Court Digest

Mississippi
Judge: State does not own disputed ground water
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A specially appointed judge is siding with Tennessee in a more than decade-long legal dispute with Mississippi over the right to ground water.

Special Master Eugene Siler Jr. said he will recommend the U.S. Supreme Court find that Mississippi doesn’t own the disputed water, but that it is an interstate resource, the Clarion Ledger reported.

The two states are fighting over an aquifer that lies beneath parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana.

Mississippi claims Tennessee is unlawfully pumping water from the Mississippi portion of the aquifer for use by Memphis residents. Since 1985, Memphis and the state of Tennessee have wrongfully taken more than 252 billion gallons of water — approximately 15% to 20% of Memphis’ supply — from within Mississippi, Mississippi lawyers have argued. They are seeking more than $600 million in damages and a court order stopping Memphis from using the aquifer as its water source.

Tennessee and Memphis argue that the water does not solely belong to Mississippi.

In his decision on Thursday, Siler said Mississippi should seek equitable apportionment — a process where the U.S. Supreme Court decides how much water each state is entitled to, the Clarion Ledger reported.

If Mississippi refuses that remedy, Siler said the case should be permanently dismissed. His recommendations now go to the U.S. Supreme Court for a decision.

Alabama
District attorney indicted on five felony charges
OPELIKA, Ala. (AP) — An east Alabama prosecutor was indicted on five felony charges of using his office for personal gain by allegedly using his position to benefit his family and conspiring to steal a pickup truck, the state said Monday.

Lee County District Attorney Brandon M. Hughes was charged with ethics violations, perjury and conspiracy to commit theft, Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office said in a statement.
Hughes previously has denied intentionally breaking any laws.

Hughes was charged with illegally hiring his three children to work for his office and paying private lawyers with public funds to settle a matter that helped him and his wife, according to the statement. He was also charged with issuing a subpoena to a company to gather evidence for his own potential defense.

The state said Hughes also allegedly tried to steal a 1985 Ford Ranger pickup truck from a business in neighboring Chambers County by hatching a plan to use a search warrant to to make a business give up the vehicle.

Hughes, who also was accused of lying to a special grand jury, surrendered at the Lee County jail on Sunday afternoon and was released on $31,000 bond, news outlets reported.

Hughes, who did not immediately comment publicly on the case, told the Opelika-Auburn News he would release a statement Monday.

Elected in 2016, Hughes previously said he had reported a possible ethics violation to the Alabama Ethics Commission, which decided in April to refer the matter to the state. Hughes denied doing anything wrong intentionally at the time, although its unclear whether the indictment related to the referral.

“I want to be clear that I have never, not once, knowingly violated any ethical standard in my 18 years as a prosecutor,” he said. “I have always put doing what is right above all else in my career.”

Pennsylvania
Judge: Man cannot be retried in 1996 slayings
READING, Pa. (AP) — An eastern Pennsylvania judge has ruled that a man cannot be tried a second time in the shooting deaths of two cousins almost a quarter of a century ago.

A Berks County judge last month dismissed the charges against 44-year-old Roderick Johnson, saying his initial trials were unfair and trying him again for the same crimes would violate federal double jeopardy laws, the Reading Eagle reported.

Johnson was convicted in 1997 of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, but a county judge granted him a new trial in 2013, citing misconduct by prosecutors. Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishauser, in her Oct. 29 ruling, cited what she called “egregious” conduct in the withholding of information from defense attorneys.

A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office said the office is considering an appeal of the ruling.

Defense attorney Jay Nigrini said his client remains in county prison and has spent more than half of his life incarcerated for crimes that weren’t properly tried.

“It’s very upsetting to know that a person has been on death row due to intentional prosecutorial misconduct,” Nigrini said. “It undermines confidence in the criminal justice system when a case like this occurs.”

Johnson and a co-defendant were sentenced to death in the slayings of 22-year-old Damon Banks and 19-year-old Gregory Banks, whose bodies were found off an Exeter Township road in December 1996. The other man was also sentenced to death but was later resentenced to 23 to 80 years, WFMZ reported.

Oklahoma
Man at center of tribal sovereignty ruling again convicted
MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — A member of the Seminole Nation has been convicted in federal court of sexually assaulting a child after the U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled that Oklahoma prosecutors did not have authority to pursue charges against American Indians in parts of the state.

Court records show Jimcy McGirt, 72, was convicted Friday in U.S. District Court in Muskogee on two counts of sexual abuse and one count of sexual contact.

Prosecutors say McGirt faces 30 years to life in prison on the federal conviction. A sentencing date was not set.

McGirt’s attorney, Richard O’Carroll, told the Tulsa World that the verdict will be appealed.

McGirt was convicted in a state court and sentenced to 500 years in prison in 1997 for the assaults that occurred on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land.

The Supreme Court ruled that the tribe’s reservation had never been disestablished and either federal courts or tribal nations have jurisdiction over crimes committed by or against Native Americans on tribal land, not the state.

A federal grand jury in September indicted McGirt on federal counts.

Missouri
Gun-waving couple sues news photographer
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis couple facing felony charges for waving guns at racial injustice protesters who marched near their home allege in a lawsuit that a news photographer trespassed to capture an image of the confrontation.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, lawyers in their 60s, filed the lawsuit Friday in St. Louis Circuit Court against United Press International photographer Bill Greenblatt and the wire service, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

At issue was a protest on June 28, when a few hundred marchers veered onto the private street near the the McCloskeys’ $1.15 million home in St. Louis’ posh Central West End area. Mark McCloskey emerged with an AR-15 rifle and his wife displayed a semiautomatic handgun.

Newspaper photographers are allowed to capture images from public rights of way. The McCloskeys live on a private street and have argued that protesters were trespassing. No one was hurt, and the McCloskeys have pleaded not guilty  to unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering.

The couple said Greenblatt’s photo has contributed to their “significant national recognition and infamy.” In addition to Greenblatt and the news service, the McCloskeys are suing Redbubble Inc., a San Francisco-based online marketplace for print-on-demand products.

The McCloskeys allege that Greenblatt, UPI, and Redbubble are all profiting from “t-shirts, masks, and other items, and licensing use of photographs bearing Plaintiffs’ likenesses, without obtaining Plaintiffs’ consent.”

Often their image on merchandise sold by Redbubble is accompanied with “mocking and pejorative taglines or captions,” causing them “humiliation, mental anguish, and severe emotional distress,” the suit alleges.

Meanwhile, UPI said recently it was considering whether to send a “cease and desist” order to the couple because of their use of the UPI photo as part of a personal greeting card.

Greenblatt referred all questions to the UPI director of photography in Washington, D.C., who could not be reached for comment. Redbubble didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press.


Indiana
Former mayor faces retrial on bribery charge
HAMMOND, Ind. (AP) — A former northwestern Indiana mayor is facing a December retrial on a federal charge alleging that he solicited a bribe from two local businessmen.

A federal judge in Hammond scheduled former Portage Mayor James Snyder’s trial for Dec. 7 on the soliciting bribes charge. During that trial, federal prosecutors will again try to convince a jury that Snyder solicited a bribe from brothers Bob and Steve Buha.

A federal jury convicted Snyder in February 2019 of bribery and federal tax violations, but the bribery verdict was later overturned. Another judge ruled that Snyder deserved a new trial because he was denied the chance of calling the brothers to testify that they didn’t bribe Snyder.

The brothers wouldn’t take the witness stand during Snyder’s 2019 trial on fears they might be criminally charged themselves if they supported Snyder and contradicted the government accusations, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

Prosecutors allege Snyder corruptly steered $1.125 million in contracts for the city of Portage to buy garbage trucks from the Portage trucking company in 2013, when the Buha brothers were its owners.

The government alleges Snyder solicited and received a $13,000 bribe from the brothers a few weeks later.

Snyder pleaded not guilty to the charge. His legal team argues the $13,000 was a legitimate payment for consulting services Snyder provided the trucking dealership to save money on the cost of insurance and information technology.

U.S. District Court Judge Theresa L. Springmann decided last month that Snyder must face a new jury on the bribery charge, overruling defense arguments that a second trial was barred by the constitutional protection against double jeopardy.

Wisconsin
Revised settlement recommended over Bucks player’s arrest
MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Milwaukee city attorney is recommending a revised offer to settle a lawsuit brought by Milwaukee Bucks guard Sterling Brown, who was taken to the ground, shocked with a Taser and arrested during an encounter with police in 2018.

City Attorney Tearman Spencer is recommending a $750,000 payment and an admission that Brown’s constitutional rights were violated during the arrest that began with a parking violation outside a Walgreen’s store.

Brown rejected the Milwaukee City Council’s original offer of $400,000 made in 2019. Brown’s attorney, Mark Thomsen, said at the time that any settlement without an admission of a civil rights violation would go nowhere. Thomsen said the admission was necessary for the city to heal.

Brown contends in his lawsuit that police used excessive force and targeted him because he is Black when they confronted him for parking illegally in a handicapped-accessible spot in January 2018. He was talking with officers while waiting for his citation when the situation escalated. Officers took him down and used a stun gun because he didn’t immediately remove his hands from his pockets, as ordered.

The latest offer also includes unspecified changes to the police department’s policies, the  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

In a letter dated Nov. 4, Spencer recommended the new settlement proposal to the Common Council’s Committee on Judiciary and Legislation “because of the unpredictability of a trial, and the city’s risk for exposure to compensatory and punitive damages, as well as additional attorney fees and costs.”