Louisiana
Court: Death during appeal no longer means exoneration
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A white man whose murder conviction in the killing of a Black man was vacated because he killed himself while his appeal was pending should not have been legally exonerated, Louisiana’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Thursday’s ruling in the case of Kenneth Gleason — convicted in one Black man’s death, charged in another and accused of an attack on a Black family’s home. It reversed an appeals court order and decades of precedent that said convictions and indictments in Louisiana must be tossed when the convicted defendant dies before his or her appeal is resolved.
The high court’s order said that from now on in such cases, appeals will be dismissed, and a note will be placed in the court record stating that the conviction removed the defendant’s presumption of innocence but was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal.
Writing for the court, Justice Piper Griffin said the practice of vacating convictions upon a defendant’s death is short-sighted. “It ignores consideration that the state has an interest in preserving a presumptively valid conviction,” Griffin wrote. And, she said, it is unfair to victims.
“Abatement of the conviction subordinates the victim’s constitutional guarantees of fairness, dignity, and respect to the reliance interests of the convicted,” Griffin said. “To abate a conviction would be as to say there has been no crime and there is no victim.”
In a partial dissent, Justice Scott Crichton agreed that the precedent that essentially exonerated Gleason should be abandoned, but he wanted to go farther, noting evidence that Gleason had killed two men in what appeared to be racially motivated attacks.
“In my view, the victims of defendant’s shocking and senseless crimes, their relatives and friends, and the entire community impacted by defendant’s vicious spree, deserve the finality of his conviction being unambiguous in the records of the court system,” Crichton wrote.
Gleason, 27, hanged himself in his cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in Sept. 21. He had begun a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Donald Smart. Smart, 49, was shot in a park near Louisiana State University as he was walking to his overnight shift as a restaurant dishwasher in September 2017.
After Gleason died, a district judge, following state court doctrine and precedent, vacated the conviction and dismissed the indictment, according to Thursday’s ruling.
Gleason also had been charged in the fatal shooting of Bruce Cofield, 59, a homeless man who was sitting at a bus stop on a busy street in Baton Rouge two days before Smart was killed. And authorities also said Gleason had fired gunshots through the front door of a Black family.
He wasn’t charged with a hate crime, but an FBI agent testified that Gleason searched the internet around the time of the crimes for topics including Nazi propaganda and white nationalism. Law enforcement told The Associated Press that officers who searched his home found a handwritten copy of an Adolf Hitler speech.
Virginia
Man named in July 4 plot sentenced on immigration charge
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Guatemalan immigrant who was identified by Richmond police as one of two suspects in a potential July 4 mass shooting plot has been sentenced to 5 1/2 months in prison for reentering the U.S. after deportation.
Rolman Balcarcel-Bavagas, 38, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court after pleading guilty to the charge in August. He does not face any charges related to the alleged mass shooting plot.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Judge Hannah Lauck said during the sentencing hearing that it would be legally inappropriate for her to take into account that “there were some very serious firearms” recovered by police in the house where Balcarcel-Bavagas was living because there was no evidence tying him to the weapons. His housemate, Julio Alvarado Dubon, 52, has been charged with illegally possessing two AR-15-style rifles and a semiautomatic pistol that were discovered in his room during a search.
Prosecutors said Balcarcel-Bavagas illegally entered the U.S. three times and had been deported twice before. Balcarcel-Bavagas will be deported to Guatemala after serving his term.
During a July 6 press conference, former Richmond police Chief Gerald Smith said Balcarcel-Bavagas and Dubon had been planning a mass shooting at a Fourth of July gathering at the Dogwood Dell Amphitheater. But prosecutors ultimately determined there was no evidence to prosecute the two men on charges related to such an event.
In court documents filed last month, federal prosecutors said they lack evidence to prove Balcarcel-Bavagas was part of a mass shooting plot, but added that law enforcement acted “lawfully and appropriately” when investigating a tip from a concerned citizen about a potential mass shooting.
Washington
14-year-old boy held in fatal school shooting
SEATTLE (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered a 14-year-old boy arrested in a fatal shooting at a Seattle high school to remain in custody pending a charging decision by prosecutors.
A 15-year-old boy who police say was with him when he was arrested and had a handgun in his backpack — possibly the weapon used in the shooting — was also ordered detained.
Both boys had initial court appearances Wednesday, one day after the shooting at Ingraham High School left a student dead.
Police arrested the pair on a public bus about an hour after the shooting.
Judge Averil Rothrock, of the Juvenile Division of King County Superior Court, found probable cause to detain the 14-year-old for investigation of first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a gun and possession of a dangerous weapon at school.
Rothrock found probable cause to detain the 15-year-old for unlawful possession of a firearm as well as rendering criminal assistance.
The Associated Press is not naming the boys because of their age and because they have not yet been charged.
The King County prosecutor’s office said it cannot file charges before it receives additional documentation from the Seattle Police Department. The deadline for filing charges is Monday.
No previous cases for the 14-year-old nor the 15-year-old have been referred to the King County prosecutor, spokesman Casey McNerthney said Wednesday.
Authorities have not released the name of the student killed Tuesday. Superintendent Brent Jones said the shooting seemed to be a “targeted attack.” Multiple students witnessed the shooting, police said.
Classes at Ingraham were canceled Wednesday. Other nearby schools had modified lockdowns all day, with a heavy police presence and afterschool events canceled.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, an independent, nonpartisan research project, there have been 272 gun-related incidents at U.S. schools this year, including cases where a gun is brandished, shot or a bullet hits school property. Those include the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed the 19 children and two adults.
Texas
Man accused of slipping abortion drug in wife’s drinks
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas grand jury has indicted a husband accused of slipping a medicine used for abortions into his wife’s drinks in hopes that it would end her pregnancy.
Mason Herring, a 38-year-old Houston attorney, was indicted on two felony counts, including assault of a pregnant person, under charges handed up last week by a Harris County grand jury. Court records show he was originally arrested in May and released on a $30,000 bond.
Nicholas Norris, an attorney for Herring, declined to immediately comment Thursday.
Prosecutors told Houston television station KTRK that the baby was born prematurely but was healthy and well.
According to court documents, Herring’s wife told authorities her husband in March began lecturing her on hydration and offering water. She said she became severely ill and after drinking from the first cup that appeared cloudy, which her husband allegedly explained was perhaps the result of the cup or water pipes being dirty.
Herring’s wife became suspicious, according to court records, and began refusing multiple other drinks her husband offered. She said she later found in the trash packaging for a drug that contains misoprostol, a medicine used to induce abortion.
The couple had separated earlier this year and were attending marriage counseling when she told him about the pregnancy, according to court documents. She said Mason Herring expressed to her in text messages multiple times that he was unhappy about the pregnancy.
A spokesperson for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Herring was also indicted on an assault charge of attempting to an induce an abortion.
Hawaii
Man testifies about beating he says was hate crime
HONOLULU (AP) — A white man who says he was a victim of a hate crime when two Native Hawaiian men assaulted him while he was fixing up a home he purchased in their remote Maui village testified Wednesday that his attackers were racially motivated, even though he conceded that no racist comments can be heard in video taken during the 2014 beating.
Christopher Kunzelman said the men beat him and told him no white people would ever live in Kahakuloa village — a comment that’s not heard in the footage. Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. are on trial for one federal count each of a hate crime. Their defense attorneys don’t deny the assault, but say their actions were motivated by Kunzelman’s entitled and disrespectful attitude — not his race.
Alo-Kaonohi and Aki punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat Kunzelman, leaving him with injuries including a concussion, two broken ribs and head and abdominal trauma, U.S. prosecutors said.
Under questioning by Salina Kanai, a federal defender for Alo-Kaonohi, Kunzelman acknowledged that the men were enraged about Kunzelman earlier cutting locks on village gates but made no mention of his race.
“He’s not talking about your skin color, he’s not talking about your race,” Kanai said of Alo-Kaonohi, who is heard in the video calling him “brah” and “buddy.”
Kanai said Alo-Kaonohi, during an expletive-laced tirade about the locks, didn’t call Kunzelman a “haole,” a Hawaiian word that can mean white person.
Kunzelman responded, “Correct, not yet.”
More than five minutes into the incident, which was recorded by cameras on Kunzelman’s vehicle parked under the house, there was only one utterance of anything racial, Kanai said.
“You’s a haole, eh,” Aki said in the recording.
The video shows what is happening downstairs, including Aki pacing with a shovel on his shoulder. The video captures the sound coming from upstairs, where Kunzelman said he was beaten, but not any images.
What’s not audible in the video is the men calling him “haole” in a derogatory way and threatening to shoot him with his own gun, even though they were shouting, Kunzelman said.
Kunzelman testified that he and his wife decided to move to Maui from Scottsdale, Arizona, after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He said his wife loved the island.
A Hawaiian woman visited him in his dreams and told him to buy the dilapidated oceanfront house, he said, which he and his wife purchased sight unseen for $175,000 after coming across a listing for it online.
