Court Digest

Hawaii
Bilked relatives of ex-power couple get house sale proceeds
HONOLULU (AP) — The bulk of the money from the foreclosure sale of a house owned by a former Honolulu police chief and his estranged wife convicted of conspiracy must go to the relatives they bilked, a U.S. judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright granted a magistrate judge’s findings on what to do with about $63,000 leftover from the $1.3 million sale of a home in east Honolulu owned by Louis Kealoha, who retired as police chief in the midst of a federal corruption investigation, and his wife Katherine Kealoha, a former deputy prosecutor.

Seabright last year sentenced Katherine Kealoha to 13 years in prison, saying she was the mastermind behind the scheme to frame her uncle for the theft of the couple’s home mailbox to hide fraud that included stealing from her own grandmother. Her husband was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The ruling said about $62,000 should go to the trust for Katherine Kealoha’s uncle, Gerard Puana, and his now-deceased mother, Florence Puana, as partial fulfillment of the more than $289,000 restitution the Kealohas owe them.

After the home was sold in 2019, the proceeds went into an interest-bearing account. About $44,000 plus interest will go to Florence Puana’s trust, Seabright’s order said. She was 100 years old when she died last year. About $18,000 plus interest goes to Gerard Puana, the order said.

About $1,100 will go to the Hawaii Community Federal Credit Union, which asked to recover more than $100,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs from the sale.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Wes Reber Porter found that while the credit union and the Puanas both have legal interests in the proceeds, the credit union already recovered more than $1 million for the balance of the mortgage while the Puanas haven’t received any proceeds from the sale.

Washington
Judge blocks some virus rules on farms
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — A Washington state judge has blocked some coronavirus-related restrictions on farms and orchards meant to protect farmworkers.

Yakima County Superior Court Judge Blaine Gibson issued an injunction last week that stops the state from enforcing a series of regulations to protect workers from the virus, the Tri-City Herald reported.

The now-blocked rules had required twice-daily visits from medical staff to isolated workers; required workers to be within 20 minutes of an emergency room and an hour from a ventilator; and provided workers open access to people in the community.

The judge’s ruling left in place restrictions on bunk beds, a regulation that the two groups that brought the suit — the Washington Farm Bureau and Wafla — had fought to lift, the newspaper reported.

Wafla is a human resources firm that supplies laborers for farms. They also manage housing for workers. Farm owners had potentially faced steep fines for violating the now-blocked regulations.

Franklin County Farm Bureau President James Alford said the state restrictions seemed to have been made by someone who did not understand the industry.

“After a year of asking the state to work with the farm community to make science-based adjustments to the COVID-19 emergency regulations, we’re very pleased with this common-sense ruling,” added John Stuhlmiller, the chief executive officer of Washington Farm Bureau.

A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, Mike Faulk, said the governor is pleased with the outcome and that the state had already been considering similar changes.

The United Farm Workers said the changes could result in health risks for farm workers.

“Our concerns at the state level have not diminished,” said Elizabeth Strater, the director of strategic campaigns for the United Farm Workers. “These aren’t tools. These are human beings. ... We really need to do the bare minimum to make sure they’re safe.”

New York
Ghislaine Maxwell’s sleep loss in jail concerns judges
NEW YORK (AP) — Appeals judges hearing bail arguments seemed sympathetic Monday to claims that British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is unjustly kept awake at night by guards ensuring she doesn’t die in jail like Jeffrey Epstein did while awaiting his sex trafficking trial.

Two of three judges on a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Manhattan expressed concern about light shined in her cell every 15 minutes at night as Federal Bureau of Prisons guards make sure she’s breathing.

They did not, however, seem necessarily inclined to free Maxwell, 59, on bail before a July 12 trial on charges  that she procured teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse and sometimes joined in the abuse. She has pleaded not guilty. Bail has been rejected three times  since her arrest last July.

“Is she a suicide risk or not?” Circuit Judge Richard J. Sullivan asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz. “Has the BOP concluded she’s a suicide risk or is it some other reason why they’re shining lights all night long?”

Pomerantz said it was a routine guards employed to ensure inmates are breathing. She said guards shine light at the ceiling above where Maxwell sleeps rather than at her eyes when they check her breathing.
Her comment was challenged by Circuit Judge Pierre N. Leval, who repeatedly asked if Maxwell posed a suicide risk.

“Routine to shine a light into the eyes of every prisoner every 15 minutes during the night? Are you really telling us that?” he asked.

“Your honor, I can’t tell you what is done as to all inmates, but what I can say is that we have not been told that she is a suicide risk,” Pomerantz responded.

Attorney David Markus, representing Maxwell on appeal, said she is not suicidal.

“There’s no evidence she’s suicidal. Why is the Bureau of Prisons doing this? They’re doing it because Jeffrey Epstein died on their watch. And again, she’s not Jeffrey Epstein, this isn’t right,” Markus said.

Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan lockup in August 2019 as he awaited trial.

“One of the main complaints in the defendant’s briefing is that she is being improperly treated as a suicide risk in a manner that makes her life hell and doesn’t allow her to sleep and makes it very difficult for her to prepare” for trial, Leval said.

Defense lawyers have complained that Maxwell is deteriorating in jail, where she is repeatedly searched and is filmed outside her cell. Prosecutors counter that she remains healthy and has been given accommodations other prisoners lack.

The judges also seemed concerned that Maxwell isn’t permitted to wear an eye mask that wraps securely around her head.

Markus said Maxwell puts a sock or towel over eyes so she can sleep at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

“The government used the word routine to say how Ms. Maxwell’s being treated in MDC. There is absolutely nothing routine about it. She’s being treated differently than any other inmate ever in that institution,” he said.

Ohio
Ex-cop who killed Tamir Rice appeals to State Supreme Court
CLEVELAND (AP) — The white Cleveland police officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black child playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in November 2014, has filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court to get his job back.

Attorneys for Timothy Loehmann filed the appeal last week. A state appellate court earlier this year dismissed an appeal citing a police union’s failure to serve notice on outside attorneys hired by the city.

A police union is seeking to have the Supreme Court overturn that ruling.

Cleveland fired Loehmann in 2017 not for killing Tamir but for providing false information on his job application. An arbitrator and a county judge upheld his dismissal.

Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Jeff Follmer said on Monday that he wished the 8th District Court of Appeals had decided the case on the merits of whether Loehmann’s firing and not on a technicality.

Loehmann, a rookie, shot Tamir within seconds of a cruiser skidding to a stop near a gazebo where he had been sitting. Officers responded to a call from a man who said someone was waving a gun around. The man also told a dispatcher the gun could be a fake and the person might be a juvenile.


California
Judge tosses lawsuit of man who alleged Jackson molestation
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge on Monday dismissed the lawsuit of a man who alleged that Michael Jackson sexually abused him as a boy.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark A. Young granted the Jackson estate’s request to dismiss the suit brought in 2013 by Wade Robson. The judge said two Jackson entertainment corporations targeted by the lawsuit had no legal duty to protect Robson from Jackson.

“There is no evidence supporting plaintiff’s contention that defendants exercised control over Jackson,” the judge wrote. “The evidence further demonstrates that defendants had no legal ability to control Jackson, because Jackson had complete and total ownership of the corporate defendants.”

The dismissal came after the judge dismissed a similar lawsuit in October by James Safechuck. Both men made their allegations in the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.”

Vince Finaldi, attorney for Robson and Safechuck, said the ruling has “fatal flaws” and will be appealed.

“If allowed to stand, the decision would set a dangerous precedent that would leave thousands of children working in the entertainment industry vulnerable to sexual abuse by persons in places of power,” Finaldi said in a statement.

Robson, now a 38-year-old choreographer, met Jackson when he was 5 years old. He went on to appear in Jackson music videos and record music on his label.

His lawsuit alleged that Jackson molested him over a seven-year period, and that as Jackson’s employee, the two corporations Jackson had started had a duty to protect him the same way the Boy Scouts or a school would need to protect children from their leaders. But the judge found the corporations were merely legal entities that were controlled by Jackson, not organizations that could control him.

Another judge previously dismissed the lawsuits by Robson and Safechuck in 2017, finding the statute of limitations had expired. But an appeals court revived the legal actions in 2019 after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law giving those who allege childhood sexual abuse longer to file lawsuits.

The allegations gained new life when the two men repeated them in detail in “Leaving Neverland,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and later aired on HBO.

The Jackson estate has adamantly and repeatedly denied that he abused either of the boys, and brought a lawsuit against HBO that is now in private arbitration.

“Wade Robson has spent the last 8 years pursuing frivolous claims in different lawsuits against Michael Jackson’s estate and companies associated with it,” Jackson estate attorney Jonathan Steinsapir said in a statement after Monday’s ruling. “Yet a judge has once again ruled that Robson’s claims have no merit whatsoever, that no trial is necessary.”

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they were victims of sexual abuse. But Robson and Safechuck have repeatedly come forward and approved of the use of their identities.


Oregon
University sues ex-cop over Latino bicyclist stopped at gunpoint
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — The University of Oregon has filed a federal lawsuit against a former campus police officer, accusing him of lying in police reports and withholding key evidence in an alleged malicious prosecution of a Latino bicyclist he stopped at gunpoint.

The university fired officer Troy Phillips in 2019 for dishonesty, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Phillips couldn’t immediately be reached by the newspaper for comment.

The university agreed last week to pay $115,000 to the family of the bicyclist, Eliborio Rodrigues Jr., who later died in an unrelated encounter with Eugene police. The payment settled a notice to sue the university.

Phillips failed to disclose to a Eugene municipal prosecutor who asked that his Oct. 27, 2018, stop of Rodrigues was videotaped and audio recorded through his police car’s mobile camera, the lawsuit says.

Although the officer reviewed the video when writing his police report, he falsified what happened in the report and in a probable cause statement, according to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene Friday.

It accuses Phillips of unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution and fabricating evidence and says Phillips should pay the damages owed to Rodrigues’ estate.

The university alleges the officer had no grounds to stop Rodrigues while he was biking in a bike lane and that after stopping him at gunpoint, Phillips tackled him.

The suit alleges Phillips used excessive force.