Arkansas
Court orders state to count signatures collected by volunteers for abortion-rights measure
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday night ordered the state to begin counting signatures submitted in favor of putting an abortion-rights measure on the ballot — but only ones collected by volunteers for the proposal’s campaign.
The one-page order from the majority-conservative court left uncertainty about the future of the proposed ballot measure. Justices stopped short of ruling on whether to allow a lawsuit challenging the state’s rejection of petitions for the measure to go forward.
The court gave the state until 9 a.m. Monday to perform an initial count of the signatures from volunteers.
Election officials on July 10 said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding signature gatherers it hired.
The group disputed that assertion, saying the documents submitted complied with the law and that it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed. Arkansans for Limited Government sued over the rejection, and the state asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit.
Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.
“We are heartened by this outcome, which honors the constitutional rights of Arkansans to participate in direct democracy, the voices of 101,000 Arkansas voters who signed the petition, and the work of hundreds of volunteers across the state who poured themselves into this effort,” the group said in a statement Tuesday night.
A spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said his office was reviewing the ruling and would have further comment Wednesday.
The state has said that removing the signatures collected by paid canvassers would leave 87,382 from volunteers — nearly 3,000 short of the requirement.
According to the order, three justices on the majority-conservative court would have ordered the state to count and check the validity of all of the signatures submitted.
The proposed amendment if approved wouldn’t make abortion a constitutional right, but is seen as a test of support of abortion rights in a predominantly Republican state. Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would prohibit laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allow the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth.
Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.
New York
Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie charged with supporting terrorist group
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a frenzied knife attack in western New York faces a new charge that he supported a terrorist group.
An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo on Wednesday charges Hadi Matar with providing material support to Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran. The indictment didn’t detail what evidence linked Matar to the group.
The federal charge comes after Matar earlier this month rejected an offer by state prosecutors to recommend a shorter prison sentence if he agreed to plead guilty in Chautauqua County Court, where he is charged with attempted murder and assault. The agreement also would have required him to plead guilty to a federal terrorism-related charge, which hadn’t been filed yet at the time.
Instead, both cases will now proceed to trial separately. Jury selection in the state case is set for Oct. 15.
Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the 2022 attack, during which he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times as the acclaimed writer was onstage about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution.
Knife wounds blinded Rushdie in one eye. The event moderator, Henry Reese, was also wounded.
Rushdie detailed the attack and his long and painful recovery in a memoir published in April.
The author spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Khomeini considered the book blasphemous.
Rushdie reemerged into the public the late 1990s.
Matar was born in the U.S. but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. He lived in New Jersey prior to the attack. His mother has said that her son became withdrawn and moody after he visited his father in Lebanon in 2018.
The attack raised questions about whether Rushdie had gotten proper security protection, given that he is still the subject of death threats. A state police trooper and county sheriff’s deputy had been assigned to the lecture. In 1991, a Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was stabbed to death. An Italian translator survived a knife attack the same year. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times but survived.
The investigation into Rushdie’s stabbing focused partly on whether Matar had been acting alone or in concert with militant or religious groups.
New Mexico
Federal court won’t block 7-day waiting period on gun purchases amid litigation
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that New Mexico can continue to enforce a new, seven-day waiting period on gun sales while a court challenge backed by the National Rifle Association moves forward.
In a ruling Monday, Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning denied the NRA’s request for a restraining order or injunction that would block the extended waiting period.
Democratic state lawmakers enacted the restrictions earlier this year in hopes of ensuring more time for the completion of federal background checks on gun buyers.
Only three states have longer waiting periods — California, Hawaii and Washington, along with the District of Columbia — that range up to 14 days, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Rhode Island also has a seven-day wait.
“The defendants adduce significant evidence that waiting period laws may help reduce this tidal wave of gun violence,” Browning said in a ruling of more than 100 pages.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Tuesday applauded the ruling as an indication that the waiting period is constitutional and will be able to remain in effect.
“This 7-day cooling-off period makes our community safer by providing a critical buffer against impulsive firearms purchases and ensuring comprehensive background checks are completed,” the Democrat said in a statement.
The NRA and Mountain States Legal Foundation, an advocacy group for gun rights, filed the lawsuit on behalf of two New Mexico residents, citing concerns about delayed access to weapons for victims of domestic violence and others. The Supreme Court in June upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
Robert Welsh, an associate attorney for the foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms, said the judge’s order allows the case to proceed and include additional evidence.
He described state waiting periods for gun purchases as “increasingly prevalent.”
“The Supreme Court is eventually going to be asked to weigh in on these arbitrary waiting periods,” he said.
New Mexico’s new waiting period holds an exception for concealed permit holders and went into effect in May.
Massachusetts
Man gets life without parole in 1988 killing and sexual assault of woman in Boston
BOSTON (AP) — A man was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the killing of a woman whose body was found in the basement of a Boston building more than three decades ago.
DNA evidence linked Carl Vega, 61, to the 1988 killing of 21-year-old Judy Chamberlain, prosecutors said. A maintenance worker discovered her body in a basement well. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
“She was beautiful, loved, and still is,” Chamberlain’s brother, John Olson, said Tuesday in Suffolk County Superior Court before Vega was sentenced. “Judy remains in our mind and hearts until we meet again.”
Vega was convicted of first-degree murder in June. His lawyer, Timothy Bradl, didn’t immediately respond to a Wednesday email seeking comment.
Vega, who went by several names, was identified as a suspect in 2011 after a federal database matched his DNA profile to evidence from Chamberlain’s killing, according to the district attorney’s office. However, prosecutors at the time did not think they had enough evidence to bring charges.
Vega was required to submit a DNA sample in 1990 after he was convicted of rape in a 1987 attack on an elderly woman in Revere. He was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, and then prosecutors successfully petitioned to have him civilly committed in 2008.
Investigators collected new evidence in the Chamberlain case and a grand jury returned an indictment against Vega in 2021 for her killing.
Alabama
Woman pleads guilty to stealing $300K from church to buy gifts for TikTok content creators
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — A former administrative assistant at an Alabama Catholic church pleaded guilty Tuesday to embezzling about $300,000 to cover gifts for TikTok content creators and personal expenses, federal authorities said.
Kristen Marie Battocletti, 35, entered her plea to one count of wire fraud involving the theft of money from St. Francis of Assisi University Parish in a federal courtroom in Tuscaloosa, al.com reported.
According to court documents, Battocletti engaged in a scheme to defraud the church from April 2023 through October 2023 of hundreds of thousands of dollars and used the money to buy more than $220,000 in TikTok digital coins for gifts to content creators and to pay personal expenses, federal authorities said.
In the scheme, she initiated more than 600 unauthorized transactions, according to her indictment announced last week by U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona for the Northern District of Alabama.
U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler set Battocletti's sentencing for Nov. 26. She faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.
Court orders state to count signatures collected by volunteers for abortion-rights measure
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday night ordered the state to begin counting signatures submitted in favor of putting an abortion-rights measure on the ballot — but only ones collected by volunteers for the proposal’s campaign.
The one-page order from the majority-conservative court left uncertainty about the future of the proposed ballot measure. Justices stopped short of ruling on whether to allow a lawsuit challenging the state’s rejection of petitions for the measure to go forward.
The court gave the state until 9 a.m. Monday to perform an initial count of the signatures from volunteers.
Election officials on July 10 said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding signature gatherers it hired.
The group disputed that assertion, saying the documents submitted complied with the law and that it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed. Arkansans for Limited Government sued over the rejection, and the state asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit.
Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.
“We are heartened by this outcome, which honors the constitutional rights of Arkansans to participate in direct democracy, the voices of 101,000 Arkansas voters who signed the petition, and the work of hundreds of volunteers across the state who poured themselves into this effort,” the group said in a statement Tuesday night.
A spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said his office was reviewing the ruling and would have further comment Wednesday.
The state has said that removing the signatures collected by paid canvassers would leave 87,382 from volunteers — nearly 3,000 short of the requirement.
According to the order, three justices on the majority-conservative court would have ordered the state to count and check the validity of all of the signatures submitted.
The proposed amendment if approved wouldn’t make abortion a constitutional right, but is seen as a test of support of abortion rights in a predominantly Republican state. Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would prohibit laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allow the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth.
Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.
New York
Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie charged with supporting terrorist group
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a frenzied knife attack in western New York faces a new charge that he supported a terrorist group.
An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo on Wednesday charges Hadi Matar with providing material support to Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran. The indictment didn’t detail what evidence linked Matar to the group.
The federal charge comes after Matar earlier this month rejected an offer by state prosecutors to recommend a shorter prison sentence if he agreed to plead guilty in Chautauqua County Court, where he is charged with attempted murder and assault. The agreement also would have required him to plead guilty to a federal terrorism-related charge, which hadn’t been filed yet at the time.
Instead, both cases will now proceed to trial separately. Jury selection in the state case is set for Oct. 15.
Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the 2022 attack, during which he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times as the acclaimed writer was onstage about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution.
Knife wounds blinded Rushdie in one eye. The event moderator, Henry Reese, was also wounded.
Rushdie detailed the attack and his long and painful recovery in a memoir published in April.
The author spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Khomeini considered the book blasphemous.
Rushdie reemerged into the public the late 1990s.
Matar was born in the U.S. but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. He lived in New Jersey prior to the attack. His mother has said that her son became withdrawn and moody after he visited his father in Lebanon in 2018.
The attack raised questions about whether Rushdie had gotten proper security protection, given that he is still the subject of death threats. A state police trooper and county sheriff’s deputy had been assigned to the lecture. In 1991, a Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was stabbed to death. An Italian translator survived a knife attack the same year. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times but survived.
The investigation into Rushdie’s stabbing focused partly on whether Matar had been acting alone or in concert with militant or religious groups.
New Mexico
Federal court won’t block 7-day waiting period on gun purchases amid litigation
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that New Mexico can continue to enforce a new, seven-day waiting period on gun sales while a court challenge backed by the National Rifle Association moves forward.
In a ruling Monday, Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning denied the NRA’s request for a restraining order or injunction that would block the extended waiting period.
Democratic state lawmakers enacted the restrictions earlier this year in hopes of ensuring more time for the completion of federal background checks on gun buyers.
Only three states have longer waiting periods — California, Hawaii and Washington, along with the District of Columbia — that range up to 14 days, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Rhode Island also has a seven-day wait.
“The defendants adduce significant evidence that waiting period laws may help reduce this tidal wave of gun violence,” Browning said in a ruling of more than 100 pages.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Tuesday applauded the ruling as an indication that the waiting period is constitutional and will be able to remain in effect.
“This 7-day cooling-off period makes our community safer by providing a critical buffer against impulsive firearms purchases and ensuring comprehensive background checks are completed,” the Democrat said in a statement.
The NRA and Mountain States Legal Foundation, an advocacy group for gun rights, filed the lawsuit on behalf of two New Mexico residents, citing concerns about delayed access to weapons for victims of domestic violence and others. The Supreme Court in June upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
Robert Welsh, an associate attorney for the foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms, said the judge’s order allows the case to proceed and include additional evidence.
He described state waiting periods for gun purchases as “increasingly prevalent.”
“The Supreme Court is eventually going to be asked to weigh in on these arbitrary waiting periods,” he said.
New Mexico’s new waiting period holds an exception for concealed permit holders and went into effect in May.
Massachusetts
Man gets life without parole in 1988 killing and sexual assault of woman in Boston
BOSTON (AP) — A man was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the killing of a woman whose body was found in the basement of a Boston building more than three decades ago.
DNA evidence linked Carl Vega, 61, to the 1988 killing of 21-year-old Judy Chamberlain, prosecutors said. A maintenance worker discovered her body in a basement well. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
“She was beautiful, loved, and still is,” Chamberlain’s brother, John Olson, said Tuesday in Suffolk County Superior Court before Vega was sentenced. “Judy remains in our mind and hearts until we meet again.”
Vega was convicted of first-degree murder in June. His lawyer, Timothy Bradl, didn’t immediately respond to a Wednesday email seeking comment.
Vega, who went by several names, was identified as a suspect in 2011 after a federal database matched his DNA profile to evidence from Chamberlain’s killing, according to the district attorney’s office. However, prosecutors at the time did not think they had enough evidence to bring charges.
Vega was required to submit a DNA sample in 1990 after he was convicted of rape in a 1987 attack on an elderly woman in Revere. He was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, and then prosecutors successfully petitioned to have him civilly committed in 2008.
Investigators collected new evidence in the Chamberlain case and a grand jury returned an indictment against Vega in 2021 for her killing.
Alabama
Woman pleads guilty to stealing $300K from church to buy gifts for TikTok content creators
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — A former administrative assistant at an Alabama Catholic church pleaded guilty Tuesday to embezzling about $300,000 to cover gifts for TikTok content creators and personal expenses, federal authorities said.
Kristen Marie Battocletti, 35, entered her plea to one count of wire fraud involving the theft of money from St. Francis of Assisi University Parish in a federal courtroom in Tuscaloosa, al.com reported.
According to court documents, Battocletti engaged in a scheme to defraud the church from April 2023 through October 2023 of hundreds of thousands of dollars and used the money to buy more than $220,000 in TikTok digital coins for gifts to content creators and to pay personal expenses, federal authorities said.
In the scheme, she initiated more than 600 unauthorized transactions, according to her indictment announced last week by U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona for the Northern District of Alabama.
U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler set Battocletti's sentencing for Nov. 26. She faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000.
