Mississippi
Court won’t revive lawsuit over lawyer’s suicide
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court says it will not revive a lawsuit by the family of a Mississippi lawyer who took his own life after he was arrested and accused of providing information to people who snuck into a nursing home and photographed the ailing wife of a U.S. senator during a contentious election.
Images of Rose Cochran appeared briefly online during the 2014 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, in a video that accused now-deceased Sen. Thad Cochran of having an affair while his wife was bedridden with dementia — an accusation that Thad Cochran denied.
The primary exacerbated rifts between establishment Republicans who supported Cochran and tea party activists, including lawyer Mark Mayfield, who backed Cochran’s GOP primary challenger, state lawmaker Chris McDaniel.
In 2017, Mayfield’s survivors sued Madison Mayor Hawkins-Butler and others, saying the defendants were part of a network of Cochran supporters who pushed Mayfield to suicide in June 2014. Mayfield died by gunfire, and police said he left a suicide note, days after Cochran defeated McDaniel in a primary runoff and before the felony charge against Mayfield could be prosecuted.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves dismissed the lawsuit in 2021. He wrote that Mayfield’s relatives did not prove the city of Madison improperly retaliated against Mayfield for constitutionally protected speech or political activity.
A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Reeves’ ruling July 27. In a split decision Wednesday, the full appeals court said it would not reconsider the Mayfield family’s appeal.
One of the appellate judges, James C. Ho, wrote that the family’s lawsuit should have gone to trial, and that this ruling and others by the 5th Circuit could have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.
“There’s not much left to freedom of speech if you have to worry about being jailed for disagreeing with public officials,” Ho wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.
In 2021, Reeves wrote that despite sworn statements from former Madison County Assistant District Attorney Dow Yoder that “this case was handled unlike any other case that ever came through the DA’s office,” there was “no evidence” that Mayfield was investigated or arrested because of constitutionally protected speech or political activity.
Mayfield’s mother lived in the same nursing home as Rose Cochran in Madison, a Jackson suburb. Mayfield was charged with conspiracy to exploit a vulnerable adult, after Madison authorities accused him of giving information to other McDaniel supporters who entered the facility without permission and photographed the senator’s wife. McDaniel condemned the operation and said it was not authorized by his campaign.
If Mayfield had been convicted of the felony, he would have faced up five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, and he could have lost his law license.
“Perhaps he shouldn’t have provided the information he was asked,” Ho wrote. “But did he deserve to be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned? Did he deserve to be humiliated, even driven to suicide — and his family destroyed? It’s unfathomable that law enforcement officials would’ve devoted scarce police resources to pursuing Mayfield, but for one thing: The people in power disliked his political views.”
Two other people who supported McDaniel in 2014, John Mary and Clayton Kelly, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
Cochran’s campaign said in 2014 that he wasn’t involved in an improper relationship. He was re-elected that November, and Rose Cochran died the following month. The senator married a longtime aide in May 2015.
Cochran served six years in the House before winning a Senate seat in 1978, and he rose to the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. He retired in frail health in 2018 and died in 2019 at age 81.
Missouri
Death row inmate sues governor for dissolving inqury board of innocence
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri death row inmate is suing Gov. Mike Parson over the governor’s decision to dissolve a board of inquiry that was convened to investigate the man’s innocence claim.
The lawsuit on behalf of Marcellus Williams asks a state judge to invalidate Parson’s June order that did away with the inquiry board.
Parson also lifted a stay of execution. The next day, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date, though no date has been set. Bailey also is named in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Williams, 54, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her home in the St. Louis suburb of University City. Gayle worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1981 to 1992 before leaving to do social work.
Williams was hours away from execution in 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens halted the process and ordered an investigation. His decision followed the release of new DNA testing unavailable at the time of the killing. It showed that DNA found on the knife used to stab Gayle matched an unknown person, not Williams, attorneys for Williams said.
The former St. Louis County prosecutor said there was ample other evidence pointing to Williams as the killer.
A panel of five judges was appointed to investigate, but after six years, no conclusion was reached. Parson said in a statement in June that it was time to “move forward” on the case.
“We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing,” Parson said. “This administration won’t do that.”
The lawsuit states that Greitens’ 2017 order required the inquiry board to provide a report and recommendation — but Parson received neither.
“The dissolution of the board of inquiry before a report or recommendation could be issued means that, to date, no judge has ruled on the full evidence of Mr. William’s innocence,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a statement.
“Knowing that, the state of Missouri still seeks to execute him. That is not justice.”
Parson’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Bailey said in a statement that his office “will always unabashedly pursue justice for victims. In this case, that looks like carrying out the lawful sentence and judgment handed down by the Court.”
Prosecutors said Williams broke a window pane to get inside Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.
Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on such a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams sold it a day or two later.
Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a St. Louis cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.
Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted felons out for a $10,000 reward.
Tennessee
Court revives Jewish couple’s lawsuit alleging adoption bias
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Appellate judges have revived a couple’s lawsuit that alleges a state-sponsored Christian adoption agency wouldn’t help them because they are Jewish and argues that a Tennessee law protecting such denials is unconstitutional.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals ruled that Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram have the right as taxpayers to sue in the case, as do six other taxpayer plaintiffs in the case. The ruling overturns a lower court’s determination in June 2022 that none of them had legal standing. The case can now proceed in the trial court.
The lawsuit against the state challenges a 2020 law that installed legal protections for private adoption agencies to reject state-funded placement of children to parents based on religious beliefs.
Much of the criticism of the law focused on how it shielded adoption agencies that refuse to serve prospective LGBTQ parents. But the Rutan-Rams alleged they were discriminated against because they were Jewish, in violation of their state constitutional rights.
In their lawsuit, the married couple said the Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greeneville barred them from taking Tennessee state-mandated foster-parent training and denied them a home-study certification when they attempted to adopt a child from Florida in 2021.
The state Department of Children’s Services later provided the couple with the required training and home study, then approved them as foster parents in June 2021. The couple has been foster-parenting a teenage girl they hope to adopt. They also want to foster at least one more child, for whom they would likewise pursue adoption, the ruling states.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed the lawsuit on the couple’s behalf, called this week’s ruling an important victory.
“This loving couple wanted to help a child in need, only to be told that they couldn’t get services from a taxpayer-funded agency because they’re the wrong religion,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United. “Liz and Gabe deserve their day in court, and Americans United intends to see that they get it.”
Representatives from the Tennessee attorney general’s office and Holston United Methodist Home for Children did not immediately return emailed requests for comment on the ruling. The home is not a defendant in the lawsuit.
During a 2-1 trial court ruling in 2022, the judges in the majority said the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue, and did not rule on the constitutional protections in the lawsuit.
The judges did, however, downplay some of the lawsuit’s arguments against the law, writing that it “does not single out people of the Jewish faith as a disfavored, innately inferior group.” They also found that the services the couple sought would not have been state-funded, saying the scope of Holston’s contract with the state is for services for children “in the custody of the State of Tennessee.”
Before the adoption law change, some faith-based agencies had already not allowed gay couples to adopt. But the 2020 law provides legal protections to agencies that do so.
The Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church has said the Holston United Methodist Home for Children is a separate entity from the conference, a group of some 800-plus congregations based in Alcoa, Tennessee, after the two organizations in 2002 agreed to not “accept any legal or financial responsibility for the other.”
