National Roundup

Colorado
Lawyers who filed election lawsuit must pay rivals' fees
DENVER (AP) — A federal magistrate on Wednesday levied penalties against two Colorado attorneys for filing a class-action lawsuit that alleged the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

The now-dismissed suit relied on baseless conspiracy theories spread by the former president and his supporters. It named elected officials in four swing states, Facebook, the company's founder Mark Zuckerberg and Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose election machines were at the center of some of the most fevered speculation.

Magistrate Judge N. Reid Nureiter ruled that the two attorneys who filed the lawsuit must pay the legal fees of the defendants.
"The lawsuit put into or repeated into the public record highly inflammatory and damaging allegations that could have put individuals' safety in danger," Nureiter wrote, noting the Jan. 6 insurrection was spurred by the lies it repeated, as were threats against election and Dominion officials. "Doing so without a valid legal basis or serious independent personal investigation into the facts was the height of recklessness."

There are few recourses against false lawsuits other than penalizing lawyers for filing them. Repeated audits and recounts found no significant fraud in the presidential election. Even Trump's own administration  said the election was clean.

That did not stop Trump and his allies from filing dozens of suits and continuing to insist the contest was stolen from him, a lie that inspired the crowds that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In the end, Trump and his allies lost more than 50 of the election lawsuits.

The lawyers in the Colorado case, Gary D. Fielder and Ernest J. Walker, were not connected with other Trump lawyers — including Sidney Powell, who is one of multiple Trump-backing attorneys who face possible sanctions for an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the election results in Michigan.

Fielder and Walker said during a court hearing last month that they were trying to protect democracy.

Florida
Murder charges filed in Miami Beach spring break overdoses
MIAMI (AP) — Two North Carolina men accused of raping a 24-year-old tourist who overdosed during spring break in Miami Beach now face first-degree murder charges.

On Wednesday, a grand jury in Miami-Dade County found Evoire Collier, 21, and Dorian Taylor, 25, both from Greensboro, North Carolina, responsible for the fentanyl-induced death in March of Christine Englehardt of Richboro, Pennsylvania. She met the men while visiting South Beach, and went with them to her room at the Albion Hotel, prosecutors said.

The grand jury added a second first-degree murder charge against Taylor for supplying the same opioid to Walter Riley, 21, from Chicago. He was found unconscious on a nearby street and died March 20, two days after Englehardt was found unresponsive in her hotel room, the Miami Herald reported.

The three-page grand jury report accuses the pair of killing Englehardt with their "unlawful distribution of fentanyl" while committing sexual battery and burglary. The men allegedly took Englehardt's credit cards and made illegal purchases at SOBE Liquors and the Sugar Factory.

Collier's attorney, Phil Reizenstein, told the Herald he's "stunned" by the indictment. He said the medical examiner found Englehardt had ingested so many different drugs that it was nearly impossible to pin down what caused her death.

"I think they're going to regret doing this," said Reizenstein. "I think by the time I'm finished with them, they're never going to be able to say she died of this."

Taylor's attorney, Liesbeth Boot, couldn't be reached.

The men remain jailed in Miami. They were arrested March 21, according to jail records.

Authorities said surveillance video captured the men entering the hotel with Englehardt and later leaving without her. An arrest report says Collier confessed to giving Englehardt a green pill and claimed they sexually assaulted her in the hotel room even as she lay unconscious.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner determined the pills ingested by Englehardt were "rapidly fatal" fentanyl. The autopsy also found that her alcohol level when she died hovered near 2.0, almost three times the legal limit, and asphyxia may have played a role in her death, the Herald reported.

Missouri
Recordings to be heard at trial in woman’s death
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Audio recordings of arguments between a Missouri man and his Chinese wife will be allowed during the man’s upcoming trial in her death, a judge has ruled.

Circuit Judge Brouck Jacobs ruled Tuesday the recordings are “relevant and otherwise admissible” in the case against Joseph Elledge, of Columbia, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Mengqi Ji.

Ji was reported missing in October 2019, prompting extensive searches that concluded when her body was found in March  of this year at a park near Columbia.

Boone County Prosecuting Attorney had argued the recordings are key evidence that would show Elledge’s motive for the killing, context for the crime and his consciousness of guilt, The Columbia Missourian reported.

Elledge’s defense attorneys argued the tapes were hearsay and should not be admitted during the trial.

Ji secretly recorded two of the tapes and Elledge recorded 10 others, for a total of 13 hours of recordings.

Elledge’s murder trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 1. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and to related charges of child endangerment involving the couple’s young child and domestic abuse.