Court Digest

Illinois
Father of July 4th parade mass shooting suspect to stand trial for assist in gun license application
WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) — The father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago will stand trial starting Monday accused of helping his teenage son obtain a gun license even after he had threatened violence.

Robert Crimo Jr. is charged with seven counts of reckless conduct — one for each person his son, Robert Crimo III, is accused of killing in Highland Park on Independence Day last year. Each count carries a maximum three-year prison term.

In 2019, at the age of 19, Crimo III was too young to apply for his own gun license, but he could apply with the sponsorship of a parent or guardian. His father sponsored his application, even though just months earlier a relative reported to police that Crimo III had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”

Crimo Jr. was arrested in December 2022, and pleaded not guilty this year to seven counts of reckless conduct. He waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Judge George Strickland will hear evidence and issue a verdict.

Defense attorney George Gomez has called the charges against Crimo Jr. “baseless and unprecedented.”

Anti-gun violence advocates say they are encouraged that police and prosecutors are investigating anyone who may have contributed to the attack, but legal experts say criminal liability can be hard to prove against a shooter’s parent or guardian. More often, they face civil lawsuits where legal standards of proof are less stringent.

But there are exceptions. In Michigan, a prosecutor charged the parents of a then-15-year-old boy with involuntary manslaughter in December 2021 after their son was charged in the fatal shooting of four students at his high school. They face trial Jan. 23. Their son pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism charges and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8.

Strickland has said he will allow Crimo III’s statement to police after his arrest as evidence, and both sides are expected to cite the transcript at Crimo Jr.’s trial. Video of the interrogation — which the judge has viewed — will not be shown, to protect the suspected gunman’s right to a fair trial.

Crimo III will neither attend nor testify at his father’s trial to avoid incriminating himself, his lawyer, Gregory Ticsay, has said.

The son faces 21 first-degree murder counts, 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery. Potential evidence — prosecutors say Crimo III admitted he was the gunman when he was arrested hours after the shooting — is voluminous. No trial date has been set in his case.

Attorneys said they expect the trial to last about four days. It was unclear how quickly the judge will rule.


Illinois
Former hockey player alleges ex-video coach sexually assaulted him in 2009-10
CHICAGO (AP) — A former hockey player in the Chicago Blackhawks organization has alleged in a lawsuit the team’s former video coach sexually assaulted him during the 2009-10 season and the Blackhawks responded inadequately to his complaint because it didn’t want a disruption during its Stanley Cup run.

The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday the law firm of Romanucci & Blandin filed the lawsuit Thursday on behalf of their client, listed as “John Doe,” in Cook County Circuit Court. The Associated Press was unable to reach a representative from the law firm.

The newspaper reported the plaintiff was a member of the Blackhawks’ “Black Aces” squad, which was made up of minor-league players who traveled with the NHL team during the playoffs to fill in in case of injuries.

One of the player’s “Black Aces” teammates was Kyle Beach, who reached a settlement with the Blackhawks in December 2021 after alleging he was sexually assaulted by then-video coach Brad Aldrich.

The lawsuit filed last week raises similar allegations against Aldrich and said the Blackhawks showed “utter indifference and/or conscious disregard for the safety of its employees, including John Doe.”

The Blackhawks, in a statement to the Tribune, declined to comment on the specifics of the latest lawsuit. They said they take allegations of workplace misconduct seriously and noted that two years ago they initiated an independent investigation into the events of 2010.

“We’ve changed as a result of what happened and implemented numerous positive improvements throughout our organization to ensure the safety and well-being of our players and employees,” the team said. “This includes completely rebuilding the leadership team with personnel who demonstrate our values and bring the right subject matter expertise in the critical areas of compliance and human resources, an expansive mental health program, and new reporting mechanisms and training for all employees.”

Attorney Antonio Romanucci told the Tribune that the lawsuits seeks to ensure teams remain accountable.

“We have a specific mission in mind, certainly that the Blackhawks remain accountable for the changes that they have promised that they have put in place with regard to prevention of these sexual abuses,” he said. “But we also want to make sure that all teams around the country are on notice that this is not acceptable behavior. Putting winning before the mental health or even physical health of players, that’s over. Hard stop.”

The lawsuit filed last week alleges Aldrich invited “Black Aces” players to his home under the guise of discussing hockey strategy but later attempted to make players watch pornographic movies with him. Aldrich is accused of offering to perform oral sex on “John Doe” and of approaching him from behind and pushing his penis against the back and buttocks of “Doe” through his clothes.

Aldrich allegedly used threats to dissuade the player from reporting Aldrich’s alleged conduct.

Aldrich in December 2013 pleaded guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in a case involving a 16-year-old high school hockey player in Michigan. Prosecutors dropped a felony count. Aldrich was released from jail in 2014.

Kansas
Women’s lawsuit accuses city of allowing police corruption to thrive for years
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Five women who say they were sexually assaulted or harassed by a former Kansas City, Kansas, detective filed a lawsuit Friday accusing the government of allowing police corruption to thrive for years.

The Kansas City Star reports that the federal lawsuit says the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, allowed its officers to “terrorize, abuse and violate” Black residents through a pattern of misconduct and assaults without being disciplined or investigated.

The government declined to comment because of the pending litigation, and a lawyer for former Detective Roger Golubski told the newspaper he couldn’t comment because he hadn’t read the lawsuit.

Golubski has been accused by federal prosecutors and civil rights groups of framing Black citizens and sexually harassing Black women and girls for years in Kansas City, Kansas.

He is currently on house arrest facing two federal indictments alleging he sexually assaulted and kidnapped a woman and a teenager between 1998 and 2002, and that he was part of a sex trafficking ring involving underage girls in Kansas City, Kansas, between 1996 and 1998.

Golubski has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The next hearing in the criminal cases is scheduled for Nov. 21, but no trial dates have been set.

Four of the five plaintiffs allege Golubski sexually assaulted or stalked them. One said the detective raped her in 1992 in the back seat of his unmarked police car.

The lawsuit says that Golubski mocked one of the women when she said she was going to file a complaint against him. Acoording to the lawsuit, Golubski replied, “Report me to who, the police? I am the police.”


California
Judge’s ruling in antitrust lawsuit against NCAA could lead to billions in damages
Class-action status in the damages portion of an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA was granted by a federal judge on Friday, a decision that could put the association on the hook for a potential multibillion dollar payout to former and current college athletes.

House vs. the NCAA is being heard in the Northern District of California by Judge Claudia Wilken, whose previous rulings in NCAA cases paved the way for college athletes to profit from their fame and for schools to direct more money into their hands.

Brought by Arizona State swimmer Grant House in 2020, the lawsuit challenges the NCAA’s remaining name, image and likeness compensation rules. TCU women’s basketball player Sedona Prince; and former Illinois football player Tymir Oliver are also listed as plaintiffs.

Wilken’s latest ruling could make more than 14,000 current and former college athletes eligible to claim damages if the NCAA loses the case.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys claim athletes who were restricted from cashing in on their fame before an NIL ban was lifted in 2021 are owed damages for what they would have been able to make.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys are also targeting the billions of dollars in media rights revenue for the football and basketball players whose sports drive the value of those deal for the NCAA and the five wealthiest college sports conferences.

A loss for the NCAA could require professional-sports style revenue sharing of those multibillion-dollar television deals for big-time college football and March Madness basketball because they involve the use of players’ names, images and likenesses.

“What we’re going to be asking the court to do for the class is to strike down all current prohibitions on NIL. And so the most significant is the rule that prohibits conferences from paying students for NIL,” Steve Berman, one of the lead plaintiffs’ attorneys and a familiar legal foe of the NCAA, told AP last month.


California
Judge: ex-UCLA gynecologist can be retried on charges of sexually abusing female patients
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former gynecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing student patients can be retried on charges involving additional women, a judge ruled Friday.

A Superior Court judge granted a prosecution request to retry Dr. James Heaps on nine charges after a jury deadlocked on the counts last fall.

No date for Heaps’ retrial was set.

Heaps, 67, was sentenced in April to an 11-year prison sentence.

He was convicted last October of five counts of sexually abusing two female patients. Los Angeles jurors found him not guilty on seven other counts and deadlocked on remaining charges involving four women.

Heaps, a longtime UCLA campus gynecologist, was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of patients during his 35-year career.

Amid a wave of sexual misconduct scandals coming to light that implicate campus doctors, he was arrested in 2019. UCLA later agreed to pay nearly $700 million in lawsuit settlements to hundreds of Heaps’ former patients — a record amount for a public university.

Women who brought the lawsuits said Heaps groped them, made suggestive comments or conducted unnecessarily invasive exams during his 35-year career. The lawsuits contended that the university ignored their complaints and deliberately concealed abuse that happened for decades during examinations at the UCLA student health center, the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center or in Heaps’ campus office.