Minnesota
Judge resets trial to Oct. 24 for 2 ex-cops in Floyd killing
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge on Tuesday rescheduled the state trial for two former Minneapolis police officers in George Floyd’s killing to Oct. 24 to resolve dueling requests for a new trial date after the state sought to start it as soon as this summer while a defense lawyer asked to delay it to next spring.
Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the May 2020 killing of Floyd. Their trial was supposed to start this month, but Judge Peter Cahill earlier this month postponed it until Jan. 5, saying that would improve prospects for a fair trial. He settled on the October date during a brief hearing Tuesday.
The killing of Floyd, who was Black, sparked immediate protests in Minneapolis that spread around the U.S. and beyond in a reckoning over police brutality and discrimination involving people of color. Derek Chauvin, a white police officer who pinned Floyd’s neck to the pavement with his knee for more than 9 minutes as Floyd said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still, was convicted last year of murder.
Thao held back onlookers at the scene. Kueng helped restrain Floyd.
State prosecutor Matthew Frank on Friday had requested a speedy trial on behalf of Floyd’s family, which under Minnesota law could have meant mid-August. Kueng’s defense attorney, Tom Plunkett, followed with a request Sunday for a longer delay — until April — because of a scheduling conflict.
Attorneys for all sides told Cahill they agreed to the Oct. 24 start date for jury selection. The judge also scheduled a hearing on pretrial motions for Sept. 26-27.
Frank told the court that it would have been “traumatic” for the Floyd family to push the trial date out farther. Not only was their loved one killed by police officers, he said, they’ve had to watch the video of his dying minutes “time and time again in the media and throughout the trial process.”
Thao and Kueng have already been convicted of federal counts of violating Floyd’s rights. Their former colleague, Thomas Lane, was also convicted on a federal count and pleaded guilty in May to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. All three are free pending their federal sentencing hearings, which have not been set.
Cahill also presided over last year’s trial of Chauvin, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 22 1/2 years. Chauvin has been in prison since that conviction. He also pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge.
Colorado
Guilty plea a first for U.S. election task force
DENVER (AP) — A Nebraska man has pleaded guilty to making death threats against Colorado’s top elections official in a what officials say is the first such plea obtained by a federal task force devoted to protecting elections workers across the U.S. who have been subject to increasing threats since the 2020 presidential election.
Travis Ford, 42, pleaded guilty in Denver federal court to sending threats to Secretary of State Jena Griswold on social media. Griswold is a national advocate for elections security who has received thousands of threats over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure and that former President Donald Trump’s claims that it was stolen from him are false.
Thursday’s plea was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado and was first reported by The Denver Gazette. Ford, a resident of Lincoln, Nebraska, faces up to two years in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 6.
It’s the first guilty plea obtained by the U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which was launched last year to investigate threats of violence against elections workers, the office said. FBI agents in Colorado and Nebraska investigated the case.
“Threats of violence against election officials are dangerous for people’s safety and dangerous for our democracy, and we will use every resource at our disposal to disrupt and investigate those threats and hold perpetrators accountable,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
According to the announcement, Ford sent Griswold a series of threatening messages over Instagram in August. “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t,” one read. Another read: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security this month renewed a threat advisory warning of possible violence, particularly for elections officials, workers and other targets by individuals or small groups motivated by conspiracy theories and “false and misleading narratives.”
Griswold, a Democrat, told Colorado lawmakers earlier this year that she and other elections officials have received thousands of threats that have prompted many local clerks to quit or take security training so they feel safe in their public service work.
The Legislature passed bills to enhance security for Griswold and other statewide office-holders and to add protections for all elections workers. Gov. Jared Polis has signed them into law.
New Hampshire
State’s provisional ballot law challenged in court
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A new law creating a provisional ballot system in New Hampshire faces lawsuits days after it was enacted.
The ACLU of New Hampshire filed a lawsuit Tuesday arguing that the law violates the right to privacy the state added to its constitution in 2018 because it would diminish the secrecy of ballots and tie voters’ names to the candidates for whom they voted.
The bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu on Friday creates a new type of “affidavit ballot” for first-time voters who don’t have required documents.
Under current law, such voters fill out affidavits promising to provide documentation within 10 days, and those who don’t can be investigated and charged with fraud. But the votes themselves remain valid.
Under the new law, which takes effect in 2023, ballots cast by voters who fail to provide proof of their identities and residency seven days after an election would be thrown out.
Municipalities would report to the secretary of state total votes, minus the unqualified affidavit ballot votes, no later than 14 days after an election.
“The government should not know who you cast your ballot for in a state election,” said Henry Klementowicz, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Hampshire. “Voting is one of the most important democratic things a person can do, and they deserve to do so privately and secretly.”
The law also faces a court challenge from the advocacy groups 603 Forward and Open Democracy Action.
While provisional ballots are required by federal law, New Hampshire is exempt because it offered same-day voter registration at the time the National Voter Registration Act was enacted in 1993. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Idaho and Minnesota are the only other two states that do not issue provisional ballots.
Louisiana
Man, 70, convicted of murder in feud with neighbor
GRETNA, La. (AP) — A 70-year-old Louisiana man has been convicted of murder after shooting his next-door neighbor in a long-running feud that escalated from threats and fist fighting to fatal violence.
Lawrence Sly of Harvey faces a mandatory life sentence after a Jefferson Parish jury found him guilty of second-degree murder Friday, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
Prosecutors said Sly shot an unarmed 57-year-old Garland Webber six times outside their homes, including twice in the head, on Nov. 11, 2019.
Sly testified that he opened fire in self-defense. He said he was taking out his trash when Webber approached him and he thought Webber was reaching for a gun in his waistband.
Investigators later concluded that Webber was unarmed. Sly told police he continued shooting even after Webber collapsed because he feared that Webber would retaliate if he survived.
Court records show sheriff’s deputies since at least 2015 responded to several calls from the two neighbors as they accused each other of threats, harassment and assault. In 2017, Webber pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for pointing a shotgun at Sly. The following year deputies responded to a scuffle that left both men injured, but neither was charged.
Sly is scheduled for sentencing by a judge on July 11. Second-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison in Louisiana.
California
Trial of former Theranos exec Sunny Balwani nears end
SAN JOSE (AP) — A jury on Tuesday is scheduled to hear closing arguments in the trial of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former Theranos official charged with teaming up with his secret lover, CEO Elizabeth Holmes, to carry out a massive fraud.
The three months of testimony and evidence mirrored the case against Holmes in a separate trial last year. Holmes was convicted on four counts of defrauding investors and acquitted on four counts alleging she had also deceived patients who submitted to Theranos blood tests. She is free on $500,000 bail but faces a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years. Balwani faces the same punishment if convicted.
Holmes, 38, is awaiting sentencing in September.
Lawyers for Balwani, 57, have depicted him as a well-intentioned investor and entrepreneur who became Theranos’ chief operating officer in 2010 and then was swept into the scam by Holmes. She later dumped him as her lover and business partner in 2016 as Theranos began to unravel.
Before that fissure, Balwani put up $15 million of his own money to help bolster Theranos when Holmes brought him on board as her top lieutenant while they were clandestinely living together. Balwani’s Theranos investment eventually became worth about $500 million on paper — a stake that his lawyers told jurors he never sold. It became worthless when the company collapsed.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have portrayed Balwani as a ruthless accomplice who helped Holmes swindle investors. At one point, they charged, Balwani oversaw the Theranos lab that covered up serious flaws in a the company’s blood-testing technology that could have jeopardized the lives of patients.
Holmes’ bold claims for Theranos helped make her a Silicon Valley star — a rich one, too, with a paper fortune of $4.5 billion based on the company’s success in fundraising and brokering business deals based on Holmes’ promise that Theranos would revolutionize health care. Holmes boasted the company had developed a technology that could scan for more than 200 potential health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.
Balwani began dating Holmes around the same time she started Theranos, and then began providing her business advice drawn from his previous success that included selling a technology startup that made him rich. Their relationship was a focal point of a Hulu TV series, “The Dropout,” about Holmes’ rise and fall that was released shortly before the trial began, complicating efforts to pick an unbiased jury.
During her trial, Holmes took the witness stand and at one point tearfully accused Balwani of being a domineering figure in her life who subjected her to emotional and sexual abuse.
One of Balwani’s other attorneys vehemently denied those allegations during Holmes’ trial. Balwani’s lawyers have urged jurors in the current trial to discard anything they may have previously read or heard of Holmes’ allegations.
There had been speculation that Holmes might return to court to testify against Balwani during his trial, but it never happened. Unlike Holmes, Balwani opted against testifying in his own defense during his trial.
