Tennessee
Judge bans bear poachers from hunting, entering U.S. forests
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal magistrate judge has banned two men found guilty of bear poaching from hunting anywhere or entering any national forest for two years.
U.S Attorney Douglas Overbey’s office says Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton found 59-year-old Keith Bernard McJunkin and 31-year-old Levi Zachary Wilson guilty last week of baiting bears inside the Cherokee National Forest.
McJunkin was ordered to pay $1,600 in fines and Wilson was ordered to pay $1,100. Both were also sentenced to two years of probation.
Prosecutors say the two were part of a group of hunters from Tellico Plains who baited and trapped bears inside the national forest in July and August 2018. Three other men have already pleaded guilty to hunting bear over bait.
Florida
2 State Supreme Court judges tapped for federal seats
MIAMI (AP) — Two Florida Supreme Court Justices have been tapped for seats on a federal appeals court.
President Donald Trump announced the appointments Thursday of Justices Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court is based in Atlanta and has jurisdiction over federal cases originating in the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. They must still be confirmed by the Senate.
Lagoa and Luck are filling vacancies created by Judge Gerald Tjoflat and Judge Stanley Marcus. They were appointed by President Gerald Ford and President Bill Clinton, respectively.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Lagoa and Luck to the Florida Supreme Court shortly after taking office earlier this year. Lagoa and Luck previously served on lower state appeals courts and worked as federal prosecutors.
Georgia
Prosecutors say man cheated Delta frequent flyer program
ATLANTA (AP) — Federal prosecutors in Atlanta say the managing partner of a Chicago travel agency fraudulently accumulated millions of points in a Delta Air Lines frequent flyer program.
Gennady Podolsky was indicted Wednesday on 12 counts of wire fraud. A dual Ukrainian and American citizen, he is managing partner of Vega International Travel Services.
Through the SkyBonus program, businesses earn points when employees fly Delta.
Prosecutors say Podolsky created a SkyBonus account for a fertility center owned by a family member of Vega Travel’s president. When Vega Travel customers flew Delta, Podolsky entered that SkyBonus number even though they weren’t fertility center employees.
Prosecutors say Podolsky accumulated and redeemed more than 42 million points, causing Delta to lose more than $1.75 million.
Online court records didn’t list a lawyer for Podolsky.
North Carolina
Former justice who pushed for innocence process dies, 85
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The conservative North Carolina chief justice and prosecutor who led the way for the state’s unique innocence process was remembered after his death Thursday as a man who had the political strength to improve the criminal justice system when he saw evidence of its failures.
Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr, 85, died Thursday at the retirement center where he lived, surrounded by family, said his son-in-law Tom Neal. His health had deteriorated rapidly in the past month or so, Neal said.
Lake was chief justice when a string of high-profile wrongful convictions in North Carolina caught his attention. In 2002, he convened a commission of defense attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officials and others to review how innocent people are convicted and how to free them.
“We need to make sure that we don’t convict an innocent person — and if we do, to catch it fairly quickly,” Lake said in 2002. “The ultimate object of any court process is to find the truth. I think we can do some good. And I think North Carolina can take the lead on this.”
The study by Lake’s commission led to the establishment of the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, modeled after a panel in Britain. Its work has resulted in exonerations of 12 people since it was established in 2006. A judge exonerated three other men based on the commission’s work.
“He was my hero,” said Greg Taylor, fighting back tears. “I owe my life to his courage.”
Taylor was the first person declared innocent by a three-judge panel established through the innocence commission process. Taylor had been convicted of murder and sentenced to life behind bars in 1993; he was declared innocent in 2010.
On the surface, Lake seemed an unlikely vehicle to lead the still-nascent innocence movement in the early 2000s. The Republican’s namesake and father, I. Beverly Lake Sr., ran a segregationist campaign in a 1960 gubernatorial primary, and Lake Jr. was a deputy and assistant attorney general in the state Department of Justice.
His colleagues in the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys opposed the establishment of the innocence commission.
But he had a sense of fairness, said Bob Orr, who was elected to the state Supreme Court the same year as Lake. “While Bev was a conservative, certainly, he was always committed to justice, and he was open-minded to hearing different perspectives,” he said.
As Lake and his former law clerk, Chris Mumma, reviewed cases where innocent people had been convicted, he became convinced that reform was necessary, Orr and Mumma said. Lake “had the courage and backbone to go against the establishment,” Orr said.
In 2007, Lake said people want to believe “that it’s pretty much a foolproof system. We know that’s not true now.”
Mumma, now executive director of the private, nonprofit N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, described Lake as a mentor and a friend. “He had the courage to do the right thing, sometimes in the midst of criticism from his closest friends, that few politicians have,” she said.
Lindsey Guice Smith, executive director of the state innocence commission, said that “through his work, North Carolina became and remains the leader in criminal justice reform.”
