National Roundup

North Carolina
Judgeship gets filled after being vacant 14 years
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The nation’s longest federal court vacancy ended Thursday after  nearly 14 years  of foot-dragging and politics as the U.S. Senate confirmed a university professor to a North Carolina trial court seat in a bipartisan vote.

The chamber voted 68-21 to confirm Richard E. Myers, a former journalist turned attorney and law professor, to the U.S. District Court vacancy in eastern North Carolina. The vote belied the volatile politics of past years as nominees came and went — one several times — across three presidential administrations.

The seat has been vacant since Judge Malcolm Howard moved to semi-retirement status at the end of 2005. The next longest current vacancy in the federal courts began in 2013, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.  Myers’ path from  President Donald Trump’s  nomination to confirmation, however, took less than four months.

Born in Jamaica, he grew up in North Carolina and worked at the Wilmington Morning Star in the early 1990s. He earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in Chapel Hill and has been a professor there. He previously clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and was a federal prosecutor in both California and later North Carolina.

While in private practice in California, Myers also was on the legal team defending Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born scientist once charged with mishandling nuclear weapons secrets. Lee was released after the government dropped all but one charge.

“Professor Myers embodies a work ethic and diligence that we deserve in all of our judges,” Republican Sen. Richard Burr said Thursday on the Senate floor in support of confirmation. Myers also had the backing of North Carolina’s other Republican in the chamber, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis.

“From the newsroom to the courtroom, to the classroom, Professor Myers has shown his commitment to the principles of truth, justice and of wisdom,” Tillis said. “I cannot imagine a more solid foundation upon which to place the responsibility of a District Court judgeship” than that of Myers , he added.

The confirmation of Myers, who is now appointed for life, followed a confirmation process defined by delays and tumult.

Raleigh lawyer Thomas Farr had been nominated to the eastern North Carolina post four times — twice by President George W. Bush and twice by Trump. Civil rights groups had heavily criticized Farr while a Trump nominee for his work defending state voting and redistricting laws that judges had declared discriminated against black voters, as well as for his role as a  1990 campaign lawyer for then-Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican.

Efforts to confirm Farr, who also was backed by Tillis and Burr, derailed in late 2018 when two Republicans outside North Carolina announced their opposition. One of them, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott — the chamber’s only black Republican — announced his opposition after he said he had read a U.S. Justice Department memo examining postcards sent to black voters before the 1990 election.

But Democrats saw their favored nominees blocked in the Senate, too. President Barack Obama’s picked former state Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson and federal prosecutor Jennifer May-Parker, both of them black women. The judgeship covers more than 40 eastern counties from Raleigh to the coast, several of which have large black populations.

Burr specifically stopped Timmons-Goodson’s nomination from going forward in 2016, calling it a “transparent attempt to turn the Eastern District vacancy into an election season stunt.”

Iowa
Man sentenced  for violence, stalking, bombs
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — An Illinois man has been sentenced in an Iowa federal courthouse to 50 years in prison for more than a dozen counts, including domestic violence, stalking, illegal bomb-making and witness tampering.

Federal prosecutors for Iowa say 43-year-old Chad Eric Mink, of Rock Island, Illinois, was sentenced Thursday in Davenport’s federal courthouse. He had been found guilty in June of 15 counts after more than 70 witnesses testified against him.

He had faced up to life in prison for the convictions. There is no parole in the federal system.

Prosecutors say Mink used a stolen truck to ram a vehicle carrying his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend sometime after their 2013 breakup. Officials also showed that Mink had several pipe bombs and had planted a pipe bomb near his ex-girlfriend’s room at the Quad City Inn in Davenport in 2016. Prosecutors say he also tried to convince a witness to destroy and fabricate evidence.

Maryland
Ex-casino dealer gets prison for role in cheating
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A man who worked as a baccarat dealer at a Maryland casino has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in a scheme to cheat the house out of just over $1 million, according to prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm also on Wednesday sentenced Ming Zhang, 32, of Alexandria, Virginia, to three years of supervised release after his prison term and ordered him to pay full restitution, U.S. Attorney Robert Hur’s office said in a news release.

Zhang had faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison after he pleaded guilty in September 2018 to one count of conspiring to transport stolen funds.

Zhang worked for MGM National Harbor near Washington, D.C.

Zhang’s role in the plot to cheat the casino was to notify an alleged co-conspirator when he was scheduled to deal baccarat. When that person arrived at his table in September 2017, Zhang exposed part of a baccarat deck to the player, who photographed the unshuffled cards before placing large bets on hands, a court filing said. Knowing the order of cards in a deck allows bettors to predict the outcome of baccarat hands with near-perfect accuracy.

MGM National Harbor, one of six casinos in Maryland, opened on the banks of the Potomac River in December 2016.

A court filing that accompanied Zhang’s guilty plea says the cheating scheme targeted at least one other Maryland casino. Sometime between July 2017 and September 2017, Zhang was present when an alleged co-conspirator executed the cheating scheme at a different casino. Zhang accepted a payment of $1,000 after meeting with that person at a hotel near the other casino, the filing says.

After they carried out the cheating scheme, Zhang contacted one of his alleged co-conspirators to arrange for more compensation, investigators said. That person, who was returning to New York, promised to contact him later.

The next day, however, investigators confronted Zhang, who lied to them about the scheme, according to a court filing.