Kentucky
Constitutionality of new law goes to state’s Supreme Court
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The Kentucky Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments over the constitutionality of a new Kentucky law that allows involuntary commitment for violent offenders.
Arguments were being heard by justices on Wednesday in two cases out of Jefferson County, a statement from the Supreme Court said. Attorneys for two people involuntarily committed under the new law are challenging its constitutionality.
A law passed this year allows violent offenders who are incompetent for trial to be involuntarily committed if they are a danger to themselves and others regardless of whether they would benefit from treatment. Previously, a defendant could be involuntarily hospitalized only if they could benefit from treatment. If not, they could be set free.
The case is one of four justices are set to hear Wednesday and Thursday, the statement said. Proceedings are open to the public and will take place in the Supreme Court Courtroom at the Capitol.
North Dakota
Alleged Mexican cartel hitman extradited
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — An accused prolific hitman for a Mexican drug cartel has been transferred to face federal charges in North Dakota, nearly 11 years after he was apprehended in Tijuana.
Juan Francisco Sillas-Rocha appeared Friday in Fargo on three charges, including conspiracy to commit murder for a continuing criminal enterprise. Authorities said Sillas-Rocha was a top lieutenant for the Arellano Felix cartel, which for decades smuggled cocaine, marijuana and other drugs into the United States.
Sillas-Rocha, known as “Ruedas,” or “Wheels,” had been fighting extradition to the United States, where federal officials in North Dakota began gathering incriminating evidence on the Felix cartel after one of its members killed a man over a drug debt. Sillas-Rocha once boasted to authorities he killed up to 30 people a month during the gang’s prime in Tijuana, according to a detective in North Dakota.
The Felix cartel was a longtime competitor of the Sinaloa cartel led by notorious drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
It’s not clear what led Mexican authorities to turn over Sillas-Rocha to U.S. officials. Christopher Myers, the federal prosecutor on the case, declined to comment Tuesday. Attorney Matthew Lombard, who represented Sillas-Rocha in his first appearance, did not return phone messages left by The Associated Press.
The case wound up in North Dakota after Jorge “Sneaky” Arandas, a member of the Felix cartel, ordered the killing of a man for failing to pay for five pounds of methamphetamine that came from Sillas-Rocha, court documents show. Arandas told police he feared that he would be killed for not paying Sillas-Rocha, so Arandas had someone shoot the man nine times.
No plea has been filed and no further court proceedings have been scheduled.
Missouri
State Supreme Court won’t weigh recreational pot lawsuit
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to take up a lawsuit challenging a ballot proposal to legalize recreational marijuana use in the state.
The Tuesday ruling means the proposed constitutional amendment will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
If voters approve the amendment, those age 21 and older could buy and grow marijuana for personal consumption as early as this year. The measure also would also require courts to wipe most past marijuana convictions clean.
Medical marijuana is already legal in Missouri.
“We are now one step away from passing Amendment 3, which will bring millions in new revenue to Missouri, while allowing law enforcement to concentrate on fighting violent and serious crime,” pro-recreational pot campaign manager John Payne said in a statement.
Marijuana sales would be taxed at 6% under the Missouri measure. The tax is estimated to bring in more than $46 million during the first full year the amendment is in effect and close to $70 million the following year. Revenues would be earmarked for veterans’ homes, drug treatment programs and public defenders.
Cities and other municipalities could enact local sales taxes on recreational marijuana up to 3% or enact local bans on non-medical marijuana sales by a public vote.
Louisiana
Gun advocates fight for bump stocks in latest court hearing
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court was told Tuesday that there is no basis in federal law for a Trump administration ban on bump stocks — devices that enable a shooter to fire multiple rounds from semi-automatic weapons with a single trigger pull.
The ban was instituted after a sniper using bump stock-equipped weapons massacred dozens in Las Vegas in 2017. Gun rights advocates are challenging it in multiple federal courts.
At issue is not the Second Amendment but whether bump stocks qualify as illegal “machine guns” under federal law. The rule banning the devices issued by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that they do — a reversal, attorneys said, of a position held prior to the Las Vegas killings.
Opponents of the ban say the ATF’s rule doesn’t comply with federal law, and that it would take an act of Congress to ban bump stocks nationally.
So far, the ban, now being defended by the Biden administration, has survived challenges at the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Denver-based 10th Circuit. Decisions on whether the Supreme Court will hear appeals in those cases are pending. It has also survived a challenge at the federal circuit court in Washington.
A panel of three judges at the 5th Circuit in New Orleans also issued a ruling in favor of the ban, but the full New Orleans-based court, currently with 16 active members, opted to hear new arguments. It’s unclear how quickly the full court will issue a ruling. Some judges raised the possibility in questions that they could await Supreme Court action in the other cases.
According to the ATF, bump stocks harness the recoil energy of a semiautomatic firearm so that a trigger “resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” The shooter must maintain constant forward pressure on the weapon with the non-shooting hand, and constant pressure on the trigger with the trigger finger, according to Tuesday’s arguments.
But, opponents of the ATF rule argue that the trigger itself functions multiple times when a bump stock is used, so therefore bump stock weapons do not qualify as machine guns under federal law. They site language in the law that defines a machine gun as one that fires multiple times with a “single function of the trigger.”
“The trigger is going to function multiple times,” Richard Samp, arguing for a Texas gun owner, told the judges.
U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Mark Stern said the key is the action of the shooter.
“You only have to do one thing,” Stern told the judges. “Your trigger finger isn’t doing anything other than sitting still.”
