ReportWire

Tag: Trials

  • Weinstein lawyer presses woman over absence of rape evidence

    Weinstein lawyer presses woman over absence of rape evidence

    LOS ANGELES — An attorney for Harvey Weinstein peppered a woman with questions Wednesday on the lack of forensic evidence that the movie magnate raped her in 2013, or that he was even at the hotel where she says the assault occurred.

    “You don’t have any physical evidence to present to this jury that any of this happened, do you?” lawyer Alan Jackson asked pointedly during cross-examination.

    When the judge at the 70-year-old Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial sustained an objection to the question because it called for speculation, Jackson got more specific:

    “Any photos?”

    “No,” the woman said quietly.

    “Any video?”

    “No,” she replied, then added, “Do you think somebody after rape makes a video?”

    She began crying softly as she answered “no” to a series of similar questions about whether she had any documentation of bruises, scrapes, cuts, or handprints on her face from Weinstein holding her down, or had been given a sexual assault examination.

    “Do you have any physical evidence that you were even with Mr. Weinstein?” Jackson asked.

    Her crying grew louder as she answered, “I had his jacket, but I gave it away.”

    The woman, a model and actor who was working in Rome, is the the first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify at the trial and spent portions of three days on the witness stand.

    Prosecutors have presented photographs and other evidence that both Weinstein and the woman were at the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, which she had come to California to attend in February 2013.

    But they have not yet produced anything that puts Weinstein at her hotel on the night she says he forced her to perform oral sex on her bed then raped her in her bathroom.

    The woman did not go to police until October of 2017, when women’s stories about Weinstein made him the central figure in the #MeToo movement.

    She maintains that Weinstein left her jacket in the room and she gave it to hotel staff, but no lost-and-found records have been discovered to demonstrate it.

    Asked whether the explosion of media stories around Weinstein prompted her to go to police, the woman repeated earlier testimony that she had already decided to file a report earlier in the year when she urged her teenage daughter to go to authorities over sexual harassment she’d been subjected to at school.

    The woman is going only by “Jane Doe 1” in court. Her age and birthplace have also been kept out of court proceedings, though she has said her first language was Russian and she was living at the time with her three children in Italy, where she had married into considerable wealth.

    The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

    Weinstein’s defense tried to poke holes in her testimony and press on inconsistencies in previous accounts she gave to police, to prosecutors, to a grand jury, and in the first two days of her trial testimony.

    In graphic questioning, Jackson dwelt on the woman’s description in her initial interview with police of oral sex she said Weinstein forced her to perform. Jackson suggested that Weinstein’s unusual genital features after a surgery he had years earlier made the acts she described impossible.

    The same acts went unmentioned during her 2020 grand jury testimony, and Jackson asked her whether she had learned more about Weinstein’s sex organs from prosecutors and thus changed her story.

    “Never!” she said adamantly.

    Under questioning later from the prosecution, she described “very bad scarring tissue” around Weinstein’s genitals.

    It was the first time jurors heard from a witness about Weinstein’s anatomy, which arose often in his 2020 trial in New York, where he was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

    The woman told prosecutor Paul Thompson that she had been having panic attacks and had hardly slept or eaten since her testimony began Monday afternoon. It finally ended late Wednesday.

    Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of rape and sexual assault involving five women.

    When prosecutors gave their opening statement Monday, however, they excluded one of the women, putting into question whether the four counts involving her will be addressed during the trial.

    The district attorney’s office has declined to explain when asked about the issue.

    Weinstein’s attorneys said no charges have been dropped.

    ———

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

    ———

    For more on the Harvey Weinstein trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein

    Source link

  • Man who filmed shooting response acquitted of obstruction

    Man who filmed shooting response acquitted of obstruction

    BOULDER, Colo. — Dean Schiller had just left a Colorado supermarket after shopping last year when he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down. The independent, part-time journalist, began livestreaming on his YouTube channel, before officers arrived, and later refused dozens of police orders to move away.

    He would later learn that a friend who worked at the store was one of the 10 people killed inside the King Soopers store in the college town of Boulder. The suspect, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 23, is accused of killing customers, workers and a police officer who rushed into the store to try to stop the March 22, 2021, attack.

    On Wednesday, jurors acquitted Schiller of obstructing police, a misdemeanor, after Schiller’s lawyers argued that being a temporary distraction does not equate to keeping police from doing their job.

    In closing arguments, defense attorney Tiffany Drahota told jurors the case was not about being polite to the police, or about the courage shown by police that day or honoring the lives of those lost in the shooting.

    “You can mourn the victims of the King Soopers shooting and still find Dean Schiller not guilty,” she said.

    Prosecutors argued Schiller ignored 60 commands to move farther away from the store over 1 1/2 hours, becoming a distraction from police efforts to save lives and secure the crime scene. Deputy District Attorney Myra Gottl said his priority was to keep streaming to gain more viewers on his channel.

    “It was a calculated decision to get attention and he liked it,” she said in closing arguments at the trial that had opened Tuesday.

    Clips of the video shown in during Schiller’s trial showed several officers telling him to move back for his safety and for officers’ safety. At one point he does get behind the police tape eventually strung around the store but refuses to cross to the other side of the street. He also curses at some officers and flips them off when he tries to gain access from a different direction.

    While Drahota pointed out that Schiller was not arrested, Deputy District Attorney Ryan Day said that a commander had testified that police did not have time to do that and keep him secure while responding to the shooting.

    After the verdict, Schiller, who has often recorded police activity in Boulder, said he felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest. He said his prosecution made it hard to fully mourn the loss of his friend, Denny Stong, who worked at the store and who lagged behind him in leaving because he knew so many people there. He said he was responding to a need from the public in livestreaming the shooting response.

    “It wasn’t that I was creating something. It was real news and I needed to show people as long as they wanted to watch,” said Schiller. He added that his heart has not been into filming as much since losing Stong and being prosecuted.

    In a statement, District Attorney Michael Dougherty said that police responded to “an incredibly challenging and difficult crime scene” and said his office prosecutes those who obstruct and interfere with law enforcement’s responses to crises.

    Schiller’s case is part of a larger judicial reckoning taking place around the United States about how far people can go film police while officers work.

    In July, a Denver-based U.S. appeals court that oversees four Western and two Midwestern states became the seventh appeals court to rule that people have a right protected by the First Amendment to film police while they work. In September, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a new Arizona law restricting how the public and journalists can film police.

    The prosecution of the man charged in the supermarket shooting has been on hold since December after a judge ruled that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. Alissa is being treated at a state mental hospital. During a hearing last week, Judge Ingrid Bakke said there was still a substantial probability he could be treated to be made competent in the “foreseeable future,” an outlook she first shared in March.

    Source link

  • Prosecutor: Women’s stories show Weinstein’s predatory power

    Prosecutor: Women’s stories show Weinstein’s predatory power

    LOS ANGELES — A prosecutor at Harvey Weinstein‘s sexual assault trial told jurors Tuesday that the accusers who will testify will tell uncannily similar stories of themselves as young aspiring women who were cornered in hotel rooms by a man who at the time was the definition of Hollywood power.

    “Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said during his opening statement at Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial.

    The 70-year-old former movie mogul, already serving a 23-year sentence in New York, is charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault in California.

    The defense countered in its opening statement that the incidents either did not happen or were consensual sex that the women redefined in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

    Weinstein, prosecutor Thompson said, lorded his status as “the most powerful man in Hollywood” over them, talking about the female A-list actors whose careers he had made before growing aggressive.

    Thompson played a video presentation with composite photos of the women who will testify and quotes from prior testimonials. Most were aspiring actors. One was an aspiring screenwriter who thought she was going to pitch him a script.

    All will testify that Weinstein ignored clear signs that they did not consent, the prosecutor said, including “their shaking bodies, their crying, their backing away from him, their saying ‘no.’” Four women whom Weinstein is not charged with assaulting in the case will also testify about what he did to them to demonstrate his propensity for such acts, Thompson said.

    Weinstein attorney Mark Werksman told jurors that what Weinstein did with the women was considered acceptable, “transactional” behavior in Hollywood, where young women were seeking roles and other advantages by having sex with the powerful movie magnate.

    “You’ll learn that in Hollywood, sex was a commodity,” Werksman said.

    The accusers Weinstein is charged with assaulting are expected to be identified only as Jane Doe in court, but they include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an actor and documentary filmmaker who is married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Siebel Newsom had not yet met Newsom and was an aspiring actor in 2005 when, according to his indictment, Weinstein raped her at a Beverly Hills Hotel.

    Without using her name, both sides said she would testify. Werksman called her a very prominent citizen of California.”

    “She’s made herself a prominent victim in the #MeToo movement,” he added, “otherwise she’d be just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.”

    In a statement to The Associated Press, Elizabeth Fegen, who represents Siebel Newsom and two other Weinstein accusers, called the comments “despicable, desperate, dishonest.”

    “The defense is callously engaging in misogynistic name-calling and victim-shaming — but survivors will not be deterred,” she added.

    Werksman said Siebel Newsom and many other women in the case had contact, and even initiated dealings, with Weinstein in the years after the encounters, often referring to him affectionately.

    In an attempt to head off this strategy, Thompson told jurors that they would hear from a psychologist who will dispel rape myths. Key among them is the idea that a sexual assault victim would not have further contact with their assailant.

    Werksman said that Weinstein’s consensual acts were transformed in October 2017 with “the asteroid called the #MeToo movement.”

    “He became the smoldering, radioactive center of it,” Werksman said. “He is Hollywood’s Chernobyl.”

    He said that there was suddenly “a new word” for the women, “victim.”

    The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly. Siebel Newsom’s identity was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, and her attorney has told the AP and other news outlets that she is among the women Weinstein is charged with sexually assaulting who will testify during the trial.

    The first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify, a model and actor who was living and working in Italy when she met him at a film festival in Los Angeles in 2013, said she was stunned to find him knocking at the door of her hotel room after interacting with him briefly earlier that evening.

    She said she was more confused than frightened at first, so she let Weinstein in, but he grew more aggressive. She said he eventually forced her to perform oral sex.

    “I was crying, choking,” said the woman.

    She grew increasingly emotional on the stand until she was sobbing so much that she could no longer speak.

    With the court day near an end, Judge Lisa Lench called for a recess until Tuesday morning, when she’ll return to the stand.

    At the beginning of the day, Weinstein was wheeled into court wearing a suit, and climbed into a seat next to his attorneys.

    Confusion arose when Thompson during his opening statement made no mention of one accuser who had been set to testify as recently as last week. Weinstein was indicted on 11 counts overall, four of which involved the woman who was not mentioned. The district attorney’s office did not address why the woman was not referenced.

    Outside court, Weinstein’s attorney said no charges had been dismissed.

    “The people left her out of their presentation, so I didn’t mention her,” he said. “It’s a glaring absence, though, in their presentation.”

    ———

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

    ———

    For more on the Harvey Weinstein trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein

    Source link

  • 1 plea, 1 alternate approach avert trial over Floyd’s death

    1 plea, 1 alternate approach avert trial over Floyd’s death

    MINNEAPOLIS — Another long and painful trial over the killing of George Floyd was averted on Monday after one former Minneapolis police officer pleaded guilty to manslaughter and another agreed to take a more uncommon approach and let a judge decide his fate based on the evidence in the case.

    J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao had been set to stand trial Monday on charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter in the May 25, 2020, killing of Floyd, who died after another officer kneeled on the Black man’s neck, sparking worldwide protests as part of a broader reckoning over racial injustice.

    Instead, Kueng pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in exchange for the murder count being dismissed. And Thao, who previously told the judge that it “would be lying” to plead guilty, agreed to what’s called a stipulated evidence trial on the aiding and abetting manslaughter count. The two sides will work out agreed-upon evidence in his case, file written closing arguments and let Judge Peter Cahill decide guilt or innocence.

    If Thao is convicted, the murder count — which carries a presumptive sentence of 12 1/2 years in prison — will be dropped.

    The day’s developments pushed the long process of prosecuting the officers involved in Floyd’s death nearer an end. Derek Chauvin, the white officer who pinned Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as Floyd said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still, was convicted in state court in spring 2021 and later pleaded guilty to federal charges. A fourth officer, Thomas Lane, was convicted of federal charges in February and pleaded guilty to state charges in May.

    Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders back during the restraint, which was captured on video.

    Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted the state cases, said in a statement that he hopes Keung’s plea can bring comfort to Floyd’s family and “bring our communities closer to a new era of accountability and justice.” He also said his office is looking forward to a swift resolution of Thao’s case.

    Thao waived his right to a jury trial, as well as his right to cross-examine the state’s witnesses, call witnesses of his own and testify. But he preserves his right to appeal. His attorney, Bob Paule, told The Associated Press that this allows Thao to still litigate the issue of his guilt or innocence, and “it’s ultimately up to the judge to decide whether this really constitutes aiding and abetting. “

    Legal experts say the approach is uncommon in a case like this and could benefit both sides.

    “The stipulated bench trial allows him to maintain his innocence and to blame the court if he gets found guilty, rather than make any admissions himself,” said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. “On the state’s part, they also don’t want to go to trial. They are exhausted, their witnesses are exhausted. … They potentially get what they want, which is just a conviction and concurrent prison time, which is all they were looking for.”

    As part of his plea agreement, Kueng admitted that he held Floyd’s torso, that he knew from his experience and training that restraining a handcuffed person in a prone position created a substantial risk, and that the restraint of Floyd was unreasonable under the circumstances.

    Kueng agreed to a sentence of 3 1/2 years in prison, to be served at the same time as his federal sentence and in federal custody. He will be formally sentenced later and was being returned to federal custody — he has been at a prison in Ohio since early October.

    Ben Crump and other attorneys for Floyd’s family said in a statement that Kueng’s plea shows justice takes time, adding: “We must never forget the horror of what we all saw in that 9-minute video, and that there rightfully should be both accountability for all involved as well as deep lessons learned for police officers and communities everywhere.”

    In Thao’s case, both sides have until Nov. 17 to submit their materials to Cahill, who said he would decide within 90 days. If convicted of manslaughter, Thao would likely get about four years in prison, to be served at the same time as his federal sentence.

    Thao, who has been at the federal medical center in Lexington, Kentucky, since early October, said in court that he wished to remain in Hennepin County sheriff’s custody while his case proceeds, even though he would be in solitary confinement.

    Cahill said in court that Thao had recently suffered a concussion, but he did not say how. When asked if there had been an incident at the federal prison, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons said he could not comment, citing privacy, safety and security reasons.

    Someone familiar with the matter told the AP that Thao was attacked in prison on Friday but only suffered minor injuries. The person could not discuss details of the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

    John Baker, a lawyer and assistant professor of criminal justice studies at St. Cloud State University, said stipulated bench trials can be used when there are concerns about getting an unbiased jury and when a case hinges more on a legal question rather than evidentiary issues.

    Mike Brandt, a Minneapolis defense attorney who is also monitoring the case, said: “I think there was incentive for everyone to settle these cases. The state probably had a reality check; that murder charges were questionable. And if they can get (a conviction) without the time and trouble, and frankly without putting the witnesses through all the trauma again, there’s a huge benefit in that.”

    Chauvin was convicted of state murder and manslaughter charges last year and is serving 22 1/2 years in the state case. He also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years. He is serving the sentences concurrently at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona.

    Kueng, Lane and Thao were convicted of federal charges in February: All three were convicted of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care and Thao and Kueng were also convicted of failing to intervene to stop Chauvin during the killing.

    Lane, who is white, is serving his 2 1/2-year federal sentence at a facility in Colorado. He’s serving a three-year state sentence at the same time. Kueng, who is Black, was sentenced to three years on the federal counts; Thao, who is Hmong American, got a 3 1/2-year federal sentence.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd

    Source link

  • 2 Chinese officers charged in plot to obstruct Huawei probe

    2 Chinese officers charged in plot to obstruct Huawei probe

    WASHINGTON — Two men suspected of being Chinese intelligence officers have been charged with attempting to obstruct a U.S. criminal investigation and prosecution of Chinese tech giant Huawei, according to court documents unsealed Monday.

    The two men, Guochun He and Zheng Wang, are accused of trying to direct a person with the U.S. government whom they believed was a cooperator to provide confidential information about the Justice Department’s investigation, including about witnesses, trial evidence and potential new charges. One of the defendants paid about $61,000 for the information, the Justice Department said.

    The person the men reached out to began working as a double agent for the U.S government, and his contacts with the defendants were overseen by the FBI. At one point last year, prosecutors say, the unnamed person passed to the defendants a single-page document that appeared to be classified as secret and that contained information about a purported plan to charge and arrest Huawei executives in the U.S.

    But the document was actually prepared by the government for the purposes of the prosecution that was unsealed Monday, and the information in it was not accurate.

    The company is not named in the charging documents, though the references make clear that it’s Huawei, which was charged in 2019 with bank fraud and again the following year with new charges of racketeering conspiracy and a plot to steal trade secrets.

    Top FBI and Justice Department officials scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference to discuss a national security matter involving a foreign influence campaign. They did not say whether this case was what would be discussed.

    The Justice Department has issued arrest warrants for the pair, but it’s not clear whether they will ever be taken into custody.

    Spokespeople for Huawei and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

    Source link

  • Kansas undersheriff faces trial in fatal beanbag shooting

    Kansas undersheriff faces trial in fatal beanbag shooting

    BELLE PLAINE, Kan. — An undersheriff in rural Kansas faces a manslaughter trial Monday for fatally shooting an unarmed man with a homemade beanbag round out of his personal shotgun, a case that comes amid a national reckoning on police violence.

    Jury selection will start in the trial of Virgil Brewer, who was with the Barber County Sheriff’s Office at the time of the deadly encounter with Steven Myers in October 2017 outside a shed in Sun City, about 300 miles (555 km) from the Kansas City, Kansas.

    A civil lawsuit brought by Myers’ family against Brewer and then Barber County Sheriff Lonnie Small was settled in 2020 after county officials agreed to pay $3.5 million.

    Brewer’s criminal trial is expected to focus on whether his lack of knowledge and training with the less-lethal munitions amounted to reckless involuntary manslaughter.

    Defense attorney David Harger did not respond to messages seeking comment on the case. Brewer has been on unpaid leave since his 2018 arrest. He has been free pending trial.

    “The fact of the matter is that it is not going to be a good outcome for anybody, no matter whether or not he gets convicted,” Steven Myers’ widow, Kristina Myers, told The Associated Press Thursday. “Yes, it will be over in that sense, but this one bad decision has ruined the lives of so many people,”

    On the evening of Oct. 6, 2017, Brewer was carrying his personal weapon when he, along with the sheriff and a sheriff’s deputy, responded to a call about a man holding a rifle on a street after an altercation at a local bar.

    About five minutes before the fatal shooting, Sheriff Lonnie Small said, “A little luck and he’ll just pass out and die,” a remark captured on the sheriff’s body camera as they searched for Myers. They eventually found him hiding in a shed.

    Both Brewer and the deputy later told the Kansas Bureau of Investigation that they could clearly see that Myers was not armed when they confronted him outside the shed, according to the probable cause affidavit obtained by AP.

    Body camera footage reviewed by investigators shows Brewer repeatedly told Myers to “get on the ground” before shooting him, while Deputy Mark Suchy gave conflicting commands to “put your hands up now.” Seconds later, Brewer shot Myers with one round.

    Brewer told the Kansas Bureau of Investigation during an interview that he was in fear for his and the deputy’s lives when Myers continued to walk toward them, adding that he did not expect the beanbag round to penetrate Myers’ chest.

    The deputy’s body camera video showed Myers was not making any aggressive movement at the time Brewer shot him, according to Bureau Agent Brian Carroll in an affidavit in support of the criminal charge against the undersheriff.

    “Myers was never told he was under arrest, Myers was never warned that his failure to comply with commands would result in the use of the impending force,” Carroll wrote.

    Brewer then discharged his personal weapon at too close of a distance and shot Myers in the chest, a lethal force zone.

    Carroll’s affidavit contends that Brewer’s lack of knowledge and training regarding the proper use of less-lethal beanbag munitions recklessly caused Myer’s death. Proper training would have provided critical information about the proper distance to deploy the round and the proper target zone on a person.

    Such training would have also informed Brewer about past problems with rectangular-shaped bean bags like the one he used, Carroll wrote. Those are known to penetrate subjects shot with them, and their use has been discontinued for years. The rounds used today are rounded, balloon-shaped bean bags, according to the affidavit.

    Before coming to Kansas, Brewer worked in Texas where he was given the beanbag ammunition used the evening of Myers’ death. The affidavit revealed that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation interviewed Travis Martin, the deputy at the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office in Texas who gave Brewer the ammunition.

    Martin, who is expected to testify, told the agency that after speaking with the beanbag maker, that type of ammunition would no longer be carried and should not be fired on a person.

    Martin told investigators that he “thought he had talked with Brewer about not using the ammunition on a person,” according to the affidavit.

    Medical Examiner Timothy Gorrill is also expected to take the witness stand. His autopsy found the cause of death to be a penetrating shotgun bag wound to the trunk with the manner of death ruled a homicide.

    Kristina Myers said she has been subpoenaed, adding she hopes to be allowed to watch the trial after her testimony.

    “It doesn’t bring him back, but it does give us a sense of justice,” she said. “Everyone, no matter their occupation, should be held responsible for their actions. All actions have consequences.”

    Source link

  • Colorado businessman set for retrial over border wall fund

    Colorado businessman set for retrial over border wall fund

    NEW YORK — A Colorado businessman returns to New York Monday for a retrial on charges that he cheated thousands of donors to a $25 million online crowdfunding “We Build The Wall” campaign to construct a wall along the southern U.S. border.

    Timothy Shea’s first trial ended in early June without a verdict when jurors informed the judge that continuing to deliberate would leave them “further entrenched in our opposing views.”

    The case once included as a defendant Steve Bannon, a onetime top adviser to former President Donald Trump. Trump pardoned Bannon just before leaving office last year. Two others charged in the case pleaded guilty.

    The deadlocked jury came days after 11 jurors sent a note to the judge claiming one juror was politically biased against the government and in favor of Shea after labeling the rest of them as liberals and complaining the trial should have been held in a southern state.

    Jury selection in the second trial begins Monday morning in a Manhattan federal court.

    Last month, Judge Analisa Torres rejected Shea’s request to move the trial to Colorado on the grounds that “political polarization” in New York and publicity about his first trial made it impossible for him to get a fair result in Manhattan.

    She wrote that a jury note in his first trial might have indicated that differences in political opinions affected the jury’s deliberations, but he had not shown that those differences reflected a prejudice against him. And she said he had not explained why “political polarization” would be less pronounced in Colorado or anywhere else.

    Shea, of Castle Rock, Colorado, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and falsification of records charges lodged against him after questions arose over how donations were spent from a campaign that raised about $25 million for a wall. Only a few miles of wall were built.

    Prosecutors said Shea and other fund organizers promised investors that all donations would fund a wall, but Shea and the others eventually pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves.

    Shea’s lawyers said he acted honorably in the fundraising campaign and did not commit a crime.

    Shea owns an energy drink company, Winning Energy, whose cans have featured a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain “12 oz. of liberal tears.”

    Source link

  • Defense motions could sidetrack trial in Taos compound case

    Defense motions could sidetrack trial in Taos compound case

    TAOS, N.M. — A judge has ruled five defendants are competent to stand trial more than four years after they were found in a squalid New Mexico compound with 11 malnourished children and the body of a young boy.

    But multiple motions filed by defense lawyers last week may slow the proceedings again.

    Taos County sheriff’s officials raided the compound in remote northern New Mexico in August 2018, saying they also discovered a firing range and firearms.

    In a second search days later, authorities reported recovering the decomposing remains of a 3-year-old boy from an underground tunnel.

    Authorities said the child was the son of one of the five adult suspects and had been reported missing by his mother in Georgia.

    All five members of the extended family are charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and providing material support to terrorists.

    Their attorneys said the defendants would not be facing terrorism-related charges if they were not Muslim.

    Albuquerque TV station KOB reports that defense lawyers filed motions last week trying to get the judge to drop all kidnapping charges.

    The group says they’re immune to kidnapping statutes because the dead boy’s father had legal custody of him at the time.

    They also say the autopsy report lists the official cause of death as undetermined.

    In addition, defense attorneys are asking the judge to throw out any evidence the sheriff’s office and FBI obtained from the compound during execution of the search warrant.

    Source link

  • 2 cops head to trial for aiding George Floyd’s killing

    2 cops head to trial for aiding George Floyd’s killing

    MINNEAPOLIS — Two former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s death are heading to trial on state aiding and abetting counts, the third and likely final criminal proceeding in a killing that mobilized protesters worldwide against racial injustice in policing.

    J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao have already been convicted of federal counts for violating Floyd’s civil rights and begun serving those sentences. Many witnesses expected to testify at their state trial have already done so at both their federal trial and at the state trial against their former colleague, Derek Chauvin.

    While much of the evidence in this proceeding will look similar, there will be some key differences.

    Here are a few things to know as jury selection gets underway Monday:

    WHAT IS THIS TRIAL ABOUT?

    Kueng, Thao and Thomas Lane were working with Chauvin on May 25, 2020, when Chauvin, who is white, used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck to the pavement for more than nine minutes as the 46-year-old Black man said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still. Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders back.

    Kueng, who is Black, and Thao, who is Hmong American, are each charged with aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Prosecutors will have to prove they intentionally helped Chauvin. They don’t have to prove that they intended to kill Floyd or cause him great bodily harm.

    THE THIRD TRIAL

    Chauvin was the first officer to face trial in a livestreamed, weekslong proceeding filled with emotional testimony from bystanders, graphic video of Floyd’s dying moments and expert testimony about use of force as well as the mechanics of breathing. He was ultimately convicted of murder and manslaughter.

    The second trial in Floyd’s death came in federal court, where Lane, Kueng and Thao were all convicted of federal civil rights violations.

    “It’s going to be, I think, exhaustingly repetitive for the witnesses who have already testified multiple times and don’t want to relive this,” said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

    But there will be some nuances. Moran said this case could be more difficult for prosecutors: While Chauvin’s offense was more direct because he had his knee on Floyd’s neck, prosecutors in this case have to show what Kueng and Thao intentionally did to help him commit a crime.

    Judge Peter Cahill has limited expert witnesses to try to avoid repetition. He’s also ordered attorneys not to ask questions designed to elicit emotion.

    SOME NOTABLE DIFFERENCES

    Witnesses won’t be allowed to ask the jury to take actions and follow along with demonstrations – as lung and critical care specialist Dr. Martin Tobin did during Chauvin’s trial. In that case, Tobin placed his hands on his own neck and encouraged jurors to do the same as he explained how he believed Floyd died. Jurors said later that Tobin provided some of the trial’s most compelling evidence.

    It’s also unknown if a girl who was just 9 at the time of Floyd’s killing will testify. Prosecutors want to call her to argue that even a young girl knew something was wrong – so the officers should have known as well. The defense has countered that her testimony isn’t that different from that of other bystanders and will only play upon jurors’ emotions. She previously testified at Chauvin’s trial.

    Cahill encouraged prosecutors not to call the girl because testifying in a murder trial can be traumatic, especially for children, but he didn’t bar them from doing so.

    WERE PLEA DEALS OFFERED?

    Yes. Both Kueng and Thao rejected offers for three-year sentences that would have been served at the same time as their federal sentences. Thao told Cahill: “It would be lying for me to accept any plea offer.”

    That set them apart from Lane, who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting manslaughter and got three years. Kueng and Thao are risking significantly longer sentences; the murder charge has a recommended sentence of 12 1/2 years, and prosecutors say they intend to seek more.

    “The reality is, it’s their right (to go to trial) and Tou Thao in particular seems to just believe that he has done nothing wrong and therefore he can’t admit to doing anything wrong,” Moran said.

    JURY SELECTION

    Hundreds of prospective jurors were sent a 17-page questionnaire that explored how much they know about the case, their views on police and whether they’ve participated in civil rights marches, among other things.

    Sixteen people will be chosen; 12 will deliberate.

    Jurors will be questioned individually about their views and whether they can be fair. An unlimited number of potential jurors can be dismissed “for cause,” such as when a juror has shown that he or she can’t be impartial.

    Each side may also dismiss jurors with a limited number of peremptory strikes, which don’t require a reason but can be challenged if the other side believes it’s due solely to a potential juror’s race or gender.

    The defense gets 10 such strikes — five for each defendant — and the state gets six.

    The key will be finding jurors who can be impartial. Moran said that while diversity on a jury is important, the idea that a jury’s racial composition will affect the outcome has been called into question. She noted that the jury that convicted Kueng and Thao of federal charges was mostly white, as was the state jury that convicted Kim Potter, then an officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, in the 2021 fatal shooting of Black motorist Daunte Wright.

    TRIAL LOGISTICS

    Opening statements begin Nov. 7. The trial won’t be livestreamed. Cameras in courts are rare in Minnesota, and Chauvin’s was livestreamed due to the high public interest and courtroom space limitations because of COVID-19 restrictions.

    WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

    Kueng and Thao reported to federal prison earlier this month to begin serving their sentences for violating Floyd’s rights. Kueng is serving three years at federal prison in Ohio and Thao is serving 3½ years at a facility in Kentucky.

    They will be in custody in Minnesota during the trial.

    Lane, who is white, is serving his 2 ½-year federal sentence at a facility in Colorado. He’s serving a 3-year state sentence at the same time.

    Chauvin was sentenced to 22 ½ years on the state murder charge and 21 years on a federal count of violating Floyd’s rights. He’s serving those sentences simultaneously at a federal prison in Arizona.

    ———

    Find AP’s full coverage of the killing of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd

    Source link

  • Murdaugh uses public docs to sow doubt he killed wife, son

    Murdaugh uses public docs to sow doubt he killed wife, son

    COLUMBIA, S.C. — Months after accusing disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh of killing his wife and son, South Carolina investigators and prosecutors have released few details about the evidence that they believe connect him to the shootings

    That’s led Murdaugh’s lawyers to file a flurry of court documents requesting information from the prosecution, seeking to publicly weaken the case before the January trial has begun.

    The defense attorneys argue that there was unknown DNA found under Murdaugh’s wife’s fingernails. They also have a different suspect, Murdaugh’s friend Curtis Eddie Smith, arguing that he failed a lie detector test regarding the killings. Murdaugh has already admitted to asking Smith to arrange Murdaugh’s own death to defraud his life insurance company.

    Those defense documents even boosted a story from Smith that prosecutors later said had no evidence to back it up — that Paul Murdaugh killed his mother, Maggie, when he caught her with a groundskeeper at the family’s Colleton County hunting lodge and the groundskeeper then shot the son.

    Alex Murdaugh, 54, has proclaimed his innocence ever since June 2021, when he found the bodies, each shot several times. He has said through his lawyer he “loved them more than anything in the world.”

    It took more than 13 months for authorities to indict Murdaugh on two counts of murder and his trial is set to begin Jan. 23 after defense attorneys asked to hold it as quickly as possible.

    Even after the charges, prosecutors and investigators have released little on how they linked Murdaugh to the deaths or why a man who had no criminal history and was part of a wealthy, well-connected family that dominated the legal community in tiny Hampton County might have wanted to kill his own family members.

    In the months since the deaths, Murdaugh’s life has crumbled. He was fired from the law firm founded by his family for stealing money and then lost his law license. Prosecutors said he was a drug addict who helped run a money laundering and pain killer ring and stole about $8 million from settlements for wrongful death or injury he secured for mostly poor clients.

    As part of the back and forth about evidence in the upcoming murder trial, prosecutors have divulged slightly more of their case. Notably, there is a cellphone video of Murdaugh, his wife and son near dog kennels around 8:44 p.m. the night they are killed. Cellphone data indicates Murdaugh left at 9:06 p.m. and his frantic 911 call to report he found the bodies near the kennels came at 10:06 p.m.

    Murdaugh’s attorneys have requested a FBI report analyzing all the cellphone data, saying such records are crucial to their defense.

    “There is nothing to indicate … in the next 20 minutes, he butchers his son and wife, executes both of them in a brutal way,” defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said. “He’s then on the phone talking to another lawyer from his car in a very convivial way.”

    The defense also said they needed more complete gunshot residue reports after a few particles were found on Murdaugh. His attorney claim the particles likely landed on his clothing when he picked up a gun to protect himself after finding the bodies.

    Authorities have not tested Smith’s DNA and the defense said it has no findings from the source of genetic material found on the clothing of the victims.

    Murdaugh’s defense also wants complete notes from a blood spatter report after a small amount of his wife’s blood was found on his shirt. The lawyers said the blood came when Murdaugh “frantically attended his wife’s bloody corpse.”

    Prosecutors insisted they turned over every bit of evidence they have and what’s missing is mostly incomplete reports. They said the defense was aware of that when they had a friendly conversation just before the motions were filed.

    “This manner of conducting litigation says a lot about the defense’s true motives,” South Carolina Deputy Attorney General Creighton Waters wrote in his response.

    It’s clear from the pretrial back-and-forth that the prosecution does not have any eyewitnesses or video of how Maggie, 52, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, were killed on June 7, 2021. But prosecutors said people are frequently convicted through scientific evidence and circumstances that put them near the scene or give them a motivation for wrongdoing.

    “If every murder case needed a confession and an eyewitness, it would be open season out there,” Waters said in court Thursday.

    In the months before his murder trial, Murdaugh’s lawyers are focusing on Smith, who authorities said was supposed to shoot Murdaugh on the side of a lonely highway in September 2021.

    Murdaugh allegedly planned his own killing so his surviving son could collect on a $10 million life insurance policy. In the end, Smith said the gun fired as he and Murdaugh fought over the weapon, the bullet only grazing Murdaugh’s head.

    Smith’s attorneys say he did not kill Maggie or Paul Murdaugh. They argue Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers are looking for anyone else to blame for the killings, so they have seized on a lie detector test where Smith allegedly showed a reaction when asked if he shot the victims or was present when they were killed.

    Murdaugh’s lawyers said Smith knew the area around the dog kennels where the bodies were found because they were a drug drop. They also point out Smith’s DNA had not been tested as of mid-October.

    “I’m not saying he did it. I’m just saying it certainly sounds like he could have done it,” Harpootlian said.

    Prosecutors have pointed out that spike during the test could have been an emotional reaction as a result of Smith feeling guilty about the circumstances leading up to the crime, even if he had no involvement. They said Smith’s DNA is being tested now and results of lie detector tests aren’t admissible in court by themselves.

    Murdaugh’s attorneys also used court papers to make public a story Smith said he heard about Maggie Murdaugh’s affair directly leading to the killings. It didn’t explain how the groundskeeper avoided arrest or detection in the 16 months since.

    Prosecutors in court papers called it “salacious scuttlebutt that is offensive to the memory of his victims.”

    “It’s very telling they want to make this case about Eddie Smith,” Waters said.

    Source link

  • Cardi B absolved in racy mixtape artwork lawsuit

    Cardi B absolved in racy mixtape artwork lawsuit

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A jury sided with Cardi B on Friday in a copyright infringement case involving a man who claimed the Grammy-winning rapper misused his back tattoos for her sexually suggestive 2016 mixtape cover art.

    The federal jury in Southern California ruled Kevin Michael Brophy did not prove Cardi B misappropriated his likeness. After the jury forewoman read the verdict, the rapper hugged her attorneys and appeared joyful.

    Cardi B thanked the jurors, admitting she was “pretty nervous” before hearing the verdict.

    “I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose or not,” she said after leaving the courthouse. She was swarmed by several reporters, photographers and more than 40 high schoolers who chanted her name. One fan held up a sign asking if she could take him to his homecoming dance, to which she replied “Yes, I’ll see what I can do.”

    “I told myself if I win, I was going to cuss Mr. Brophy out. But I don’t have it in my heart to cuss him out,” she said. In the courtroom, Cardi B had a brief, cordial conversation with Brophy and shook his hand.

    Brophy filed the lawsuit a year after the rapper’s 2016 mixtape was released. He called himself a “family man with minor children” and said he was caused “ distress and humiliation ” by the artwork – which showed a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs inside a limousine. The man’s face cannot be seen.

    “At the end of the day, I do respect you as an artist,” Brophy said to Cardi B.

    Brophy’s lawyer, A. Barry Cappello, said photo-editing software was used to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model featured on the mixtape cover.

    But Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, disputed the allegations during her testimony earlier in the week — and had such an intense exchange with Cappello that the trial was briefly halted by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

    Cardi B said she felt Brophy hadn’t suffered any consequences as a result of the artwork. She said Brophy has harassed her legally for five year – and even at one point said she missed the “first step” of her youngest child because of the trial.

    Cardi B delivered pointed answers to several of Cappello’s questions. The lawyer once asked her to calm down, but she sharply pushed back at his contention that she knew about the altered image.

    Their heated exchange prompted the judge to send jurors out of the Santa Ana, California, courtroom and told both sides that he was considering a mistrial. After a short break, he called the arguing “unprofessional” and “not productive” but allowed questioning to resume, then placed new restrictions for both sides.

    Cardi B said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden – was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.

    Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design, but was told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.

    Cardi B’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated, noting the model did not have neck tattoos – which Brophy does.

    “It’s not your client’s back,” Cardi B said about the image, which featured a Black model. Brophy is white. The rapper pointed out that she posted a photo of the “famous Canadian model” on her social media.

    “It’s not him,” she continued. “To me, it doesn’t look like his back at all. The tattoo was modified, which is protected by the First Amendment.”

    Cardi B said the image hasn’t hindered Brophy’s employment with a popular surf and skate apparel brand or his ability to travel the world for opportunities.

    “He hasn’t gotten fired from his job,” said the rapper, who implied that the mixtape was not a lucrative one for her. “He hasn’t gotten a divorce. How has he suffered? He’s still in a surf shop at this job. Please tell me how he’s suffered.”

    Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.

    Source link

  • Cardi B absolved in racy mixtape artwork lawsuit

    Cardi B absolved in racy mixtape artwork lawsuit

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A jury sided with Cardi B on Friday in a copyright infringement case involving a man who claimed the Grammy-winning rapper misused his back tattoos for her sexually suggestive 2016 mixtape cover art.

    The federal jury in Southern California ruled Kevin Michael Brophy did not prove Cardi B misappropriated his likeness. After the jury forewoman read the verdict, the rapper hugged her attorneys and appeared joyful.

    Cardi B thanked the jurors, admitting she was “pretty nervous” before hearing the verdict.

    “I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose or not,” she said after leaving the courthouse. She was swarmed by several reporters, photographers and more than 40 high schoolers who chanted her name. One fan held up a sign asking if she could take him to his homecoming dance, to which she replied “Yes, I’ll see what I can do.”

    “I told myself if I win, I was going to cuss Mr. Brophy out. But I don’t have it in my heart to cuss him out,” she said. In the courtroom, Cardi B had a brief, cordial conversation with Brophy and shook his hand.

    Brophy filed the lawsuit a year after the rapper’s 2016 mixtape was released. He called himself a “family man with minor children” and said he was caused “ distress and humiliation ” by the artwork – which showed a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs inside a limousine. The man’s face cannot be seen.

    “At the end of the day, I do respect you as an artist,” Brophy said to Cardi B.

    Brophy’s lawyer, A. Barry Cappello, said photo-editing software was used to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model featured on the mixtape cover.

    But Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, disputed the allegations during her testimony earlier in the week — and had such an intense exchange with Cappello that the trial was briefly halted by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

    Cardi B said she felt Brophy hadn’t suffered any consequences as a result of the artwork. She said Brophy has harassed her legally for five year – and even at one point said she missed the “first step” of her youngest child because of the trial.

    Cardi B delivered pointed answers to several of Cappello’s questions. The lawyer once asked her to calm down, but she sharply pushed back at his contention that she knew about the altered image.

    Their heated exchange prompted the judge to send jurors out of the Santa Ana, California, courtroom and told both sides that he was considering a mistrial. After a short break, he called the arguing “unprofessional” and “not productive” but allowed questioning to resume, then placed new restrictions for both sides.

    Cardi B said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden – was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.

    Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design, but was told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.

    Cardi B’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated, noting the model did not have neck tattoos – which Brophy does.

    “It’s not your client’s back,” Cardi B said about the image, which featured a Black model. Brophy is white. The rapper pointed out that she posted a photo of the “famous Canadian model” on her social media.

    “It’s not him,” she continued. “To me, it doesn’t look like his back at all. The tattoo was modified, which is protected by the First Amendment.”

    Cardi B said the image hasn’t hindered Brophy’s employment with a popular surf and skate apparel brand or his ability to travel the world for opportunities.

    “He hasn’t gotten fired from his job,” said the rapper, who implied that the mixtape was not a lucrative one for her. “He hasn’t gotten a divorce. How has he suffered? He’s still in a surf shop at this job. Please tell me how he’s suffered.”

    Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.

    Source link

  • Man charged in Colorado supermarket attack still incompetent

    Man charged in Colorado supermarket attack still incompetent

    BOULDER, Colo. — A man charged with killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket last year is still incompetent to stand trial, a judge ruled Friday, keeping his prosecution on hold.

    Court proceedings against Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 23, have been paused since December, when a judge first found him to be mentally incompetent. The rulings mean he is unable to understand legal proceedings or work with his lawyers to defend himself.

    Alissa remains at the state mental hospital, where he is receiving treatment, and was not in the Boulder courtroom Friday.

    Relatives of those killed sat in the courtroom for the brief hearing while others watched online. District Court Judge Ingrid Bakke said Alissa’s latest evaluation on Oct. 10 showed he that there was a substantial probability that he could be treated to be made competent in the “forseeable future,” echoing an outlook she first shared in March.

    When District Attorney Michael Dougherty said the victims’ families were frustrated with the state hospital and the doctors there, Bakke expressed sympathy, noting that there was not much either the defense or prosecution could do as Alissa underwent treatment.

    “It understandably is a very frustrating process,” said Bakke, who set another hearing to review Alissa’s condition for Jan. 27.

    Alissa is accused of opening fire outside and inside a King Soopers store on March 2021 in the college town of Boulder. He killed customers, workers and a police officer who tried to stop the attack. Alissa surrendered after another officer shot and wounded him, according to authorities.

    Investigators have not made public information about why they believe Alissa carried out the attack.

    Robert Olds, the uncle of one of the 10 people killed, front-end manager Rikki Olds, said he tends to “build up a wall” before each review hearing to avoid getting his expectations and hopes up. But he said he would keep showing up in his quest to get justice for his niece.

    The others killed in the attack were Denny Stong, Neven Stanisic, Tralona Bartkowiak, Teri Leiker, Suzanne Fountain, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray, Jody Waters and Eric Talley, who rushed into the store with an initial team of police officers.

    Alissa is charged with murder as well as multiple attempted murder counts for endangering the lives of 26 other people.

    Alissa’s lawyers have not commented about the allegations. He has not been asked yet to enter a plea.

    Reports about his mental health evaluations have not been made public. But court documents that addressed one of them last year said he was provisionally diagnosed with an unspecified mental health condition limiting his ability to “meaningfully converse with others.”

    After Friday’s hearing, Dougherty, who said his office has been receiving records on Alissa’s treatment, said he has at times shown improvement but declined to elaborate.

    Competency is a different legal issue than a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which involves whether someone’s mental health prevented them from understanding right from wrong when a crime was committed.

    Alissa lived in the nearby suburb of Arvada, where authorities say he passed a background check to legally buy the Ruger AR-556 pistol six days before authorities say he used it in the shooting.

    Source link

  • Keeping history alive in legal thriller ‘Argentina, 1985’

    Keeping history alive in legal thriller ‘Argentina, 1985’

    The 1985 Trial of the Juntas was a seismic moment in Argentina’s history, helping to solidify the country’s democratic future after seven years of military dictatorship. But when filmmaker Santiago Mitre started talking about making a classic political thriller about the David vs. Goliath trial, in which public prosecutors Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo tried former military leaders for war crimes, including the torture and disappearance of thousands between 1976 and 1983, he was surprised to learn that few of his peers knew much about it.

    Mitre was only four years old at the time of the trial in 1985, but through his mother — who worked in justice her whole life — he’d grown up hearing stories about the trial, its importance for Argentina and anecdotes about Strassera’s unique personality (grumpy, but full of humor).

    Strassera was the veteran prosecutor who reluctantly took on the case, fearful for his family and himself. Ocampo was younger and more idealistic, but also risked alienating his own prominent family, who had significant military ties. Mitre was certain that the personalities and drama of the situation would make for a great film in the vein of classic political thrillers like “All the President’s Men” and “Judgement at Nüremberg.”

    “Argentina, 1985,” which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, chronicles the momentous trial, which took place under a cloud of extraordinary uncertainty and unease only two years after the dictatorship fell.

    With a death toll that human rights organizations estimate at 30,000, Argentina’s dictatorship is considered Latin America’s deadliest of the 1970s and ’80s. Less than half of the dead have been recognized at the official level, however, because the military made the bodies of most of its victims disappear.

    Across five months in the courtroom, during which the prosecutorial team received constant personal threats, 833 witnesses testified. Several of those testimonies are used verbatim in the film to great dramatic effect.

    “It was super important to have direct contact with the people that worked on the trial,” Mitre said. “I spoke to as many as it was possible for me, because I felt that the film needed like to have this stronger human perspective. I spoke to the judges, to the people who gave testimony in the trial and of course to the people that were part of the prosecutorial team. It was very important for me for not only for knowing the facts, but to understand what they were feeling.”

    He met Ocampo, portrayed by Peter Lanzani in the film, many times, and Strassera’s son, who though young at the time, was enraptured by his father’s work. The supportive, engaged Strassera family is a main focus of the narrative.

    “They were all involved with Julio’s trial,” Mitre said. “It was something that was very sweet.”

    Upon hearing about the project, Ricardo Darín — who had worked with Mitre before — wanted not only to play Strassera, who died in 2015, but to produce as well. Being slightly older than Mitre, he remembered the trial well, and wanted to help younger generations who were born into democracy in the country understand what happened.

    “It was a very, very big deal,” Darín said through a translator. “Let’s not forget that a lot of people in a lot of parts of the society in Argentina back then, they had no idea of the horrors that had happened. This is something that was not talked about and something that was not shared. So for a lot of people, being able to see witnesses come forward and being able to hear the family members of people who were killed or tortured was an eye opener.”

    The film has been well received around the world at various festivals, recently picking up the audience award in San Sebastian, and in Argentina, which submitted it to compete for best international film at the Oscars. The Oscars will narrow the international submissions to a 15-film shortlist in December, which will inform the final nominations in January.

    For Mitre, though, it’s more than awards on his mind. He’s trying to help preserve and build a society’s memory.

    “It was important for me as a citizen to do this film, not only as a filmmaker,” Mitre said. “It was the base of the new democracy. It was a point of reunion of the society. Many people don’t remember how hard it was to get our democracy and how important is to keep defending democracy.”

    ———

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

    Source link

  • Rape accuser testifies against filmmaker Paul Haggis

    Rape accuser testifies against filmmaker Paul Haggis

    NEW YORK — He was a famous moviemaker. She was a publicist working a film premiere where he was a VIP guest. He’d offered her a lift home and then invited her to his apartment for a drink.

    Once there screenwriter-director Paul Haggis abruptly tried to kiss her, backed her into his refrigerator, and had a question for her, accuser Haleigh Breest told a jury Thursday.

    “Are you scared of me?” he asked, according to her testimony.

    And so began, Breest said, a sexual assault that ended with the Oscar winner raping her. She’s suing him in a civil case that’s now on trial.

    Haggis maintains the 2013 encounter was consensual, and his lawyer has argued that Breest called it rape because she’s out for money. She’s seeking unspecified damages.

    In a steady, unsparing tone, Breest recounted what she said was a terrifying, painful attack that left her shocked and “really struggling to comprehend what had happened.”

    “I couldn’t understand how somebody who seemed like a nice guy would do that,” she said.

    As she spoke without looking at him, Haggis, 69, watched largely expressionlessly, sometimes rubbing his bearded chin or taking notes.

    The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Breest has done.

    Breest, now 36, said she first met the “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” screenwriter in 2012 at a premiere afterparty where she was working.

    Breest and Haggis exchanged occasional professional emails and party chitchat, she said, over the months before their paths crossed again at another premiere party she worked on Jan. 31, 2013.

    A tipsy — but not stumbling drunk — Breest accepted the filmmaker’s offer of a ride, and then his invitation for a drink, she told jurors. She said she suggested someplace public instead, but he pushed for his apartment in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, and she didn’t want to offend one of her employer’s red-carpet guests.

    “But just so you know,” she testified that she told him, “I’m not sleeping in SoHo tonight.”

    Yet Haggis’ advances began as soon as she put her bags down in his loft’s open kitchen, Breest said.

    “You’ve been flirting with me for months,” he soon said, according to her.

    “I don’t even know you,” she said she replied.

    Breest said she dodged him and thought she’d politely defused the situation when he started showing her the apartment. But when they reached a guest bedroom, Haggis “became aggressive very quickly,” pushed her onto the bed and pulled off her tights and clothes as she tried to keep them on and told him to stop, she said.

    Then, she said, he forced her to perform oral sex and wanted intercourse. She said she asked to take a shower as a subtle way to get out of the room, but he followed her there, then steered her back to the guest bedroom and made a further series of unwanted sexual moves that culminated in rape.

    “I was like a trapped animal. There was nothing for me to do,” she said.

    Breest said she passed out soon afterward, awoke alone on the bed the next morning and left without seeing Haggis again.

    That day and in the ensuing months, Breest said, she told a half-dozen friends that she had been sexually assaulted, naming Haggis to some. She said she informed her boss the next year that Haggis had done something bad to her.

    Breest didn’t tell police. She testified that she was scared and concerned about how her allegation would be handled.

    Nor did she confront Haggis when he emailed her the day after the encounter to ask about photos from the premiere. Nor at subsequent screenings or in emails, some of which she initiated, about social events and movie matters.

    “I didn’t want my work experience to be awkward,” she testified, so “I pretended like everything was normal. And it wasn’t.”

    Behind the scenes, Breest anguished over what had happened and what to do, according to text and other electronic messages shown in court.

    The communications, sent to friends, veer from frank descriptions of forced sex — “and I kept saying no” — to moments when she seemed to downplay it (“it sort of is” rape).

    At times she said she wanted to avoid Haggis, at others she mused about seeing him again to try to regain some equanimity and “not be the victim.” The messages are salted with lighthearted texting slang — “lol,” “omg,” “haha” — that Breest says were attempts to use humor to defang a tough subject.

    Haggis hasn’t testified thus far, and his lawyers haven’t yet gotten their chance to question Breest. In an opening statement, defense attorney Priya Chaudhry pointed to some of the accuser’s messages — such as a comment that she needs “to get something out of this” — to question her credibility.

    Breest said her remarks just reflect her horror at being victimized, her desire to seize back a sense of control in her life, and her confusion at how someone she thought well of could violently turn on her.

    Now, she said, she understands that night.

    “I thought I was getting a ride home. I agreed to have a drink. What happened never should have happened,” she told the jury. “And it had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him and his actions.”

    Source link

  • Cardi B battles with lawyer in racy mixtape artwork case

    Cardi B battles with lawyer in racy mixtape artwork case

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A heated exchange between rapper Cardi B and the lawyer for a man suing her for copyright infringement got so intense Wednesday that the judge briefly stopped the trial.

    The Grammy winner delivered pointed answers to several questions by attorney A. Barry Cappello, who is representing a man who claims the rapper misused his likeness on the cover of a 2016 mixtape.

    The testy back-and-forth between the Cappello and the star witness prompted U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney to send jurors out of the Santa Ana, California courtroom and tell both sides he was considering a mistrial. After a break, he called the arguing “unprofessional” and “not productive” but allowed questioning to resume – placing new restrictions for both sides.

    Kevin Michael Brophy is seeking $5 million from Cardi B over the appearance of some of his distinctive back tattoos on the mixtape’s artwork, which shows a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs.

    The rapper said she felt Brophy hadn’t suffered any consequences as a result of the artwork, yet has harassed her legally for five years. At one point she said she missed a special moment with her youngest child, who recently turned 1-year-old.

    “I have empathy for people,” she said. “I care about people. I feel like I’m being taken advantage of. I missed my child’s first step by being here.”

    Brophy told jurors Tuesday that he felt “humiliated” by the racy artwork.

    At one point, Cardi B pointed out that the man’s face cannot be seen in the artwork. Capello asked her to calm down, but she instead barked back at the lawyer’s contention that she knew about photo-editing software used to put Brophy’s tattoos – which have been featured in magazines – on another model’s body.

    “It’s not your client’s back,” she said about the image, which features a Black model. Brophy is white. The rapper said she posted a photo of the “famous Canadian model” on her social media.

    Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden — was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.

    Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design but was then told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.

    Cardi B’s lawyer, Peter Anderson, said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated, noting the model did not have neck tattoos, which Brophy does.

    “It’s not him,” the rapper said. “To me, it doesn’t look like his back at all. The tattoo was modified, which is protected by the First Amendment.”

    She said the image hasn’t hindered Brophy’s employment with a popular surf and skate apparel brand or his ability to travel the world for opportunities.

    “He hasn’t gotten fired from his job,” said Cardi B, who implied that the mixtape was not a lucrative one for her. “He hasn’t gotten a divorce. How has he suffered? He’s still in a surf shop at his job. Please tell me how he’s suffered.”

    Brophy, a self-described family man, said he sent a cease-and-desist letter to Cardi B’s representatives to remove the image, but he never received a response. The rapper said she hadn’t seen the letter.

    At one point, Cardi B said she doesn’t check her mailbox because that’s for “old people” – leading some in the courtroom to chuckle.

    When Cardi B left the courthouse, she was swarmed by around 30 high schoolers who were attempting to take selfies with her. As the rapper walked toward her vehicle with security, she smiled and waved before telling them she would be more responsive after the trial.

    Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.

    Source link

  • Case vs. Paul Haggis joins month of Hollywood #MeToo trials

    Case vs. Paul Haggis joins month of Hollywood #MeToo trials

    NEW YORK — Jurors got their first look Wednesday at a lawsuit that pits Oscar-winning moviemaker Paul Haggis against a publicist who alleges that he raped her, the latest in a lineup of #MeToo-era trials involving Hollywood figures this fall.

    Opening statements in the civil case against Haggis began Wednesday in a New York state court. The federal court next door is housing a trial in a lawsuit accusing Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey of sexual assault. In Los Angeles, former film mogul Harvey Weinstein and “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson are fighting criminal rape charges at separate trials down the hall from each other (Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence on a New York conviction). All of the men deny the allegations.

    The confluence of trials is a coincidence, but it makes for something of a #MeToo moment five years after allegations against Weinstein triggered a dam break of sexual misconduct accusations in Hollywood and beyond and catalyzed an ongoing movement to demand accountability.

    “We’re still very early on in this time of reckoning,” said Debra Katz, a Washington-based lawyer who has represented many sexual assault accusers. She isn’t involved in any of the four trials.

    In an unusual turn, both Haggis’ case and Masterson’s also have become forums for scrutinizing the Church of Scientology, though from different perspectives.

    In the case against Haggis, publicist Haleigh Breest claims that the “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” screenwriter forced her to perform oral sex and raped her after she reluctantly agreed to a drink in his apartment after a 2013 movie premiere. Haggis maintains that the encounter was consensual.

    Breest never went to police, but soon after the encounter, she gave friends an account of what happened, sending text messages that both her lawyers and Haggis’ attorneys say bolster their case.

    “He was so rough and aggressive. Never, ever again … And I kept saying no,” read one text that her lawyer Zoe Salzman highlighted in her opening statement. She said the encounter shattered Breest emotionally, but that she didn’t go public until after the allegations against Weinstein burst into view in 2017 and Haggis condemned him.

    “The hypocrisy of it made her blood boil,” Salzman said.

    Haggis attorney Priya Chaudhry pointed jurors to other parts of the same text exchange, saying that Breest added “lol” — for “laughing out loud” — when she mentioned performing oral sex, and that she said she wanted to be alone with Haggis again to “see what happens.”

    “I don’t care too much. I just hope I don’t now have enemies” professionally, she wrote, according to Chaudhry. She argued that Breest falsely accused the filmmaker of rape to get a payout.

    “Paul Haggis is relieved that he finally gets his day in court,” Chaudhry said.

    Only Breest is suing Haggis, but jurors will also hear from four other women who told her lawyers that Haggis sexually assaulted them, or attempted to do so, in separate encounters between 1996 and 2015. The jury won’t hear, however, that Italian authorities this summer investigated a sexual assault allegation against him, which he denied.

    “Mr. Haggis used his storytelling skills and his fame to prey on, to manipulate and to attack vulnerable young women in the film industry,” Salzman told jurors. “He doesn’t stop when women say no.”

    Haggis’ attorney argued there’s another explanation for the allegations.

    Promising “circumstantial evidence,” she suggested that Scientologists ginned up Breest’s lawsuit to discredit him after he split with the church and became a prominent detractor.

    The church denies any involvement, and Breest’s lawyers have called the notion a baseless conspiracy theory that lacks proof of any connection between the religion and Haggis’ accusers.

    “Scientology has nothing to do with this case,” Salzman told jurors. The church has said the same.

    Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals focused on spiritual betterment. Science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard’s 1950 book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” is a foundational text.

    The religion has gained a following among such celebrities as Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. But some high-profile members have broken with it, including Haggis, singer Lisa Marie Presley and actor Leah Remini. In a memoir and documentary series, Remini said the church uses manipulative and abusive tactics to indoctrinate followers into putting its goals above all else, and she maintained that it worked to discredit critics who spoke out.

    The church has vociferously disputed the claims.

    Haggis says he was Scientologist for three decades before leaving the church in 2009. He slammed it as “a cult” in a 2011 New Yorker article that later informed a book and an HBO documentary, and he foreshadowed that retribution would come in the form of “a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church.”

    The church has repeatedly said that Haggis lied about its practices to grab the spotlight for himself and his career. The church didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Masterson’s lawyer, meanwhile, is asking jurors to disregard the actor’s affiliation with Scientology, though prosecutors say the church discouraged two of his three accusers from going to authorities. All three are former members.

    Haggis got his Hollywood start as as TV writer and moved on to movies including “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” which won back-to-back Academy Awards for best picture in the mid-2000s. The Canada-born filmmaker also directed and was a producer of “Crash,” which garnered him and Bobby Moresco the best original screenplay Oscar in 2006.

    In a sworn statement last year, Haggis said his career nosedived and his finances cratered after Breest sued him in 2017.

    The Associated Press does not usually name people alleging sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Breest has done. She is seeking unspecified damages.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Deepa Bharath contributed from Los Angeles.

    Source link

  • Father says ‘no joy’ in Kristin Smart murder conviction

    Father says ‘no joy’ in Kristin Smart murder conviction

    LOS ANGELES — The father of Kristin Smart, the California Central Coast college student who vanished from campus 26 years ago, says a murder conviction hasn’t ended the “agonizingly long journey” to find the truth about his daughter.

    “Without Kristin, there’s no joy or happiness in this verdict,” Smart’s father, Stan Smart, said at a news conference after a jury on Tuesday found Paul Flores — the last man seen with Smart — guilty of first-degree murder.

    Prosecutors contended that Flores killed Smart, then 19, while trying to rape her in his dormitory room at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where they were first-year students. His attorney argued that prosecutors used an outlandish conspiracy theory and “junk science” to accuse him and his father, who was charged with concealing Smart’s body to hide the crime.

    Flores, who is 45, could face 25 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 9. His attorney, Robert Sanger, declined to comment on the verdict Tuesday.

    A day earlier, a separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, who was accused by prosecutors of burying Smart’s body under the deck of his house in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande for years but later digging up and moving it.

    Her body has never been found.

    Both verdicts were announced Tuesday.

    “After 26 years, with today’s split verdict, we learned that our quest for justice for Kristin will continue,” Smart’s father said. “This has been an agonizingly long journey, with more downs than ups.”

    However, he also thanked both juries for their diligence and said his faith in the justice system “has been renewed.”

    “Know that your spirit lives on in each and every one of us, everyday,” he said of his daughter. “Not a single day goes by that you aren’t missed, remembered, loved and celebrated.”

    Smart disappeared from campus over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. The father and son weren’t arrested until 2021. Their attorneys had suggested that someone else killed her or even that she may still be alive, although Smart was legally declared dead in 2002.

    San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson told reporters that the search for Smart’s remains will continue.

    “This case will not be over until Kristin is returned home, and we have committed to that from the beginning,” he said. “We don’t take a breath. We do not put this aside.”

    Paul Flores was seen with Smart on May 25, 1996. The defense said Flores was seen helping Smart walk to her dorm after she became drunk at an off-campus party. Prosecutors suggested she may have been drugged and that Flores took her to his own room where he killed her during an attempted rape.

    Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.

    During Paul Flores’ trial, the prosecution also told jurors that four cadaver dogs had alerted to the “smell of death on his mattress” but Sanger called it “junk science” and noted there wasn’t any forensic evidence of Smart having been in the room.

    “This case was not prosecuted for all these years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger said during closing arguments. “It’s sad Kristin Smart disappeared, and she may have gone out on her own, but who knows?”

    Investigators conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s body over two decades. In the past two years they turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home.

    Behind latticework beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.

    After Tuesday’s verdict, Ruben Flores maintained that both he and his son are innocent and said he feels badly that Smart’s family will never have a resolution. He said the case was about feelings, not facts.

    “We don’t know what happened to their daughter,” he told reporters.

    “They’ve had searches and everything,” he said. “They come to my house and say she was buried here, and that’s a surprise to me.”

    “He should have never been charged,” said his attorney, Harold Mesick. “It would be nice if the community would actually honor the presumption of innocence. There is so much animosity toward this man and his family.”

    The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo. A judge agreed to move it after the defense argued that it was unlikely the Floreses could receive a fair trial with so much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.

    Source link

  • Lawyer: Cardi B ‘humiliated’ man with racy image on mixtape

    Lawyer: Cardi B ‘humiliated’ man with racy image on mixtape

    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A self-described family man with a distinctive back tattoo felt humiliated after Cardi B allegedly misused his likeness for her sexually suggestive mixtape cover art, his lawyer said during opening arguments Tuesday.

    Kevin Michael Brophy is suing the Grammy-winning musician in a $5 million copyright-infringement lawsuit in federal court in Southern California. His attorneys say Brophy’s life was disrupted and he suffered distress because of the 2016 artwork.

    Brophy’s lawyer A. Barry Cappello said photo-editing software was use to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model used in the mixtape cover. The image shows a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs. The man’s face cannot be seen.

    Cardi B, who is expected to testify during the trial, is fighting the allegations and said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art – created by Timm Gooden — was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.

    “Their life has been disrupted,” Cappello told the jury as Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, watched from the defense table. He said the image disturbed Brophy along with his wife, Lindsay Michelle Brophy, who he says initially questioned her husband if it was him in the cover art. The couple has two young children.

    Brody has said he once considered his back tattoo featuring a tiger battling a serpent to be a “Michelangelo piece” that has since become “raunchy and disgusting.”

    Defense filings have pointed out that the model who posed for the photos was Black, while Brophy is white.

    Cardi B’s lawyer Peter Anderson said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated. He said the model did not have tattoos on his neck, which Brophy does.

    “Brophy’s face wasn’t on the mixtape,” Anderson said during his opening statement. “She was already popular. It has nothing to do with Brophy.”

    But Brophy contested in court that everyone who knows him believed he was on the mixtape cover. He said the offensive image was something he would never approve.

    Brophy said he sent a cease-and-desist letter to Cardi B’s representatives to remove the tattoo, but he never received a response.

    “For me, it was something I took a lot of pride in,” Brophy said about his tattoo. “Now, that image feels devalued. I feel robbed. I feel completely disregarded. There’s a lot of things I would like to be spending time on. But the only way to get this removed was to come here to this courtroom.”

    Cappello said Gooden was paid $50 to create a design but was then told to find another tattoo after he turned in an initial draft. He said Gooden googled “back tattoos” before he found an image and pasted it on the cover.

    Last month, Cardi B pleaded guilty to a criminal case stemming from a pair of brawls at New York City strip clubs that required her to perform 15 days of community service. Earlier this year, the rapper was awarded $1.25 million in a defamation lawsuit against a celebrity news blogger who posted videos falsely stating she used cocaine, had contracted herpes and engaged in prostitution.

    Source link

  • Man convicted of killing missing California college student

    Man convicted of killing missing California college student

    LOS ANGELES — The last man seen with Kristin Smart was convicted Tuesday of killing the college freshman, who vanished from a California campus more than 25 years ago, but his father was acquitted of helping him conceal the crime.

    Jurors unanimously found Paul Flores guilty of first-degree murder. He could face 25 years to life in prison when he is sentenced.

    In an email, his attorney, Robert Sanger, declined to comment on the verdict because “the matter is still pending.”

    A jury in a separate trial found his father, Ruben Flores, not guilty of charges of being an accessory to murder after the fact. The conflicting verdicts were read moments apart in the same courtroom.

    “Without Kristin, there’s no joy or happiness in this verdict,” Smart’s father, Stan Smart, said at a news conference after the hearing. “After 26 years, with today’s split verdict, we learned that our quest for justice for Kristin will continue.”

    He described the case as a long, agonizing journey and said he was grateful to the two juries for their diligence.

    Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University on the state’s scenic central coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996. Her remains have never been found. The father and son weren’t arrested until 2021.

    San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson told reporters at a news conference that the investigation won’t end until Smart’s remains are found.

    “This case will not be over until Kristin is returned home, and we have committed to that from the beginning,” he said. “We don’t take a breath. We do not put this aside.”

    Prosecutors maintained the younger Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she became intoxicated.

    His father, now 81, was accused of helping bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later digging up the remains and moving them.

    Outside the courthouse, Ruben Flores maintained that his son is innocent and said he feels badly that Smart’s family will never have a resolution. He said the case was about feelings, not facts.

    “We don’t know what happened to their daughter,” he told reporters.

    Sanger had tried to pin the killing on someone else — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying — was also a student at the campus about 200 miles (320 kilometers) up the coast from Los Angeles.

    During his closing arguments, Sanger said no attempted rape occurred and he cast doubt on testimony from witnesses, including a student who was in Smart’s dorm who testified to seeing Paul Flores in Smart’s room.

    He also referred to forensic evidence offered by the prosecution as “junk science.”

    “This case was not prosecuted for all these years because there’s no evidence,” Sanger said. “It’s sad Kristin Smart disappeared, and she may have gone out on her own, but who knows?”

    Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing. He had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.

    Investigators conducted dozens of fruitless searches for Smart’s body over two decades. In the past two years they turned their attention to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.

    Behind latticework beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.

    The trial was held in Salinas, 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of San Luis Obispo. A judge agreed to move it after the defense argued that it was unlikely the Floreses could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.

    Source link