National Roundup

New York
Ghislaine Maxwell jail conditions called ‘degrading’
LONDON (AP) — The brother of Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell said Wednesday she should be released on bail from a U.S. jail, and claimed that she was being held in “degrading” conditions that amount to torture.

Maxwell, 59, is awaiting trial in July on charges she recruited teenage girls for the late financier to sexually abuse. The British socialite has been in a federal lockup in Brooklyn since she was arrested last July, and she has lost two bail requests — including a $28.5 million bail release proposal in December — because she was deemed a flight risk.

Her brother Ian Maxwell told the BBC Wednesday he was worried about her health and ability to prepare for her trial because of the conditions she was held in.

Ghislaine Maxwell is “in effective isolation” in a 6- by 9-foot (1.8- by 2.7-meter) cell without natural light that contains a concrete bed and a toilet, he said. She is under around-the-clock surveillance with 10 cameras and four guards tracking her movement, and is also being deprived of sleep, he added.

“She has a flashlight shone in her cell every 15 minutes throughout the night ... it’s grotesque and in that respect it amounts to torture,” he said in a radio interview.

He added that she is not a suicide risk and remains “resolute,” but is losing her hair and having trouble with her eyesight.

Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with recruiting three teenagers aged as young as 14 for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 1997. She also was accused of sometimes participating in the abuse. She pleaded not guilty to an indictment.

Epstein killed himself in August 2019 at a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited a sex trafficking trial.

Virginia
Department says detectives used facial recognition program
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Virginia Beach police admitted last week that some of their detectives used a controversial facial recognition program during criminal investigations, according to a report.

In February 2020 and again in September, the Police Department had told The Virginian-Pilot that it had never used Clearview AI. It also denied using any other facial recognition technology recently, though the department briefly experimented with an in-house system at the Oceanfront in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the newspaper reported.

But records obtained by The Pilot through the state’s open records law revealed 10 detectives signed up for Clearview accounts, starting in November 2019 . On Tuesday, the department said top brass ordered all officers to stop using the facial recognition program in November, meaning some detectives could have used it for up to a year.

Only after those detectives asked the department to start paying for Clearview did police officials realize they were wrong when they repeatedly told the newspaper the department had never used the technology, police spokeswoman Officer Linda Kuehn said Tuesday. She said she issued the denials to The Pilot in February 2020 and in September based on what she’d been told.

Now, Chief Paul Neudigate has ordered a department-wide review of how new technology is evaluated and adopted, especially when it has the potential to impact people’s privacy, Kuehn said.

Maryland
Rapper sues former Gun Trace Task Force detective
BALTIMORE (AP) — A rapper from Baltimore is suing a former detective who was part of the city’s infamous Gun Trace Task Force for alleged harassment and for what he says was wrongful arrest.

The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday that the rapper is known as Young Moose. His real name Kevron Evans.

Evans has claimed that former task force detective Daniel Hersl pursued him and his family in attempts to hurt his music career. For instance, lyrics and imagery from one of his videos was used in court documents. And Evans was arrested right before he was supposed go on stage for a performance at the Royal Farms Arena.

The lawsuit was filed in Baltimore Circuit Court and seeks at least $1.5 million in damages. The suit claims that Evans lost money making opportunities suffered damage to his reputation.

Hersl is serving 18 years in federal prison after being convicted of racketeering offenses related to the task force corruption case. Hersl was accused of stealing money as a task force member as well as before joining the group.

Walter Timothy Sutton, an attorney representing Hersl, said he hadn’t seen Evans’ lawsuit. But he said that Hersl maintains he was an ethical police officer and is fully innocent.

Missouri
Woman sentenced for infant’s death
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis-area woman accused of starving her 2-month-old son to death has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Makayla Hill, 27, of Bridgeton, was sentenced Tuesday after she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of child endangerment in the 2018 death of her son, Samuel Williamson Jr., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Hill was given credit for more than two years of jail time already served.

In exchange for her plea, prosecutors dropped a second-degree murder charge.

In September 2018, Bridgeton police were called to a hotel where Hill was living with the infant and a toddler. The baby was later pronounced dead at a hospital, and an autopsy showed the 6-pound (2.7 kilogram) infant died of severe malnutrition. Authorities said Hill failed to feed the baby for about 12 hours before she found him unresponsive.

Records show the baby had received treatment several times at St. Louis-area hospitals prior to his death with symptoms of being severely underweight and vomiting blood.

Hill’s lawyer had planned to have an expert witness testify that the baby had a rare congenital disorder that could have caused him to reject nourishment and not cry when hungry or thirsty.