Court Digest

Indiana
Police: Woman shot husband, used axe to remove legs
LAPORTE, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana woman charged in her husband’s fatal shooting used an axe to cut off his legs before trying to enlist her two teenage children in a failed plan to burn his remains, authorities said.

Thessalonica Allen, of LaPorte is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse and several other counts in the July 28 fatal shooting of her husband, Randy Allen. During the 34-year-old woman’s initial hearing Wednesday, the judge entered a not guilty plea on her behalf and appointed her a public defender.

The LaPorte County’s chief public defender didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment from the attorney assigned to defend Allen.

In court documents, authorities say a Michigan man who has a child with Thessalonica Allen told police about the killing last Thursday, saying she contacted him claiming her husband had been beating their child.

When the man entered her apartment, she showed him her husband’s body in a closet and sought his help moving it to her vehicle, but he declined, saying he wanted to return home, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.

The man told officers that Thessalonica Allen threw a gun out of the car as she dropped him off at his Michigan home and told him “she had to shoot Randy because he was beating on her and the kids,” the court documents state.

After police arrested Allen in LaPorte, a city about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the Michigan border in northwestern Indiana, she confessed to shooting her husband following a physical altercation and told officers “he beats me,” the charges allege.

Officers later found her husband’s partially dismembered body inside a tote in their apartment.

“She then admitted she had to cut Randy’s legs off because she wasn’t able to fit him inside the tote,” and had used an axe to remove the limbs, police said in court documents.

Her two teenage children told officers that they did not see any physical altercation on the day Randy Allen died. They said the day before he was killed, he was helping them do homework on a computer when he found a website their mother had visited, court documents state.

After he confronted Thessalonica Allen about the website when she got home, they argued and the children heard a loud bang, documents state. The children said they then saw Randy Allen on a bedroom floor and he asked them to call 911, but their mother ordered them not to do it and sent them to their room.

She later awakened them in the middle of the night to ask them for help dragging his body from the apartment to her vehicle, but it was too heavy for them to move, according to court documents.

The children said their mother came home the next day with cleaning supplies and an axe, and awoke them a second straight night, this time for help putting the body into a tote, according to the documents. They then noticed that his legs had been removed, documents allege.

The children said they and their mother made additional failed attempts to load the body into a vehicle. They told officers that their mother “had plans to take the vehicle and body to South Bend and set it on fire,” the documents state.


South Dakota
High court orders resentencing in manslaughter case
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — The South Dakota Supreme Court has ordered a Yankton man be resentenced for manslaughter.

Jameson Mitchell pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Lucas Smith outside a Yankton bar in April of 2019. The two had fought inside the bar and then were ejected through different doors. The 22-year-old Mitchell retrieved a handgun from his apartment and returned to the alley outside the bar. Mitchell argued the gun was for his protection.

Surveillance video showed Smith charging at Mitchell, shouting for Mitchell to shoot him.

In an agreement with prosecutors Mitchell pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Circuit Judge Cheryle Gering sentenced Mitchell to 124 years in prison, more than twice the amount of time the state recommended.

In writing for the court in its decision released Thursday, Justice Mark Salter said the circuit court “effectively treated Mitchell as solely responsible for Smith’s killing without considering Smith’s own criminal conduct.”

Salter noted that the shooting was a “gravely serious offense” and that the justices understood the circuit court’s inclination to impose a stern sentence.

“However, in order to accurately assess the nature of Mitchell’s conduct, the court must consider the fact that he was reacting to a threat posed by Smith’s own assaultive conduct,” the justice wrote.

The Supreme Court vacated the sentenced and sent the case back to the lower court for sentencing.


Washington
Biden nominates first LGBT federal appeals court nominee
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is nominating a Vermont judge who played a critical role in paving the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage to become the first openly LGBT woman to serve on any federal circuit court.

The White House announced Thursday that Biden has tapped Beth Robinson, an associate justice on the Vermont Supreme Court since 2011, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The court’s territory includes Connecticut, New York and Vermont.

In 1999, before she was appointed to the Vermont Supreme Court, Robinson helped argue the case that led to Vermont’s civil unions law, the first legal recognition in the country of same-sex relationships — a forerunner of gay marriage.

Robinson served as counsel to Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, from 2010 to 2011. From 1993 to 2010, Robinson was a civil litigator in private practice at Langrock Sperry & Wool where she focused on employment law, workers’ compensation, contract disputes and family law.

Robinson previously worked at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Washington, D.C., focusing on white-collar criminal defense. She was a law clerk for Judge David Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from 1989 to 1990.

The White House also announced that Biden is nominating employment law attorney Charlotte Sweeney for the U.S. District Court in Colorado. She would become the the first openly LGBT woman to serve as a federal district court judge in any state west of the Mississippi.

Biden thus far has announced 35 judicial nominees to serve on the federal bench.


Maryland
$3 million settlement reached in fatal standoff shooting
TOWSON, Md. (AP) — A $3 million settlement has been reached in the 2016 death of a Black woman shot by Baltimore County police after a standoff, a county official and attorneys for the woman’s family confirmed to a newspaper Wednesday.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the settlement comes five years after Korryn Gaines’ death and resolves claims brought by her parents, daughter and estate, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by the newspaper.

A county police officer shot the 23-year-old Gaines during a standoff at her Randallstown apartment in 2016, killing her and injuring her then-5-year-old son, Kodi.

Left unsettled are the legal claims brought by attorneys for Kodi, who was shot in the elbow and face and underwent surgeries for his injuries.

In 2018, a county jury awarded the Gaines family about $38 million, one of the largest verdicts ever against a Baltimore-area police department. Most of the jury’s award — $32 million — was for Kodi. But the next year, a county judge overturned the jury’s decision, finding that the officer, Cpl. Royce Ruby, acted reasonably. Then, a Maryland appeals court ruled the judge erred in wiping out the jury award.

The jury had awarded about $5.4 million to the family members who have now settled with the county. That included $4.5 million to Gaines’ daughter, Karsyn; a total of $607,000 to her parents; and $300,000 to her estate.

The settlement had been reached in recent weeks but was not signed by all parties until Wednesday. It states that the plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss their claims, which “forever ends the Litigation.”

Maryland
Appellate judges uphold beach town’s topless ban
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday affirmed a Maryland beach town’s right to ban women from topless sunbathing.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ruled unanimously that Ocean City’s law, which allows men to be topless but not women, is constitutional.

Ocean City passed its law in 2017 after one of the plaintiffs in the case, Chelsea Eline, contacted Ocean City police and asserted a right to go topless.

The panel’s ruling notes that courts across the country have upheld laws banning women from topless sunbathing on public beaches. While the law imposes a restriction on women that is not imposed on men, Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote that Ocean City’s elected leaders are within their rights to enact laws that protect public sensibilities.

“The judicial legacy of justifying laws on the basis of the perceived moral sensibilities of the public is far from spotless. Some government action that we now rightly view as unconstitutional, if not immoral, has been justified on that basis. Even so, in this situation, protecting public sensibilities serves an important basis for government action,” Quattlebaum wrote.

Town leaders said they received calls and letters overwhelmingly supporting the ban.

In a concurring opinion, Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote that U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires upholding the ban. But he suggested the court should reconsider the issue.

“At first glance, Ocean City’s ordinance seems innocuous enough. ... But we must take care not to let our analysis be confined by the limits of our social lens,” Gregory wrote. “Suppose the ordinance defined nudity to include public exposure of a woman’s hair, neck, shoulders, or ankles. Would that law not run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause?”


Washington
Postmates to pay $1M to Seattle gig workers in settlement
SEATTLE (AP) — Online food delivery platform Postmates has agreed to pay almost $1 million to settle allegations it violated the city’s paid sick leave policies for gig workers, Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards said.

The city said in a news release that most of the money will go toward back wages and damages to the 1,646 Postmates gig workers in Seattle, The Seattle Times reported.

The city began investigating last fall after drivers alleged Postmates didn’t pay them for paid sick time off under the city’s Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time policy, which went into effect in July 2020.

“For years, us couriers were missing out on many benefits that we need and that we should have received from the start,” Shawn W. Gray, a Postmates driver, said in the city’s press release.

The investigation started months before Uber acquired Postmates in December.

“We appreciate the Office of Labor Standards’ close coordination with us to correct any outstanding issues,” Zahid Arab, a public affairs manager for Uber, said in the news release. “We’ve worked tirelessly to ensure that workers on the Postmates’ platform got the paid sick and safe time to which they were entitled.”


Oklahoma City landlords settle sexual harassment claims
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A group of Oklahoma City landlords agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit alleging its former agent sexually harassed female tenants, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The settlement with defendants Rosemarie Pelfrey, Omega Enterprises LLC and Pelfrey Investment Company Inc. ends a lengthy legal battle in which the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division alleged the Walter Ray Pelfrey, who managed rental properties for the company, sexually harassed more than 40 female tenants and prospective tenants over nearly 20 years.

Walter Pelfrey died in 2018, and a message seeking comment with attorneys for the companies wasn’t immediately returned.

Under the terms of a consent order approved this week by a federal judge in Oklahoma City, the defendants will pay $1.2 million in damages to the tenants harmed by Pelfrey’s harassment and a $50,000 civil penalty.

“For nearly 20 years, more than 40 female tenants and prospective tenants endured abhorrent sexual harassment when all they wanted was a safe place to call home,” Acting U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester said in a statement.