Court Digest

Washington
Ruling: Missed court date does not imply guilt
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — The Washington state Supreme Court this month unanimously rejected the notion that a man who skipped his court date could be presented as evidence that he felt guilty about the original crime.

State Supreme Court justices agreed that criminalizing a single missed court date could disproportionately harm people of color, poor people or people without reliable transportation or scheduling conflicts due to child care or work, The Daily Herald reported.

The ruling came less than a year after the state Legislature revised the bail jumping law, which gives people more time to respond to a warrant. Samuel Slater, 27, had one unexcused absence in his case, which predated the new law.

Records show Slater was convicted of violating no-contact orders five times in five years, multiple driving offenses and domestic violence charges. He pleaded guilty in 2016 to assault in Washington state.

A judge ordered him not to have contact with the woman, who was not identified, but he showed up within a day of being let out of jail. He was charged in 2017 with alleged felony violation of a no-contact order and felony bail jumping after missing a court date later in the year.

Slater’s attorney, Frederic Moll, asked for separate trials on the counts. Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Anita Farris, a former public defender, found that the charges could be tried together for “judicial economy reasons” and that they were cross-admissible, meaning one could be used to prove the other.

Judge Ellen Fair presided over the trial and agreed with Farris. State Court of Appeals judges also agreed.

During the trial, deputy prosecutor Adam Sturdivant repeatedly noted how the defendant missed his court date, asking: “If he didn’t do it, why didn’t he show up for trial call a year ago?”

Slater was found guilty on both counts and sentenced to more than two years in prison and a year of probation.

The Supreme Court found that the Snohomish County judges’ decision allowed Sturdivant to make “improper” comments to the jury about Slater’s propensity to violate orders. Attorney James Herr argued in February that the trial was not about the charge, but instead about the missed court hearing.

The state Supreme Court acknowledged there are other valid reasons why people might miss court dates. And judges have said there are alternatives to ensure people avoid skipping court — including warrants, higher bail or stricter release conditions.

The ACLU of Washington, the Washington Defender Association, Columbia Legal Services and the King County Department of Public Defense signed a legal brief supporting Slater’s case.

The state Supreme Court overturned Slater’s convictions and ruled that the case must be returned to Snohomish County, where prosecutors can decide whether to try the case again.

If so, there would need to be two separate trials. It is unclear if Snohomish County prosecutors will proceed again.

Louisiana
State lawmakers back bill to widen state drug courts
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana will seek to expand its specialized drug courts using the proceeds from opioid-related lawsuits, under a measure that received final passage from lawmakers.
The bill  from Sen. Rick Ward, a Port Allen Republican, won unanimous support in the House and the Senate to head to the governor’s desk.

The legislation creates a drug and specialty court fund in the state treasury to deposit money recovered from litigation against or settlements involving the opioid industry. Those dollars will be used to expand drug courts across Louisiana, in which judges give some people arrested for crimes the option of substance abuse treatment and heavy supervision as an alternative to jail time.

The expansion would begin a year after the balance of the fund reaches $10 million.

The measure was backed by Attorney General Jeff Landry as a way to respond to drug abuse caused by the opioid epidemic. Landry’s office will oversee the fund and disburse the money through grant awards.

“Drug and specialty courts hold people accountable and connect them to evidence-based treatment -– something that protects public safety and promotes public health,” Landry, a Republican, said in a statement.


Kentucky
Man who received controversial pardon rearrested
LONDON, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky man who received a controversial pardon from then-Gov. Matt Bevin was rearrested Sunday, The Courier-Journal reported.

Patrick Baker was convicted of killing Donald Mills. Mills’ sister told the paper an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives contacted her Monday to say Baker had been arrested again in connection with her brother’s death.

Baker was booked into the Laurel County Correctional Center in London just after 12:15 a.m. Monday, with the jail log listing his only charge as “federal prisoner held-in transit/court/serveout.” A spokesman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to an email Monday asking for more information on the charges.

Bevin issued hundreds of pardons between his electoral defeat in November 2019 and his final day in office a month later.  Baker’s pardon  was controversial because his relatives had held a fundraiser for the Republican governor in 2018.

After his pardon, Baker appeared at a news conference in Lexington where his attorneys said he was innocent of the 2014 slaying in which he was convicted of posing as a law enforcement officer and killing Mills in the victim’s Knox County home.

“I did not kill Donald Mills and my family did not pay for my release,” Baker said in a statement at the time.

In January 2020, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general asked the FBI  to investigate Bevins’ last-minute pardons.

At least one other person helped by Bevin has also been rearrested.

Dayton Jones was a few years into a 15-year sentence for sex crimes when Bevin commuted his convictions. Several months later, Jones was charged  by federal prosecutors with producing child pornography.

Kansas
County seeks repayment from special prosecutor in rape case
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Jackson County officials are seeking to recoup about $80,000 is public money paid to a special prosecutor accused of mishandling a controversial a case where a man’s rape convictions were overturned on appeal.

The county hired Jacqie Spradling in 2017 to serve as special prosecutor in the criminal case against Jacob Ewing, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Later that year, Ewing was convicted of two counts of rape and four counts of criminal sodomy, among other counts.

But the Kansas Court of Appeals threw out those convictions in 2019 and ordered a new trial, finding that Spradling made a half-dozen errors and misled the jury by making assertions during her closing argument that were not supported by the evidence.

The charges against Ewing, a former state football champion and member of a well-known local family, divided Holton, a town of about 3,300 residents. Earlier this year, Ewing pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual battery in a plea deal in which both sides agreed Ewing would be sentenced on June 18 to 10 years in prison.

Spradling didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment made by the Capital-Journal.

Jackson County Commissioner Dan Brenner said the county was asked to pay for hiring Spradling in the case, and the commission wants to see if there was a breach of that contract.

“Possibly there is malpractice, misrepresentation or both,” Brenner said. If that is the case, we believe the citizens of Jackson County should get their money back.”

Ohio
Man gets 4 life terms plus 98 years in robbery slayings
AKRON, Ohio (AP) — A man was sentenced to four life terms without parole in a series of shooting deaths during robberies in Ohio about five years ago, including the death of a university student killed during a pizza shop robbery and a mother and son slain in their home.

Summit County Common Pleas Court Judge Alison McCarty sentenced 27-year-old Shaquille Anderson Friday to four consecutive sentences plus an additional 98 years in prison for his role in the murder of 21-year-old University of Akron student Zakaria Husein and three other people in robberies between December 2015 and June 2016.

“May these heartless acts weigh heavy on your heart,” she told the defendant, who pleaded no contest and was convicted in Husein’s death in February 2020. He agreed at the time to take the same step in the two other cases in exchange for life terms rather than the death penalty.

Sentences in all thee cases, delayed for more than a year because of the pandemic, were imposed in separate hearings allowing relatives of the victims to speak either in person or by video. The Akron Beacon Journal reports that Anderson didn’t speak due to his pending appeals and showed no emotion during the three hours of hearings.

Husein was killed during a December 2015 robbery at his family business, Premium New York Style Pizza. Surveillance video from inside the store showed a man wearing a mask demand money and shoot Husein before fleeing with the cash.

Ammar Husein, Zak’s brother, said Anderson may have thought he had a tough life but it didn’t compare to the conditions in Palestine, his family’s native land.

“You were richer than everybody in the neighborhood where I came from,” he said.

Sonia Freeman, 48, and her son Christopher Lane-Freeman, 28, were shot to death by three men during a May 2016 robbery in their West Akron apartment. Christian Dorsey, 24, was found shot to death on a street after a June 2016 robbery.

“May you rot behind prison walls for the rest of your life and have a painful death,” said Roslyn Carter, cousin of Sonia Freeman and second cousin of Christopher Lane-Freeman. “We will forever live in pain ... You didn’t have to do it but the devil in you made you.”

Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh called the defendant “the worst of the worst,” adding in a statement that his “reign of terror impacted several families who will feel the pain of what he did for years.”

Georgia
Man accused of sex trafficking gets 30 years
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man who prosecutors say operated a sex and drug trafficking business has been sentenced to serve more than three decades in prison.

Anthony Wilson Jackson, 50, led a scheme to carry out sex trafficking across the country and shipped and distributed large quantities of marijuana around Savannah, federal prosecutors said. He was sentenced last week to serve 30 years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to numerous federal charges.

“Anthony Jackson is a violent serial criminal who profited from trafficking drugs and renting human beings for sex acts,” Acting U.S. Attorney David Estes said in a news release.

Investigators began looking into Jackson in 2016 while investigating the death of Ava Fulmer, a woman who worked for him and whose body was found inside a burned vehicle in Savannah, prosecutors said. Her death remains under investigation.

Jackson threatened to murder women whom he trafficked for sex, forced them to bow and pray to him and was violently abusive, prosecutors said. During the investigation, authorities seized drugs, drug trafficking paraphernalia, multiple guns, ammunition and more than $7,000 in cash.

“This man was connected to multiple facets of illegal activity that contribute to crime and safety concerns in our community, from guns to drugs to sex crimes,” Savannah Police Chief Roy Minter said in the release. “Putting an end to his time on our streets is one more step toward a safer Savannah.”

New Jersey
Canadian teen admits false bomb threat to Ivy League school
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A Canadian teenager accused of making a phony bomb threat to an Ivy League university in New Jersey last year has pleaded guilty to creating a false public alarm and was sentenced to two years of probation.

The 16-year-old boy entered his plea Friday, according to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office. It was made public on Tuesday.

The boy, who was 15 at the time, called the Princeton University Department of Public Safety on Sept. 19 and said he had placed improvised explosive devices in a least four locations, including the school’s art museum, chapel, main library and Nassau Hall. The campus was largely empty at the time, as most classes were being taught remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The teen, whose name has not been released, was identified as a suspect in March after a multiagency investigation involving authorities in the United States and Canada. He was arrested without incident March 24 at his grandparents’ house in South Vacherie, Louisiana, a rural community between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.