Alabama
Teen convicted of killing 5 family members in 2019 when he was 14
ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama teenager has been convicted of killing five family members, including three young siblings, when he was 14 years old.
A jury deliberated for two hours Thursday before finding Mason Sisk, now 18, guilty of multiple counts of capital murder for the 2019 slayings, local media reported. All five were shot in the head at their home in Elkmont. The youngest, Colson, was just 6 months old.
Sisk faces life in prison because of his age at the time of the killings. He’ll be sentenced July 25.
Sisk initially told police he was in the basement playing video games when he heard gunshots and ran outside to see a vehicle pulling away, but he later told investigators he’d killed the five, prosecutors said.
“Yeah, they argue a lot, and I got fed up with it,” Sisk said in a video recording of the questioning. “And the kids were going through a lot.”
His defense attorneys argued the sheriff used manipulative interrogation tactics on a child who was fatigued, sleep deprived and traumatized by what happened, WAAY-TV reported.
John Wayne Sisk, age 38; Mary Sisk, age 35; Kane, age 6; Aurora, age 4; and the infant Colson were killed on Sept. 2, 2019.
The first attempt to prosecute Sisk ended in a mistrial last September after new evidence from Mary Sisk’s cellphone became available.
The Limestone County district attorney said he was pleased with Thursday’s verdict.
“Any life that is lost is horrific, but Mason Sisk killed three children and we wanted to communicate that,” District Attorney Brian C.T. Jones told WHNT-TV.
Defense attorney Shay Golden told the Huntsville TV station that he thinks there were mistakes in the trial, including, “information that we believe to be relevant was never really allowed to be discussed and considered.”
“We just feel like it’s inevitably going to have to be tried again,” Golden told the station.
The slayings rocked the quiet community of Elkmont, a tiny town of 500 residents just northwest of Huntsville and not far from the Alabama-Tennessee border.
Kentucky
Court overturns rulings allowing Confederate statue removal
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Kentucky Supreme Court has overturned lower court rulings that allowed leaders in Kentucky’s largest city to remove a Confederate statue from a prominent location three years ago.
The 6-1 ruling issued Thursday said Louisville violated due process in getting approval to remove the John Breckenridge Castleman monument from Cherokee Triangle, news outlets reported.
The statue was vandalized several times over a few years before it was removed from its pedestal in June 2020 following a decision from Louisville’s landmarks commission.
A group called Friends of Louisville Public Art filed a lawsuit challenging the landmarks commission ruling. They argued the statue was a local landmark and said some commission members should not have been allowed to vote because they have a conflict of interest.
While the group acknowledged Castleman’s Confederate ties, they argued that he later renounced his allegiance to the Confederacy. Castleman later served as a brigadier general in the U.S. Army. He was partially responsible for establishing Louisville’s park system and fought to keep the city’s parks and playgrounds open to Black residents.
Kentucky’s Court of Appeals upheld a Jefferson Circuit Court judge’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit. The appeals court ruled that there were “no facts to support the conflict of interests claim.”
The Supreme Court disagreed. Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said it was a “patent” conflict for city employees to vote on the application to remove the monument.
“... Their employment and their being asked to sit in review of an application filed by their employer were sufficient to raise a reasonable question of impartiality such that recusal was required as a matter of law,” he wrote for the majority.
Plaintiff Steve Wiser said he was pleased with the court’s ruling.
Kevin Trager, a spokesman for the city, said officials were reviewing the opinion before deciding how to proceed.
Virginia
Judge rules against Google, allows antitrust case to proceed
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday rejected a motion from Google to toss out the government’s antirust case against it.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled the lawsuit alleging Google wields monopolistic power in the world of online advertising can proceed in its entirety.
Her ruling is the second setback for Google at the federal court in Alexandria. Google had earlier tried to get the case consolidated with a similar lawsuit that’s been ongoing for several years in New York. But Brinkema ruled last month that the case can proceed in the Alexandria courthouse, which is known as the “Rocket Docket” for its reputation of adjudicating disputes swiftly.
The lawsuit alleges that Google holds a virtual monopoly in online advertising that works to the detriment of consumers. The complaint alleged that Google “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.”
Google argued that the case should be tossed out, in part because the government defines Google’s alleged monopoly too narrowly. Google’s lawyers contend the lawsuit does not account for advertisers’ ability, for example, to advertise on huge social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok that run their own advertising platforms independent of Google.
In court papers, Google made an analogy to an unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, a concert promoter that owns and operates a large number of outdoor amphitheaters.
The lawsuit alleged Live Nation held a monopoly on amphitheaters, but a judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove a monopoly in part because they did not take into account reasonable alternatives to amphitheater venues, like indoor concert halls and arenas.
Brinkema said the question of how to define the market in which Google allegedly holds a monopoly will be a key issue in the case, But she said at this preliminary stage, the government’s allegations are plausible enough for the case to move forward. The government’s burden of proof, though, will increase at trial.
A number of states, including Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee, have joined in the case as plaintiffs against Google.
California
$2.3B awarded in sex abuse lawsuit that named Mormon church
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A woman who was molested for years by her stepfather has been awarded $2.28 billion by a California jury in a lawsuit that also implicated her mother and the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which both parents were active, her attorneys announced.
The panel in Riverside County Superior Court awarded damages Tuesday to a woman described in court papers only as Jane Doe, who said she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, according to an announcement by the law firm of Gary A. Dordick.
The lawsuit alleged that beginning in the 1980s, the stepfather sexually abused the girl. The assaults took place at their Lake Elsinore home and at events, meetings, and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the lawsuit said.
“These ongoing acts of abuse brought Plaintiff to the brink of suicide,” according to the lawsuit.
In addition to the stepfather, the negligence and sexual abuse suit also named the church and the woman’s mother. It alleged that the woman repeatedly told church officials, including local bishops, about the sexual abuse but that they failed to report it to law enforcement in violation of church policy and also used “intimidation and shaming tactics” to keep her from telling anyone outside the church.
The AP is not naming the stepfather nor the mother to shield the identity of the victim. An email to the stepfather’s attorney seeking comment wasn’t returned.
The stepfather was arrested in 1997 after Jane Doe told her high school basketball coach about the abuse, the suit said. He pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts with a child under age 14 and spent three years in state prison, according to the lawsuit.
While denying wrongdoing, the church settled its part of the lawsuit for $1 million in December, and the woman’s mother settled for $200,000 in February, according to the woman’s lawyers.
The stepfather failed to appear at trial on the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer to the lawsuit rather than face a warrant for his arrest, and “accordingly, his attorney was not able to participate in the trial,” the law firm said in an email.
Massachusetts
Court reinstates charges against leaders of veterans’ home
BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts’ highest court overruled a lower court judge Thursday and reinstated criminal neglect charges against two top former officials at a veterans’ home. Nearly 80 veterans died at the Veterans’ Home in Holyoke after contracting the coronavirus in one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in a long-term care facility in the nation.
The ruling allows the case against Bennett Walsh, the former superintendent at the facility, and Dr. David Clinton, its former medical director, to move forward.
In their ruling, the majority of the justices found that the facts presented to the grand jury constituted probable cause to believe that Walsh and Clinton violated the elder abuse statute and that Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough Jr. erred in dismissing the charges.
“Of course, sometimes bad things happen for no discernable reason, and no one is to blame. At any subsequent trial, prosecutors will need to prove their case. We conclude only that they will have the opportunity to do so,” the court ruled.
Walsh and Clinton pleaded not guilty in 2020 to charges stemming from their decision that March to combine two dementia units, packing residents who were positive for the coronavirus into the same space as those with no symptoms.
In November 2021, McDonough found that there was “insufficient reasonably trustworthy evidence that, had these two dementia units not been merged, the medical condition” of five veterans in question would have been materially different.
Last year Massachusetts agreed to pay $56 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by the families of veterans who died.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell welcomed Thursday’s decision.
“Today’s decision allows us to focus once again on securing accountability for the tragic and preventable deaths at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke,” she said in a written statement.
