Court Digest

Virginia
Prosecutor will probe mayor’s removal of Confederate statues
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A judge in Virginia has appointed a county prosecutor to investigate whether Richmond’s mayor broke any laws when his administration hired a company to remove the city’s Confederate monuments.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Monday that Richmond Circuit Court Judge Joi Taylor has appointed Augusta Commonwealth’s Attorney Timothy Martin.

The Levar Stoney administration originally authorized a $1.8 million contract with the company NAH LLC for the removal of Richmond’s Confederate monuments in July. The company is linked to a Newport News-based contracting firm whose owner has donated $4,000 to Stoney’s campaign and political action committee since 2016.

Administration officials said that other firms had declined to take the project. They also said the administration had the authority to take the memorials down because they had become a threat to public safety as protests erupted across the nation.

Richmond Councilwoman Kim Gray had requested an investigation last month, saying that the contract’s cost and the project’s ties to the mayor’s donor raised “troubling questions.” She is running for mayor against Stoney.

Stoney’s administration has denied wrongdoing.

Confederate statues have been coming down throughout the southern United States in the wake of protests against racism and police brutality. The demonstrations were sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.

Oklahoma
Feds indict Indian men whose cases led to sovereignty ruling
MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation convicted of murder in state court and another convicted of sexually assaulting a child in cases at the center of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling on tribal sovereignty are now facing felony charges in federal court, U.S. Attorney Brian Kuester announced on Monday.

A federal grand jury in Muskogee returned criminal indictments against Jimcy McGirt, 71, for three counts of aggravated sexual abuse, and Patrick Dwayne Murphy, 51, for murder and kidnapping. The FBI is the primary investigative agency in the two Native American men’s cases.

Both McGirt and Murphy have been in state prison since the 1990s but had challenged their sentences, arguing they should have been charged in federal, not state court. Those challenges ultimately made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled this summer that state prosecutors lack jurisdiction in certain criminal cases that occur on tribal lands.

Both cases involved the boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, which the high court ruled Congress never formally disestablished and therefore remains an Indian reservation.

Kuester said six of the 26 counties that make up the Eastern District of Oklahoma are within the boundaries of the Creek Nation and that his office has seen a major increase in the number of criminal cases his prosecutors are handling that typically would have been prosecuted in state court.

Massachusetts
Legal dispute over logging in state forest back in court
GREENFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A judge has set a deadline of Friday for the sides in a legal dispute over tree cutting in a Massachusetts state forest to submit additional written comments on the case.

Twenty-nine members of the Wendell State Forest Alliance sued the state Department of Conservation and Recreation alleging that the logging of 100-year-old oak trees in the forest in the summer of 2019 broke several state laws and regulations, according to The Recorder of Greenfield.

Assistant Attorney General Kendra Kinscherf told a Greenfield Superior Court judge this past week that the case should be dismissed, as the logging ended a year ago.

Several members of the alliance, who are not represented by an attorney, said the logging may have violated state laws meant to combat global warming, and the public was denied due process because of a lack of any meaningful way to appeal decisions regarding public forests.

The alliance is not seeking any money in the suit, but is asking the judge to declare the state’s decisions wrong so a similar project won’t happen in other forests.

Maryland
Baltimore must pay alleged police victim full settlement
BALTIMORE (AP) — The city of Baltimore must stop withholding tens of thousands of dollars from an alleged victim of police misconduct, despite the city’s accusation that the Black woman violated a non-disparagement clause that was part of a 2014 settlement, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The judge wrote that the city must pay Ashley Overbey Underwood the remaining $31,500 due to as part of her settlement, plus interest.

The order comes after a federal appeals court ruled in July 2019 that Baltimore’s practice of reducing financial settlements to alleged victims of police misconduct when they speak about their experience is unconstitutional, likening the practice to “hush money.” The ACLU of Maryland had sued on behalf of Underwood in that case.

Underwood had negotiated a $63,000 settlement with the city after suing three police officers who she said beat her and shot her with a stun gun when she reported a burglary in her home. But she only got half the money because the city said she violated the settlement’s non-disparagement clause when she responded to online comments in an article about her case.

Baltimore has paid millions of dollars in such settlements. Critics have argued the non-disparagement clauses help cover up police misconduct and make it more difficult to accurately assess police actions.

Following the 2-1 ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Baltimore Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young in 2019 signed an executive order that bars the city in some instances from prohibiting alleged victims of police brutality from disparaging police after they receive cash settlements. The order applies retroactively.

New York
Lennon’s killer says he sought glory, deserved death penalty
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The man who killed John Lennon in 1980 says he was seeking glory and deserved the death penalty for a “despicable” act.

Mark David Chapman made the comments in response to questions last month from a parole board, which denied him parole for an 11th time. As in previous parole board hearings, the now 65-year-old inmate expressed remorse for gunning down the former Beatle outside the musician’s Manhattan apartment building.

“I assassinated him .. because he was very, very, very famous and that’s the only reason and I was very, very, very, very much seeking self-glory. Very selfish,” Chapman said, according to a transcript released by the state Monday after an open records request.

Looking back 40 years later, Chapman called his actions “creepy” and “despicable.” He said he thinks all the time about the pain he inflicted on Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono.

“I just want her to know that she knows her husband like no one else and knows the kind of man he was. I didn’t,” he said.

Chapman shot and killed Lennon on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, as he and Ono were returning to their Upper West Side apartment. Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman on a copy of his recently released album, “Double Fantasy,” earlier that day.

“He was actually kind to me that day,” Chapman said.

Chapman is serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Wende Correctional Facility, east of Buffalo. He told the board he would have “no complaint whatsoever” if they chose to leave him in prison for the rest of his life.

“I deserve zero, nothing. At the time I deserved the death penalty. When you knowingly plot someone’s murder and know it’s wrong and you do it for yourself, that’s a death penalty right there, in my opinion,” he said.

In denying him parole, the board said Chapman committed an “evil act” and said they found his statement that “infamy brings you glory” disturbing.

Chapman will be up for parole again in August 2022.

Washington
Trump asks Supreme Court for fast action in census case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for fast action on its effort, blocked by a lower court, to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets.

In court papers filed Tuesday, the administration suggested the court hear arguments in the case in December, potentially with a new justice appointed by President Donald Trump in place. That would allow for a final decision before the Jan. 10, 2021, deadline in federal law to transmit census numbers that will determine each state’s allotment of seats in the House of Representatives for the next 10 years.

Trump said he would reveal his pick Saturday to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week. Senate Republicans plan to move quickly to confirm Ginsburg’s replacement, over the objections of Democrats who say the winner of the presidential election should name the new justice.

In early September, a panel of three federal judges in New York said Trump’s order was unlawful. The judges prohibited Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose agency oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, from excluding people in the country illegally when handing in 2020 census figures used to calculate how many congressional seats each state gets in a process known as apportionment.

The judges said that those in the country illegally qualify as people to be counted in the states they reside.

The administration’s appeal contends the panel was wrong to even consider the case and also came to the wrong conclusion about whether people living in the U.S. illegally must be counted for purposes of apportionment.

The court could reverse the lower-court ruling without even hearing arguments, the administration said. It asked the court to decide how to proceed by mid-October and said it would also ask the justices to put the lower-court ruling on hold, if the three judges don’t themselves do so.

Opponents of Trump’s order said it was an effort to suppress the growing political power of Latinos in the U.S. and to discriminate against immigrant communities of color. They also said undocumented residents use the nation’s roads, parks and other public amenities and should be taken into account for any distribution of federal resources.

The numbers used for apportionment are derived from the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident that is set to end in two weeks, although there is separate litigation to extend the count because of the coronavirus pandemic. The census also helps determine the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually.

New York
China: Spying allegations against New York City cop ‘pure fabrication’
BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday said allegations against a New York City police officer charged with being an “intelligence asset” for the Chinese government are a “pure fabrication” and part of a U.S. plot to smear Chinese diplomats in the United States.

Baimadajie Angwang, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Tibet, allegedly agreed to spy on U.S. supporters of the Tibetan independence movement since 2018 as an agent for China in its effort to suppress the movement, according to a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court.

It says he secretly worked for unnamed handlers from the Chinese Consulate in New York.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday said the indictment against Angwang was full of hedging terms such as “seems” and “possibly,” giving the appearance that prosecutors were straining to make their case.

“The relevant accusations made by the U.S. side are pure fabrication,” Wang told reporters at a daily briefing. “The U.S. plot to discredit the Chinese Consulate and personnel in the United States will not succeed.”

There was no allegation that Angwang compromised national security or New York Police Department operations. Still, he was considered “the definition of an insider threat,” William Sweeney, head of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement Monday.

Court papers say Angwang’s job as a spy for China was to “locate potential intelligence sources” and “identify potential threats to the (People’s Republic of China) in the New York metropolitan area.” He also was expected to provide consulate officials “access to senior NYPD officials through invitations to official NYPD events,” they add.

An advocacy group, International Campaign for Tibet, said in a statement that the arrest shows that the “Chinese Communist Party is engaged in malign operations to suppress dissent, not only in Tibet ... but any place in the world where Tibetans are free to express themselves.”