Washington
The Onion and the Supreme Court — not a parody
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Onion has some serious things to say in defense of parody.
The satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd has filed a Supreme Court brief in support of a man who was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of police on social media.
“As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists,” lawyers for the Onion wrote in a brief filed Monday. “This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.”
The court filing doesn’t entirely keep a straight face, calling the federal judiciary “total Latin dorks.”
The Onion said it employs 350,000 people, is read by 4.3 trillion people and “has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”
The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.
The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be “removed from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.”
After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have “qualified immunity” and threw out the lawsuit.
One issue is whether people might reasonably have believed that what they saw on Novak’s site was real.
But the Onion said Novak had no obligation to post a disclaimer. “Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original,” the Onion said, noting its own tendency to mimic “the dry tone of an Associated Press news story.”
More than once, people have republished the Onion’s claims as true, including when it reported in 2012 that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man alive.
The brief concludes with a familiar call for the court to hear the case and a twist.
“The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first,” lawyers for the Onion wrote.
Texas
Woman convicted of killing a woman to take her unborn baby
NEW BOSTON, Texas (AP) — A Texas woman was convicted of capital murder Monday for killing a pregnant woman to take her unborn baby.
A Bowie County jury in northeast Texas deliberated about an hour before finding Taylor Rene Parker, 29, guilty of the October 2020 murder of Reagan Michelle Simmons-Hancock, 21, and the abduction of the daughter cut from her womb who later died.
The verdict of a jury of six men and six women came after three weeks of sometimes grisly testimony.
Parker’s attorneys argued that the baby was never alive and moved to dismiss a kidnapping charge, which would have lowered the capital murder charge to murder.
“That’s why in opening statements we spent so much time on definitions. You can’t kidnap a person who has not been born alive,” said Jeff Harrelson in his final argument to the jury.
Prosecutors said, however, that several medical professionals testified the infant had a heartbeat when born. They also recounted Parker’s actions leading to the day Simmons-Hancock was killed.
“We have methodically laid out what she (Parker) did, why she did it, all the moving parts, and all the collateral damage. The best evidence the state of Texas has that baby was born alive is that Taylor Parker said it wasn’t,” said prosecutor Kelley Crisp.
Fellow prosecutor Lauren Richards recounted all of the masquerades Parker performed for different people, including the pregnancy she faked leading up to the killing.
“In the past two weeks, the evidence has never been more clear,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards told the jury. “She’s a liar, a manipulator, and now she’s gonna be held accountable for it.”
She reminded the jury of how Reagan was beaten in the head at least five times with such force that the blows compressed her skull into her brain.
“The pain Reagan must have felt when Taylor started cutting her abdomen, hip to hip … indescribable,” Richards said. “When Taylor had the baby and Reagan was still alive, that’s when Taylor started slashing and cutting. She can’t leave her alive. It was no quick death. She just kept cutting her. I guess Reagan would not die fast enough for Taylor to get out of there and get on with her plans.”
The punishment phase has been scheduled to begin Oct. 12. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, although jurors may opt for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
California
Ex-city official gets 5 years in corruption case
ADELANTO, Calif. (AP) — A former city council member in Southern California was sentenced to five years in prison for taking a $10,000 bribe to help open a cannabis business and also hiring someone to burn down his restaurant for an insurance payout, prosecutors said.
Jermaine Wright, who served on the city council and was mayor pro tem of Adelanto in San Bernardino County, was convicted in June of bribery and attempted arson, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Wright, a 46-year-old Riverside resident, was sentenced on Monday by U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal.
Wright was arrested in 2017 and charged with soliciting and accepting a bribe from an FBI agent posing as someone who wanted help regarding a marijuana transportation business.
He also was charged with paying another undercover FBI agent $1,500 to set fire to his restaurant, Fat Boyz Grill, to collect insurance money.
Wright said he wanted the damage at his restaurant to be “total,” according to a pre-sentencing report. He told the undercover agent that the building’s landlord would be turning off the water on an upcoming weekend, leaving the sprinkler system useless, the report stated.
David Kaloyanides, Wright’s attorney, told the Los Angeles Times that he and his client were pleased the judge went with their request for a five-year sentence, the minimum allowed by statute.
New Jersey
Homeless ‘good Samaritan’ gets probation in gas money scam
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — A Philadelphia man who pleaded guilty to conspiring with a New Jersey couple on a bogus feel-good story of helping a motorist in distress that garnered more than $400,000 in online donations has been sentenced to three years’ probation.
Johnny Bobbitt Jr., 39, who previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, was also ordered Monday in federal court in New Jersey to pay $25,000 in restitution. He earlier was sentenced to five years’ probation after pleading guilty in 2019 to state charges of conspiracy to commit theft by deception.
Prosecutors said Bobbitt aided Mark D’Amico and Katelyn McClure in a feel-good story in late 2017 about the homeless veteran giving his last $20 to help McClure when her car ran out of gas on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. The three conducted newspaper and television interviews and solicited donations, ostensibly to help Bobbitt, through a GoFundMe campaign they named “Paying It Forward,” prosecutors said.
The campaign raised more than $400,000 from about 14,000 donors in about a month and at the time was the largest fraud perpetrated through the crowdfunding platform, according to the prosecutor’s office in Burlington County, New Jersey.
Authorities began investigating after Bobbitt sued the couple, accusing them of not giving him the money. They eventually determined that all of the money was spent by March 2018, with large chunks spent by McClure and D’Amico on a recreational vehicle, a BMW and trips to casinos in Las Vegas and New Jersey.
D’Amico pleaded guilty in December 2019 and was sentenced in August to five years in state prison, a term running concurrent to an earlier term imposed on separate federal charges. McClure was sentenced to a year on federal charges and is awaiting sentencing on state charges. Both have been ordered to fully reimburse GoFundMe.
Wisconsin
Parade suspect delays jury picks with disruptions
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A man accused of killing six people and injuring dozens more when he allegedly drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Wisconsin last year managed to delay the start of his trial Monday by becoming so disruptive the judge had to take multiple breaks before forcing him to watch the proceedings via video from another room.
Prosecutors allege Darrell Brooks drove his vehicle into the Nov. 21 parade in downtown Waukesha despite police warnings to stop and officers opening fire on him. He faces 77 charges, including six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and 61 counts of reckless endangerment. Each homicide charge carries a mandatory life sentence.
Brooks’ trial was scheduled to begin Monday morning with jury selection. He initially pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease, a move that could have resulted in him being sentenced to a mental institution rather than prison. But he withdrew that plea in September and l ast week persuaded Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow to let him represent himself.
Before prospective jurors were led into the courtroom Monday morning, Brooks repeatedly interrupted Dorow, saying he didn’t recognize the state of Wisconsin or Dorow as a judge. Dorow called a recess and sent Brooks back to his cell.
It went on like that throughout the morning, with Dorow calling Brooks back into court only for him to again become disruptive. He repeatedly asked Dorow to state her name and questioned the court’s jurisdiction.
Dorow warned Brooks that if he continues to be disruptive she could appoint an attorney to the case. She ultimately called 10 recesses before ordering him to participate via video from another room. He was unmuted and allowed to ask questions of a jail administrator about when he received discovery documents after Dorow allowed him to act as his own attorney.
The jury selection process finally began at about 2 p.m.
Dorow said in court documents that she anticipates calling 340 prospective jurors. The selection process could last three or four days, she said, before 16 jurors are finally selected. Twelve will decide the case; the other four will serve as alternates.
Washington
Justices won’t revive Oakland’s lawsuit over loss of Raiders
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Oakland’s last-ditch effort to revive an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League over the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas in 2020.
The city had been seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in its claim that the league violated federal antitrust law by acting like a “cartel” that sent the Raiders away when Oakland refused to meet the NFL’s “increasingly exorbitant” demand for public money to build a new stadium.
The federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected the lawsuit, and the justices said Monday they would not intervene.
The Raiders were involved in an earlier antitrust suit against the NFL, when owner Al Davis wanted to move the team from Oakland to Los Angeles.
Davis eventually won his lawsuit and the Raiders moved south in 1982, only to return to Oakland in 1995.
