Court Digest

Missouri
Ex-detective found guilty of excessive force
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal jury has found a former suburban St. Louis police detective with a string of past misconduct allegations guilty in an excessive force case for kicking a defenseless person during a 2019 arrest.

Ellis Brown III was convicted Thursday of felony deprivation of rights under color of law for repeatedly kicking a man who was face-down and restrained, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Steven Kolb had led St. Ann police officers on a chase in April 2019 through north St. Louis before his car and several police cars crashed, prosecutors said. Kolb then got out of his car and initially tried to flee before lying on his stomach in a bank parking lot with his hands outstretched.

The incident was captured on bank surveillance video, and prosecutors said it showed Kolb had surrendered as was not a threat.

“Ellis Brown was interested in one thing and one thing only: retribution,” U.S. Attorney Sirena Wissler said in her closing argument.

Prosecutors said the beating required Kolb to be flown by medical helicopter to hospital for treatment of broken ribs and broken bones in his face.

Defense attorney James Towey said in his closing argument that Brown could have believed Kolb had a weapon, though no weapon was found.

“Police work is a very dangerous job,” Towey told the jury. “They make split-second decisions.”

Brown faces up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced in September.

Brown was the former head of the St. Ann police detective bureau at the time of the 2019 arrest and carried a string of misconduct complaints on his record when he joined the department in 2017.

He had come to the St. Ann department — which has hired several officers accused of misconduct at other departments — after leaving the St. Louis Police Department during a state of Missouri disciplinary investigation in which he and his partner were accused of following a vehicle that crashed, then not reporting the crash or helping the driver. Investigators say Brown also lied about how he spend his time that night.

Brown denied the misconduct, but state officials placed his police license on probation.

Brown also was one of two officers who shot and killed 25-year-old Kajieme Powell in St. Louis in 2014 while investigating reports that Powell stole an energy drink and snacks from a market. Local prosecutors later declined to charge the officers, who said Powell approached them with a knife.

Several criminal cases involving Brown in St. Louis were later thrown out when lawyers found he submitted nearly identical language in 19 search warrant applications.


Missouri
Former CPA receives 15-year sentence for Ponzi scheme
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A one-time certified public accountant in south-central Missouri has been sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison for conducting a Ponzi scheme that swindled millions of dollars from dozens of victims.

Douglas Richardson, 47, of Lebanon, was sentenced Thursday in Springfield’s federal court to 188 months and ordered to pay more than $8.8 million in restitution to his victims across the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri said in a news release.

There is no parole in the federal system.

A jury convicted Richardson in 2019 of six counts of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering. As a part of this scheme, Richardson knowingly fleeced several elderly victims out of most or all of their retirement savings, prosecutors said.

Richardson used the proceeds from the scheme to support a lavish lifestyle that included a $1 million home, regular family vacations to Disney World and expensive cars, motorhomes and motorcycles, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also presented evidence at Richardson’s sentencing hearing on Thursday that Richardson continued to swindle money from people even as he awaited sentencing. That included defrauding one victim of nearly $100,000 and taking $800 from a victim’s bank account during his jury trial without the victim’s knowledge, prosecutors said.


Montana
Man gets $50k settlement for hand injuries at tribal jail
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A northeastern Montana man has received a $50,000 settlement from the federal government in a lawsuit alleging staff at the Fort Peck tribal jail failed to protect him from being injured by another inmate and did not seek medical treatment for the severe hand injuries he suffered during the 2018 assault.

Tyler Headdress, now 37, filed the lawsuit in April 2020 and it entered mediation in February, said Tim Bechtold of Missoula, Headdress’ attorney.

“He’ll never be 100% because they waited too long, and they couldn’t fix him properly,” his father Henry Headdress told The Billings Gazette. “He sat there without help for six days, and that is unbelievable.”

Tyler Headdress was jailed in mid-December 2018 on a warrant with a $100 bond, court records said. Three days later, another inmate assaulted him. While guards stopped the fight, they did not seek medical care for Headdress, the complaint states.

He did not receive professional medical treatment until he bonded out of jail six days later.

Workers at an Indian Health Service clinic in Poplar put his hands in splints and took X-rays before referring him to Billings Clinic for surgery, Harry Headdress said. He said his son has pins in both hands and is unable to make a fist with his left hand.

“For someone who was incarcerated, this was not just a simple case of negligence. It was a conscious disregard for medical need,” Bechtold said.

Nevada
State plans to use 3 or 4 drugs for next execution
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada prison officials disclosed Thursday that they want to use a never-before-tried combination of drugs for the state’s first lethal injection in 15 years, including the powerful opioid fentanyl, the sedative ketamine and a heart-stopping salt, potassium chloride.

Deputy federal public defenders representing convicted murderer Zane Michael Floyd promised courtroom challenges of the plan.

A just-completed execution manual provided to a federal judge said a similar-acting drug, alfentanil, might substitute for fentanyl and potassium acetate might substitute for potassium chloride.

In an alternate four-drug procedure, the muscle paralytic cisatracurium would also be used to stop the condemned man’s ability to breathe before he receives the heart-stopping agent.

U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II said he may issue a stay of execution ahead of a possible late-July death date to allow time to review the choice of drugs and the 65-page execution manual.

A state judge in Las Vegas on Monday gave the go-ahead for prosecutors and prison officials to plan Floyd’s execution for the week of July 26.

An exact date would be set after a death warrant is issued July 9.

Floyd, 45, does not want to die. But he lost state and federal appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear claims including that his mother’s use of alcohol while she was pregnant left him with a diminished mental capacity.

His defense attorneys, David Anthony and Brad Levenson, have promised to appeal again to the Nevada Supreme Court.

A court fight about the choice of drugs also could push back an execution date.

In 2017 and 2018, battles over the effects of three-drug procedure that the state Department of Corrections picked — including fentanyl and cisatracurium — promoted judges to call off the scheduled execution of twice-convicted murderer Scott Dozier.

Dozier had volunteered to be the first person put to death in Nevada since Daryl Mack in 2006. Mack was convicted of a 1988 rape and murder in Reno and asked for his sentence to be carried out.
Dozier killed himself in prison in January 2019, after expressing frustration with delays.

In his case, pharmaceutical companies fought to block the use of their products in an execution.

Randall Gilmer, the state attorney representing the Nevada Department of Corrections and prisons chief Charles Daniels, told Boulware on Thursday that Nevada does not intend to make public the source of drugs to be used in Floyd’s lethal injection.

Floyd also is seeking clemency Sept. 21 from the state Board of Pardons, made up of the governor, seven state Supreme Court justices and state attorney general.


California
$15M awarded over eggs, embryos ruined at fertility clinic
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A jury on Thursday awarded nearly $15 million to five people who lost eggs or embryos when a cryogenic storage tank failed at a fertility clinic.

A federal jury made the award in a lawsuit filed over the 2018 tank failure at the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco that destroyed about 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos.

The award — including more than $14 million in damages for pain, suffering and emotional distress — will go to three women who lost eggs and a married couple who lost embryos.

Their case is the first to go to a jury, but hundreds of other people also have sued the clinic and Chart Industries Inc., which made the cryogenic tank where the specimens were stored.

During the trial, the women and the couple described their pain from the loss.

Chloe Poynton, 39, lost nine eggs.

“It’s really painful to be at a baby shower celebrating someone else’s family being built and knowing inside you’ll never get that,” Poynton testified. “So you start to pull back. You start to isolate.”

A similar tank failure in a Cleveland suburb that occurred the same day as the San Francisco failure ruined more than 4,000 eggs and embryos. They were the biggest such losses on record in the U.S., causing centers around the nation to review their procedures.

In closing arguments during the San Francisco trial, a lawyer for Chart blamed the fertility center for the tank failure. But jurors rejected the argument that the tank had been misused or improperly modified.

Jurors found that a manufacturing defect was to blame for the tank failure and found Chart 90% responsible and negligent for failing to recall the malfunctioning part, finding that was a “substantial factor” in causing harm.

The part was a controller that monitored liquid nitrogen levels.

Pacific Fertility was found negligent and 10% responsible for harm.

The three women were each awarded about $2 million to $3 million, while the couple was awarded $7.2 million.

Messages left for Chart’s attorney and Pacific Fertility weren’t immediately returned Thursday.

Louisiana
$4.5 million accepted by family of man killed by police
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The children of a Black man killed by police in Louisiana’s capital city five years ago have accepted a $4.5 million settlement with the local government.

Alton Sterling’s 2016 shooting by a Baton Rouge police officer was captured on video and sparked anger and protests in the city’s Black community.

Baton Rouge news outlets report that court documents show Sterling’s family asked that their lawsuit be dismissed in mid-May, signaling acceptance of the settlement approved about three months earlier by the Metro Council for Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish.

“This matter has been resolved,” Parish Attorney Andy Dotson said Friday in The Advocate. “And the settlement agreement made with the plaintiff will proceed as planned as voted upon by the council.”

The officer who shot Sterling during a struggle outside a convenience store lost his job and another officer was suspended. Neither was charged criminally after state and federal investigations.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Sterling’s five children in 2017 by their mothers. It sought damages for violation of Sterling’s civil rights and claimed the local government was negligent in its hiring, training and supervision of Blane Salamoni, the officer who fired the six shots that killed Sterling.

The agreement will pay $1 million upfront to Sterling’s children from East Baton Rouge Parish’s insurance reserve funds, WBRZ-TV reported, with the remaining money being paid in equal installments over the next four years.

The initial funds will be allocated from the city-parish’s Insurance Reserve Fund, with the remaining payments pulled from the annual operating budget.

Sterling was fatally shot by Baton Rouge police responding to a complaint of a man with a gun outside a convenience store on North Foster Drive in 2016. Widespread protests followed after cellphone video of the encounter was spread online.