Massachusetts
Former Boston attorney once named ‘most eligible bachelor’ convicted of rape
BOSTON (AP) — A former Boston attorney who was once named one of People magazine’s most eligible bachelors was found guilty of rape on Wednesday after a jury deliberated for five hours, prosecutors said.
Gary Zerola, 52, was acquitted of the greater charge of aggravated rape and burglary, according to the office of the Suffolk County district attorney.
The former prosecutor and defense attorney was arrested in January 2021. Investigators said at the time that Zerola had been wanted on a warrant issued out of Boston Municipal Court for rape and breaking and entering. He pleaded not guilty.
Zerola has faced previous charges of rape and sexual assault. He previously faced two rape charges in Suffolk County and was acquitted in 2023, according to the district’s attorney’s office. He also was charged in three sexual assault cases between 2006 and 2007, but he was never convicted.
Prosecutors said in January 2021 he had paid for a night of drinking with a woman he was dating and her 21-year-old friend. The friend became intoxicated and had to be helped back to her Beacon Hill apartment. Zerola later entered the apartment without permission and sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping, prosecutors said.
“These cases are always difficult, and this victim deserves enormous credit for taking the stand and telling the jury what happened to her that night,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement. “I thank the jurors for considering all of the information presented to them and for returning a just verdict.”
An attorney for Zerola said in an email that he would most likely have a comment after the sentencing.
Zerola will be sentenced on July 15. The judge revoked his bail on Wednesday, and he was ordered held pending sentencing.
Zerola worked as an assistant district attorney in Essex County for one year, and in Suffolk County for two months in 2000, according to former District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office.
Georgia
Prosecutor drops remaining charges against ex-police chief and top aide after indictment dismissed
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Prosecutors have dropped two remaining charges against a former Georgia police chief and a top aide two months after the state’s highest court threw out an indictment charging the men with violating their oaths of office.
A Superior Court judge granted on Tuesday prosecutors’ motion to withdraw pending charges of influencing a witness and subornation of perjury against former Glynn County Police Chief John Powell and his former chief of staff, Brian Scott.
District Attorney Joe Mulholland’s decision to drop the case ends a four-year effort to prosecute Powell and Scott for what prosecutors called an illegal effort to cover up a narcotics officer’s improper relationship with a confidential informant.
“Of course, we are grateful that justice has been served,” Powell’s attorney, Tom Withers, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
Scott’s attorney, Tracy Alan Brown, said in an email that they “are both extremely pleased that this lengthy legal saga is over. He has maintained his innocence from the beginning.”
The police officials were originally indicted in February 2020, though the oath violation counts and other charges were dismissed months later. Prosecutors obtained a second indictment in 2021 that renewed the oath violation charges.
However, the Georgia Supreme Court threw out the second indictment in April, ruling that it was fatally flawed by technical errors.
The problem cited by the court was that the indictment charged both men with violating a specific part of their oath: to uphold due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. Turning a blind eye to police misconduct, the justices said in the unanimous ruling, isn’t a due process issue.
The state Supreme Court’s decision all but ended the prosecution of Powell and Scott, as Georgia law prohibits indicting the same person more than twice for the same offense.
Mulholland, an outside district attorney assigned to the case after Glynn County prosecutors recused themselves, notified a Superior Court judge June 18 that he would not pursue the only two charges still pending from the original indictment.
The allegations of scandal involving Powell and Scott ultimately led to the dismantling of Glynn County police’s drug task force. It also prompted a failed attempt by Georgia lawmakers to abolish the county police department and hand law enforcement in parts of Glynn County outside the city of Brunswick back to the elected county sheriff.
Glynn County commissioners fired Powell in 2021. Scott was fired from his job as police chief of Vidalia, Georgia, a few months later when the second indictment was issued.
Louisiana
Four officers in now-disbanded police unit charged in cover-up of beating
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Four officers associated with a now-disbanded unit of the Baton Rouge Police Department have been indicted by a Louisiana grand jury on charges alleging that they covered up the beating of a suspect in custody.
The charges stem from an attempted strip search in September 2020, when two officers from the Street Crimes Unit allegedly hit a suspect and shocked him with their stun guns. The episode was captured by body-worn cameras that the officers didn’t know were turned on.
The four were members of the unit. They were indicted for alleged malfeasance in office and charges related to obstruction of justice, according to Baton Rouge news outlets.
The beating happened after police swarmed an area where a music video was being shot, according to warrants. A suspect was brought to a police precinct to be strip-searched in the bathroom. Documents said the suspect was stripped naked and beaten for not complying.
One of the officers pulled out his Taser, and his body-worn camera was immediately activated.
The arrest warrant for the officers said the camera was later hidden and never returned. The accused officers later conspired to write a letter, falsely claiming the body camera was missing or lost, the department said.
The charges come as the FBI pursues a civil rights investigation into allegations made in lawsuits last year that officers assaulted detainees in an obscure warehouse known as the “ Brave Cave.”
Soon after the allegations arose, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome ordered the facility closed. The police department disbanded the street crimes unit.
“This was an isolated incident. This is not an indictment on the Baton Rouge Police Department,” District Attorney Hillar Moore said at a Tuesday news conference to announce the indictments.
“These indictments reaffirm our dedication to police reform and accountability,” Broome said in a news release. “The indictments should not reflect on the vast majority of Baton Rouge Police officers who are committed to professionalism.”
North Carolina
Judge upholds state’s anti-rioting law, dismisses civil liberties suit
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a civil rights group challenging North Carolina’s anti-rioting law, whose criminal penalties were raised last year by state legislators.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina sued over the law, after the legislature increased punishments in response to protests against racial injustice and police brutality in 2020 that at times became violent.
In a dismissal order sought by attorneys for the state and three district attorneys who also were sued, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs in Winston-Salem ruled Tuesday that the law withstands challenges by the ACLU alleging that the language was unconstitutional through being both overbroad and vague.
Biggs cited in large part previous state appellate court rulings examining previous versions of the anti-rioting law that she declared protects free speech and peaceful protestors whom the ACLU feared could be wrongly arrested.
“This Court concludes that the Anti-Riot Act does not criminalize a substantial amount of protected expressive activity relative to the Act’s plainly legitimate sweep,” wrote Biggs in her order released Wednesday. The decision, barring an appeal, would uphold the law’s enforcement, paving the way for the higher penalties to become enforced permanently.
While demonstrations in North Carolina following George Floyd’s death were largely peaceful, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore and others championing the changes said the laws didn’t deter rioting and looting in downtown Raleigh in June 2020.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who had successfully vetoed a similar bill in 2021, allowed the 2023 bill with the more severe penalties to become law without his signature. Several Democrats along with the GOP legislators in the General Assembly majority had supported the legislation last year, raising the likelihood that any Cooper veto would have been overridden.
The lawsuit considered by Biggs, who was nominated to the bench by then-President Barack Obama, focused on the law’s definition of a riot, which was unchanged by the new legislation.
But the ACLU argued the definition was so vague and overbroad that its employees or members advocating in protests otherwise protected by the U.S. and state constitutions could be arrested and subject to criminal and civil penalties simply by being near violent activity.
The law says a riot involves an assembly of three or more people that engages in or threatens disorderly and violent conduct to the point it causes injury or damage, or creates a “clear and present danger” of injury or damage.
Lawyers for state Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat and lawsuit defendant along with the District Attorneys, wrote in legal briefs that the state ACLU was wrong to argue that its members could be prosecuted for participating peacefully in a protest.
A 1975 state Supreme Court opinion rejected that possibility, Stein’s lawyers said, and a provision added to the 2023 version of the law states that the “mere presence alone” at an event where rioting takes place falls short of the evidence needed for a conviction.
A spokesperson for Stein said the Attorney General’s Office was reviewing the ruling.
The ACLU of North Carolina had sued in April 2023, but it refiled its lawsuit in July after state legislators passed another law making additional minor changes.
Kristi Graunke, the state ACLU’s legal director, said Wednesday her group disagrees with the judge’s ultimate analysis. But Graunke said Biggs’ ruling should admonish district attorneys that “protestors who act peacefully — even if others around them are acting violently — should not be subject to prosecution for rioting.”
The 2023 criminal changes raise criminal punishments or create new crimes related to willingly participating in or inciting a riot.
Fines and prison time will increase, typically by a couple years or more, for protesters who brandish a weapon, injure somebody or cause significant property damage. The law also creates new crimes for protesters who cause a death or incite a riot that contributes to a death.
Business owners also will be able to seek compensation from protesters who damage property, equal to three times the monetary damage. And those accused of rioting or looting will also have to wait 24 hours before their bond is set.
Former Boston attorney once named ‘most eligible bachelor’ convicted of rape
BOSTON (AP) — A former Boston attorney who was once named one of People magazine’s most eligible bachelors was found guilty of rape on Wednesday after a jury deliberated for five hours, prosecutors said.
Gary Zerola, 52, was acquitted of the greater charge of aggravated rape and burglary, according to the office of the Suffolk County district attorney.
The former prosecutor and defense attorney was arrested in January 2021. Investigators said at the time that Zerola had been wanted on a warrant issued out of Boston Municipal Court for rape and breaking and entering. He pleaded not guilty.
Zerola has faced previous charges of rape and sexual assault. He previously faced two rape charges in Suffolk County and was acquitted in 2023, according to the district’s attorney’s office. He also was charged in three sexual assault cases between 2006 and 2007, but he was never convicted.
Prosecutors said in January 2021 he had paid for a night of drinking with a woman he was dating and her 21-year-old friend. The friend became intoxicated and had to be helped back to her Beacon Hill apartment. Zerola later entered the apartment without permission and sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping, prosecutors said.
“These cases are always difficult, and this victim deserves enormous credit for taking the stand and telling the jury what happened to her that night,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement. “I thank the jurors for considering all of the information presented to them and for returning a just verdict.”
An attorney for Zerola said in an email that he would most likely have a comment after the sentencing.
Zerola will be sentenced on July 15. The judge revoked his bail on Wednesday, and he was ordered held pending sentencing.
Zerola worked as an assistant district attorney in Essex County for one year, and in Suffolk County for two months in 2000, according to former District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office.
Georgia
Prosecutor drops remaining charges against ex-police chief and top aide after indictment dismissed
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Prosecutors have dropped two remaining charges against a former Georgia police chief and a top aide two months after the state’s highest court threw out an indictment charging the men with violating their oaths of office.
A Superior Court judge granted on Tuesday prosecutors’ motion to withdraw pending charges of influencing a witness and subornation of perjury against former Glynn County Police Chief John Powell and his former chief of staff, Brian Scott.
District Attorney Joe Mulholland’s decision to drop the case ends a four-year effort to prosecute Powell and Scott for what prosecutors called an illegal effort to cover up a narcotics officer’s improper relationship with a confidential informant.
“Of course, we are grateful that justice has been served,” Powell’s attorney, Tom Withers, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
Scott’s attorney, Tracy Alan Brown, said in an email that they “are both extremely pleased that this lengthy legal saga is over. He has maintained his innocence from the beginning.”
The police officials were originally indicted in February 2020, though the oath violation counts and other charges were dismissed months later. Prosecutors obtained a second indictment in 2021 that renewed the oath violation charges.
However, the Georgia Supreme Court threw out the second indictment in April, ruling that it was fatally flawed by technical errors.
The problem cited by the court was that the indictment charged both men with violating a specific part of their oath: to uphold due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. Turning a blind eye to police misconduct, the justices said in the unanimous ruling, isn’t a due process issue.
The state Supreme Court’s decision all but ended the prosecution of Powell and Scott, as Georgia law prohibits indicting the same person more than twice for the same offense.
Mulholland, an outside district attorney assigned to the case after Glynn County prosecutors recused themselves, notified a Superior Court judge June 18 that he would not pursue the only two charges still pending from the original indictment.
The allegations of scandal involving Powell and Scott ultimately led to the dismantling of Glynn County police’s drug task force. It also prompted a failed attempt by Georgia lawmakers to abolish the county police department and hand law enforcement in parts of Glynn County outside the city of Brunswick back to the elected county sheriff.
Glynn County commissioners fired Powell in 2021. Scott was fired from his job as police chief of Vidalia, Georgia, a few months later when the second indictment was issued.
Louisiana
Four officers in now-disbanded police unit charged in cover-up of beating
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Four officers associated with a now-disbanded unit of the Baton Rouge Police Department have been indicted by a Louisiana grand jury on charges alleging that they covered up the beating of a suspect in custody.
The charges stem from an attempted strip search in September 2020, when two officers from the Street Crimes Unit allegedly hit a suspect and shocked him with their stun guns. The episode was captured by body-worn cameras that the officers didn’t know were turned on.
The four were members of the unit. They were indicted for alleged malfeasance in office and charges related to obstruction of justice, according to Baton Rouge news outlets.
The beating happened after police swarmed an area where a music video was being shot, according to warrants. A suspect was brought to a police precinct to be strip-searched in the bathroom. Documents said the suspect was stripped naked and beaten for not complying.
One of the officers pulled out his Taser, and his body-worn camera was immediately activated.
The arrest warrant for the officers said the camera was later hidden and never returned. The accused officers later conspired to write a letter, falsely claiming the body camera was missing or lost, the department said.
The charges come as the FBI pursues a civil rights investigation into allegations made in lawsuits last year that officers assaulted detainees in an obscure warehouse known as the “ Brave Cave.”
Soon after the allegations arose, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome ordered the facility closed. The police department disbanded the street crimes unit.
“This was an isolated incident. This is not an indictment on the Baton Rouge Police Department,” District Attorney Hillar Moore said at a Tuesday news conference to announce the indictments.
“These indictments reaffirm our dedication to police reform and accountability,” Broome said in a news release. “The indictments should not reflect on the vast majority of Baton Rouge Police officers who are committed to professionalism.”
North Carolina
Judge upholds state’s anti-rioting law, dismisses civil liberties suit
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a civil rights group challenging North Carolina’s anti-rioting law, whose criminal penalties were raised last year by state legislators.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina sued over the law, after the legislature increased punishments in response to protests against racial injustice and police brutality in 2020 that at times became violent.
In a dismissal order sought by attorneys for the state and three district attorneys who also were sued, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs in Winston-Salem ruled Tuesday that the law withstands challenges by the ACLU alleging that the language was unconstitutional through being both overbroad and vague.
Biggs cited in large part previous state appellate court rulings examining previous versions of the anti-rioting law that she declared protects free speech and peaceful protestors whom the ACLU feared could be wrongly arrested.
“This Court concludes that the Anti-Riot Act does not criminalize a substantial amount of protected expressive activity relative to the Act’s plainly legitimate sweep,” wrote Biggs in her order released Wednesday. The decision, barring an appeal, would uphold the law’s enforcement, paving the way for the higher penalties to become enforced permanently.
While demonstrations in North Carolina following George Floyd’s death were largely peaceful, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore and others championing the changes said the laws didn’t deter rioting and looting in downtown Raleigh in June 2020.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who had successfully vetoed a similar bill in 2021, allowed the 2023 bill with the more severe penalties to become law without his signature. Several Democrats along with the GOP legislators in the General Assembly majority had supported the legislation last year, raising the likelihood that any Cooper veto would have been overridden.
The lawsuit considered by Biggs, who was nominated to the bench by then-President Barack Obama, focused on the law’s definition of a riot, which was unchanged by the new legislation.
But the ACLU argued the definition was so vague and overbroad that its employees or members advocating in protests otherwise protected by the U.S. and state constitutions could be arrested and subject to criminal and civil penalties simply by being near violent activity.
The law says a riot involves an assembly of three or more people that engages in or threatens disorderly and violent conduct to the point it causes injury or damage, or creates a “clear and present danger” of injury or damage.
Lawyers for state Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat and lawsuit defendant along with the District Attorneys, wrote in legal briefs that the state ACLU was wrong to argue that its members could be prosecuted for participating peacefully in a protest.
A 1975 state Supreme Court opinion rejected that possibility, Stein’s lawyers said, and a provision added to the 2023 version of the law states that the “mere presence alone” at an event where rioting takes place falls short of the evidence needed for a conviction.
A spokesperson for Stein said the Attorney General’s Office was reviewing the ruling.
The ACLU of North Carolina had sued in April 2023, but it refiled its lawsuit in July after state legislators passed another law making additional minor changes.
Kristi Graunke, the state ACLU’s legal director, said Wednesday her group disagrees with the judge’s ultimate analysis. But Graunke said Biggs’ ruling should admonish district attorneys that “protestors who act peacefully — even if others around them are acting violently — should not be subject to prosecution for rioting.”
The 2023 criminal changes raise criminal punishments or create new crimes related to willingly participating in or inciting a riot.
Fines and prison time will increase, typically by a couple years or more, for protesters who brandish a weapon, injure somebody or cause significant property damage. The law also creates new crimes for protesters who cause a death or incite a riot that contributes to a death.
Business owners also will be able to seek compensation from protesters who damage property, equal to three times the monetary damage. And those accused of rioting or looting will also have to wait 24 hours before their bond is set.
