Court Digest

Alabama
Judge reduces prison sentence for former speaker
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday slashed former House Speaker Mike Hubbard’s prison sentence from four years to 28 months, significantly reducing the time the once-powerful Republican will spend behind bars for an ethics conviction.

Lee County Circuit Judge Jacob Walker reduced Hubbard’s sentence at the request of defense attorneys after some of his conviction was overturned.

Hubbard was sentenced to four years in prison after his 2016 conviction on ethics charges. Prosecutors accused Hubbard of leveraging his powerful public office to obtain clients and investments for his businesses.

The defense asked a court to reduce Hubbard’s sentence since appellate courts earlier this year overturned six of the 12 counts in his conviction. The attorney general’s office opposed the request.

The Republican was one of the state’s most powerful politicians for years, until the ethics conviction in a corruption case ended his political career. Hubbard, the architect of the GOP’s takeover of the Alabama Legislature in 2010, was a legislator from Auburn and former chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. He was elected House speaker soon after Republicans won control of both legislative chambers.

Hubbard was automatically removed from office after his 2016 felony conviction.

Missouri
Man gets life sentence for 2017 killing
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Wayne County man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 2017 killing, the Missouri attorney general’s office said Wednesday.
Joshua Oldham was convicted in August of first-degree murder in the death of Marshall “Luke” Helm on Nov. 4, 2017.

In addition to the life sentence for the killing, Oldham was also sentenced to 30 years for armed criminal action and 10 years for unlawful possession of a firearm. The sentences will run consecutively.

“One of my main priorities as Attorney General has been to fight violent crime all over the state and prosecute Missouri’s most violent offenders,” Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a news release.

Wisconsin
Court: Ex-cop can try to rescind plea in suitcase death
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A former suburban Milwaukee police officer convicted of killing two women during sex and stuffing their corpses into suitcases can keep trying to withdraw his guilty plea in one of the cases, a Wisconsin appeals court ruled Wednesday.

Steven Zelich, of West Allis, pleaded guilty in 2016 to reckless homicide and hiding a corpse in 19-year-old Jenny Gamez’s death four years earlier. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2017 in 37-year-old Laura Simonson’s death in Minnesota in 2013.

Prosecutors said Zelich met the women online, got together with them at hotels — Gamez in Kenosha, Simonson in Rochester — and choked them to death during sex. He then stuffed their bodies in suitcases and dumped them in a ditch in Kenosha County.

He was sentenced to 35 years in prison in the Wisconsin case and 25 years in the Minnesota case.

Zelich filed a post-conviction motion seeking to withdraw his guilty plea in the Wisconsin case. He argued that he pleaded guilty only after Judge Bruce Schroeder decided Wisconsin prosecutors could introduce evidence from the Minnesota case and his attorney mistakenly informed him he could challenge that ruling on appeal.

Schroeder held a hearing on the motion last year but ended the proceedings prematurely before denying the request, according to Zelich.

The 2nd District Court of Appeals ordered Schroeder to reopen the hearing and allow Zelich to withdraw his plea if he can show his attorney was ineffective.

Online court records don’t list any appeals from Zelich in Minnesota.

Massachusetts
State’s highest court gets 1st Latina justice
BOSTON (AP) — Dalila Argaez Wendlandt was unanimously confirmed to a seat on the highest court in Massachusetts on Wednesday.

With her confirmation by the Governor’s Council, Wendlandt becomes the first Latina justice on the Supreme Judicial Court, which traces its history to the late 17th century.

“Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt is a highly intelligent, accomplished jurist who has served with distinction on the Appeals Court, and I am confident that she will continue to serve with integrity and impartiality on the Supreme Judicial Court,” Republican Gov. Charlie Baker said in a statement.

Wendlandt, 51, has served on the state’s second highest court since 2017.

Born in New Orleans, she is the daughter of Colombian immigrants and has engineering degrees from the University of Illinois and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a law degree from Stanford University.

Wendlandt’s confirmation comes about a week after the confirmation of Kimberly Budd as the high court’s chief justice, making her the first Black woman to serve in that capacity.

Mississippi
Longtime judge, pioneer for women in public service, dies
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — Sadie Monts Holland, longtime Lee County Justice Court Judge and pioneer for Mississippi women in public service, has died at age 87.

Holland’s son, Steve Holland, wrote on social media that she died of a heart attack and stroke Monday after undergoing heart surgery.

“We celebrate the renaissance life she’s lived for almost 88 years and will the whole of our lives thank God for Sadie being the most caring, compassionate, loving Mom anyone could have,” Holland, a former state representative, wrote on Facebook.

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports  that Holland was involved in public service for more than 50 years. Many of the positions she held were firsts for women.

Holland was born Jan. 31, 1933, the only child of sharecroppers, according to The Journal. She married John Clarence “J.C.” Holland in December 1949 and raised six sons on their Plantersville farm, known by many as the Sadie J. Farm.

Holland became the first woman in Mississippi to serve as a public school bus driver in the 1960s, a job she performed for 17 years. She was the first female court administrator in Tupelo and was elected the first female mayor of Nettleton in 1979.

After running at age 70, she was the first woman elected justice court judge in Lee County, a position she held for 16 years.

In addition, Holland was the first woman to lead an integrated 4-H Club in Mississippi.

Holland was at the center of a national news story in 2013 when she was one of three people who were sent letters that tested positive for the poison ricin. The other letters were addressed to then-President Barack Obama and Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

The letters to Obama and Wicker never reached their intended targets because they were stopped in mail processing facilities.

Holland opened her ricin letter, and Steve Holland told The Associated Press in 2013 that like just about any country lady would do, she gave it a “smell test” when she saw something odd. Steve Holland reports it burnt her nose a little. The judge later underwent medical tests and was found to be fine.

A Tupelo man was charged with attempted use of a biological weapon in connection with the letters and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The state legislature honored Holland in 2019 with a statewide resolution that named the intersection of Highway 6 and County Road 814 as “The Sadie Holland Intersection.” She retired as Lee County Justice Court Judge in November 2019.

Holland is predeceased by her husband, who died in 2016 at age 85.

New York
Manhattan DA appeals Manafort dismissal to state’s high court
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City prosecutors are seeking to have the state’s highest court revive state mortgage fraud charges against President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort after striking out twice before in lower courts.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office sent a letter Tuesday to the state’s chief judge asking permission to challenge an intermediate appeals court’s ruling last month, which upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds. In New York, the highest court is called the Court of Appeals.

A four-judge panel in the intermediate court ruled Oct. 22 that the DA’s office failed to demonstrate that the state charges warranted an exception to state double jeopardy protections. That echoed trial court judge Maxwell Wiley’s finding last December that the state charges against Manafort mirrored the federal case that landed him behind bars.

A message seeking comment was left with Manafort’s lawyer, who previously said the case led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had extensive factual overlap with the federal case and was a “clear violation of New York law.”

Vance, a Democrat, filed the state charges in what was widely seen as an attempt to hedge against the possibility Trump would pardon Manafort for federal crimes. That hasn’t happened.

Manafort, 71, was convicted in federal court on charges alleging he misled the U.S. government about lucrative foreign lobbying work, hid millions of dollars from tax authorities and encouraged witnesses to lie on his behalf.

He was released to home confinement in May because of concerns about the coronavirus less than a year into his nearly 7 1/2 year sentence.

Florida
High court won’t reinstate vacated death sentences
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court ruled Wednesday it cannot reinstate death sentences for two convicted killers who previously had those sentences vacated by the justices in a ruling that could ultimately affect dozens of cases.

Instead, the justices determined that new sentencing hearings must be held for this pair of inmates. They are among more than 100 murderers who had death sentences vacated over the issue of whether juries had to unanimously recommend capital punishment.

“We realize that resentencing in a capital case is time-consuming and costly, all at the public’s expense. These considerations, however compelling, do not give us license to exceed the legal constraints on our authority,” the court ruled in one of the cases.

The decisions are the latest twist in the Florida Supreme Court’s effort to decide whether juries must unanimously recommend death sentences. A 2016 ruling known as Hurst required unanimous juries and led the justices to vacate more than 100 death sentences in Florida.

Then came a ruling in January, known as Poole, that juries did not have to be unanimous in capital punishment cases after all. By then, the Supreme Court had new justices with more conservative legal views.

That led prosecutors around the state to ask the Supreme Court to reinstate death sentences that had been vacated over the unanimous jury issue. The court, in its ruling Wednesday, rejected that idea.

One case was that of Michael James Jackson, who was convicted in Duval County of kidnapping, robbing and burying alive Carol and Reggie Sumner, who were both 61 and disabled, in 2005.

Jackson’s new sentencing hearing had been set to begin in February but was put on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. Prosecutors also had wanted that hearing canceled.

“Jackson’s vacated death sentences cannot be retroactively reinstated,” the court ruled. “To the extent the state seeks to permanently halt the resentencing, that would leave Jackson without a sentence for the two murders.”

The other case decided Wednesday involved Bessman Okafor, who was convicted in the 2012 slaying in Orange County of Alex Zaldivar, 19, during a home-invasion robbery. His new sentencing hearing had been set for March after the original death penalty was vacated.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled Okafor must have that hearing before a lower trial court — and so might dozens of other killers who had death sentences vacated under the Hurst decision.

“In reaching this conclusion, we acknowledge the burden that resentencing proceedings will place on the victims of Okafor’s crimes. We also acknowledge the consequences for the victims in similar cases that will be governed by our decision here,” the justices ruled. “Nonetheless, our holding is compelled by applicable law.”