National Roundup

Rhode Island
AG reviewing who is getting COVID vaccines in Rhode Island
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island’s attorney general is reviewing whether the state’s largest hospital operators are properly distributing COVID vaccines.

The Providence Journal reports state Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office has been in contact with the state Department of Health regarding the distribution of vaccines by Lifespan and Care New England.

Kristy dosReis, a spokeswoman for Neronha, told the newspaper that the office intends to look into any improper distribution and determine whether legal violations occurred.

The Journal previously reported that board members and trustees at the two hospital groups have been offered vaccinations, even as elderly residents won’t receive the vaccine until at least next month, under the state’s vaccine distribution plan.

Health Department spokesman Joseph Wendelken told the Journal that hospitals have been instructed to vaccinate highest exposure healthcare workers first, as well as staff critical to the facility’s operation, such as lab and IT workers and certain administrators.

But hospital operators around the country have expanded vaccine eligibility to all their employees, including top administrators, board members and people who work remotely.

Spokespersons for Lifespan, which operates Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and others, and Care New England, which runs Women and Infants Hospital in Providence and others, didn’t respond to emails seeking comment Thursday.

Connecticut
Feds no longer seeking death penalty in killing of three people
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Federal prosecutors are no longer seeking the death penalty for a Connecticut drug dealer convicted for his role in the killings of three people beaten to death in a turf dispute over crack cocaine sales.

The U.S. attorney’s office notified Azibo Aquart’s lawyer about its decision late last month, according to a document filed Tuesday in federal court in New Haven.

A spokesperson for federal prosecutors in Connecticut had no immediate comment Thursday.

Aquart, now 39, was sentenced to death in 2012 for the 2005 killings in Bridgeport, becoming the first federal court defendant in Connecticut to receive the death penalty since federal capital punishment was reinstated in 1988.

But a federal appeals court overturned the sentence in 2018, after finding prosecutorial misconduct during the cross-examination of a now-retired FBI agent. The court, however, upheld Aquart’s convictions for murder in aid of racketeering and other crimes, and ordered a new sentencing hearing. He now faces up to life in prison.

Aquart was one of four men convicted in the killings of Tina Johnson, James Reid and Basil Williams, who were beaten to death with baseball bats on Aug. 24, 2005, and found bound with duct tape in Johnson’s apartment.

Prosecutors said Johnson had been selling crack cocaine in Aquart’s drug turf in the Charles Street Apartments without his permission. Aquart and his associates were involved in numerous acts of violence to maintain control over their drug selling activities in the apartment complex, authorities said.

“Azibo Aquart carried out heinous crimes, and committed horrific acts of violence,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said after Aquart was sentenced to death. “There is no joy on this day — only the recognition that we must continue not only to seek justice for victims of violent crime, but also to do all we can to prevent and deter drug trafficking and the terror that so often accompanies it.”
Aquart’s lawyer, David Moraghan, had no comment Thursday.

Nearly 50 men are on federal death row, while Connecticut abolished its death penalty in 2015.

Former President Donald Trump resumed federal executions last year after a 17-year hiatus and his Justice Department put to death 13 people, an unprecedented run that ended just days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions. Biden favors eliminating the death penalty.

Other than Aquart’s case, there are at least three pending federal prosecutions in Connecticut where defendants are eligible for the death penalty, but none in which prosecutors currently are seeking capital punishment, according to Thomas Carson, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Ohio
Child advocates: State foster plan illegal, inadequate
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s plan for addressing disparities in payments made to adults caring for related children but who aren’t licensed foster parents is illegal and inadequate, according to a new filing in a federal lawsuit.

At issue are relatives who aren’t licensed caregivers but are approved to care for children taken from their parents. The arrangement is often referred to as kinship care.

Child advocates argue the state must follow a 2017 federal appeals court decision ordering equality in payments to kinship caregivers, and in November sued to force adherence to that ruling.

Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law late last yea r providing a partial fix. The plan authorizes a $10.20 per child per day payment for kinship caregivers for up to nine months.

Advocates say that money falls far short of what licensed foster care parents receive, citing as an example the $1,500 to $9,667 monthly payments per foster child in Hamilton County.

The state has asked a federal judge to dismiss the 2020 lawsuit, arguing the new plan fixes the problem. Lawyers representing children in kinship care disagree, saying the plan doesn’t come close to bridging the financial gap.

“On its face, the new program continues to harmfully and unlawfully treat approved relative foster homes differently, because they involve relative caregivers,” attorneys argued in a Wednesday court filing.