South Carolina
Lawsuits to save Confederate icons dropped
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Lawsuits filed to stop the removal of memorials to Confederate leaders and a pro-slavery congressman in a South Carolina city have been dropped.
The Post and Courier reports that the American Heritage Association helped fund one of the lawsuits. It had been filed by descendants of John C. Calhoun, a former congressman and vice president who died before the Civil War, opposing the city of Charleston’s removal of Calhoun’s statue.
The association also had filed a lawsuit opposing the removal of a Robert E. Lee Memorial Highway marker from the campus of a charter school in Charleston, and the renaming of an auditorium that had been named after Christopher Memminger, a treasury secretary of the Confederacy.
The stone-and-metal monument to Confederate Gen. Lee, was removed in July 2021 and placed in storage.
The city made a deal with the South Carolina State Museum to take the statue of Calhoun.
Both suits had been filed in state court. The highway marker and auditorium lawsuit was dropped Sept. 13. The Calhoun lawsuit was dropped Sept. 15, the newspaper reported.
AHA President Brett Barry declined to comment on the status of the Calhoun case, despite the descendants’ request for dismissal.
“Charleston monuments are an integral part of the city’s historical and artistic American landscape,” Barry told The Post and Courier. “Both the American Heritage Association and members of the Calhoun family look forward to commenting on the destruction of U.S. Vice President Calhoun’s monument and the associated lawsuit in the coming weeks.”
Opponents of the removal of the Lee memorial had accused the city of violating the state Heritage Act, which protects certain monuments.
“As city attorneys have made clear from the start, there was never a violation of the Heritage Act,” Charleston city spokesman Jack O’Toole told The Post and Courier on Sept. 16. “And now that these lawsuits have been dropped, the city can start moving forward once again with plans for these historical items to be displayed in an appropriate public setting here in our state.”
Louisiana
39 years later, committee OKs $95M settlement for flood victims
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana families and businesses in Tangipahoa Parish are a step closer to getting paid for flood damages in 1983 caused by the construction of Interstate 12.
A $95 million payment was approved Friday by the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, The Advocate reported. The committee’s action allows the money to be moved to an escrow account, and eventually to the 1,246 victims, 400 families and 96 businesses harmed.
“This is the single final payment that resolves the entirety of the lawsuit,” Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said.
When those payments will be made is unclear. The state earlier put $6 million into an account for the plaintiffs, which means the total settlement is $101 million, the newspaper reported.
Dardenne said he is confident a district judge will approve the payment, which will then allow a special master to decide how much individuals and businesses are owed.
Rains on April 6, 1983, flooded about 6,000 homes in the Baton Rouge area. In Tangipahoa Parish, east of Baton Rouge, the newly opened I-12 acted like a large levee, and resulted in water from the Tangipahoa River being diverted into homes and businesses.
In 1999, a jury decided that the I-12 bridge over the river did not change elevation crossing the river as it should have and awarded plaintiffs in $92 million. However, nothing happened for years while the state Department of Transportation and Development appealed and the Legislature declined to approve the award.
The final amount was agreed to by lawmakers after negotiations by Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration.
Ohio
Woman accused of abandoning autistic son enters plea
CINCINNATI (AP) — An Indiana mother accused of having abandoned her 5-year-old autistic son on an Ohio street earlier this year has pleaded guilty to child endangerment.
Heather Adkins, 33, of Shelbyville entered the plea last week in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court and is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 28. A kidnapping charge was dropped as part of a plea agreement and Adkins now faces a term of five years probation to three years in prison, officials said.
Prosecutors said Adkins drove from Indiana to Tennessee in February to drop off two of her three children with a friend but on the way back abandoned her son on a dead-end street in Colerain Township near Cincinnati, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from her home.
Officials said the boy, who is nonverbal, was spotted by passing motorists as he tried to wave down cars in the rain. Adkins was arrested at a gas station in Georgetown, Ky., on an unrelated warrant.
“It’s heartbreaking to imagine what this non-verbal, 5-year-old boy went through,” Prosecutor Joseph Deters said in a statement in February.
In court last Monday, Adkins acknowledged the facts of the case but denied that she intended to harm her son, WCPO-TV reported.
Missouri
No joke: Man who dressed up as Batman villain learns lesson
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A convicted felon in Missouri accused of livestreaming threats to bomb and kill people while he was dressed up as the Batman villain known as The Joker was sentenced Friday to 60 days in jail, with credit for several months served after his arrest.
Jeremy Garnier, 51, of University City, was sentenced after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a terrorist threat. Prosecutors reduced the charge from a felony for the March 2020 incident.
Garnier told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he never intended to make a threat and pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor to avoid many more months in jail.
“I was talking like The Joker,” Garnier said Saturday in a telephone interview. “I was in character. Everybody knew that it was a joke and that I had no intentions of following through with a threat.”
Garnier told the Post-Dispatch he served more than 20 years in federal and state prison for robbing a credit union in the 1980s and for other felonies, in order to support his crack habit. He said he is now sober and wants to use his platform to raise awareness about the opioid epidemic.
He said he has learned another hard lesson.
“Think before you act,” he said. “Your actions have repercussions. No matter how trivial and joking I thought it was, people took it seriously.”
