National Roundup

Oregon
State challenges ruling in release in killing of prisons chief
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The state of Oregon has urged a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling that allowed the release of a man who served nearly 30 years for the killing of Oregon prisons chief Michael Francke.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the state contends Frank Gable, now 63, and his lawyers failed to meet the legal threshold for showing Gable didn’t commit the fatal stabbing in 1989.

Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Gutman on Monday argued that Gable has not produced any new “trustworthy eyewitness accounts” or critical physical evidence to undercut his conviction and that the alleged confession to the killing by another man was unreliable and appropriately excluded at trial.

Gable’s lawyers countered that Oregon’s U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta made the right call and his decision should stand.

In a ruling in April 2019, Acosta found that the state trial judge erroneously barred the man’s confession and that Gable’s lawyers at the time should have asserted his federal due process rights in light of that error.

Acosta ordered the state to release Gable or retry him in 90 days. The state released Gable in June 2019 and appealed Acosta’s decision.

Gable is on federal supervision, living with his wife in Kansas as the state’s appeal proceeds.

He had been serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the killing of Francke, 42, in Salem. Francke was the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections when he was attacked during a confrontation near his state-issued car outside the Dome Building, the agency’s headquarters.

Gable was arrested 15 months later after another man said he saw him stab Francke. The state argued at trial that Francke interrupted Gable as Gable burgled Francke’s car. A jury found Gable guilty of aggravated murder and he was sentenced in 1991.

Washington
U.S. stands by Boeing settlement reached in Trump’s final days
The Justice Department is standing by a settlement it reached with Boeing for deceiving regulators who approved the 737 Max, despite personal pleas to Attorney General Merrick Garland from relatives of passengers who died in crashes of Max jets.

In a filing Tuesday, the Justice Department asked a federal court in Texas to deny the families’ request for a hearing into the $2.5 billion settlement.

The families argued that government lawyers violated a crime-victims law by not telling them that the government was negotiating a settlement with Boeing. They want a court to strike down the part of the deal that shields Boeing from criminal prosecution.

The Justice Department told the court, however, that the family members are not crime victims. Department lawyers also said the settlement included compensation above what the law required.

Last month, several relatives of passengers held a video meeting with Garland during which they pressed the attorney general to help them re-open the settlement, which was reached two weeks before the Trump administration left office.

According to people who took part in the meeting, Garland expressed sympathy to the passengers’ relatives but expressed no position on the case.

In the settlement, Boeing blamed two former test pilots for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about a key flight-control system that played a role in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. The Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing for conspiracy to defraud the government.

Most of the settlement, about $1.8 billion, went to airlines that lost money because their Max planes were grounded for nearly two years. Boeing agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine and contribute $500 million to a fund for victims’ relatives.

The company has settled many, but not all, of the lawsuits filed by passengers’ families.

Nevada
Death penalty to be sought in store shooting case
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Prosecutors have filed documents to seek the death penalty against a 22-year-old man accused of donning battle gear and firing at least 20 shots outside and inside a Las Vegas convenience store, killing a man in a parked car but missing people in the business.

Jesus Javier Uribe of Las Vegas faces 27 felony charges in the Nov. 4 rampage that prosecutors dubbed an act of random terrorism.

A grand jury indicted Uribe last month on charges including murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and unlawful discharge of a weapon.

Uribe’s public defender, Kathleen Hamers, declined to comment Tuesday about Friday’s court filing.

Uribe remains jailed with a court hearing Feb. 23 on a bid to be freed pending trial, scheduled for March 2023.

Police and prosecutors say Uribe had no known connection with Curtis Leon Abraham, a 36-year-old local filmmaker who was killed as he sat in his car, or three people who ducked for cover in the convenience store.

A motive for the shooting was not determined.

Police issued a plea for help to find the gunman and released a photo of the gunman entering the store before a tip from his family led to Uribe.

Georgia
Chief Justice: Virtual hearings here to stay
ATLANTA (AP) — The head of Georgia’s highest court said Tuesday virtual court hearings during the pandemic have saved time and money and will continue after the COVID crisis passes.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice David Nahmias made the comments during his “State of the Judiciary” address at the Georgia Capitol.

He also said state courts are facing a huge backlog of cases as a result of the pandemic. The backlog is particularly acute for serious criminal cases that are the most likely to go to trial, including many gang-related cases.

To help address the problem, the state will use more than $100 million in federal funds to expand capacity. Nahmias said more counties need to step up and contribute some of the federal funds they’ve received to the effort.

He also noted one good outcome of the pandemic: Judges, who are usually slow to adopt new technology, have been forced to embrace it. Nahmias said almost every court in the state has used video conferencing for proceedings, and many of those virtual hearings “can and should be part of the judicial system’s new normal when COVID becomes just a memory.”

“Virtual proceedings are one of the lessons learned from the pandemic that will be used long after it dissipates,” he said.