Court Digest

New York
Trial in death of anti-gang activist ends in mistrial
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — The second trial of a New York woman accused of causing the death of an anti-gang activist in a dispute over a memorial honoring the activist’s slain daughter has ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a verdict on the top count of criminally negligent homicide.

Jurors on Long Island deadlocked Monday after four days of deliberations in the case of Annmarie Drago, accused of fatally running over Evelyn Rodriguez in 2018. Drago was found guilty of one misdemeanor count of petit larceny for stealing a bouquet and other items from the memorial that Rodriguez had set up to honor her teenage daughter, Kayla Cuevas.

Newsday reported that neither Drago not defense attorney Matthew Hereth commented after the mistrial was declared Monday in a courtroom in Suffolk County.

Drago was convicted in Rodriguez’s death in 2020, but the conviction was overturned last year and the judge ordered a new trial, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said after the second trial ended Monday with no verdict on the homicide charge that he is prepared to retry the case yet again.

In September 2018, Rodriguez had set up the memorial in front of Drago’s mother’s house ahead of a vigil to mark the two-year anniversary of the discovery of 16-year-old Kayla’s body at the property.
Drago, who was trying the sell the house, had dismantled the memorial because she didn’t want to scare off buyers. That led to a confrontation between the two women.

Prosecutors said Drago caused Rodriguez’s death when she drove over her with her SUV. The defense argued that a step Rodriguez took to the left just as Drago accelerated caused her foot to get stuck under the front driver’s-side tire.

Rodriguez had become a symbol in the fight against gang violence after Kayla was hacked and beaten to death along with a friend in 2016. Authorities believe the girls were victims of the MS-13 gang.

Minnesota
Judge rejects guilty plea that would have spared man of prison time
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge has taken the rare move of rejecting a negotiated plea agreement that would have allowed a man to avoid prison time for his role in a deadly attempted carjacking in Minneapolis.

Hennepin County District Judge Michael Burns said Monday that he didn’t believe 20-year-old Husayn Braveheart was “particularly amenable to probation” or that Braveheart had a “significantly lesser role” in the crime, as prosecutors and his public defender said. Burns ordered a trial unless another agreement is reached before a Dec. 14 hearing, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Minnesota judges rarely turn aside plea agreements, but they’ve done it twice this month in Hennepin County.

Braveheart was 15 in June 2019 when he and co-defendant Jered Ohsman, then 17, drew semiautomatic pistols at Steven Markey, a 39-year-old paralegal from Plymouth, Minnesota, authorities said.
Ohsman told police he ordered Markey out of the vehicle and shot him after seeing him reach for something. Braveheart fired at the vehicle as Markey drove off before dying, according to court documents.

The teenagers were arrested after crashing a stolen SUV.

Markey’s mother, attorney Catherine Markey, said she was “hopeful” after Burns’ decision.

“I’m very proud of Judge Burns,” she said. “I’m thankful to have people like him on the bench in Hennepin County.”

Prior to the hearing, Markey’s family and supporters had sent letters asking Burns to reject the negotiation. The family held news conferences, attended rallies near the courthouse and circulated an online petition, calling the plea agreement an unacceptable outcome.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose office negotiated the rejected deal, campaigned on treating juvenile offenders differently with a focus on rehabilitation.

Braveheart addressed the court Monday by apologizing to the Markey family.

“I take full responsibility for my actions that day and I have no one to blame but myself in this situation,” he said. “I can’t go back. I wish I could. But the only way I see is forward.”

Ohsman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2020 and was sentenced to 22 years. The presumptive guideline for Braveheart also called for a 22-year sentence.

Prosecutors and Braveheart’s public defenders said Braveheart played a lesser role in the murder because Ohsman admitted to firing the fatal shot. But Burns said Braveheart shot at Markey as he drove away, endangering the public.


Texas
Jury finds Baylor negligent in Title IX lawsuit brought by former student
WACO, Texas (AP) — A federal jury on Tuesday found Baylor University negligent in a Title IX lawsuit and awarded $270,000 to a former student who alleged she was physically abused by a football player in 2014 during a period of wide-ranging scandal at the nation’s biggest Baptist school.

In siding with former student Dolores Lozano, jurors in a Waco courtroom held that Baylor “maintained a policy of deliberate indifference to reports of sexual harassment” that put her at risk. The jury awarded her damages for negligence by Baylor but not for the Title IX violation.

The verdict comes a month after Baylor settled a separate, years-long federal lawsuit brought by 15 women who alleged they were sexually assaulted at the school. That was the largest case related to a scandal that ultimately led to the ouster of the university’s president and football coach Art Briles.

“It was never about the money, it was about justice,” Lozano said outside the courthouse after the verdict, according to the Waco Tribune Herald.

Lozano had also named Briles and former athletic director Ian McCaw as defendants in the lawsuit. Both testified during the trial, but U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman last week dismissed them from the case, ruling no reasonable jury could find them negligent.

In a statement, Baylor said the verdict concludes all litigation against the school from 2015 and 2016, when the scandal erupted with assault allegations made against football players.

“We are obviously disappointed in the decision in this case, as we continue to contend that Baylor coaches and employees in Athletics and across the campus reported and handled these incidents in the correct, legally and clinically prescribed manner,” the statement read.

In the wake of the scandal, the school hired Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton to investigate how it handled those assaults and others. The law firm’s report determined that under the leadership of school President Ken Starr, Baylor did little to respond to accusations of sexual assault involving football players over several years.

It also raised broader questions of how the school responded to sexual assault claims across campus.

Lozano’s lawsuit faulted Baylor over its handling of her reports that she was assaulted three times in 2014 by then-running back Devin Chafin. He denied the accusations in a video deposition played during the trial last week, according to the Tribune-Herald.

Baylor officials have said the school has made sweeping changes to how it addresses sexual assault claims and victims in response to the Pepper Hamilton report. That report has never been fully released publicly, despite efforts by the women suing the school to force it into the open.

Briles has denied he covered up sexual violence in his program. He led the program to a Big 12 conference championship but has not returned to major-college coaching.


West Virginia
Man indicted on murder charge in connection with disappearance of girl 20 years ago
BECKLEY, W.Va. (AP) — A special grand jury has indicted a West Virginia man on a murder charge in the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl more than two decades ago, authorities said.

Larry Webb is accused of killing Natasha “Alex” Carter, Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Hatfield said Tuesday. Carter and her mother, Susan Carter, have not been seen since Aug. 8, 2000.

At the time they went missing, Susan Carter was in a contentious custody battle with Natasha’s father and had told him he would never see his daughter again, according to an FBI flyer from back then that said the pair might have left the state. Carter and her daughter were apparently living in Webb’s house when they disappeared, news outlets reported.

The FBI announced a renewed push for answers in the case in 2021. Police executed search warrants at Webb’s home in 2022 and 2023 and authorities said they recovered additional evidence in the investigation.

During the last search, Webb, who is in his 80s, told news outlets he did not know what happened to the girl and did not know when he last saw her.

“I don’t remember,” Webb said. “I have dementia. I can’t say exactly.”

The disappearance of Susan Carter, who is presumed dead, is still under investigation, Hatfield said. “The wealth of evidence that we had pertained to the death of Natasha ‘Alex’ Carter,” he said.

Hatfield said police were working to arrest Webb, who was currently in a “quasi-medical housing situation.”

It was not clear if Webb has an attorney. A circuit court clerk said she did not have an attorney of record listed and the public defender’s office declined to answer questions.

Colorado
Judge chides company for paying $23,500 settlement in coins
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado judge chided a welding company that tried to pay off a $23,500 settlement with a subcontractor by sending the money in loose coins that weighed 3 tons (2.7 metric tonnes).

Judge Joseph Findley ruled Monday that JMF Enterprises “acted maliciously and in bad faith” by delivering a custom-made metal box containing the coins that was too heavy to be carried in the freight elevator at the offices for Fired Up Fabrications’ lawyers, let alone the forklift required to carry it, according to court filings.

Findley ordered JMF to pay by a more conventional method like a check. He also said JMF would now have write a larger one — to pay an extra estimated $8,092 to cover legal fees for the ensuing dispute over whether it had the right to pay in coins.

One of the subcontractor’s lawyers, Danielle Beem, told Denver’s KCNC-TV, which first reported the judge’s order, that the coin payment was a “symbolic middle finger.”

Lawyers for JMF said the settlement agreement did not specify how the money was to be paid and said it had no intention of harassing Fired Up Fabrications, noting that both parties were “very close friends” before the lawsuit.

“The form of the settlement in this case is a reference to their shared career field and is intended to satisfy the settlement, albeit in an uncommon form,” they said in a September court filing.

Findley said photographic evidence showed JMF apparently took the extra step of taking coins separated in boxes by denomination and then “dumping them loosely and randomly” into the container.

“The amount of time and expense required to remedy the payment attempt would have the effect of significantly reducing and offsetting the net amount of the settlement to be received by Plaintiff in the form of costs and inconvenience,” Findley said.