Louisiana
State high court leaves abortion bans on hold
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected the state attorney general’s request to allow immediate enforcement of state laws against most abortions in a 4-to-2 ruling late Wednesday.
The majority said only that the court declined to get involved “at this preliminary stage.”
Louisiana’s new laws included so-called triggers to make them take effect as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court reversed abortion rights. But a state judge in New Orleans blocked enforcement until he could hear a lawsuit claiming the law is unclear about medical exceptions and when the ban takes effect.
“We look forward to the preliminary injunction hearing on Friday” in district court, said Joanna Wright, an attorney for the north Louisiana abortion clinic that filed the suit, along with others.
Attorney General Jeff Landry tweeted, “Louisiana Supreme Court is delaying the inevitable. Our Legislature fulfilled their constitutional duties, and now the Judiciary must. It is disappointing that time is not immediate.”
Landry’s request to lift the hold is premature, Justice Jefferson Hughes III, one of the majority, wrote in a concurring opinion. He said the case should go through district and appellate courts before coming to the state’s high court.
Justices William Crain and Jay McCallum disagreed with Hughes and Chief Justice John Weimer stepped aside from the case.
McCallum wrote that plaintiffs hadn’t shown that enforcing the laws before the case could be heard would cause “immediate irreparable injury,” so the hold should be dissolved.
Crain wrote that “these circumstances are at least as compelling as others” where the state’s highest court has stepped in.
“While whether these doctors will suffer irreparable harm by being prohibited from performing abortions is debatable, terminating alleged life during the period of the temporary restraining order is irreparable,” he wrote.
He also said the justices should step in now to analyze whether the laws were unconstitutionally vague.
Landry’s July 1 filing contended that abortion rights advocates who filed the suit “are willfully misreading clear terms in the law in an attempt to manufacture arguments that the statutes are unconstitutionally vague.”
Abortion rights supporters responded that the district court or a state appeal court needed to fully consider and rule before the case goes to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
California
Woman fakes cancer, forges notes to judge to avoid prison
SAN DIEGO (AP) — One note submitted to the federal judge sentencing a 38-year-old California woman for embezzlement claimed that a biopsy had revealed “cancerous cells” in her uterus. Another indicated that she was undergoing a surgical procedure, and her cancer had spread to the cervix. Yet another letter warned she “cannot be exposed to COVID-19” because of her fragile state.
But federal officials say the notes and cancer were all fake, and now Ashleigh Lynn Chavez is headed to prison for three times as long. The court this week added an additional two years to her initial, one-year prison sentence.
The fake claim of having cancer kept Chavez out on bond from the time of her guilty plea in 2019 to embezzling more than $160,000 from her former employer through her sentencing hearing on March 31, 2021. The notes then bought her an additional three months of freedom by the judge who believed she was getting medical treatment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of California.
All told, Chavez was able to avoid being locked up for six months, federal officials said.
Chavez’s attorney, Benjamin Kington, said in a sentencing memorandum that Chavez was “terrified” about being separated from her newborn son, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The notes also claimed she was too ill to work and could not make restitution payments to her former employer.
Two different attorneys hired by Chavez believed the notes were authentic and submitted them to the court, according to federal officials.
By August 2021, the notes forged by Chavez were asking the court to permit her to serve time in home confinement. In one forged note, attributed to a San Diego-area oncologist, Chavez wrote that “(a) year in prison could be a death sentence for my patient.”
Federal authorities contacted the doctors named in the letters who denied writing them, though Chavez had been a patient of one of the physicians, according to federal officials.
“This defendant went to appalling lengths to avoid her initial prison sentence by falsifying medical documents to claim she had cancer. This offensive conduct is an affront to every person fighting that battle,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy said in a statement.
Vermont
Man charged with killing mother at sea seeks freedom
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The man charged with killing his mother at sea in a plot to inherit millions of dollars has asked a federal court Wednesday to authorize his release from custody pending trial.
The attorneys for Nathan Carman filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Burlington saying the evidence against him is “tenuous at best” and he is not a flight risk or a danger to the community.
As conditions of release, Carman is willing to surrender his passport, submit to electronic monitoring and turn over all the money he has, $10,000, to a third party or post some of that money as bail, the filing says.
He has also been under criminal investigation for almost a decade and he has been facing civil litigation, but he has always shown up in court.
“At no time during that lengthy period has Mr. Carman ever attempted to threaten a witness, contact a witness inappropriately or sought to influence a witness in any way,” the filing says. “There is no evidence to support such a claim now.”
After Carman’s arrest, prosecutors argued he should be held because he poses a flight risk and is a danger to the community.
Carman has been held since his arrest in May when he was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Linda Carman of Middletown, Connecticut, during a fishing trip off the Rhode Island coast. Her body has never been found.
He was also charged with multiple counts of fraud.
Authorities also alleged Carman killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of a scheme to obtain money and property from his grandfather’s estate, but he was not charged with that killing.
The Wednesday motion says that during his eight years living in Vernon, Vermont, Carman led a quiet life with solid ties to the community, participating in town forums, attending a local church and had many local friends.
