Ohio
Police: Man with knife dies after being shot by cop
BARBERTON, Ohio (AP) — A man armed with a knife was shot and killed by a police officer in Ohio, authorities said.
Barberton police said a woman called 911 at about 9 a.m. Monday to report that a man had followed her, threatened her and demanded that she give him her car keys and other property.
Officers responded and said the suspect fled but was found in a nearby parking lot. They allege that he was armed with a knife and refused commands to drop the weapon, and an officer fired, hitting him in the abdomen. Police said he still refused to let go of the weapon and resisted being handcuffed despite having been wounded.
The man, identified as 34-year-old Zachary Zoran of Akron, was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said.
Police said Zoran was wanted on a felony aggravated menacing warrant after alleged threats to a family member in Cuyahoga Falls on Christmas Day. In the last 24 hours, he had made several social media posts threatening police and the public and saying he always carried multiple weapons, police said.
The shooting is being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the Summit County medical examiner’s office and Barberton detectives. Barberton police spokesperson Marty Eberhart said the last officer-involved shooting in the city occurred more than a decade ago.
Georgia
Hearing delayed for former DA charged in wake of Arbery killing
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A judge has postponed a court hearing this week for a former Georgia prosecutor charged with meddling in the police investigation of the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Superior Court Judge John R. Turner ordered that the court appearance for former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson’, initially scheduled for Thursday, be held later, according to court records. The judge has not set a new date.
Johnson has not appeared in court since she was indicted in September 2021 on charges of violating her oath of office and hindering police investigating Arbery’s killing. White men in pickup trucks chased the young Black man on Feb. 23, 2020, after spotting him running in their neighborhood outside coastal Brunswick. The chase ended with Arbery being shot dead in the street.
The man who initiated the chase, Greg McMichael, was a retiree who had worked as an investigator for Johnson. She was still Glynn County’s top prosecutor when Arbery was killed, but lost her reelection campaign a few months later.
The indictment against Johnson accuses her of using her office to try to shield Greg McMichael and Travis McMichael, his adult son who fired the fatal shotgun blasts, from prosecution.
Both McMichaels and a neighbor who joined the chase and recorded cellphone video of the killing, William “Roddie” Bryan, weren’t arrested until more than two months later when the video leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police.
The McMichaels and Bryan all have since been convicted of murder and federal hate crime charges.
Johnson has denied wrongdoing, saying she immediately recused herself from the investigation into Arbery’s death.
New York
Divided appeals court rejects 4 insider trading convictions
NEW YORK (AP) — A divided appeals court on Tuesday rejected the insider trading convictions of four men, including an ex-government employee turned consultant, prompting a sharp dissent from a judge who says the ruling may prompt insiders to sell confidential government information to the highest bidders.
The decision of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came in a case in which a Washington consultant, David Blaszczak, was charged with converting government secrets into hedge fund profits.
In 2018, a jury convicted Blaszczak and three hedge fund employees in a scheme prosecutors said enabled the hedge fund workers to make over $3.5 million illegally for their company from 2012 through 2014. The Securities and Exchange Commission said the profits reached $3.9 million.
Before becoming a consultant, Blaszczak worked at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The SEC and prosecutors said he boasted about access to government information about the timing and content of planned changes to reimbursement rules affecting publicly traded health care-related companies.
In a 2-to-1 decision Tuesday, the 2nd Circuit said it was reversing its prior affirmance of the convictions after the U.S. Supreme Court urged further consideration to consider its reversal of convictions of officials in the administration of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
In that case, the Supreme Court concluded that politically motivated conduct by the officials to cause significant traffic gridlock for several days at the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge linking New Jersey and Manhattan was not a crime because they did not aim to deprive the bridge’s owners of money or property.
In the Blaszczak case, defense lawyers argued that their client’s information did not constitute property or a thing of value within the meaning of criminal laws pertaining to fraud and insider trading. Their argument, as it related to most counts, was supported by prosecutors in the most recent appeal.
The 2nd Circuit agreed to reverse the majority of convictions and vacated convictions on two other counts, leaving it to a lower court to decide whether a retrial on those counts will occur.
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Richard A. Sullivan blasted the ruling. He wrote that it “effectively permits sophisticated insiders to leverage their access to confidential government information and sell it to the highest bidders — in this case, hedge funds that used the confidential information to make millions shorting the stocks of public companies affected by CMS’s regulations.”
He said the ruling also “threatens to upend decades of settled precedent concerning frauds premised on the theft of intangible property and suggests — in what amounts to dicta — a curious and troubling rule of deference that would require federal courts to acquiesce whenever the government announces a new, post-conviction statutory interpretation.”
Sullivan said he disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that confidential information held by a government agency is not property.
David Patton, a lawyer who defended Blaszczak, declined comment.
A prosecutor’s spokesperson also declined comment.
Washington
Bill signed forcing Bureau of Prisons to fix cameras
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed into law Tuesday a bill requiring the federal Bureau of Prisons to overhaul outdated security systems and fix broken surveillance cameras after rampant staff sexual abuse, inmate escapes and high-profile deaths.
The bipartisan Prison Camera Reform Act, which passed the Senate last year and the House on Dec. 14, requires the Bureau of Prisons to evaluate and enhance security camera, radio and public address systems at its 122 facilities.
The agency must submit a report to Congress within three months detailing deficiencies and a plan to make needed upgrades. Those upgrades are required within three years and the bureau must submit annual progress reports to lawmakers.
Failing and inadequate security cameras have allowed inmates to escape from federal prisons and hampered investigations. They’ve been an issue in inmate deaths, including that of financier Jeffrey Epstein at a federal jail in New York City in 2019.
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog found that deficiencies with security cameras have compromised investigations into staff misconduct, the introduction of contraband, civil rights violations and inmate deaths.
In March, The Associated Press reported that a lack of security cameras in critical areas contributed to widespread staff sexual abuse of inmates at a federal women’s prison in Dublin, California.
“Broken prison camera systems are enabling corruption, misconduct, and abuse,” said the legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “That’s why I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass my Prison Camera Reform Act, which is now law.”
Arizona
Ex-Border Patrol agent sentenced for drugs, bribery
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A former U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona has been sentenced to more than a dozen years in prison for trafficking drugs and taking bribes on the job.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona in Tucson said in a news release that 36-year-old Ramon Antonio Monreal-Rodriguez was sentenced earlier this month.
A federal judge during a Dec. 14 hearing ordered Monreal-Rodriguez, of Vail, to serve 152 months. He must also pay $151,000 to his former employer to cover the salary earned while involved in criminal activity.
Monreal-Rodriguez has agreed to plead guilty to a slew of charges. They include bribery, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana and conspiracy to provide firearms to a convicted felon.
Prosecutors say he was involved in three different conspiracies in two federal criminal cases.
Monreal-Rodriguez illegally bought firearms from federally licensed firearms dealers for others between July and August of 2018. He also offered firearms to known felons, according to authorities.
He also collaborated with a drug trafficking organization between January and September of 2018 to smuggle narcotics across the border. He was accused of using his work vehicle to transport the drugs across the border.
Prosecutors say he received more than $1 million from the narcotics sales.
