Court Roundup

 Massachusetts
Judge says he’ll toss some of ex-mayor’s fraud convictions
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday said he planned to toss several convictions against the Massachusetts mayor elected at just 23 years old who was found guilty by jurors of bilking investors and extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from marijuana businesses.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock said he intended to overturn eight counts of the jury’s guilty verdict against ex-Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia that the judge said prosecutors failed to prove during trial.

Correia, who maintains he is innocent, would remain convicted of multiple counts of wire fraud, extortion conspiracy and extortion. He’s expected to be sentenced on Tuesday, and prosecutors had been seeking 11 years behind bars, pointing to what they described as Correia’s continued defiance.

“The betrayal of people who considered him like family, the pervasive lying, cheating, stealing, and blame-shifting, and the egregious breaches of the public trust must be met with a sentence that thoroughly repudiates the defendant’s abhorrent conduct and deters both this defendant and others like him from doing it again,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Hafer wrote in court documents.

Correia, now 29, had originally been scheduled to receive his punishment on Monday, but the judge said he was unpersuaded that there was enough evidence to back up several fraud counts. Those stemmed from allegations that Correia misused money he got from investors who backed his smartphone app called “SnoOwl” on lavish purchases for himself and his then-girlfriend.

The judge said he believed prosecutors failed to prove six wire fraud counts by showing that wires — or electronic communications — were used to process the checks Correia got from the investors. The judge also said that prosecutors failed to prove two counts of filing false tax returns.

Before the judge made his comments on Monday, Correia’s lawyers had asked for three years behind bars. They said in court papers that the former mayor “cannot be defined solely as a ‘crooked politician’ or ‘thief,’” and told the judge that Correia has “great potential to learn from this chapter of his life.”

“This case evokes the legend of Icarus. Mr. Correia flew early, high, and fast. The verdict points to a hubristic loss of moral compass and, now, a crash into the sea. But Mr. Correia’s story need not end there,” Correia’s defense attorneys wrote.

The charges against Correia in 2018 marked a stunning collapse for the politician who was elected on a promise to rejuvenate the struggling mill city and was once seen as a rising Democratic star.

Prosecutors alleged that Correia looted a bank account of funds investors gave him for his smartphone app to buy things for himself and shower his girlfriend in expensive gifts. Prosecutors said he spent investor funds on dinners at high-end restaurants, luxury hotels, casino trips and such lavish items as a Mercedes, a helicopter tour of Newport, Rhode Island, and a $700 pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.

Throughout his trial, prosecutors depicted him as a greedy liar who misled those who pumped money into his app the same way they say he deceived voters to get elected by portraying himself as a successful entrepreneur. Investors told jurors that they had been impressed with Correia and trusted him to use their cash to build up the business and make them more money.

After becoming mayor in 2016, prosecutors say Correia began soliciting bribes from marijuana vendors in exchange for letters of approval from the city they needed in order to get a license. During the trial, prosecutors had one vendor use fake money to show jurors how he said he stuffed $75,000 in cash in a metal box clipboard before handing it to Correia in the mayor’s city-issued vehicle.

Correia was found guilty in May of extortion, extortion conspiracy, wire fraud and filing false tax returns after 23 hours of jury deliberations over four days. The jury acquitted him on three counts, including accusations that he forced his chief of staff to give him half of her salary in order to keep her city job.

Correia — who did not take the stand in his defense — told reporters after his conviction that “the real truth” would come out and predicted he would be vindicated.

He hired new attorneys, who filed papers in July urging the judge to throw out the jury’s verdict. They slammed prosecutors for what the defense described as an “unfair smear campaign in the courtroom” and called the evidence against Correia “remarkably shallow.”

Louisiana
Class action for lawsuit claiming abuse at prison
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal lawsuit in which several inmates at a north Louisiana state prison allege harsh treatment of the mentally ill was granted class action status on Monday by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Foote’s decision means the criminal justice advocates who filed the lawsuit in 2018 can potentially seek relief for hundreds of prisoners over alleged inhumane treatment at the Wade Correctional Center in Claiborne Parish. Exactly how many is unclear but the ruling by Foote, of Shreveport, says there were 366 people being held at the buildings in question in March 2020.

The lawsuit says some inmates at the Wade center have been held in isolation, confined in cells for 23 to 24 hours per day, for months and sometimes years, causing or exacerbating mental health problems. It alleges that some seeking mental health treatment have been placed in isolation in a disciplinary area, and that inmates have resorted to self mutilation and attempts at suicide to escape brutal conditions.

Prisoners allege the conditions at the prison violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and also Eighth Amendment protections against cruel punishment. The suit was filed in the federal court system for the Western District of Louisiana.

State officials denied the lawsuit’s allegations when it was filed. They fought efforts to have the court grant class action status to the lawsuit and didn’t immediately respond to a query on whether they would appeal Foote’s ruling.


California
Twitter to pay $809.5M to settle shareholder suit
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter said Monday it will pay $809.5 million to settle a consolidated class action lawsuit alleging that the company misled investors about how much its user base was growing and how much users interacted with its platform.

The San Francisco company said the proposed settlement, which must still be signed off by a judge, resolves all claims against it without Twitter admitting any wrongdoing. The original lawsuit filed in 2016 by Twitter investor Doris Shenwick claimed that Twitter executives “knowingly made inaccurate public statements regarding these metrics, and failed to disclose internal information about them, resulting in an inflated share price that fell when the truth about user engagement became known.”

The company said it plans to use cash on hand to pay the settlement in the fourth quarter of 2021. It expects to record a one-time charge as a result.

According to the lawsuit, in 2014 Twitter executives said that the site’s monthly average user base was expected to increase significantly to “to over 550 million” in the intermediate term and “over a billion” over the longer term.

In 2019, Twitter stopped reporting monthly user figures. At last count that spring, that number was at 330 million. Now, Twitter reports only daily user figures.

And in 2017, Twitter said it had been overstating its monthly user numbers by mistake because it was including users of a third-party app it should not have.

Shares of Twitter Inc. fell $2.50, or 4%, to $59.95 in afternoon trading.

South Carolina
Consultants sued over 2018 deaths of women in sheriff’s van
The estates of two South Carolina women who drowned while locked in the back of a sheriff’s department van during Hurricane Florence have filed lawsuits alleging negligence by a company that created policies and procedures for the law enforcement agency.

The lawsuits were filed last week in Horry County by representatives of 43-year-old Nicolette Green and 45-year-old Wendy Newton against Moseley Architects, which consults with law enforcement agencies and develops policies and procedures.

Two deputies were driving the women to a mental-health facility under a court order in September 2018 when their van was swept away by rising floodwaters as Hurricane Florence inundated South Carolina.

Many roads in the northeastern part of the state were flooded out and blocked off in the days following the powerful storm, which smashed into the Southeast coast Sept. 14 and triggered severe flooding as it stalled over the Carolinas for days.

On Sept. 18, the deputies, in a marked sheriff’s department vehicle, were waved through a barricade near the Little Pee Dee River by National Guardsmen charged with keeping motorists out of the area, according to authorities. As waters swirled around the van, the two deputies were unable to free the women, who were locked in a compartment in the back, officials said.

Rescue crews needed about 45 minutes to find the van, which was underwater at that point, and plucked the Horry County deputies from the roof, authorities said.

According to the lawsuits, the deputies were “acting in accordance with the policies and procedures created by” the consulting firm on the night the women were swept away. Their deaths were the culmination of a series of failures, such as the deputies not being able to provide their location to first responders, or maintain “the equipment, training, practice, procedure, and protocol to complete a safe transport,” according to the suits.

Specifically, the department “lacked any policy related to mental health patients and their transport” and “maintained insufficient policies, procedures, and training for routine law enforcement function,” the lawsuits read.

Representatives for Moseley did not immediately return an email message seeking comment Monday.

Fired from the Horry County Sheriff’s Office a month after the deaths as part of an internal investigation, the two officers driving the women also face criminal charges, including reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter. Their trial is expected later this year.


Georgia
Psychologist indicted for $100,000 in false Medicaid claims
GAINESVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A northeast Georgia psychologist has been indicted for allegedly billing Medicaid for almost $100,000 in false claims.

The Times of Gainesville reports that Dr. Guy Jordan was indicted last week on charges of Medicaid fraud and false statements.

According to the indictment, the Gainesville resident conducted behavioral health assessments for children referred by pediatricians and the criminal justice system.

Defense attorney Graham McKinnon said Jordan is cooperating with investigators. While not speaking specifically to the allegations, McKinnon said his client has long provided quality psychological services. Jordan is free on $30,000 bail. The charges carry a maximum of 15 years in prison if Jordan is convicted.

Attorney General Chris Carr’s office is prosecuting the case.

Prosecutors say Jordan “routinely and consistently” billed for weekly therapy sessions, creating falsified backdated records, when he performed only one assessment. They say Jordan collected hundreds of overpayments between January 2016 and August 2019, totaling $99,398.62.

“These assessments were done for the purpose of providing a diagnosis in order to assist parents, teachers and courts in support of a troubled child in school and in the court system,” the indictment states. “These one-time visits, lasting several hours, constituted the one and only contact with the child by Guy Jordan and his associates.”


Minnesota
Ex-probation officer convicted in real estate agent killing
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former probation officer has been found guilty for her role in the kidnapping and killing of a Minneapolis real estate agent.

Jurors in Hennepin County on Monday found 29-year-old Elsa Segura guilty of luring Monique Baugh to a bogus home showing in Maple Grove on Dec. 31, 2019, and aiding in the kidnapping and murder of the victim, who was found fatally shot in a Minneapolis alley.

Segura’s attorney, Amanda Montgomery, told jurors her client had no knowledge of a plot, and that the prosecution’s case was speculation.

According to investigators, two men convicted in the case were part of a scheme aimed at getting to Baugh’s boyfriend, who had a feud with a former business associate and drug dealer. Baugh’s boyfriend was shot and wounded during an altercation after Baugh was kidnapped.

Cedric Berry and Berry Davis were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the kidnapping and murder of Baugh.

Segura was found guilty on one count each of aiding and abetting the crimes of premeditated first-degree murder, attempted premeditated first-degree murder, kidnapping and first-degree felony murder while committing kidnapping, the Star Tribune reported.

She is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 9.