National Roundup

Utah
Ex-Disney actor: Judge in sex crime case has anti-gay bias
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A former Disney Channel actor charged with trying to have sex with a 13-year-old boy in Salt Lake City contends he can’t get a fair trial because the judge handling his case is biased against gay people.

An attorney for actor Stoney Westmoreland said in court documents filed last month that U.S. District Judge Howard Nielson Jr. is incapable of being impartial because he represented proponents of a gay marriage ban in California when he was a private attorney, the Deseret News reports. Nielson argued then that being gay is a choice and people can become heterosexual via conversion therapy, defense attorney Wendy Lewis wrote in court documents.

Judge Nielson refuted the notion and denied Westmoreland’s request for him to recuse himself from the case. He said views of his clients don’t represent his own opinions.

“I can state categorically and unequivocally that I do not harbor any personal bias or prejudice concerning Mr. Westmoreland,” Nielson wrote in his order denying the motion earlier this month.

Westmoreland was fired from his grandfather role on the made-in-Utah Disney Channel series “Andi Mack” after his December arrest.

Police say Westmoreland, 49, communicated with an undercover officer on the app Grindr and was arrested after trying to meet the investigator posing as a teenager.

Westmoreland has pleaded not guilty to enticement of a minor.

The actor is bisexual and his lifestyle will be discussed at the upcoming trial, with witnesses who are gay men expected to discuss Westmoreland’s transition from being in a heterosexual marriage to coming out as gay, Lewis wrote.

The attorney mentioned opposition earlier this year by 59 Democratic members of Congress who said in a letter that Nielson shouldn’t be appointed because he is biased against LGBTQ people. He earned the appointment based on backing by Republicans including Sens. Mitt Romney and Mike Lee of Utah.

Washington
Fred Graham, pioneering legal affairs journalist, dies at 88
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fred P. Graham, who covered the Supreme Court and momentous legal affairs of his era for The New York Times, CBS News and Court TV, has died at his Washington home. He was 88.

The cause of his death Saturday was complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to his wife, Skila Harris.

Graham was the first lawyer hired by the Times to cover the Supreme Court and was a founding anchor of Court TV, a pioneering position made possible by the opening of criminal trials to TV coverage from inside the courtroom in the early 1990s.

Known for his soothing Southern drawl, Graham studied at Yale, Vanderbilt and Oxford universities and practiced law and worked in federal government jobs before the Times hired him to cover the high court in 1965. He moved to CBS News in 1972 as the Watergate scandal was heating up.

During his time at CBS and Court TV, he led efforts to get TV cameras into courtrooms. He was a co-founder of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an organization created to protect journalists’ First Amendment rights.

“Graham was instrumental in creating the organization that we are today,” said the committee’s chairman, Stephen J. Adler, and in “ensuring that legal reporters have the legal support they need.”

Graham, the son of a Presbyterian preacher, attended a small elementary school in Texarkana, Arkansas; high school in Nashville, Tennessee; and Yale on a scholarship. After several years in the Marine Corps, in Japan and Korea, he earned a law degree at Vanderbilt while working as a reporter at The Tennessean.

Graham attended Oxford University as a Fulbright scholar. Then he returned to Nashville and worked as a lawyer before Sen. Estes Kefauver brought him to Washington to work as chief counsel of a Senate subcommittee. Graham later served as an aide to Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz.

The New York Times was looking for a replacement for its Supreme Court reporter and chose Graham, launching his long career in legal journalism. After moving to CBS News in 1972, Graham worked there until 1987, when the network was cutting staff and did not renew his contract. He returned to Nashville to work at a local television station. But his absence from national news didn’t last long.

When a cable startup known as Court TV was looking for anchors to start its legal coverage, Graham was one of the first hired for the network, which provided extensive coverage of all types of court cases, including business disputes and the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Graham’s extensive coverage of the courts helped give him the background later to write four books, including a memoir, and numerous articles on legal topics for magazines and newspapers around the country.

Graham won a Peabody Award, for his coverage of the Watergate scandal, and three Emmy awards.

Connecticut
Convicted financial adviser asks judge to set aside verdicts
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — An attorney for a Connecticut financial adviser convicted of bilking his clients out of more than $1 million is making a last-ditch effort to have a federal judge set aside the jury’s verdicts and find him not guilty.

Leon Vaccarelli, 43, of Waterbury, was convicted in May of 21 charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. He has yet to be sentenced.

His attorney, Jonathan Einhorn, in a 24-page motion urged a judge to set aside the verdicts, arguing that Vaccarelli’s alcoholism prevented his client from forming the intent needed to commit the crimes, according to a story Saturday in The Republican American  of Waterbury.

“His conduct was a product of his alcoholism and as a result his cognitive function was impacted so as to render him not guilty of the offenses charged,” Einhorn wrote.

Federal prosecutors in their objection to the motion wrote that Vaccarelli’s conduct was “replete” with fraud, as he made up financial terms to deceive clients and lied to victims about where their money had gone.

Instead of investing his clients’ money, Vaccarelli used it for personal expenses including his mortgage, and to pay off earlier investors, prosecutors said.

His victims included retirees and a nurse.

The judge has not yet ruled on Einhorn’s motion.