National Roundup

Georgia
State Supreme Court overturns 2015 murder conviction
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of a man found guilty of intentionally running over a woman with his car.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the court reversed 28-year-old Dewey Calhoun Green’s 2015 malice and felony murder convictions on Thursday. The court said key witness testimony that may’ve affected the jury’s verdict was excluded from trial. It’s unclear whether the case will be retried.

Prosecutors previously argued that Green rear-ended 53-year-old Janice Pitts’ SUV before backing up and intentionally running her over as she surveyed the damage.

The newspaper reports an accident reconstructionist who had planned on testifying the crash could’ve been unintentional wasn’t permitted to take the stand because the defense didn’t submit written reports of his opinions. The court now says he was erroneously barred from testifying.

Kansas
Trial delayed over bomb plot for solider said to be Satanist
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge in Kansas has delayed the trial of an Army infantry soldier who prosecutors say is a Satanist hoping to overthrow the U.S. government and distributed information about building bombs.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Topeka on Monday granted a request from attorneys for Jarrett William Smith to postpone a trial from early December until at least mid-January. Smith pleaded not guilty in September to charges of distributing explosives information and making a threatening interstate communication.

His attorneys said they needed more time to review evidence.

Smith was a private stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. He’s accused of providing information about explosives to an FBI undercover agent and threatening to burn down the house of a far-left-leaning “antifa” member.

Authorities say he also wanted to car bomb a major news organization.

New York
Columnist sues Trump for calling her sex assault claim a lie
NEW YORK (AP) — An advice columnist who has accused President Donald Trump of raping her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s sued him Monday, saying he defamed her by calling her a liar whom he had never even met.

E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, filed Monday in New York, says Trump “smeared her integrity, honesty and dignity — all in the national press” when he responded to her allegations, first broached in a New York magazine article this past June.

“Nobody is entitled to conceal acts of sexual assault behind a wall of defamatory false­hoods and deflections,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in the suit.

A message requesting comment was sent to a law firm that has represented Trump in other cases.

Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, is among over a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct or sexual assault, or both, predating his presidency.

She isn’t the only one to sue over his denials. One such case, filed by Summer Zervos, a onetime contestant on his former reality show, “The Apprentice,” is ongoing in the same Manhattan courthouse where Carroll has filed her claim.

Carroll says she bumped into the then-real estate developer in the high-end store Bergdorf Goodman in 1995 or 1996, and he asked her to help him pick out a gift for “a girl” and eventually suggested lingerie. He suggested Carroll try on a see-through bodysuit, she said, and after a joking exchange, they went into a dressing room.

She says Trump then pushed her against a wall, pulled down her tights and raped her as she struggled, eventually broke free and fled.

Carroll said there were no attendants in the dressing room area. She didn’t file a police report but said she did tell two journalist friends. Both have corroborated that they were told.

Trump said in June that Carroll was “totally lying,” termed the accusation “fake news” and called her “not my type.”

He also said he’d never met her, though a 1987 photo shows him and Carroll in a photo with their spouses at the time.

“Give me a break,” Trump said of the photo, noting it shows his back to the camera.

The suit says Trump harmed Carroll’s reputation and career. It seeks unspecified damages.

Rhode Island
Advocates: More abusers should surrender guns
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Gun safety advocates want Rhode Island family court judges to require more domestic abusers to surrender their firearms.

A report released Monday shows 34% of domestic abusers are being ordered to surrender their weapons in final orders of protection. That’s an increase from 5% before a 2017 state law regarding firearm surrenders took effect.

In cases where a defendant is ordered to surrender firearms, 36% filed an affidavit — as required under the law — to prove they no longer have the weapons.

The report was compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action. Besides court files, it relies on observations of trained volunteers who monitored 289 domestic violence protection order cases between October 2018 and May 2019.

Some judges disagree about how the law should be interpreted.

New York
Appeals court upholds conviction of NY, NJ bomber
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction on weapons of mass destruction charges of a New Jersey man who set off small bombs in two states.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction Monday of Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who is serving a life prison sentence.

Rahimi, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, was sentenced in February 2018 in connection with the Sept. 17, 2016, attacks that sent shrapnel across a New York City block.

His sentencing judge has said it was a miracle nobody was killed.

The bombings triggered a two-day manhunt that ended in a shootout with police in Linden, New Jersey.

Earlier this month, he was convicted in a New Jersey court of multiple counts of attempted murder in the shootout.