Court Digest

Kentucky
Former State Supreme Court justice dies
COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer, who served on the state’s high court for 24 years, has died. He was 89.

Wintersheimer died Feb. 18 at home in Covington, Middendorf Funeral Home said.

He was elected to the Supreme Court in 1982 and served until his retirement in 2006. He previously served six years on the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Wintersheimer earned his law degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1960 and worked in private practice and as city solicitor for Covington for 14 years.

He taught business law at Thomas More College and then Kentucky constitutional law at Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University for more than 20 years, the funeral home said.

Wintersheimer’s funeral was Wednesday.

Maine
Man sentenced to 48 years in murder trial
BANGOR, Maine (AP) — A Black man was sentenced to 48 years for shooting a woman and leaving her lifeless body alongside a road in Maine’s first murder trial since the start of the pandemic.

Carine Reeves became angry over insults from the woman in a rental car he was driving, prompting him to stop, pull her from the vehicle and shoot her in the head in July 2017 in Cherryfield, prosecutors said.

Reeves, 40, of New York, maintained his innocence at his sentencing for murder on Tuesday. He said he was not present when Sally Shaw, was killed, the Bangor Daily New reported.

“I’m going to fight for my life,” Reeves told the judge. “Nobody’s looking to see who actually killed Sally Shaw. You aren’t seeking justice; you are seeking a conviction.”

Reeves intends to appeal.

Before the trial, Reeves told the judge that it would be prejudicial for him, as a Black man, to be forced to wear a mask in accordance with pandemic-related restrictions. His attorney said the mask could subject him to racial profiling and stereotyping by jurors who often associate masks with criminals.

Justice Harold Stewart II denied the motion and Reeves wore a mask along with everyone else in the courtroom.

At the start of the pandemic, Maine’s courts were closed except for emergency business. In-person trials with juries were delayed for months, and Reeves was tried in September.

Prosecutors said Reeves and Shaw were dealing drugs, and key testimony came from a third occupant of the car, Quaneysha Greeley, who testified about the shooting under a plea agreement.

Shaw’s daughter, Heather Senechiame, described her mother as a “fiery redhead who laughed as she had no care in the world.” She owned and operated a driving school in Gray.

“She fell into hard times and into a trap and the hands of a killer,” she said in a statement read by her son.

Reeves was extradited from New York to stand trial in Maine. He’s expected to be returned to New York to complete a sentence for crimes there before being returned to Maine to finish his sentence for murder.

North Carolina
Police: Man faces charges from 1990 rape case
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Police in Fayetteville, North Carolina, say a prison inmate has been charged in a cold case rape from more than three decades ago.

The Fayetteville Observer reported Wednesday that Timothy Kurt Ragler, 55, faces charges including first-degree rape and and kidnapping.

Authorities say the assault occurred in 1990. Police said the victim was walking to her vehicle after leaving work when Ragler attacked. The initial investigation was stymied because of the limitations at the time in DNA technology.

Police said that recently tested DNA identified him as the assailant. He is already serving life imprisonment for unrelated sexual assault crimes in Cumberland County in 1990, according to court records. It’s unclear if he has hired an attorney.

Georgia
DA indicted for bribery agrees to suspension from office
ATLANTA (AP) — A suburban Atlanta district attorney has agreed to step down from his post at least temporarily after he was indicted on charges that he improperly sought to have a court dismiss a charge against a female employee he is accused of sexually harassing.

Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending Paulding County District Attorney Donald Richard “Dick” Donovan, writing that Donovan had agreed to be suspended.

Donovan was indicted Feb. 17 for bribery, two counts of false swearing and violating his oath of office.

Donovan is accused of committing bribery when he dismissed a criminal case in Paulding County Superior Court in which the defendant was being represented by the prosecutor of the municipal court in nearby Cedartown. In exchange, the indictment alleged Donovan was trying to influence the prosecutor to dismiss a shoplifting case in the Cedartown court that was pending against a woman who worked in his office.

The indictment also alleges Donovan lied when he denied “ever having said that he wanted to have sex” with her and that he lied when he denied “describing his fantasies desiring to be physical” with the woman.

Finally, Donovan is accused of violating his oath of office when he committed bribery.

He earlier declined comment to The Associated Press.

Donovan turned himself in Monday and is free on $2,500 bail.

The employee filed a suit in federal court in 2019 alleging Donovan told the woman he was in love with her, gave her unwanted hugs and kisses, sent her personal text messages and emails, gave her unwanted gifts, forced her into private meetings and described sexual fantasies involving her.

A lawyer hired by the county corroborated the woman’s allegations.

The lawsuit was settled in early 2020. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported the woman was paid $300,000.

Georgia
Family sues high school officials over teen’s heat death
JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — The family of a high school basketball player who died after practicing outdoor in nearly 100-degree heat in Georgia is suing several school officials for wrongful death.

The parents of 16-year-old Imani Bell filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Clayton County State Court, news outlets reported.

The suit names several administrators and coaching staff at Elite Scholars Academy, a public school in Jonesboro. It accuses the officials of negligence and pre-death pain and suffering.

The Clayton County school system was not named in the lawsuit and Clayton County school district officials declined to comment on pending litigation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Imani died at a hospital in August 2019 shortly after “signaling she was in distress” and collapsing during outdoor basketball drills which included running up and down stadium steps, according to the lawsuit. Recorded temperatures that day reached up to 97 degrees with a heat index of up to 106, a news outlet said.

The lawsuit alleged Imani died from cardiac arrest and acute kidney failure, among other complications of heatstroke.

In the aftermath of the teen’s death, the Journal-Constitution reported that the school appeared to have violated district and Georgia High School Association policy by allowing outdoor athletic activity when the heat index surpassed 95 degrees. The district has since implemented additional measures, including canceling physical education classes and athletic practices on days with intense heat, the news outlet said.

The Bell family is seeking unspecified monetary damages, burial expenses and the removal of involved school officials, according to a lawyer representing the family.

“We just want closure in this whole situation,” Dorian Bell, Imani’s mother, said during a news conference Wednesday. “We need that. That’s a part of our healing.”

California
Wildfire victims sue former PG&E executives alleging neglect
SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — A trust representing more than 80,000 victims of deadly wildfires ignited by Pacific Gas and Electric’s rickety electrical grid is suing nearly two dozen of the utility’s former executives and board members, alleging they neglected their duty to ensure the equipment wouldn’t kill people.

The complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court is an offshoot of a $13.5 billion settlement that PG&E reached with the wildfire victims while the utility was mired in bankruptcy from January 2019 through June last year.

As part of that deal, PG&E granted the victims the right to go after the utility’s hierarchy leading up to and during a series of wind-driven wildfires that killed more than 100 people and destroyed more than 25,000 homes and businesses in Northern California in 2017 and 2018.

John Trotter, the trustee overseeing the $13.5 billion settlement, is now following through with an action that targets a litany of former executives and board members.

The list includes two of PG&E’s former chief executives, Anthony Earley and Geisha Williams, who were paid millions of dollars during their reigns. The company is now being run by a former Michigan utility executive, Patricia Poppe, with a board of directors that was overhauled during PG&E’s bankruptcy case.

PG&E acknowledged the lawsuit without commenting directly on the allegations. “We remain focused on reducing wildfire risk across our service area and making our electric system more resilient to the climate-driven challenges we all face in California,” the company said in a statement.

The wildfire victims’ lawsuit is seeking to tap into the $200 million to $400 million in liability insurance that PG&E secured for the former executives and board members, said Frank Pitre, the lawyer handling the case. He told The Associated Press that he hopes to resolve the lawsuit within the next year to help wildfire victims still struggling to rebuild their lives.

If the lawsuit is successful, it could help make up for a roughly $1 billion shortfall that the wildfire victims’ trust faces because half of the promised settlement consisted of PG&E stock that is currently worth less than what was hoped for when the deal was struck toward the end of 2019.

Trotter acknowledged the problem in a Jan. 26 letter to the wildfire victims — many of whom had balked at a settlement that required half of the promised $13.5 billion to come in stock in a company with a history of negligence.

But none of the PG&E shares have been been sold by the trust so far, leaving time for the stock to rebound.

PG&E’s stock price closed at $11.41 on Wednesday. The shares have ranged from a low of $3.55 to $25.19 during the tumultuous past two years.

The complaint against PG&E’s former executives and board members seeks to tie them to acts for which the utility has already accepted responsibility.

That includes the company pleading guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter  for causing a 2018 wildfire that wiped out the town of Paradise, California, along with the surrounding area. PG&E was fined $4 million in that case, the maximum penalty allowed.

“If there was ever a corporation that deserved to go to prison, it’s PG&E,” Butte County Judge Michael Deems said at the time of the utility’s sentencing eight months ago.

Deems’ condemnation is included in the wildfire victims’ lawsuit alongside scorching criticism from U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s probation in another criminal case. That case stemmed from the utility’s neglect of natural gas lines that blew up an entire neighborhood in a San Francisco Bay Area suburb in 2010.

Alsup has repeatedly ripped PG&E for not doing more to maintain its power lines in recent years, including during a court hearing earlier this month cited in the victims’ lawsuit.

“PG&E has been a terror, T-E-R-R-O-R, to the people of California,” Alsup said during the Feb. 3 hearing.

Pitre said it’s time to hold people hired to manage and oversee the company responsible for PG&E’s recklessness. “We are talking about a massive dereliction of duty.”