Court Digest

Delaware
Former police chief pleads guilty to falsifying records
FENWICK ISLAND, Del. (AP) — The Delaware Department of Justice says that a former police chief in the coastal town of Fenwick Island has pleaded guilty to misconduct and falsifying records.

The Delaware News Journal reported Wednesday that William Boyden has also agreed to no longer work in a law enforcement capacity,

The indictment against Boyden said he submitted false reports regarding his firearm “certifications and qualifications” to allow him to remain as chief of police.

The justice department said that Boyden “accepted responsibility at the first available court hearing, and agreed to no longer work in a law enforcement capacity.”

Boyden got a suspended sentence of one year in prison and a year of probation. He also must complete 100 hours of community service.

Boyden was indicted in August.

California
Ex-San Diego sheriff’s captain pleads guilty to gun sales
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A former San Diego County sheriff’s captain has pleaded guilty to selling “off roster” guns available only to law enforcement, according to a newspaper report.

As part of a plea agreement, Marco Garmo admitted to one count of engaging in the business of dealing firearms without a federal license, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. He faces a maximum of five years in prison when sentenced.

The criminal conviction focused on the gun-trafficking charge. But the plea agreement also details other abuses of power, including lying to investigators and tipping off a family-connected illegal marijuana dispensary of an impending raid, the Times said.

“This case involved stunning and sustained violations of the public trust by a high-ranking law enforcement officer who bent his public position to his private gain,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Frakes said in a statement.

According to the indictment, Garmo oversaw a scheme that took advantage of a provision in state gun laws that allows law enforcement to occasionally resell certain firearms not available to the general public.

The scheme involved Garmo making straw purchases of handguns, rifles and high-capacity magazines that civilians were not allowed to purchase, then transferring or pretending to loan many of them to friends or acquaintances, prosecutors said.

New York
Appeals panel won’t speed release of NYPD discipline records
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to keep the release of New York City police disciplinary records on pause while public safety unions fight a lower-court decision that had cleared the way for their disclosure.

Two of three judges who heard arguments on the matter Tuesday in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to stay District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla’s Aug. 21 ruling as the appeals process unfolds. The unions are seeking a way around a new state transparency law.

The other judge, Gerard Edmund Lynch, disagreed and would have upheld Failla’s decision to lift a temporary restraining order, according to the court’s ruling. The restraining order has remained in effect because of the union’s appeal.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Lynch questioned the merits of the union lawsuit since scores of discipline records have already been posted online, noting he was able to look up an officer he knows in a database of 320,000 NYPD misconduct complaints that the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union posted online last month.

“The cat is not only out of the bag, it’s running the streets,” Lynch said.

“There are many more cats and many more bags,” union lawyer Anthony Coles replied.

A message seeking comment on the ruling was left with a spokesperson for the unions.

An organization that opposes the union lawsuit, Communities United for Police Reform, said in a statement that it viewed the ruling as “very narrow, and very temporary” because it only blocks records from being made public while Failla’s ruling is under appeal.

“While we are disappointed by further delay in the publication of these records, today’s ruling is no indication that the underlying order allowing publication was incorrect,” the statement said.

The Police Benevolent Association, representing New York City police officers, and other public safety unions, sued the city on July 15 to block Mayor Bill de Blasio from making good on a promise to post a database of misconduct complaints online. They argued that posting unproven or false complaints could sully officers’ reputations and compromise their safety.

New York lawmakers, spurred to action by protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other police misconduct, repealed a law in June that for decades blocked the public disclosure of disciplinary records for police officers, as well as firefighters and correctional officers.

Pennsylvania
Court gives Democrats wins in mail-in vote case
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court on Thursday handed victories to the Democratic Party in an election-related lawsuit that sought favorable fixes to glitches and gray areas in the battleground state’s fledgling mail-in voting law.

The state Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic majority, granted the Democratic Party’s request to order an extension of Pennsylvania’s Election Day-deadline to count mailed-in ballots for three days after Election Day.

It also authorized the use of satellite election offices and drop boxes — which Philadelphia and its heavily populated suburbs are planning to use help relieve the pressure from an avalanche of mailed-in ballots expected in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

The court’s ruling comes as Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature are at a stalemate over some of the issues, less than seven weeks before the election.

Rhode Island
Brow, attorneys reach settlement in fight over women’s sports
Brown University and attorneys for student-athletes who challenged the Ivy League school’s decision to reduce several women’s varsity sports teams to club status announced a proposed settlement Thursday.

In addition to restoring the women’s equestrian and women’s fencing teams to varsity status, the sides also said that a 1998 legal agreement ensuring gender equity in varsity sports at Brown would end on Aug. 31, 2024. The school would still be subject to the federal Title IX law requiring equal opportunities for women in sports.

Until that date, the Providence, Rhode Island, school will continue to comply with the 1998 agreement’s maximum 2.25% difference between the percentage of female varsity athletes and full-time female undergraduates, and will not reduce the status of — or eliminate — any women’s varsity teams and will not add any new men’s varsity teams, the sides said in a joint statement.

The settlement is subject to the approval of a federal judge, which could come as early as next week.

Lynette Labinger, lead attorney for the student-athletes, called the proposed settlement bittersweet because they were not able to save all five women’s sports.

“But through our efforts and the overwhelming contributions and energy of the student-athletes, we have ensured that Brown will provide meaningful participation opportunities for more women athletes and not simply push numbers around on a page,” she said in a statement.

Brown announced  in May it would reduce women’s varsity fencing, golf, squash, skiing and equestrian teams to club status in an effort to streamline its athletic department and make remaining teams more competitive.

Six men’s varsity sports were also cut, although track and cross country were later restored.  Brown said it would add co-ed and women’s varsity sailing teams to maintain gender balance.

Public Justice and the ACLU of Rhode Island on June 29 filed a motion asking the federal court to enforce the 1998 agreement by restoring the women’s sports and finding the university in contempt.
The 1998 agreement had stemmed from a legal challenge to Brown’s decision to cut women’s gymnastics and volleyball in the eary 1990s. It was named the Cohen Agreement after one of the plaintiffs, and previously had no expiration date.

That agreement presented a “significant obstacle” to Brown because it established unique reporting requirements not faced by any other U.S. college or university, the school said in a statement Thursday.

The school had repeatedly denied violating the terms of the agreement.

“The Cohen agreement served an important purpose when it was signed 22 years ago, but Brown’s commitment to women athletes transcends the agreement,” Brown President Christina Paxson said in a statement. “We can provide excellent athletics opportunities for women and men, be a leader in upholding Title IX and have a competitive varsity program. And we will.”

The legal battle became increasing tense last month when attorneys for the student-athletes released a series of internal Brown documents, including emails from Paxson and other top administrators that Public Justice and the ACLU said proved that Brown wanted to dismantle the 1998 agreement.

Brown fired back that Public Justice and the ACLU were just hyping “spurious conspiracy claims.”

Missouri
Woman pleads not guilty to illegally killing elk
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A southeast Missouri woman pleaded not guilty Thursday to illegally killing a protected elk and leaving its carcass in a field.

Deborah Flanigan, 50, of Scott County, was charged with a misdemeanor Sept. 10 after an investigation by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The case against Flanigan is one of six investigations into the killing of elk in Missouri in recent years, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The other five investigations are continuing.

The elk carcass was found in Carter County in November 2019, with no meat or other parts taken.

Elk were reintroduced to Missouri in 2011 and the herd has grown to about 200, with a range in parts of Carter, Reynolds and Shannon counties.

The state is planning its first elk hunt  in October, which drew thousands of applications for the five permits that will be issued.

“A healthy, growing elk population brings significant economic, recreational, and cultural benefits to these communities,” said Randy Doman, protection chief for the conservation department. “The senseless waste of people’s resources should not be tolerated.”

South Carolina
Mom gets 30 years for killing baby and leaving body in trash
EDGEFIELD, S.C. (AP) — A Florida woman who killed her 6-month-old son in South Carolina because she was angry when the child’s father wouldn’t answer her texts or phone calls was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday.

Vernita Lashon Jones told police she suffocated her son, Anthony Frost, and then dumped the baby’s body in a trash bin behind an apartment in Johnston. The child’s remains were found in a Greenville County landfill in November 2018, prosecutors said.

Jones, 27, pleaded guilty to homicide by child abuse in Edgefield County, The Aiken Standard reported.

She faced 30 years to life in prison, but her attorney asked for leniency, saying Jones suffered from mental illness and was considering killing her son and herself but did not take enough pills combined with alcohol.

“She was essentially born a crack baby, was raped, abandoned and had a string of bad boyfriends. We ask the court for whatever mercy the court seems fit to give,” public defender Bennett Casto said.

Jones lived in Clewiston, Florida, but left her son’s father and moved to South Carolina with the baby. Prosecutors said she then began leaving angry messages on the father’s phone and disturbing text messages like “answer the phone before I kill him” and “call us now before I beat him.’”

Friends in Johnston called police after seeing her around her apartment complex without the baby.

“Your selfishness robbed this child the opportunity to crawl, take his first steps or even utter his first words.,” Johnston Police Chief Lamaz Robinson said, saying the crime shocked and hurt his town of 2,350 known for being in the middle of South Carolina’s peach country.

The father’s family didn’t come to court because of COVID-19, but wrote a statement to the judge asking for a life sentence.

“Everyone remember Anthony as the baby who was loved by his family in Florida and not just a baby who was placed in a dumpster,” the statement said.

Jones, wearing a mask, cried during the hearing and said she wished she could do anything to bring back her son.

“I know I decided to do a horrible, horrible thing and I know that I can’t take it back,” Jones said. “I know I’ve offended a lot of people, not just my family but people statewide. I just want to say I wish that day never happened.”