Missouri
Police want chemical agent restrictions lifted
ST. LOUIS (AP) - St. Louis police are asking a judge to lift restrictions on their ability to use pepper spray and other chemical agents to break up protests.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that lawyers for police filed a 39-page motion Friday in federal court. At issue is a preliminary injunction issued in November 2017 after the ACLU sued on behalf of protesters.
The protesters said police used heavy-handed tactics, including unnecessary use of pepper spray and tear gas, after the acquittal of Jason Stockley. The former white St. Louis police officer had been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting Anthony Lamar Smith, a black drug suspect.
City lawyers argue that the ACLU "inveigled the Court into improvident intrusion into police practices." The city and ACLU have been ordered into mediation.
West Virginia
Mom changes abduction tale, says man may have just been nice
BARBOURSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) - A sensational case of an attempted child kidnapping in a West Virginia shopping mall may have been nothing more than a man being friendly to a little girl.
BarboursviIle police initially said a woman pulled a gun on the man, forcing him to release her 5-year-old daughter. Mohamed Fathy Hussein Zayan was arrested near the Huntington Mall's food court on an attempted abduction charge.
But the 54-year-old engineer from Alexandria, Egypt, was released from jail Tuesday night, and Police Sgt. Anthony Jividen says a prosecutor will have to decide whether to charge the woman instead.
The sergeant says the mother now says she may have misinterpreted the man's intentions. He doesn't speak English, and police say he may have simply been patting the girl on the head.
Arkansas
2 men arrested after shooting each other while wearing vest
ROGERS, Ark. (AP) - Two Arkansas men have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault after police say they shot each other while taking turns wearing a bulletproof vest.
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that 50-year-old Charles Ferris and 36-year-old Christopher Hicks were arrested Monday.
A police affidavit says the two men are neighbors and were drinking on a deck Sunday when Ferris told Hicks to shoot him with a .22-caliber rifle while Ferris wore the vest. The affidavit says the shot left a red mark on Ferris' chest and that he was angry because it hurt.
The affidavit says Hicks then put on the vest and Ferris "unloaded the clip" into his back, causing bruises but no serious injuries.
Florida
Police arrest man accused in machete deaths of wife, child
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) - Law enforcement authorities have captured a man they say used a machete to kill his wife and daughter.
Miami Gardens Police Chief Delma Noel-Pratt said a fire rescue crew spotted 57-year-old Noel Chambers Tuesday night and called police, who took him into custody.
Police had searched for Chambers since Saturday when they found the bodies of 48-year-old Lorrice Harris and 10-year-old Shayla. Another daughter, 29-year-old Shanalee Chambers, was critically injured.
The Miami Herald reports that Harris' family spoke to the media on Monday to help police find Chambers. Daughter Ashley Anderson called her father a "monster."
Ernie Saunders said his sister had asked for a divorce before she was killed.
Chambers is charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
West Virginia
Convicted former pharmacist fined in pill case
WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) - A former West Virginia pharmacist convicted in state court of improperly dispensing medications has been fined $336,000 in federal court.
Federal prosecutors say a judge in Wheeling imposed the penalty against 50-year-old David M. Wasanyi.
Prosecutors say Wasanyi worked as a pharmacist in Martinsburg and Charles Town and violated federal law when he filled nearly 1,200 prescriptions for controlled substances for patients who traveled from as far away as Florida. Many of the prescriptions were written for oxycodone.
Wasanyi was sentenced twice in state court in 2016 for delivery of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to up to 11 years for one conviction and up to 75 years for another.
Louisiana
4 African Americans eliminated from jury can seek damages
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Four African Americans can move ahead with a lawsuit seeking damages from a Louisiana district attorney's office over the racial composition of juries, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Dee Drell in Alexandria ruled Monday in a 2015 lawsuit that alleges the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office ensures that juries are predominantly white by using its right to reject prospective jurors.
Drell's order was only a partial victory for the black residents and the civil rights group that filed the lawsuit. Drell refused to grant class-action status on behalf of all black Caddo residents who are jury-eligible. And he dismissed much of the lawsuit, including a request that he block the Caddo prosecutor from using what are called "peremptory challenges" to reject African American jurors.
But Drell said four plaintiffs could continue pursuing damages for their allegations that their constitutional rights were violated because they were excluded from juries on the basis of race.
A trial date has not been set.
The lawsuit was filed by the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. It cites data analysis by the anti-death-penalty group Reprieve Australia, which studied records of 332 criminal trials from Jan. 28, 2003, through Dec. 5, 2012 - a period spanning the tenures of two district attorneys, Paul Carmouche and his successor, Charles Scott, who died in 2015.
Amid other findings, the study says prosecutors exercised peremptory challenges against 46% of qualified African American jurors, but only 15% of qualified jurors who were not African American. When the MacArthur Center first made the allegations of discrimination in jury selection, Dale Cox, then the acting district attorney, denied that black jurors were systematically rejected by prosecutors.
James Stewart, who became the first African American district attorney in Caddo shortly after the lawsuit was filed, has continued to fight for dismissal of the lawsuit. In court filings, attorneys for his office have called the plaintiffs' claims "speculative, hypothetical and moot," and noted that the alleged injustices happened before Stewart took office
Published: Thu, Apr 04, 2019
