New York
Guilty plea possible from Buffalo gunman on federal charges
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The white gunman who pleaded guilty to state charges in the massacre of 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket would be willing plead guilty to federal charges if spared the death penalty, his lawyer said in court Friday.
Payton Gendron pleaded guilty late last month to state charges of murder and hate-motivated terrorism, guaranteeing he will spend the rest of his life in prison. But he still faces separate federal hate crime charges that could result in a death sentence if he is convicted.
Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. asked lawyers at a status conference in the federal case Friday why they were devoting time and effort to evidence related to Gendron’s guilt when he has already pleaded in state court.
Defense attorney Sonya Zoghlin said Gendron is prepared to enter a guilty plea in federal court in exchange for a life sentence.
“It is still our hope to resolve this matter short of a trial,” she said.
However, the Justice Department has yet to decide whether to seek capital punishment in the case.
The department has not initiated any new efforts to seek the death penalty since President Joe Biden took office and there is a moratorium on executions. But the department has not sought block the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston from supporting the death sentence for marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Lawyers in the Gendron case said they would meet after the holidays to allow the defense to present mitigating reasons why he should not receive a death sentence.
Judge Schroeder said he would give the defense until March 10 to review discovery and start preliminary talks with prosecutors.
Gendron wore body armor and used a legally purchased AR-15 style rifle in his attack on the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo in May. He said in documents posted online just before the attack that he’d picked the store, about a three hour drive from his home in Conklin, New York, because it was in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86 and included eight customers and a store security guard who died trying to protect shoppers. Three more people were wounded.
Gendron surrendered when police confronted him as he emerged from the store.
Gendron, 19, did not appear in court Friday.
Maryland
Family of victim in ‘Serial’ case seeks new court hearing
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — An attorney requested a new hearing on Friday on the motion that led to the release of Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial” already has been overturned.
Steve Kelly, an attorney for the family of victim Hae Min Lee, filed the request in a legal brief in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the state’s second-highest court.
The new hearing would require the prosecutor to present any evidence supporting the motion and give Young Lee, who is Hae Min Lee’s brother, the right to challenge the evidence and present his own.
The filing said Lee “lacked notice and a meaningful opportunity to participate,” and was excluded from a legal proceeding “at which the state’s attorney and circuit court apparently decided the outcome.”
“Nothing Mr. Lee might have said in opposition could have altered the result,” the court filing said. “His statement was, at best, an empty ritual.”
Erica Suter, Syed’s lawyer, said in a statement that the family’s grief and pain “deserves our deepest compassion,” which she said has been compounded by prosecutorial misconduct.
“Justice for Hae Min Lee means finding the actual killer, not furthering the harm experienced by Adnan Syed and his family,” Suter said. “This appeal is about whether Hae Min Lee’s family was properly notified. They were. The closure they seek is not found in incarcerating an innocent man.”
Prosecutors moved to vacate Syed’s conviction in September, after a yearlong investigation. A Baltimore judge ordered a new trial and freed Syed from prison, but gave prosecutors 30 days to decide whether to dismiss the charges or proceed with a new trial. The judge ruled that the state had violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have bolstered Syed’s defense.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced at an Oct. 11 news conference that her office had dismissed all charges against Syed.
Prosecutors have previously said that a reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence regarding the possible involvement of two alternate suspects. The two suspects may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.
Mosby’s office also cited new results from DNA testing that was conducted using a more modern technique than when evidence in the case was first tested.
Syed served more than 20 years in prison for the strangling of Lee, who was 18 at the time. Her body was found weeks later, buried in a Baltimore park in 1999.
Syed has always maintained his innocence. His case captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of “Serial” focused on Lee’s killing and raised doubts about some of the evidence prosecutors had used. The program shattered podcast-streaming and downloading records.
Illinois
No bond for woman charged in death of socialite mom
CHICAGO (AP) — A judge declined to ease bond conditions Thursday and release a Chicago woman who is charged with conspiracy in the 2014 death of her wealthy mother during a luxury vacation in Bali.
The decision means Heather Mack, 27, will remain in custody without bond while awaiting a July trial in federal court in Chicago.
Mack was arrested in Chicago in November 2021 after serving more than seven years in an Indonesian prison for her role in the killing. The body of her socialite mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, was stuffed in a suitcase and left in a taxi outside a hotel on the island of Bali.
Although Mack was convicted in Indonesia, U.S. prosecutors filed their own case, accusing her of conspiring with her then-boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, before they traveled to the islands in 2014.
Defense attorney Michael Leonard said Mack has behaved well while in custody and would not pose a flight risk or a threat to the public if granted bond. He cited her “loving” relationship with her 7-year-old daughter, who was born shortly before Mack and Schaefer were convicted in the death of von Wiese-Mack in 2015.
But U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly declined to release Mack. “There are plenty of reasons to believe she would pose a danger to others,” he said.
Mack reportedly had a fraught, often violent relationship with her mother. Police responded dozens of times to the family’s home in Oak Park, Illinois.
Von Wiese-Mack’s siblings testified that that they feared for their safety if Mack were to be released.
Through tears, von Wiese-Mack’s younger sister Debbi Curran said she had been a “second mother” to Mack all her life, but called her niece a “master manipulator.”
Mack, who had appeared impassive throughout the hearing, wiped away tears as Curran spoke. Mack’s child is in the custody of Curran’s daughter.
Defense attorney Leonard said he and Mack were “disappointed” that she was denied bail but understood the judge’s decision due to the serious allegations against her.
In 2017, Robert Bibbs was sentenced to nine years in a U.S. prison for advising Mack and Schaefer about how to kill Mack’s mother. Their motive apparently was to inherit money from von Wiese-Mack, who was the widow of jazz and classical composer James L. Mack.
Schaefer still is in prison in Indonesia, serving a longer sentence than Mack.
Ann Arbor
Michigan lineman Mazi Smith takes plea deal in gun case
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Michigan defensive lineman Mazi Smith pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor Thursday, a week after he was charged with a felony for possessing a gun in his pickup truck without a concealed-weapon permit.
Smith’s record will be scrubbed clean if stays out of trouble for a certain period of time, which is a common offer for young people with no past criminal activity.
Smith, 21, was stopped for speeding on Oct. 7 and found to have a handgun and ammunition but not a concealed-pistol permit, Ann Arbor police said. He was taken to the police station and released a day before Michigan faced Indiana.
Smith pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge involving a vehicle. He’s scheduled to return to court on Dec. 29, two days before No. 2 Michigan plays No. 3 TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, part of the College Football Playoff.
Washtenaw County prosecutor Eli Savit, a Wolverine fan, was criticized for waiting nearly two months to file a charge. He said there was nothing remarkable about the timeline, especially when Smith was not in custody, which would have forced a quicker decision.
Defense attorney John Shea said Smith was applying for a concealed-weapon permit at the time of the traffic stop and has one now.
The case has not harmed Smith’s status with the football team. He played in the Big Ten Championship last weekend.
“Mazi was honest, forthcoming and cooperative from the very beginning and is a tremendous young man. He is not and never has been considered a threat to the university or community,” Michigan director of athletics Warde Manuel said last week.
The same prosecutor’s office struck a deal with Eastern Michigan basketball star Emoni Bates, who was arrested and similarly charged in September with carrying a concealed weapon in a car. Bates settled the matter with a misdemeanor. He said it was not his car or gun.
Maryland
Court upholds murder conviction in 2017 university student stabbing
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The first-degree murder conviction of a white man sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a Black college student at the University of Maryland has been upheld by the state’s second-highest court.
Sean Urbanski’s conviction was upheld by the Court of Special Appeals on Wednesday in the 2017 killing of Army 2nd Lt. Richard Collins III.
Urbanski was initially also charged with a state hate crime, but Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Hill threw out the charge, ruling prosecutors had failed to show Urbanski, who is white, stabbed Collins specifically because Collins was Black.
Urbanski’s attorneys argued the trial judge should not have allowed jurors to consider racist memes and ties to a white nationalist Facebook group found on Urbanski’s phone, because there was no connection between the racially offensive material on the phone and the murder.
However, the appeals panel ruled the trial judge appropriately allowed jurors to consider the material.
“Memes depicting violence against Black people constituted relevant evidence that was probative of Appellant’s intent to violently harm Lt. Collins,” the court wrote. “Thus, this Court holds that the contested evidence was admissible to prove motive for first-degree murder and does not violate the Appellant’s First Amendment rights.”
