Oklahoma
Jury awards $25 million to man who sued newspaper after being mistakenly named in report
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma jury awarded a man $25 million on Monday after finding the state’s largest newspaper defamed him when they mistakenly identified him as the announcer who made racist comments during a 2021 broadcast of a girls basketball game.
The jury in Muskogee County awarded Scott Sapulpa $5 million in actual damages and another $20 million in punitive damages.
“We’re just so happy for Scott. Hopefully this will vindicate his name,” said Michael Barkett, Sapulpa’s attorney.
Sapulpa alleged defamation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the jury found the newspaper acted with actual malice, which permitted them to consider punitive damages, Barkett said.
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the newspaper’s owner, Gannett, said in a statement the company was disappointed with the verdict and planned to appeal.
“There was no evidence presented to the jury that The Oklahoman acted with any awareness that what was reported was false or with any intention to harm the plaintiff in this case,” Anton said.
The incident occurred in 2021 before the Norman-Midwest City girls high school basketball game when an announcer for a livestream cursed and called one team by a racial epithet as the players kneeled during the national anthem.
The broadcasters told their listeners on the livestream that they would return after a break. Then one, apparently not realizing the audio was still live, said: “They’re kneeling? (Expletive) them,” one of the men said. “I hope Norman gets their ass kicked ... (Expletive) (epithet).”
Sapulpa, one of two announcers, was initially identified by the newspaper as the person who made the racist comment.
Matt Rowan, the owner and operator of the streaming service, later told The Oklahoman he was the person who made the remarks. Rowan apologized and blamed his use of racist language on his blood-sugar levels.
Pennsylvania
Man freed after nearly 40 years in prison after murder conviction is reversed
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man has been freed after spending nearly four decades in prison on a murder conviction in a 1984 Philadelphia fire attributed to arson under standards that prosecutors said would not support a conviction today.
Harold Staten, 71, was convicted in 1986 of setting an early morning fire that killed a man in a north Philadelphia row house in October 1984. Authorities said four men escaped by jumping from second-floor windows and Charles Harris later died of burns at a hospital.
Staten was convicted of arson and second-degree murder and sentenced to life.
Assistant District Attorney Carrie Wood of the Philadelphia prosecutor’s office conviction integrity unit cited “substantial changes in fire science” and a report from a former federal agent and fire investigator that led officials to conclude that “there is little credible information that could stand up his murder conviction today.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that after prosecutors on Monday cited flawed science and conflicting testimony in recommending reversal of the verdict, Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio vacated Staten’s 1986 guilty verdict and ended his sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.
Staten, who has spent more than half of his life in prison, burst into tears at the judge’s decision, lowering his face into his hands, the newspaper reported. His son, Harold DeBose, exclaimed “Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah,” an Arabic phrase meaning “Praise be to God.”
DeBose, who was a teenager when his dad went to prison, said before his father’s release Monday night that he wanted his father to hug his granddaughter and his great-grandson, and then he wants to help guide him into a world that has changed so much during his decades in prison, the Inquirer reported.
The case was revived by attorneys for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project who cited advances in fire investigation technology. Prosecutors in Staten’s original trial alleged that he started the fire after a dispute, but a chemical analysis of samples taken from the home later showed no trace of accelerant.
District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement that “due to the passage of time, we unfortunately may never know how the fire began that killed Charles Harris nearly four decades ago.”
Pennsylvania
Man sentenced to life without parole in 1991 slaying of woman
BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole in the slaying of a Pennsylvania woman more than three decades ago and an arson fire set at her suburban Philadelphia home that authorities said was intended to cover up the crime.
Robert Atkins, 57, was sentenced Friday in Bucks County Court after being convicted a day earlier of first-degree murder and two counts of arson in the April 1991 death of 35-year-old Joy Hibbs in Bristol Township.
Authorities said the victim’s body was found after the fire at the Bristol Township home, and an autopsy later concluded that she had been stabbed and strangled. Prosecutors alleged that a dispute over a marijuana sale escalated when Atkins threatened to kill Hibbs and blow up her house. Atkins was arrested in the case in May 2022.
Defense attorney Craig Penglase argued that the case was built on a “mountain of doubt” following pressure from Hibbs’ family and media reports on the case. He accused detectives in the initial investigation of mishandling evidence and failing to pursue other potential suspects.
Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. said before sentencing that Atkins had robbed Hibbs’ family of a future with her.
“The depraved level of violence is almost unimaginable,” he said. “They were living the American dream. You didn’t just take her life, you took that from them.”
Atkins was sentenced to the mandatory life-without-parole term in the murder conviction and to an additional five to seven years on one arson conviction and a 10- to 20-year concurrent term on the other arson conviction, prosecutors said.
Outside of the courtroom, David Hibbs, Joy Hibbs’ youngest child, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the family had begun to heal after three decades of fighting to solve his mother’s case.
“We’re sorry that it took 32 years to get here, but we finally got justice for Joy,” he said.
Jury awards $25 million to man who sued newspaper after being mistakenly named in report
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma jury awarded a man $25 million on Monday after finding the state’s largest newspaper defamed him when they mistakenly identified him as the announcer who made racist comments during a 2021 broadcast of a girls basketball game.
The jury in Muskogee County awarded Scott Sapulpa $5 million in actual damages and another $20 million in punitive damages.
“We’re just so happy for Scott. Hopefully this will vindicate his name,” said Michael Barkett, Sapulpa’s attorney.
Sapulpa alleged defamation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the jury found the newspaper acted with actual malice, which permitted them to consider punitive damages, Barkett said.
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the newspaper’s owner, Gannett, said in a statement the company was disappointed with the verdict and planned to appeal.
“There was no evidence presented to the jury that The Oklahoman acted with any awareness that what was reported was false or with any intention to harm the plaintiff in this case,” Anton said.
The incident occurred in 2021 before the Norman-Midwest City girls high school basketball game when an announcer for a livestream cursed and called one team by a racial epithet as the players kneeled during the national anthem.
The broadcasters told their listeners on the livestream that they would return after a break. Then one, apparently not realizing the audio was still live, said: “They’re kneeling? (Expletive) them,” one of the men said. “I hope Norman gets their ass kicked ... (Expletive) (epithet).”
Sapulpa, one of two announcers, was initially identified by the newspaper as the person who made the racist comment.
Matt Rowan, the owner and operator of the streaming service, later told The Oklahoman he was the person who made the remarks. Rowan apologized and blamed his use of racist language on his blood-sugar levels.
Pennsylvania
Man freed after nearly 40 years in prison after murder conviction is reversed
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man has been freed after spending nearly four decades in prison on a murder conviction in a 1984 Philadelphia fire attributed to arson under standards that prosecutors said would not support a conviction today.
Harold Staten, 71, was convicted in 1986 of setting an early morning fire that killed a man in a north Philadelphia row house in October 1984. Authorities said four men escaped by jumping from second-floor windows and Charles Harris later died of burns at a hospital.
Staten was convicted of arson and second-degree murder and sentenced to life.
Assistant District Attorney Carrie Wood of the Philadelphia prosecutor’s office conviction integrity unit cited “substantial changes in fire science” and a report from a former federal agent and fire investigator that led officials to conclude that “there is little credible information that could stand up his murder conviction today.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that after prosecutors on Monday cited flawed science and conflicting testimony in recommending reversal of the verdict, Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio vacated Staten’s 1986 guilty verdict and ended his sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.
Staten, who has spent more than half of his life in prison, burst into tears at the judge’s decision, lowering his face into his hands, the newspaper reported. His son, Harold DeBose, exclaimed “Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah,” an Arabic phrase meaning “Praise be to God.”
DeBose, who was a teenager when his dad went to prison, said before his father’s release Monday night that he wanted his father to hug his granddaughter and his great-grandson, and then he wants to help guide him into a world that has changed so much during his decades in prison, the Inquirer reported.
The case was revived by attorneys for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project who cited advances in fire investigation technology. Prosecutors in Staten’s original trial alleged that he started the fire after a dispute, but a chemical analysis of samples taken from the home later showed no trace of accelerant.
District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement that “due to the passage of time, we unfortunately may never know how the fire began that killed Charles Harris nearly four decades ago.”
Pennsylvania
Man sentenced to life without parole in 1991 slaying of woman
BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole in the slaying of a Pennsylvania woman more than three decades ago and an arson fire set at her suburban Philadelphia home that authorities said was intended to cover up the crime.
Robert Atkins, 57, was sentenced Friday in Bucks County Court after being convicted a day earlier of first-degree murder and two counts of arson in the April 1991 death of 35-year-old Joy Hibbs in Bristol Township.
Authorities said the victim’s body was found after the fire at the Bristol Township home, and an autopsy later concluded that she had been stabbed and strangled. Prosecutors alleged that a dispute over a marijuana sale escalated when Atkins threatened to kill Hibbs and blow up her house. Atkins was arrested in the case in May 2022.
Defense attorney Craig Penglase argued that the case was built on a “mountain of doubt” following pressure from Hibbs’ family and media reports on the case. He accused detectives in the initial investigation of mishandling evidence and failing to pursue other potential suspects.
Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. said before sentencing that Atkins had robbed Hibbs’ family of a future with her.
“The depraved level of violence is almost unimaginable,” he said. “They were living the American dream. You didn’t just take her life, you took that from them.”
Atkins was sentenced to the mandatory life-without-parole term in the murder conviction and to an additional five to seven years on one arson conviction and a 10- to 20-year concurrent term on the other arson conviction, prosecutors said.
Outside of the courtroom, David Hibbs, Joy Hibbs’ youngest child, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the family had begun to heal after three decades of fighting to solve his mother’s case.
“We’re sorry that it took 32 years to get here, but we finally got justice for Joy,” he said.
