Court Digest

Louisiana
Man pleads guilty to heroin distribution
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Prosecutors say a man who pleaded guilty to heroin distribution in federal court in New Orleans will also forfeit a luxury car, a diamond-encrusted Rolex watch and other jewelry.

Prosecutors said in a Thursday news release that 44-year-old Arthur Johnson of New Orleans faces at least 10 years in prison — and possibly life — after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin. The release from U.S. Attorney Duane Evans also says Johnson could be fined as much as $10 million. Court records show the plea was entered Tuesday.

Prosecutors said Johnson was arrested after investigators intercepted communications between him and a Chicago drug courier. An investigation built on intercepted communications, surveillance of Johnson and purchases of heroin led to his arrest in December 2017.

Johnson’s plea agreement includes his forfeiture of a 2017 Mercedes Benz, thousands of dollars in cash and array of diamond jewelry including “a Rolex watch covered in approximately 17.45 carats of diamonds.”

U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan set sentencing for Dec. 1.

Oklahoma
City must pay nearly $1M over panhandling suit
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma City must pay nearly $1 million to five attorneys who successfully challenged an anti-panhandling ordinance adopted by the city, a federal judge ruled this week.

U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued the order approving 2,474 billable hours that attorneys spent on the case for a total of $986,350.

A federal appeals court determined in 2020 that the ordinance placing restrictions on panhandling on street medians is an unconstitutional violation of free speech. Plaintiffs included two homeless men who used the medians to panhandle, including one who sold issues of the Curbside Chronicle newspaper, two joggers, a journalist and a community activist who has used medians to protest and erect signs for his legislative candidacy.

Several attorneys for the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union were among those who represented the plaintiffs.

“We hope this fee amount will deter Oklahoma City from violating the constitutional rights of Oklahomans and encourage them to consider the concerns of the community in the future,” Megan Lambert, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Oklahoma, said in a statement. “We will continue our fight for the free speech rights of all Oklahomans.”

A spokeswoman for the city didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s order, but city officials have said previously the ordinance was adopted as a public safety measure.


California
State Supreme Court upholds death penalty rules
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s top court rejected an attempt to make it harder to impose the death penalty, ruling Thursday in favor of the current system where jurors need not unanimously agree on aggravating factors used to justify the punishment.

Jurors already must unanimously agree to impose a death sentence, and to do so must decide that aggravating factors outweigh mitigating circumstances.

But they do not have to unanimously agree on each specific aggravating factor, the California Supreme Court said in a 7-0 decision. Those factors include things like having multiple or prior victims, the slaying being gang-related or spurred by a victim’s race or religion, or the murder being “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.”

The justices upheld that longstanding practice in a case that otherwise could have undermined the death sentences of the most populous state’s nearly 700 condemned prisoners.

The death penalty might be fairer if the state did make changes, Associate Justice Goodwin Liu wrote for the court.

He noted that the state attorney general’s office also agreed that such a requirement “would improve our system of capital punishment and make it even more reliable” and that state lawmakers should consider the change.

“Nevertheless, to date our Legislature and electorate have not imposed such requirements,” Liu wrote, and the court found there is no such mandate in state law or the constitution.

The justices also rejected requiring that both the death sentence and the specific aggravating circumstances be justified beyond a reasonable doubt. That level of proof is currently required for criminal convictions but not in sentencing decisions.

“I am pleased to see that the California Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a call to overturn decades of clear precedent,” said Criminal Justice Legal Foundation Legal Director Kent Scheidegger, who wrote a brief supporting the death penalty. A ruling otherwise, the foundation said, would have had “a devastating impact on hundreds of well-deserved judgments for horrible crimes.”

Defense attorneys argued that current sentencing practices in capital cases violate the constitutional requirement that verdicts be both unanimous and beyond a reasonable doubt.

Gov. Gavin Newsom was one of those seeking stricter standards when he took the unprecedented step of filing a brief arguing that current practices spur racial discrimination. The higher threshold was also supported by a minority of district attorneys including Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and George Gascón in Los Angeles.

Newsom’s brief — written by two professors at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law — tracked other critics who contend the death penalty process is inherently racist because Black people are disproportionately excluded from juries in capital cases.

But those more sweeping objections “do not bear directly on the specific state law questions before us,” Liu wrote.

Nor did the court find evidence of prosecutorial basis against Black jurors in the Los Angeles County case of Donte Lamont McDaniel, 42.

He was sentenced to death in 2009 for the murders of 33-year-old George Brooks and 52-year-old Annette Anderson and two counts of attempted murder on behalf of the Bounty Hunter Bloods street gang. The court upheld his conviction and sentence.

“It doesn’t change the fact that the death penalty system in California does discriminate against people of color, particularly Black defendants. And there’s ample data to demonstrate that,” said Elisabeth Semel, co-director of the UC Berkeley Death Penalty Clinic and co-author of Newsom’s legal brief.

Newsom spokeswoman Erin Mellon said the court “missed an opportunity to fix one of the many flaws in California’s death penalty.” Executions are irreversible and the process discriminates not only on race but against those who are poor or mentally ill, she said.

California has not executed anyone since 2006, and Newsom has imposed a moratorium while he is governor. But voters narrowly upheld the death penalty in 2012 and 2016.

Five of the seven justices were appointed by Democratic governors who oppose capital punishment. Liu was appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

Liu took the unusual step of writing not only the majority opinion, but also a separate 30-page opinion in which he argued the state’s death penalty process could be deemed unconstitutional under a different legal argument not currently before the court.

“There is a world of difference between a unanimous jury finding of an aggravating circumstance and the smorgasbord approach that our capital sentencing scheme allows,” he wrote.

He noted in the majority opinion that Colorado, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Utah all have included a reasonable doubt standard in their death penalty laws. Although that is not binding on California, he said other states’ experience shows that including reasonable doubt and jury unanimity standards can work.

Of 1,077 death sentences imposed since 1978 in California, 230 — more than 1 in 5 — have been reversed by either the California Supreme Court or a federal court, according to a March report by the Office of the State Public Defender titled “California’s Broken Death Penalty.”


Oklahoma
State’s seeks execution dates for 7 death-row inmates
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s new attorney general filed motions on Thursday seeking execution dates for seven death-row inmates who have exhausted all of their appeals.

Attorney General John O’Connor asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for James Coddington, Donald Grant, John Grant, Julius Jones, Wade Lay, Gilbert Postelle and Bigler Stouffer. All but Stouffer were recently dismissed from a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocols. None of those six inmates selected an alternative method of execution, which the federal judge said was necessary for them to continue as plaintiffs in the case.

Stouffer never joined the federal lawsuit, in which death row inmates contend the state’s current three-drug protocol of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride risks subjecting them to unconstitutional pain and suffering.

An attorney for some of the inmates, Dale Baich, criticized O’Connor for moving forward with executions while the federal case is pending.

“The drug protocol that was problematic seven years ago is the same one the state seeks to use again,” Baich said in a statement. “Given that history and the unresolved questions about the constitutionality of the state’s execution protocol that are pending before the federal district court, Oklahoma should not move forward with any executions at this time.”

In a statement, O’Connor cited a state question approved by two-thirds of Oklahoma voters in 2016 to enshrine the death penalty into the Oklahoma Constitution and noted that the inmates’ appeals had lasted between 13 and 36 years.

“Our thoughts remain with the families and loved ones of the victims of all death row inmates,” O’Connor said. “They have endured the lengthy appeals process, while waiting decades for justice for horrific crimes their loved ones suffered. Further delay will only perpetuate that injustice.”

Oklahoma announced last year it had secured a source for the drugs and planned to resume lethal injections. The state once had one of the busiest death chambers in the nation, but executions were put on hold following a botched lethal injection in 2014 that left an inmate writhing on the gurney and drug mix-ups in 2015 in which the wrong lethal drugs were delivered. One inmate was executed with an unapproved drug and a second inmate was just moments away from being led to the death chamber before prison officials realized the same wrong drug had been delivered for his execution.


Massachusetts
Owner of closed clothing store settles discrmination lawsuit
BOSTON (AP) — The former owner of a high-end footwear and clothing store in Boston accused of discriminating against a Black man, a woman of Middle Eastern descent and other customers has been permanently barred from operating a retail business in the state and ordered to pay $220,000 under an agreement with the attorney general’s office announced Friday.

The consent judgment settles a lawsuit filed in 2018 against Hicham Ali “Sam” Hassan, who owned The Tannery in Boston’s Back Bay, that alleged he violated state law by engaging in discriminatory behavior that included making derogatory comments and denying service to customers based on their actual or perceived race, national origin, or immigration status.

The store has since closed.

“We have strong laws in Massachusetts to put an end to the kind of unlawful, unacceptable, and racist behavior that this business owner blatantly displayed in his store,” Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement. “This settlement provides relief to the customers that were harmed and makes clear that everyone should be welcome and respected in businesses across our state.”

The $220,000 will be used to pay restitution to victims and to fund anti-discrimination and racial justice programs.

A voicemail seeking comment was left with Hassan’s attorney.

According to the attorney general, Hassan in 2017 told a Black customer he didn’t want his “kind” at the store, implied he didn’t have enough money to shop there, and told him to leave.

On another occasion, when a woman of Middle Eastern descent entered the store with her husband and 8-year-old child, Hassan mocked her accent, and told her to “go back to your country and clean and cook mgadara,” a traditional Middle Eastern dish.

The attorney general’s office also chronicled other instances of Hassan’s alleged discriminatory behavior.