National Roundup

Illinois
Peace Corps agrees to pay $750K to family of dead volunteer
The Peace Corps has agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a 24-year-old volunteer from Illinois who died in 2018 in East Africa after the agency’s doctors misdiagnosed a case of malaria, a law firm announced Tuesday.

Bernice Heiderman of Inverness, Illinois, died in January 2018 on the island nation of Comoros after texting her mother that the local Peace Corps doctor wasn’t taking seriously her complaints of dizziness, nausea, fever and fatigue, said Adam Dinnell, a partner at the Houston-based law firm of Schiffer Hicks Johnson PLLC.

The doctor told her to drink water and take aspirin, said Dinnell, whose firm filed a federal lawsuit for damages in Chicago on behalf of the Heiderman family.

The woman’s mother, Julie Heiderman, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview the family feels that with the settlement, the Peace Corps has taken some accountability for her daughter’s death and realized it had treated the family “horrifically.”

“The Peace Corps was awful,” she said, refusing to speak to the family without its attorney being present and not returning the body to the family until days after extended family had gathered in Illinois for the funeral.
Her daughter had wanted to join the Peace Corps since the time she was in junior high, Heiderman said.

“She felt very patriotic about serving her country in the way she chose,” the mother said.

The Peace Corps issued a statement saying it “continues to mourn the tragic loss of Volunteer Bernice Heiderman.”

Comoros is in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and the island nation of Madagascar.

A post-mortem test revealed Bernice Heiderman died of malaria, Dinnell said. An investigation by the Peace Corps’ inspector general concluded the doctor and the agency’s head medical officer in Washington ignored directives and failed to follow standard protocols, such as ordering a simple blood test that would have detected malaria, which is easily treatable with medication, he said.

The inspector general’s review also found that Heiderman had not been following her required malaria suppression medication regime for several months prior to her death.

West Virginia
Lawsuit denouncing conditions at jail has been settled
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A lawsuit filed by inmates who described conditions at a southern West Virginia jail as inhumane has been settled, a federal judge said Tuesday, a week after a magistrate judge said some records in the suit had been intentionally destroyed.

U.S. District Judge Frank Volk said in a court filing that the plaintiffs and defendants “have reached a resolution of this matter.” The filing said the parties believe a limited class-action settlement fund must be formulated. Volk scheduled a status conference for Thursday.

The lawsuit filed last year on behalf of current and former inmates of the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver referenced a lack of access to water and food at the facility, as well as overcrowding and fights that were allowed to continue until someone was injured.

The lawsuit named Betsy Jividen, the state corrections commissioner who resigned in August 2022; State Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandy, who retired in July; Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation Executive Officer Brad Douglas, who was fired last week; assistant corrections commissioner William Marshall, who has since been appointed commissioner; and former Southern Regional Jail superintendent Mike Francis.

Douglas and Homeland Security Chief Counsel Phil Sword were fired last week after a federal magistrate judge cited the “intentional” destruction of records in recommending a default judgment in the lawsuit. That followed a hearing in early October in which former and current corrections officials, including some defendants in the lawsuit, said no steps had been taken to preserve evidence at the jail, including emails and documents.

The email accounts of Jividen, Francis and others were removed after they left their jobs, according to testimony at the hearing.

Brian Abraham, the chief of staff for Republican Gov. Jim Justice, had said no one in the administration sought to have emails deleted in any agency. Abraham blamed an attorney he did not name who was aware of the litigation, saying that person could have stopped the deletions and “failed to do so.”

Justice has said Homeland Security told him an investigation he ordered into conditions at the jail found no evidence of inhumane treatment. News outlets have reported there were more than a dozen deaths at the Southern Regional Jail last year.

Volk, the federal judge, said the lawsuit’s resolution does not include other parties, including two medical providers and seven county commissions that house inmates at the jail.


Texas
Businessman at center of AG Ken Paxton’s impeachment facing charges
DALLAS (AP) — A Texas businessman at the center of the scandal that led to the historic impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton has been charged with additional federal crimes.

The new indictment of Nate Paul alleges that he defrauded business partners, adding to earlier charges that the Austin-based real estate developer made false statements to mortgage lenders to obtain $172 million in loans.

Paul, 36, pleaded not guilty in June to the eight counts of making false statements while seeking loans from mortgage lenders in the U.S. and Ireland. His attorneys did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the superseding indictment issued Tuesday on four new counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The charges against Paul are the result of a yearslong FBI investigation that Paxton involved his office in, setting off a chain of events that led to a separate federal probe of the Republican attorney general and his May impeachment by the GOP-controlled state House of Representatives.

Paxton was suspended from office ahead of his impeachment trial, where he pleaded not guilty to political charges including misconduct, bribery and corruption.

In September, the state’s Republican-controlled Senate fully acquitted Paxton — a resounding victory that reaffirmed the power of the GOP’s hard right and put an indicted incumbent who remains under FBI investigation back into office.

Neither Paxton nor Paul was called to testify at the impeachment proceeding.

The federal investigation of Paxton is ongoing and he still faces a state criminal trial on securities fraud charges brought against him in 2015. He also pleaded not guilty in the state case.