Louisiana
Appeals court rules Texas courtroom can open with prayer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A deeply divided federal appeals court has ruled that a Texas judge may start the day with prayer, overturning a district court decision.
Judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans split 2-1 in opinions handed down Thursday, reversing a ruling made without a trial by U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt.
Montgomery County Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack doesn’t force anyone to attend the prayers before court formally opens, Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote for himself and Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt.
Mack “takes great pains to convince attendees that they need not watch the ceremony — and that doing so will not affect their cases,” he wrote.
Judge E. Grady Jolly responded, “For the majority to find that there is no evidence of coercion, suggests, in my opinion, willful blindness and indisputable error.”
He noted that Mack is a Pentecostal minister who made a campaign promise to establish prayer in his courtroom. “He has previously criticized opponents of his prayer ceremony and has acted hostile following a litigant’s noncooperation in the prayer,” Jolly wrote.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued Mack in 2017 for itself and an anonymous lawyer who said he attended the sessions out of fear that not doing so would hurt his clients.
“A courtroom is not a church, and a judge’s bench should not be a pulpit,” the foundation’s co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said in a news release Friday. “This is a dishonest decision, both in claiming a tradition of courtroom prayer and in denying that it is coercive.”
Two people who made sworn statements against Mack included an attorney who said he stayed out of the courtroom during the prayer and Mack gave him the “bare minimum” to which he was entitled in evicting a tenant. The other was a criminal defendant who said Mack tried to raise the fine in her plea agreement because she showed “apathy” during the prayer.
But, the majority said, neither proved bias.
“One got the precise penalty for which she plea-bargained, and the other won the eviction he sought. They offer nothing more than the subjective perception that Mack disliked them,” Smith wrote.
Nevada
Man sentenced for scheme targeting migrants
LAS VEGAS (AP) — An Arizona man who convinced recent immigrants from mainly Asian countries to pay him thousands of dollars each to help them gain U.S. citizenship has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison by a federal judge in Las Vegas, authorities announced.
Court documents show Douglas Lee Thayer, 70, of Mohave Valley collected payments of between $7,000 and $20,000 from at least 160 recent immigrants by promising them the company he ran would find a family to adopt them as adults. He told the victims he would then get them new birth certificates and other documents that would let them gain U.S. citizenship.
A federal jury in Las Vegas convicted Thayer of two criminal counts of mail fraud on April. 18, and he was sentenced on Friday. He is set to surrender to start his sentence next month.
According to the indictment and a sentencing memorandum from federal prosecutors, Thayer ran a Las Vegas-based business called U.S. Adult Adoption Services. After the Justice Department announced in 2016 that it had shut down a similar scheme in Sacramento, California, Thayer offered refunds to the Asian and Hispanic immigrants.
He had charged more than $1 million in fees, but the refunds were only a fraction of what he collected, and prosecutors said he netted more than $850,000.
The owner of the Sacramento business was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors said Thayer’s victims were particularly vulnerable because they mostly were recent immigrants who spoke little English and knew little if anything about immigration law. The government does not provide an easier path to citizenship for immigrants who are adopted as adults by Americans.
“This prison sentence should serve as a warning that taking advantage of vulnerable victims, regardless of citizenship status, will be investigated and prosecuted,” U.S. Attorney for Nevada Jason Frierson said in a statement.
In pushing for a harsh sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Simon Kung said in his sentencing memo to U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro that Thayer “has spent his entire life committing crimes,” included armed robbery, attempted murder and rape, narcotics and the latest, fraud.
“Despite spending more than 20 years in prison prior to the instant offense, he has not been deterred from crime,” Kung wrote.
Texas
Suspect in killings of 22 elderly women goes on trial again
DALLAS (AP) — A man charged with killing 22 women in the Dallas area is set to be tried in the death of one of them after being convicted of capital murder in the death of another earlier this year.
The capital murder trial of Billy Chemirmir, 49, in the death of 87-year-old Mary Brooks is scheduled to begin Monday in Dallas. He received a sentence of life in prison without parole after being found guilty in April in the smothering death of 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris. If convicted in Brooks’ death, he’ll receive a second sentence of life in prison without parole. He maintains his innocence.
His first trial in Harris’ death ended in a mistrial last November when the jury deadlocked.
In the years following his arrest in 2018, police across the Dallas area reexamined the deaths of other older people that had been considered natural — even though families raised alarm bells about missing jewelry. Four indictments were added this summer.
In a video interview with police, Chemirmir told a detective that he made money buying and selling jewelry and had also worked as a caregiver and a security guard.
Most of the people Chemirmir is accused of killing lived in apartments at independent living communities for older people, where Chemirmir allegedly forced his way into apartments or posed as a handyman. He’s also accused of killing women in private homes, including the widow of a man he had cared for in his job as an at-home caregiver.
Dallas County prosecutors decided to try Chemirmir on two of the 13 capital murder cases against him in the county, and seek life sentences rather than the death penalty. Prosecutors in neighboring Collin County haven’t said if they will try any of their nine capital murder cases against Chemirmir.
Chemirmir’s arrest was set in motion in March 2018 when a woman who was 91 at the time told police that a man had forced his way into her apartment at an independent living community for seniors, tried to smother her with a pillow and took her jewelry.
Police said when they found Chemirmir the next day in the parking lot of his apartment complex, he was holding jewelry and cash, and had just thrown away a large red jewelry box. Documents in the box led them to the home of Harris, who was found dead in her bedroom, lipstick smeared on her pillow.
