National Roundup

Florida
Sheriff wants leads following Netflix series
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida sheriff is asking for new leads in the disappearance of the former husband of a big cat sanctuary owner featured in the new Netflix series “Tiger King.”

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister posted on his personal Twitter  account Monday that the popularity of the seven-part documentary made it a good time to ask for new leads in the 1997 disappearance of Jack “Don” Lewis. He was married to Carole Baskin, who runs Big Cat Rescue near Tampa.

Lewis went missing shortly before a planned business trip to Costa Rica, investigators said shortly after his disappearance. His van was found near a Pasco County airport. Deputies searched the wildlife sanctuary he ran with his wife, but he was never found in Florida nor Costa Rica.

“Tiger King” tells the story of an Oklahoma zookeeper named Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as “Joe Exotic,” who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison this year after being convicted in an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot against Baskin. He was upset that Baskin, an outspoken critic of him and his zoo, won a million-dollar civil judgment against him.

The documentary extensively covered Maldonado-Passage’s repeated accusations that Baskin killed her husband and possibly fed him to her tigers. Baskin has never been charged with any crime and released a statement  refuting the accusations made in the series.

“Tiger King” quickly became Netflix’s top show following its March 20 release. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office confirmed last week that the Lewis case is still active and open.

Montana
Ex-Blackfeet chairman gets 10 months prison in fraud case
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A former Blackfeet Nation chairman who defrauded a tribal Head Start early education program through an overtime pay scheme was sentenced Monday to 10 months in prison and his plea to be spared prison time because of the coronavirus was denied.

Willie Sharp’s attorney had argued the Bureau of Prisons was unprepared for the unfolding pandemic, saying the 66-year-old defendant’s age and health problems put him at high risk of complications if he becomes ill with the virus.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris rejected Willie Sharp’s request but issued a more lenient sentence than what was recommended by federal prosecutors.

Federal prosecutors had recommended about two years in prison after Sharp, who is from the town of Browning, admitted to his role in stealing more than $230,000 from the northwestern Montana tribe’s Head Start early education program.

Head Start works to break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool to children from low-income families.

Prosecutor have said Sharp and his co-defendants embarked on the scheme for employees to inflate overtime payments less than two weeks after their program serving poor Native American kids was informed of a of a $160,000 budget cut by federal officials.

The theft “hurt the children enrolled in Head Start by prohibiting the purchase of books, barring the ability to obtain teaching materials and cutting food nutrition programs for those who need it most” U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said in a statement.

A charge of theft from a tribal government receiving federal funding was dismissed under the terms of a plea deal.

Defense attorney Andrew Huff said Sharp could not appeal under the terms of the plea deal. He declined further comment.

Sharp pleaded guilty to wire fraud last year after he authorized false overtime claims on more than 5,800 hours, resulting in $174,000 in payments including to his wife, Denise Sharp, the program’s personnel manager. The scheme took place over a 15-month period starting in 2013, prosecutors said.

Denise Sharp and four others were convicted and sentenced to eight or nine months in prison.

Morris ordered Sharp and the other defendants to pay $174,000 in restitution.

After the fraud was uncovered, the Blackfeet Tribe did an internal review and agreed it could not justify the overtime claims.

It repaid the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services $250,620.29 for disallowed costs and other expenses, Alme’s office said.

Mississippi
Trump nominates judge for 5th U.S. appeals court
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals is being nominated to serve on a federal appeals court that handles cases for Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the White House announced Monday.

Cory Wilson joined the 10-member state court in February 2019 after being appointed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican. Before that, Wilson was a first-term Republican member of the Mississippi House.

President Donald Trump announced in August that he was nominating Wilson to become a federal district judge in southern Mississippi. The state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, introduced Wilson to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, but the committee had not yet acted on the nomination.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considered one of the most conservative appeals courts in the nation.

“Judge Wilson’s performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year confirmed what we already knew — he is a smart, thoughtful, conservative jurist who will follow the rule of law,” Wicker said in a statement Monday. “Given his academic and professional achievements, I am sure that Judge Wilson would serve the court well.”

Hyde-Smith said she has known Wilson many years and considers him well qualified.

“The elevation of Judge Cory Wilson’s nomination to the Circuit Court of Appeals reflects President Trump’s confidence in Cory’s conservative judicial philosophy, legal knowledge, academic and public service,” Hyde-Smith said in a statement.

Wilson earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi and his law degree from Yale University, where he worked on the Yale Law Journal. He was a law clerk to Judge Emmett Ripley Cox of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

As the president switches Wilson’s nomination to a different court, the White House said Monday that Trump is also nominating another attorney to fill the district judgeship in southern Mississippi. Kristi Haskins Johnson is a former assistant U.S. attorney for southern Mississippi. Earlier this year, she was named solicitor general for the state of Mississippi.

If confirmed, she would be the first woman to serve as a federal judge in the district that encompasses the southern half of the state.

Johnson earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from Mississippi College, where she was executive editor of the Mississippi College Law Review. She was U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock in northern Mississippi and for Judge Leslie H. Southwick of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.