Court Digest

Illinois
Man arraigned on 1st-degree murder in teen boy’s death
URBANA, Ill. (AP) — A Champaign man has been arraigned on a first-degree murder charge in the slaying of a 14-year-old boy whose body was found last week in a roadside ditch.

Daryl Vandyke 55, told a Champaign County judge on Tuesday he understood his rights and the charges he faces in Steven Butler III’s killing. A public defender was appointed to represent Vandyke, whose initial court hearing on Monday was postponed after he appeared confused and unresponsive.

Vandyke is accused of repeatedly striking Butler with an axe or other edged tool on July 29, knowing that his acts would kill the teen, The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported.

He faces 20 to 60 years in prison if he’s convicted of murder. His next court hearing is Sept. 14.

Butler’s father reported him missing to police on the night of July 29, hours after he left the family home, purportedly to mow a lawn.

Butler’s body was found by two cyclists on July 30 in a roadside ditch east of Urbana.

Champaign police said it’s believed the killing took place on Vandyke’s property, less than a mile from where the boy lived with his father and two siblings in Champaign.

Prosecutors have said Butler died from blunt-force injuries and that Vandyke is an acquaintance of the boy’s father.

Ohio
Judge: Shooting suit can continue against police officer, not city
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit against the white Ohio police officer who shot and killed a Black teenager can continue, but the city of Columbus will not be held liable.

The ruling Tuesday came months after attorneys for Columbus officer Bryan Mason sought dismissal of the suit, arguing that their client used reasonable force and that race wasn’t a factor in the 2016 shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King.

The lawsuit filed by  Tyre’s grandmother in 2018 challenges the police account, alleging that his death resulted from excessive force, racial discrimination and alleged failure by the police department to properly investigate and discipline officers for racially motivated or unconstitutional behavior.

The federal judge ruled Tuesday that there is no evidence that the city and the police department violated Tyre’s civil rights, therefore they cannot be held legally liable.

Authorities said Mason shot Tyre in the head and torso in September 2016 while police were responding to a reported armed robbery.

The family’s lawsuit cited witnesses who said that Mason used a racial slur after firing and that the BB gun Tyre reportedly had wasn’t visible.

Mason, who has said he feared a “gunfight,” contends that he acted reasonably to protect himself and denies having directed a slur toward the teens. A grand jury decided not to bring charges against him.

Indiana
Staet Supreme Court denies AG request in Holcomb lawsuit
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday denied an emergency request by state Attorney General Todd Rokita to stall Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s lawsuit challenging the increased power state legislators gave themselves to intervene during public health emergencies following conservative objections to his COVID-19 actions.

Rokita petitioned the Indiana Supreme Court last month after a Marion County judge ruled against arguments from his office that he alone has the legal authority to represent the state in court and can decide whether the new law is allowed under the state constitution.

The Republican attorney general asked the Indiana Supreme Court to order the trial court hearing the case to “cease all proceedings” in the lawsuit, arguing that Holcomb’s lawsuit does not meet the narrow standard for cases can filed with the Supreme Court.

The emergency request was turned down 5-0 by the court without comment.

A request for a permanent writ is still pending, with briefs due Friday. The next hearing in Marion Superior Court is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Holcomb’s lawsuit argues that the law passed this year over his veto by the Republican-dominated Legislature is unconstitutional because it gives lawmakers a new power to call themselves into a special legislative “emergency session” during statewide emergencies declared by the governor.

Holcomb and some legal experts maintain the state constitution allows only the governor to call the Legislature into special session after its annual session ends.

Rokita, who unsuccessfully challenged Holcomb for the 2016 Republican nomination for governor, has argued that state law gives him the legal authority to turn down Holcomb’s request to take the dispute to court. His office’s court filings repeatedly called the governor’s private lawyers “unauthorized counsel” in asking for them to be removed from the case.


South Dakota
Ex-lawyer gets more than 2 years in prison for fraud
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A disbarred South Dakota lawyer who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and other counts for allegedly stealing nearly $144,000 from a dead man’s estate was sentenced to more than two years in prison and must repay the money she stole.

Rena Hymans of Vale, who practiced law in Sturgis, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering and one count of bank fraud.

Hymans allegedly deposited the inheritance into the trust account of the late Leo Drillig in May 2017 and was supposed to immediately transfer the money to Drillig, but did not. Drillig’s cousin, Doris Powers Lauing, said Drillig was murdered in Germany. Lauing wanted to use the money to bury him with family. She said Drillig is now buried in a mass grave.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken sentenced Hymans to 30 months in jail with no supervised release and ordered her to pay restitution, the Rapid City Journal reported.

“You’ve been punished by the state bar, you’re barred from practicing in federal courts,” Viken said in his reasoning for the sentence.

Hymans told the court that she filed for bankruptcy and hopes to work toward repaying the money.


Maryland
Man pleads guilty to laundering $6.2 million in ‘romance scheme’
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to launder more than $6.2 million from a “romance scheme” to fraudulently solicit money from more than 200 victims targeted through social media and dating websites.
Lesley Annor, 23, of Gaithersburg faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge George Hazel is scheduled to sentence him on Oct. 29.

Annor has been jailed since he and his brother, David Annor, were arrested in November 2020 on money laundering charges. David Annor pleaded not guilty to a conspiracy charge in January.

Their victims’ ages ranged from 38 to 83, lived in the U.S. and overseas and often were elderly or isolated, prosecutors said.

A Texas woman told FBI agents that she lost approximately $100,000 in the scheme after meeting someone through Facebook whom she believed was a U.S. soldier preparing to return home from Afghanistan. She thought she was paying for a surgery for the man after a car accident, an FBI agent said in an affidavit.

A Virginia woman told FBI agents that she lost roughly $177,000 after meeting somebody through Facebook whom she believed to be an underwater welder from Canada. The Facebook user asked her for money to buy equipment after they engaged in romantic conversations, the agent said.

The agent’s affidavit also describes how the plot’s co-conspirators defrauded a Hawaii woman, a Georgia woman and a man from Washington state.

Lesley Annor and others laundered money through approximately 34 bank accounts at 11 financial institutions, with victims paying more than $400,000 into personal bank accounts controlled by Annor, according to prosecutors. They said the brothers sent money to other co-conspirators, often in Ghana, and kept at least 10% of victim payments for themselves.

David Annor laundered money through a shell company called Ravid Enterprise LLC that purportedly sold cars, the FBI said.


California
Man sentenced for firebomb plot
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California man who plotted to firebomb the homes of people on his personal “enemies list” was sentenced Tuesday to 18 years in federal prison.

David Jah, 47, of Concord, was sentenced for conspiracy to commit arson. He was convicted last fall.

Prosecutors said Jah had made a list of six people he thought had wronged him, including attorneys involved in the sale of his childhood home in San Francisco; a lawyer who was involved in removing him from the home; the home’s buyer; a former neighbor and a deputy city attorney who had represented police in an excessive force lawsuit filed by his son.

“When Mr. Jah was unable to achieve his objectives in court, he turned to violence,” said Stephanie M. Hinds, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said in a statement.

In 2018, Clark recruited two men who threw Molotov cocktails at three homes, one of which belonged to the next-door neighbor of an intended victim, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also contended there was evidence other people on the list were targeted for firebombings or drive-by shootings between 2016 and 2018.

Nobody was seriously harmed in any of the attacks.

Kristopher Alexis-Clark, 27, of Vallejo, and Dennis Williams, 41, of Fairfield, both have pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme and await sentencing.

Florida
Judge: Preserving evidence key to collapse probe
Preservation of evidence is critical to understanding why a Florida oceanfront condominium collapsed and to protect the legal rights of victims and others, a judge said Wednesday.

Miami-Dade County is expected later this month to hand over control of the Champlain Towers South site to a court-appointed receiver. That receiver, attorney Michael Goldberg, said discussions are ongoing regarding how experts such as engineers will gain access to the property and the building’s steel-and-concrete remains, some of which are stored in a local warehouse.

“We are not going to be delaying this,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman said at a hearing. “Everyone will have the opportunity to do the investigations they need. We don’t want to be in the position of being accused of spoiling evidence.”

The 12-story condominium building in Surfside collapsed for unknown reasons June 24, killing 98 people and leaving dozens more homeless. The cause of the collapse, one of the deadliest of its kind in U.S. history, is still under investigation.

The hearing conducted remotely Wednesday concerned lawsuits filed by family members of victims, unit owners, mortgage holders and others seeking damages for their losses.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said access to evidence by experts could help officials avert similar building disasters by understanding what happened at Champlain Towers South.

“It has to be done a lot sooner than later. There are lives at stake,” Burkett said.

One survivor, Sharon Schechter, said she barely escaped from her unit on the 11th floor but raised concerns at the hearing that renters such as herself might be left with little or nothing despite losing their possessions.

“I don’t know where I stand. I lost everything I had,” Schechter told the judge. “Everything was working great and then my life was turned upside down.”

Hanzman said Schechter and other tenants will have a claim for their losses as the lawsuits move forward. They are likely to be consolidated into a single class action affecting all of the collapse claims that will be filed in mid-August.

But Hanzman said even with the proposed sale of the Champlain Towers property and insurance payouts, there probably won’t be enough money to go around.

“There will likely not be enough to compensate everyone for what their claims may be,” the judge said. But he cautioned attorneys to make sure their cases are ironclad. “I’m not interested in ‘hail Mary’ claims.”

Another hearing was scheduled for next Wednesday.