Court Digest

Maine
Jury acquits man in fatal parking lot shooting
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A jury has acquitted a 23-year-old man charged in a fatal shooting in a Walmart parking lot in Auburn.

A jury returned not guilty verdicts Wednesday for Gage Dalphonse, of Auburn, on charges of murder and manslaughter.

Dalphonse, who claimed self defense, shot Jean Fournier, 41, of Turner, twice in the back after the two exchanged words and Fournier delivered a punch in a parking lot on July 27, 2019.

Prosecutors said Dalphonse leaned out the driver’s side window of his car and shot Fournier as he ran away.

Defense attorney James Howaniec told the Sun Journal that he’s sympathetic to the Fournier family but said the facts pointed to self defense.

“It was an incredibly unfortunate and tragic sequence of events that evolved basically over one minute in the Walmart parking lot,” he said.

The crime happened in Auburn, but the trial was moved to Superior Court in Augusta because of pretrial publicity.

Kentucky
State to collect $300M in settling gambling suit
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — An internet gambling site has agreed to pay $300 million to Kentucky to settle a long-running lawsuit filed by the state, Gov. Andy Beshear said.

Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of PokerStars, agreed to the settlement, the governor said Wednesday in a news release.

“After 10 long years, the commonwealth has not only prevailed, but collected dollars that the General Assembly will be able to direct to critical areas, like education, health care and economic development,” Beshear said.

The settlement ends a long legal fight. Under state law, proceeds from the settlement will go to the state’s General Fund.

The state filed legal action in 2008 to stop the unregulated and untaxed offshore gambling operations that were operating in Kentucky, the governor’s office said.

From 2007 to 2011, PokerStars, the largest offshore gambling operator, collected almost $300 million in actual cash losses from thousands of Kentuckians who played on PokerStars websites, Beshear’s office said.


Arizona
Trial set over man’s death in struggle with Phoenix police
PHOENIX (AP) — An April 25 trial has been scheduled in a lawsuit filed over the 2017 death of a man during a struggle with Phoenix police officers who were arresting him outside a community center.

The lawsuit alleged officers caused Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin’s death by using unjustified force. Muhaymin was experiencing homeless at the time and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia.
Lawyers representing the city have denied the lawsuit’s allegations of excessive force and wrongful death.

Police were called to the community center after a dispute arose over whether Muhaymin could bring his service dog into a bathroom there.

While he was in the bathroom, officers who ran a records check discovered Muhaymin had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court.

Tensions rose as an officer told Muhaymin to put down his dog because he was under arrest. Muhaymin was forced to the ground after police asked him to cooperate.

After officers brought Muhaymin to the parking lot, officers again urged Muhaymin to stop moving. Still, the struggle continued, with officers again forcing him to the ground. “I can’t breathe,” Muhaymin said. “I can’t breathe.”
Minutes later, Muhaymin went into cardiac arrest and died, the lawsuit said.

None of the officers have been criminally charged or faced internal discipline for their actions during the encounter.

California
Man charged with perjury in Hollywood execs lawsuit
NEW YORK (AP) — A Los Angeles man has been charged by New York federal prosecutors with perjury for allegedly falsifying emails to support his lawsuit against entertainment industry executives.

Rovier Carrington, 22, was arrested Tuesday in California and released on $15,000 bail after a court appearance.

A message seeking comment was sent to his court-appointed attorney.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a release Wednesday that Carrington had made “extremely serious allegations” including that Hollywood executives had sexually assaulted him and defrauded him when they refused to produce his reality television program. She said he then lied about faking evidence.

The perjury charge was filed after the collapse of his 2018 Manhattan lawsuit against Viacom and Paramount Pictures executives in which he claimed he was the victim of sexual offenses, unfair competition, fraud, misappropriation and other misdeeds.

He had claimed in the lawsuit that he was “related to Hollywood royalty” as the great-grandson of one of “The Three Stooges” and was a writer, actor and producer of TV shows who had worked in 2010 on a reality television show: “The Life of a Trendsetter.”

After defendants in the civil action produced proof that emails were fabricated, Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan ordered Carrington to pay $600,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.

She said that Carrington had taken steps, including discarding an iPhone, to destroy evidence in the case even as defendants were trying to obtain as much information as possible about his allegations.

Failla dismissed the lawsuit, disallowing Carrington to refile it, but she declined a request by defendants to make a criminal referral to federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that email chains that Carrington submitted to support his lawsuit were faked and he was unable to produce original versions of any of the chains. They said the versions of the email chains he offered also could not be located in email accounts belonging to alleged recipients.

Georgia
Man convicted of murder after shooting, burying 2 roommates
DOUGLAS, Ga. (AP) — A south Georgia man has been convicted of killing two roommates in 2019 and then burying them.

Christopher Lane Jones was found guilty Wednesday of two counts of malice murder and two counts of concealing a death by a Coffee County jury after 35 minutes of deliberation, Assistant District Attorney Ian Sansot said.

Coffee County Superior Court Judge J. Kelly Brooks sentenced Jones to two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole for the murders, plus another 20 years in prison for concealment, Sansot told local news outlets.

Prosecutors say Jones killed Kristian Bell, 25, and Steven James Ward, 35, as they and others were being evicted from a house in Nicholls in late January 2019. Evidence presented at trial showed Jones was high on methamphetamines when he became angry with Jones and shot Ward. Bell came out of the house and Jones then shot Bell six times.

When two other people came to the house to move furniture, testimony showed Jones confessed to the killings and directed the others to dig a grave for the bodies, which Jones had hidden under the house. Jones then built a fire pit over the grave to hide it.

Bell’s family later reported her missing, prompting a search. Her family was directed to the house, where they found Bell’s belongings. Days later, on Feb. 9, the bodies were found in the makeshift grave.

Prosecutors said Jones later told three other people about the killings. He was arrested in California and did not deny his actions when questioned, authorities said.

Dedrick Johnson, one of the two men who helped bury the bodies, was convicted in December 2019 on two counts of concealing the death of another. Joseph Burch remains jailed on the same charges while awaiting trial.


California
Judge plans to re-sentence Scott Peterson to life this fall
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — Scott Peterson, who spent more than 15 years on Death Row in the 2002 murders of his pregnant wife and unborn son, will be sentenced to life in prison this fall, a judge said Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said she wants to sentence Peterson in November before deciding whether he deserves a new trial over alleged juror misconduct. She set an Oct. 6 hearing to set a date for resentencing him to a life term with no chance of parole.

The California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence last year because jurors who personally disagreed with the death penalty but were willing to impose it were improperly dismissed.
Prosecutors said they won’t seek the death penalty if Peterson gets a new trial.

The high court found there was considerable circumstantial evidence incriminating him in the first-degree murder of Laci Peterson, 27, who was eight months pregnant, and the second-degree murder of the boy they planned to name Connor.

Prosecutors said Peterson took his wife’s body from their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002 and dumped her in San Francisco Bay from his fishing boat. The body of his wife and the boy fetus washed ashore in April 2003.
Peterson’s lawyers are seeking a new trial on allegations a juror committed misconduct by falsely answering questions during the selection process.

Defense lawyers said the woman, who coauthored a book on the case, eagerly sought to be a juror in the case and did not disclose she had been a crime victim.

The woman known as Juror 7 did not reveal during jury selection that she had been beaten by a boyfriend while pregnant in 2001. She also didn’t disclose that during another pregnancy she had obtained a restraining order against a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whom she feared would hurt her unborn child.

The judge denied a defense request to take depositions of the juror and witnesses to those crimes against her but said she could be questioned during an evidentiary hearing.

The juror, however, has said she won’t testify at a hearing unless she is granted immunity from prosecution on a possible perjury charge, attorneys said. If not, she will invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.


Texas
Court overturns inmate’s capital murder conviction
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ highest criminal court on Wednesday overturned a death row inmate’s capital murder conviction because one of the prosecutors in his 2003 trial was moonlighting as a clerk for the judge in the case.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the arrangement between Midland County State District Judge John Hyde and then-prosecutor Weldon Petty clearly violated Clinton Young’s right to a fair trial. Young was convicted and sentenced to death in the shooting of a man during a 2001 drug-related crime rampage across Texas.

Hyde died in 2012, but Midland County prosecutors in 2019 discovered the paid arrangement between the judge and Petty, who had also been working on the side for other district judges for years.

The appeals court noted that as a prosecutor, Petty would oppose defense motions while also drafting recommendations of denial for judges to sign. As part of the legal team prosecuting Young, Petty drafted the legal motions submitted during the trial and sometimes participated in oral arguments.

Petty’s side agreement with Hyde was to perform “legal work” as a judicial clerk outside of his official duties. It paid him more $9,000 over the time spanning Young’s initial indictment, trial and post-conviction appeals, which Petty handled both as prosecutor and as clerk for the judge, the appeals court noted.

“Judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, in the form of an undisclosed employment relationship between the trial judge and the prosecutor appearing before him, tainted (Young’s) entire proceeding from the outset,” the court wrote. “As a result, little confidence can be placed in the fairness of the proceedings or the outcome of (Young’s) trial.”

The appeals court ordered Young to be removed from death row and sent back to Midland County jail under his original indictment.

District Attorney Laura Nodolf, who was elected in 2016 and who later discovered the paid agreement between the prosecutor and judge, said her office has been recused from Young’s case going forward and any decision whether to retry him.

“If Mr. Young is retried, it needs to be the cleanest slate possible,” Nodolf said. “The most ethical thing would be for us to take a step back and let another office take a look at the case.”

Petty, who worked as a full-time prosecutor in Midland County from 2002 to 2019, is retired. During an evidentiary hearing, he refused to testify about his paid work for the judge, citing a constitutional privilege against self-incrimination, the appeals court noted.