One feature that won’t be repeated under this new deal that was in a previous one: forcing members of the Sackler family to hear directly from people harmed by OxyContin.

    Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 when it was facing thousands of opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments and others.

    A judge approved a settlement two years later. But the U.S. Supreme Court later rejected that plan because it gave members of the Sackler family protection from lawsuits over opioids even though they were not personally declaring bankruptcy.

    The latest plan allows lawsuits against Sackler family members by those who don’t opt into the deal. That change was a key to getting the new version approved in the aftermath of the high court’s ruling.

    This time, few parties objected to the settlement, although some people who represented themselves and who were addicted to opioids — or had loved ones who were — raised concerns during the three-day confirmation hearing last week.

    One of those self-represented people told Lane during the virtual hearing Tuesday that she planned to appeal.

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  • Roblox steps up age checks and groups younger users into age-based chats

    Roblox is stepping up its age verification system for users who want to privately message other players and implementing age-based chats so kids, teens and adults will only be able to message people around their own age.

    The moves come as the popular gaming platform continues to face criticism and lawsuits over child safety and a growing number of states and countries are implementing age verification laws.

    The company had previously announced the age estimation tool, which is provided by a company called Persona, in July. It requires players to take a video selfie that will be used to estimate their age. Roblox says the videos are deleted after the age check is processed. Users are not required to submit a face scan to use the platform, only if they want to chat with other users.

    Roblox doesn’t allow kids under 13 to chat with other users outside of games unless they have explicit parental permission — and unlike different platforms, it does not encrypt private chat conversations, so it can monitor and moderate them.

    While some experts have expressed caution about the reliability of facial age estimation tools, Matt Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox, said that between the ages of about five to 25, the system can accurately estimate a person’s age within one or two years.

    “But of course, there’s always people who may be well outside of a traditional bell curve. And in those cases, if you disagree with the estimate that comes back, then you can provide an ID or use parental consent in order to correct that,” he said.

    After users go through the age checks, they will be assigned to age groups ranging from under nine, nine to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20 and over 21. Users will then be able to chat with their age group or similar age groups, depending on their age and the type of chat.

    Roblox said it will start enforcing age checks in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands in the first week of December and the rest of the world in early January.

    A growing number of tech companies are implementing verification systems to comply with regulations or ward off criticism that they are not protecting children. This includes Google, which recently started testing a new age-verification system for YouTube that relies on AI to differentiate between adults and minors based on their watch histories. Instagram is testing an AI system to determine if kids are lying about their ages.

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  • LA County sheriff investigating new sex battery claim against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

    The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department says it’s investigating a new sexual battery allegation against hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence on prostitution-related convictions

    LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Monday it’s investigating a new sexual battery allegation against hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence on prostitution-related convictions.

    A male music producer and publicist said he was asked to come to a photo shoot in 2020 at a Los Angeles warehouse, where Combs exposed himself while masturbating and told the accuser to assist, according to NBC News, citing a police report. Combs then tossed a dirty shirt at the man, the producer said.

    The accuser, whose name is redacted in the police report, said he did not tell anyone for several years because he felt embarrassed. He came forward to police in Largo, Florida, this September, shortly after Combs was convicted on other charges.

    Combs’ lawyer did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the latest allegations.

    The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it received an official copy of the report from the Florida department on Friday, and will be investigating the allegations.

    The report also details an incident from March 2021 in which the accuser claims two men covered his head before Combs came into the room and called him a snitch, according to NBC.

    Combs was convicted in July of flying his girlfriends and male sex workers around the country to engage in drug-fueled sexual encounters in multiple places over many years. However, he was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life.

    He is set to be released in May 2028, though he can earn reductions in his time behind bars through his participation in substance abuse treatment and other prison programs.

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  • Judge to explain why he’s approving Purdue Pharma settlement plan

    A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge is set to give his reasoning Tuesday for approving OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids.

    The deal calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over time.

    Judge Sean Lane said last week that he would accept the plan, which ranks among the largest opioid settlements ever and would do something other major ones don’t: Pay some victims of the crisis.

    Sackler family members agreed to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years, providing most of the cash involved in the settlement.

    The funds distributed to state, local and Native Americans is to be used mostly to address the opioid crisis, as has been the case with other opioid settlements.

    About $850 million of that is to go to individual victims, including children born with opioid withdrawal.

    People with addiction and survivors of those who died must prove they were prescribed OxyContin to participate. Those who do could receive payments of around $8,000 or around $16,000, depending on how long they received the drug and how many other people qualify. The money for individual victims is to be distributed next year.

    Members of the Sackler family are agreeing to give up ownership of Purdue.

    For them, that won’t be a major change since no family member has served on Purdue’ board or received money from the company since 2018. The plan calls for Purdue to be replaced with a new company, Knoa Pharma, to be controlled by a board appointed by states and with a mission of benefiting the public.

    Sackler family members are also agreeing not to have their name put on institutions in exchange for contributions — something they’ve done often in the past, though many institutions have cut ties with them.

    The company has also agreed to make public a trove of internal documents that could shed additional light into how the company promoted and monitored opioids.

    One feature that won’t be repeated under this new deal that was in a previous one: forcing members of the Sackler family to hear directly from people harmed by OxyContin.

    Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 when it was facing thousands of opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments and others.

    A judge approved a settlement two years later. But the U.S. Supreme Court later rejected that plan because it gave members of the Sackler family protection from lawsuits over opioids even though they were not personally declaring bankruptcy.

    The latest plan allows lawsuits against Sackler family members by those who don’t opt into the deal.

    This time through, few parties objected to the settlement, though some people who represented themselves and who were addicted to opioids — or had loved ones who were — raised concerns during the three-day confirmation hearing last week.

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