South Dakota
Supreme Court: Board had authority to reject large hog farm
REDFIELD, S.D. (AP) — The South Dakota Supreme Court agrees that a Spink County board had the authority to reject an application for a large-scale hog operation in 2018.
The high court’s decision upholds a lower court ruling which rejected calls for additional testimony in the case.
Arrow Farms, in 2017, applied for a conditional use permit to operate a concentrated animal feeding operation, also called a CAFO, which would include more than 7,500 hogs. Arrow Farms said it met setbacks required by the county, South Dakota Public Broadcasting reported.
The Spink County Board of Adjustment rejected the permit which led to a lawsuit by Preston Miles. He alleged the board’s denial was arbitrary and that its members were biased against him and his project.
Some of the board members say they rejected the permit over concerns about foul odors emanating from the operation.
The Supreme Court said the board members did not have a disqualifying interest in the permit hearing.
Illinois
Ex-Chicago alderman gets 13-month sentence after guilty plea
CHICAGO (AP) — A former Chicago alderman has been sentenced to 13 months in prison after pleading guilty to spending cash from a political fund on vacations, jewelry and other personal expenses.
Before he sentenced Ricardo Munoz on Thursday, U.S. District Judge John Kness told the former six-term 22nd Ward alderman that if he allowed him to avoid prison, the community “would draw the wrong message, and a negative message.”
“People need to get the message that public figures are held to a higher standard. And if you didn’t want to be held to a higher standard, you shouldn’t run six times for alderman,” Kness added.
Munoz pleaded guilty in September to wire fraud and money laundering, admitting to stealing nearly $38,000 from the Progressive Reform Caucus, for which he served as chairman and performed the duties of its treasurer. He used the money for personal expenses, including a family member’s college tuition, jewelry, clothing and vacations.
Prosecutors filed a motion in December asking that Munoz serve a one-year prison sentence.
A lawyer for Munoz, Richard Kling, noted in court that Munoz had paid back all but $6,891 of the stolen funds, which the judge ordered him to pay in restitution.
Munoz, who announced his retirement from the City Council in 2018, is the latest in a long line of Chicago City Council members convicted of federal crimes.
Patrick Daley Thompson, a grandson and nephew of Chicago’s two longest-serving mayors, was convicted by a federal jury last month of tax crimes and making false statements. The conviction cost Thompson, who is set for sentencing on July 6, his seat on the council.
North Dakota
Appeals court revives part of lawsuit by injured pipeline protester
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Federal appeals judges have revived part of a lawsuit filed by an Arizona man who claims law enforcement officers in North Dakota seriously injured him and violated his civil rights during protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline five years ago.
The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week ruled that federal Judge Daniel Traynor improperly dismissed Marcus Mitchell’s claim of excessive force.
The judges also said that if Mitchell’s claims are true, “then Morton County law enforcement engaged in a persistent pattern of excessive force against peaceful protesters that was tacitly authorized by Sheriff (Kyle) Kirchmeier and that led to Mitchell’s injury.”
Law enforcement has long denied using excessive force against the thousands of pipeline opponents who camped near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The $3.8 billion project by Texas-based Energy Transfer was constructed to move North Dakota oil to Illinois.
Authorities maintain some protesters used violent and illegal tactics and assaulted officers. The protests resulted in 761 arrests over a six-month span, the Bismarck Tribune reported.
Traynor in December 2020 threw out Mitchell’s lawsuit, saying he had placed himself in harm’s way and had failed to show that law enforcement officers treated him any differently than anyone else at the protests.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also is considering two other excessive force lawsuits filed against law enforcement in the wake of the DAPL protests in 2016 and 2017. A fourth lawsuit is still making its way through federal court.
Colorado
Ex-hippie who left failed bomb resentenced to time served
DENVER (AP) — A man who left a homemade bomb outside a police station in a Colorado mountain town had his sentence reduced to time served Thursday following a successful appeal.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello issued the new sentence for David Ansberry following a re-sentencing hearing, according to court documents.
Ansberry was originally sentenced to 27 years in prison for leaving the device, which did not explode, outside the Nederland police station in 2016. He pleaded guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against a person or property.
At the time, Arguello sided with the government in treating his actions as a form of terrorism, finding that he was seeking revenge for the town marshal’s killing of a fellow member of a band of hippies after arresting the man in 1971.
But in 2020, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Ansberry to be re-sentenced. It said Arguello could only add a terrorism sentencing enhancement in re-sentencing Ansberry if she determined the shooting of Ansberry’s friend was official government conduct. It also said the police officer who first discovered the bomb could not be considered a victim of the crime in determining a sentence.
California
Mother’s conviction for fetal death overturned
HANFORD, Calif. (AP) — A California court has overturned the conviction and 11-year prison sentence of a woman for causing the death of her unborn child through drug use, the state’s top prosecutor said Thursday.
A judge in Kings County Superior Court on Wednesday reversed the conviction of Adora Perez, who pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in 2018 to avoid a charge of murder of a fetus. The original murder charge was ordered reinstated.
However, Perez was ordered sent from prison to the county jail pending an April 6 lower court hearing where Perez can argue that the law was intended to prosecute people who cause a miscarriage or stillbirth rather than the pregnant women themselves.
“We will review the Court’s ruling and analysis in detail and make a determination on any further action we may take, including appeal,” Kings County Executive Assistant District Attorney Philip Esbenshade said in an email Thursday.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta applauded the decision.
“This decision is a good first step towards affirming what we know to be true, no woman should be penalized for the loss of her pregnancy,” he said in a statement. “Bottom line: Pregnant individuals will be protected by the law, not criminalized by it.”
Perez gave birth to a full-term, stillborn baby on Dec. 31, 2017, at a hospital in Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley. Perez acknowledged that she had used methamphetamine during the pregnancy, and a doctor believed that the baby had died hours earlier from “extensive drug use” by the mother, according to court documents.
She was charged with fetal murder and pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and the plea was upheld on appeal. The judge in Wednesday’s ruling said that the court shouldn’t have permitted the plea because California’s voluntary manslaughter law doesn’t apply to the unborn.
“There is no crime in California of manslaughter of a fetus,” Judge Valerie R. Chrissakis wrote.
That means the woman’s plea bargain was illegal “based upon a factual or legal impossibility and/or non-existent crime,” the ruling said.
Perez was one of two women charged with fetal murder in Kings County on grounds that their drug use led to stillbirths. The first woman was charged in 2019, but a Kings County judge dismissed the case last May.
California’s murder law was amended in 1970 to include the death of a fetus. In January, Bonta issued a legal interpretation that said the change was intended to criminalize violence done to pregnant women that caused fetal death. The intent, he said, was never to include a woman’s own actions that might result in a miscarriage or stillbirth.
Otherwise pregnant, addicted women might avoid health care services for fear their substance abuse could lead to criminal prosecution, he said.
Florida
Judge sets April 4 for jury selection in penalty trial for school shooter
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Jury selection in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is on track to begin April 4, the judge said Friday during a status conference with the lawyers.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer also set aside full days on March 30 and 31 to address any issues either side might have before the jury selection begins. The hearings will take place in the courtroom where the trial will take place so attorneys can become familiar with the technology being used during the trial.
“We have a very good organizational plan, and most of the issues have been addressed,” Scherer said. “That’s a very good start.”
Cruz, now 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. But a jury must still decide whether he will be executed or receive a life sentence without parole. The penalty trial is expected to last at least two months.
Scherer and attorneys from the defense and prosecution discussed how jurors will be selected and what the judge will say as they try to determine whether members of the jury pool can be fair and impartial.
They set jury selection to begin on April 4 and continue through April 6, with April 7 and 8 set aside for the completion of any depositions of the numerous possible witnesses.
It was Valentine’s Day in 2018 when Cruz opened fire on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus in Parkland, Florida, killing 14 students and three staff members. The shooting also injured 17 others.
The trial was originally scheduled to start in 2020, but it was delayed numerous times during the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, prosecutors told the judge they needed more time to depose dozens of defense witnesses.
Under Florida law, prosecutors and defense attorneys are allowed to interview the other side’s witnesses before trial so they know what they are expected to say and can prepare their cross-examination.
During the trial, jurors will be seeing evidence that would have been introduced had there been a trial.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed a $127.5 million settlement with victims’ families over the FBI’s failure to investigate a tip it received about a month before the Parkland massacre.
