National Roundup

Alabama
University to remove slavery supporter’s name from hall
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — The University of Alabama has decided to remove from an academic building the name of a white doctor who misused medical evidence to support slavery, according to school officials.

The system’s board of trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to strip the name of Dr. Josiah Nott from the campus facility which houses the Honors College, labs and offices, and replace it with Honors Hall, news outlets reported.

Nott helped found the university’s medical school in Mobile and the building bearing his name on the Tuscaloosa campus opened in the 1920s. But a working group the board appointed in June to review building names found that the doctor’s contributions to the university were “minimal at best.”

“Our group found that Josiah Nott, who supported slavery, misused medical evidence to argue that non-white races were inferior and that my ancestors, like scores of others, were destined for destruction,” said Trustee John England, who is Black.

“Of course, I’m still here,” England added.

The university previously authorized the removal of plaques dedicated to Confederate soldiers from a campus quad. Board president pro tempore Ronald Gray said Wednesday that the work is ongoing and “far from finished,” news outlets reported.

The action comes as other universities and institutions around the world have faced calls to address racist legacies. Protesters in the U.S. have also called for Confederate monuments and other icons to be removed during this year’s demonstrations against racial injustice.

New York
Lawyer: Michael Cohen has offer to be a political consultant
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer has been offered work as a consultant and to make media appearances for a political action committee, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Michael Cohen hopes to accept the offer to work on the committee’s behalf, attorney Danya Perry told U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in a letter aimed at ensuring the judge does not object. She did not identify the committee.

She wrote that Cohen also plans to have discussions with his editor and publisher “as quickly as possible” to achieve his goal of publishing a book critical of Trump before November’s election.

The judge ordered Cohen released from prison two weeks ago, saying the government returned him to prison in July in retaliation after Cohen said publicly that he planned to publish the book titled “Disloyal: The True Story of Michael Cohen, Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.”

The Bureau of Prisons denied that Cohen was imprisoned for retaliatory reasons.

Cohen is serving the majority of his three-year prison sentence in home confinement after a coronavirus outbreak in prisons led to some prisoners without a violent record getting out from behind bars.

After getting out in May, Cohen was returned to prison after Probation Department employees said he refused to sign a form that would have banned him from publishing the book and speaking with the media. Prosecutors dropped their media objections last week.

Cohen, 53, began serving the sentence in May 2019 after pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress, among other charges.

California
Oakland man gets life for execution-style double killing
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — An Oakland criminal who authorities say bribed a law enforcement official for protection was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for killing a couple over a business deal.

Wing Wo Ma, also known as “Fat Mark,” was sentenced for the 2013 execution-style slayings in Mendocino County. He was convicted last year of murder, drug distribution conspiracy, fraud conspiracy, weapons, and bribery charges.

Prosecutors said Ma shot Jim Tat Kong and his wife, Cindy Bao Feng Chen, in the head on Chen’s birthday as the couple sat in a minivan in Fort Bragg.

Kong was a Chinese-American gangster and rival to San Francisco gang leader Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, authorities said.

 Ma had borrowed money from Kong for a nearby marijuana growing operation and other failed ventures and was afraid of retribution because he wasn’t able to repay the money, prosecutors said.

DNA from abandoned cigarette butts linked Ma to the crime.

The bribery conviction stemmed from Ma’s relationship with Harry Hu, a onetime Oakland police lieutenant and inspector with the Alameda County district attorney’s office.

“Since at least 2008, Ma bribed Hu with airfare for multiple trips to Las Vegas, free accommodation at high-end suites and hotel rooms at Las Vegas casinos, meals and entertainment in Las Vegas and San Francisco, female hostesses at private room bars in Las Vegas and San Francisco, music concert tickets, use of a new Mercedes-Benz, and labor for the remodel of Hu’s personal residence,” said a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

Ma bribed Hu to protect himself from prosecution for various crimes and used his reputation to attract investors to his “”fraudulent schemes,” prosecutors said.

Hu, a noted expert on Bay Area Asian organized crime, pleaded guilty to bribery in 2018 and could face a year in federal prison when he is sentenced later this month.


California
Ex-federal agent sentenced for stealing smuggled drug money
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A former U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigator was sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison Wednesday in California for stealing more than $100,000 in smuggled drug money, authorities said.

Tyrone Cedric Duren, 50, was handed a sentence of 10 years and 8 months in a San Diego courtroom. He also was ordered to pay $275,000 and forfeit his home in Bonsall in San Diego County, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

Duren pleaded guilty last year to 19 charges, including money laundering, making false statements and tax evasion.

Prosecutors said Duren was investigating bulk cash smuggling when he stole money from people taking drug proceeds to Mexico.

“Over several years, Duren used his position as a federal agent to place GPS trackers on vehicles used to transport proceeds from drug sales. Duren then took some of the drug money after it was seized, laundered it into his own accounts, and spent it on real estate and international travel,” the U.S. attorney’s office statement said.

In 2014, Duren stole more than $100,000 that was hidden in laundry detergent boxes in a car that was stopped and searched at a Border Patrol checkpoint, prosecutors said.