North Carolina
Man charged in fatal shooting near courthouse
NEW BERN, N.C. (AP) — One man was killed and a second man was wounded in a shooting outside a North Carolina courthouse, police said Tuesday.
New Bern police said in a news release that they received a call about a shooting near the Craven County Courthouse around 10:50 a.m. Officers responding to the scene found two men with gunshot wounds, the news release said. The two men were taken to a local hospital.
Police said Jordan Andre McDaniels, 23, was killed. The second shooting victim, Jaheem Deshawn McDaniels, 21, is hospitalized in critical condition, police said. Both men are from Bayboro.
Officers with the New Bern Police Department arrested Dakota Wright, 19, of Vanceboro. He is charged with an open count of murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and attempted murder, the news release said.
Wright was jailed without bond with his court date scheduled for Wednesday. It couldn’t be determined on Tuesday if Wright has an attorney.
Police said an investigation showed the shooting was not random and that those involved knew each other.
North Carolina
Judge: Voters with disabilities can choose who help them
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked North Carolina laws that greatly restrict who can help people with disabilities request absentee ballots, fill them out and return them.
A disabled person needing help to vote by mail can now seek assistance from anyone they choose, not just from a close relative or legal guardian as state law has limited, the State Board of Elections told county election officials after the decision filed Monday by U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle.
Boyle declared that such restraints in state law conflict with the federal Voting Rights Act, which allows people who are blind, can’t read or write, or have a disability to pick whomever they wish to assist them with voting, other than the voter’s employer or union.
The elimination of the state’s restrictions applies to all citizens with such disabilities, and not just the thousands who reside in hospitals, clinics or nursing homes, Boyle ruled in a lawsuit filed last September against the state board by the nonprofit Disability Rights North Carolina.
“Voting is a fundamental right in this country, and these barriers not only violated federal law, they effectively denied the dignity, autonomy and humanity of disabled people by preventing their full participation in voting,” Disability Rights North Carolina CEO Virginia Knowlton Marcus said in a news release Tuesday. “We are gratified to see these barriers come down.”
Such restrictions in state law were designed in part to protect vulnerable voters from being manipulated by facility operators or party activists to vote for certain candidates.
But “facility staff are often the only reliable assistants available to an individual with a disability living in a facility and are often residents’ most consistent and trusted source of assistance,” the Disability Rights lawsuit said. Receiving assistance from near relatives or guardians became more difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic as visitations were restricted.
County boards already allow “multipartisan assistance teams” to enter nursing and rest homes and help residents. Voters with disabilities can still request such teams, State Board of Elections attorney Katelyn Love wrote in guidance to state boards late Monday.
State laws prohibiting certain people from assisting absentee voters who are not disabled and live in hospitals, rest homes or nursing homes will remain enforceable, Love said, including nursing home owners and workers, elected officials and candidates. It’s a felony for owners of hospitals, clinics, nursing homes or rest homes to provide absentee ballot assistance.
Although North Carolina law prevents an employer or union representative from assisting an in-person voter with a disability or who is illiterate, that prohibition doesn’t apply to an absentee voter, state board spokesperson Pat Gannon wrote in an email. The board interprets the Voting Rights Act as allowing, but not requiring, a state to allow such assistance, he said.
The rule changes will be posted to the state board’s website, but it’s too late in the election cycle to alter printed materials, she said. Absentee ballots are currently being accepted for July 26 elections in some localities. The general election is Nov. 8.
Lisa Grafstein, a Disability Rights attorney who filed the lawsuit, said Tuesday that other laws remain to punish those who seek to exploit people with disabilities in their voting.
Georgia
Ex-missionary gets 10 years for sex assault of Ugandan girl
MACON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty in February to sexually assaulting a girl while a missionary in Uganda.
U.S. District Judge Marc. T. Treadwell sentenced Eric Tuininga, 45, of Milledgeville last week. He was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution and spend a lifetime on supervised release as a registered sex offender after getting out of prison.
Prosecutors have said that an American citizen had contacted the U.S. embassy in Kampala, Uganda in June 2019 to tell officials that Tuininga was having sex with Ugandan girls as young as 14 who were under the care of the U.S.-based Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Mbale, Uganda.
Tuininga was one of the church’s ministers. Authorities said they found Tuininga had already returned to the United States, but federal agents identified the minor and kept investigating. Tuininga admitted to the conduct, with prosecutors saying he told them that the victim would often visit the church property in Mbale.
The recommended sentence for Tuininga was seven to nine years, The Telegraph of Macon reported. But Treadwell sentenced him to a decade in federal prison after hearing testimony from the victim’s caretaker and some of Tuininga’s family members. Tuininga’s defense attorney had objected to some of the evidence at sentencing and requested a sentence of five years.
“I want to recognize the true bravery displayed by the Ugandan girl for speaking out when she was assaulted by a trusted person of power from another country, courageously seeking justice across continents,” U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary said in a statement. “Law enforcement — both abroad and here at home — took on a challenging international case.”
Mark Bube, general secretary of the denomination’s committee of foreign missions, has said Tuininga’s misconduct was reported by other Orthodox Presbyterian missionaries in Uganda and that he was removed from missionary work in 2019. Bube said Tuininga was later removed entirely from ministry and excommunicated from the church based in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
Tuininga joined the church from a separate but affiliated denomination in Oregon. A website chronicling Tuininga’s work in Uganda said he began working there in 2012 after previously working as a minister at Immanuel’s Reformed Church in Salem, Oregon.
