Texas
Jury clears most ‘Trump Train’ drivers in trial over 2020 Biden-Harris bus incident
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal jury in Texas on Monday rejected voter intimidation allegations against all but one of a group of former President Donald Trump supporters who surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus on an interstate days before the 2020 election.
Only one of the six Trump supporters who were sued in the civil trial was held responsible by the jury. A Texas man whose car brushed up against another as the caravan of vehicles dubbed the “Trump Train” raced down Interstate 35, was ordered to pay the bus driver $10,000 and another $30,000 in punitive damages.
Both sides declared victory at the end of a two-week trial in an Austin courthouse. The five Trump supporters cleared in the lawsuit — which was brought by three people aboard the campaign bus, including former Texas Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis — described the verdict as vindicating and a relief.
“We’re just ready to feel like normal people again,” said Joeylynn Mesaros, one of the defendants, who described being harassed for participating in the “Trump Train.” “It’s been a thousand something days to have our day in court.”
Attorneys for those aboard the bus said justice was served, even as they disagreed with the jury’s decision to clear five of the defendants.
“When I came to this case it was never about politics that day. I’m grateful, I’m proud of my team,” said Tim Holloway, who was behind the wheel of the campaign bus on Oct. 30, 2020.
The Biden-Harris campaign bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin for an event when a group of cars and pickup trucks waving Trump flags boxed in the bus on the highway. Davis testified she feared for her life.
Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15-mph crawl.
It was the last day of early voting in Texas and the bus was scheduled to stop at San Marcos for an event at Texas State University. The event was canceled after Davis and others on the bus — a campaign staffer and the driver — made repeated calls to 911 asking for a police escort through San Marcos and no help arrived.
The trial centered on whether the actions of the “Trump Train” participants amounted to political intimidation.
No criminal charges were filed against the six Trump supporters.
An attorney for Cisneros, the only member of the convoy who the jury found liable, said they would appeal.
Davis testified that she felt scared and anxious throughout the ordeal. “I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” she testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”
Minnesota
Prosecutors and victim’s family call for the release of man convicted of murder in 2009
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The local prosecutor and family of the victim are calling for a man’s murder conviction to be vacated after a review by the Minnesota attorney general concluded he’s innocent.
Jurors in 2009 found Edgar Barrientos-Quintana guilty of killing 18-year-old Jesse Mickelson in a drive-by shooting. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But after a three-year investigation, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Conviction Review Unit in August released a damning report of Minneapolis police’s original investigation that also cited evidence supporting Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi.
Barrientos-Quintana last month asked a judge to vacate his conviction based on the report. On Monday, the Hennepin County attorney and Mickelson’s sisters said they support his release.
“It’s been 16 years, but I would rather have no conviction than the wrong conviction,” Mickelson’s sister Tina Rosebear said at a news conference.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she will dismiss charges against Barrientos-Quintana if the judge vacates his conviction.
Security footage placed Barrientos-Quintana at a grocery story shortly before the shooting, and the attorney general’s office pointed to phone records not presented at trial that placed him at his girlfriend’s suburban apartment shortly after the shooting. The Conviction Review Unit determined that he could not have traveled to and from the crime scene in that time.
The reviewers also cast blame on police, who showed an old photo of Barrientos-Quintana with a shaved head to eyewitnesses who had described the suspect as being bald. Security footage showed Barrientos-Quintana had short, dark hair at the time of the shooting.
“Unfortunately, after Mr. Barrientos became a suspect in the shooting, the state’s investigation failed to seriously consider and rule out plausible alternative suspects,” a news release from the attorney general said.
Minneapolis police do not support Barrientos-Quintana’s bid for freedom.
Chief Brian O’Hara in a statement said he’s worried Barrientos-Quintana “will be set free based only on a reinterpretation of old evidence rather than the existence of any new facts.”
“I am confident our investigators acted with the utmost integrity and professionalism and followed all the evidence available to them using investigative best practices,” O’Hara said.
Arizona
Boyfriend of a Navajo woman gets life sentence in her murder
PHOENIX (AP) — After family members of a slain Navajo woman described their grief in a federal courtroom, the judge on Monday sentenced her boyfriend to life imprisonment for first-degree murder in a case that became emblematic of what officials call an epidemic of missing and slain Indigenous women.
Five years after Jaime Yazzie was killed, her relatives and friends cheered as they streamed out of the downtown Phoenix courthouse after U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayas handed down the sentence for Tre C. James.
Yazzie was 32 and the mother of three sons when she went missing in the summer of 2019 from her community of Pinon on the Navajo Nation. Despite a high-profile search, her remains were not found until November 2021 on the neighboring Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona.
James was convicted last fall in Yazzie’s fatal shooting. The jury also found James guilty of several acts of domestic violence committed against three former dating partners.
Yazzie’s three sons, now ages 18, 14, 10, and other relatives attended Monday’s sentencing, along with several dozen supporters. Another dozen or so supporters stayed outside to demonstrate on the sidewalk, chanting and beating drums.
“There is no sentence you can impose that will balance the scale,” Yazzie’s mother, Ethelene Denny, told the judge before the announcement. Denny detailed the pain the family has suffered from the moment Yazzie disappeared, through a desperate 2 1/2-year search and the ultimate shock and heartbreak when her remains were found.
Federal prosecutors also played an earlier recorded video statement from Yazzie’s father, James Yazzie, who has since died.
“It’s not right,” the elder Yazzie said in the video, who was clearly ailing and had trouble speaking. “Taking my daughter away and taking my grandkids’ mom. It hits me right in the heart.”
“Today’s sentence underscores the fact that Jamie Yazzie was not forgotten by the FBI or our federal and tribal partners,” FBI Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Jose A. Perez said in a statement. “Our office is committed to addressing the violence that Native American communities in Arizona face every day and we will continue our efforts to protect families, help victims and ensure that justice is served in each case we pursue.”
Yazzie’s case gained attention through the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women grassroots movement that draws attention to widespread violence against Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada.
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs characterizes the violence against Indigenous women as a crisis.
Women from Native American and Alaska Native communities have long suffered from high rates of assault, abduction and murder. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women — 84% — have experienced violence in their lifetimes, including 56% who have been victimized by sexual violence.
Maryland
State sues owner and manager of ship that caused bridge collapse
BALTIMORE (AP) — The state of Maryland has added to the legal troubles facing the owner and operator of the container ship Dali, which caused the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after the massive vessel experienced an ill-timed electrical blackout and other failures.
Officials announced a new lawsuit Tuesday that echoes several other recent filings alleging the ship’s Singapore-based owner and manager, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, knowingly sent an unseaworthy ship into U.S. waters.
“Hear me loud and clear. What happened in the early morning of March 26 should never have happened,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference. “A bridge that was used by thousands of vehicles every single day should still be here right now. A key artery to the Port of Baltimore, which helped move billions of dollars of freight every single year, should still be here right now. And the six victims of the collapse should all be here right now.”
Six construction workers were killed when the ship rammed into one off the bridge’s supports, causing the span to topple into the water. Their families have also sued the companies.
A suit filed last week by the U.S. Department of Justice provided the most detailed account yet of the cascading series of failures on the Dali that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster. That complaint alleges mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in a power outage moments before it crashed into one of the bridge’s support columns.
Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, said last week that the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”
FBI agents boarded the Dali in April amid a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the collapse. Agents boarded another container ship managed by Synergy while it was docked in Baltimore on Saturday.
The Dali was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. Six men on a road crew, who were filling potholes during an overnight shift, fell to their deaths as the bridge crumbled beneath them. The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully reopened in June.
Grace Ocean and Synergy filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.
Since then, a number of entities have filed opposing claims, including Baltimore’s mayor and city council, survivors of the collapse, local businesses and insurance companies. They’ve all been consolidated into one liability case and the deadline for claims to be filed is Tuesday.
The state’s claim seeks punitive damages against the companies as well as costs associated with cleaning up the wreckage and rebuilding the bridge. It also cites lost toll revenues, environmental contamination, damage to the state’s natural resources and other damages. Officials said they’re still working to quantify the total monetary loss.
“We will not allow Marylanders to be left with the bill for the gross negligence, mismanagement and incompetence that caused this harm,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said at Tuesday’s news conference. “No one can deny that the Dali’s destruction of the Key Bridge has caused just that: tremendous pain and suffering that will continue for years to come.”
Jury clears most ‘Trump Train’ drivers in trial over 2020 Biden-Harris bus incident
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal jury in Texas on Monday rejected voter intimidation allegations against all but one of a group of former President Donald Trump supporters who surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus on an interstate days before the 2020 election.
Only one of the six Trump supporters who were sued in the civil trial was held responsible by the jury. A Texas man whose car brushed up against another as the caravan of vehicles dubbed the “Trump Train” raced down Interstate 35, was ordered to pay the bus driver $10,000 and another $30,000 in punitive damages.
Both sides declared victory at the end of a two-week trial in an Austin courthouse. The five Trump supporters cleared in the lawsuit — which was brought by three people aboard the campaign bus, including former Texas Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis — described the verdict as vindicating and a relief.
“We’re just ready to feel like normal people again,” said Joeylynn Mesaros, one of the defendants, who described being harassed for participating in the “Trump Train.” “It’s been a thousand something days to have our day in court.”
Attorneys for those aboard the bus said justice was served, even as they disagreed with the jury’s decision to clear five of the defendants.
“When I came to this case it was never about politics that day. I’m grateful, I’m proud of my team,” said Tim Holloway, who was behind the wheel of the campaign bus on Oct. 30, 2020.
The Biden-Harris campaign bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin for an event when a group of cars and pickup trucks waving Trump flags boxed in the bus on the highway. Davis testified she feared for her life.
Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15-mph crawl.
It was the last day of early voting in Texas and the bus was scheduled to stop at San Marcos for an event at Texas State University. The event was canceled after Davis and others on the bus — a campaign staffer and the driver — made repeated calls to 911 asking for a police escort through San Marcos and no help arrived.
The trial centered on whether the actions of the “Trump Train” participants amounted to political intimidation.
No criminal charges were filed against the six Trump supporters.
An attorney for Cisneros, the only member of the convoy who the jury found liable, said they would appeal.
Davis testified that she felt scared and anxious throughout the ordeal. “I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” she testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”
Minnesota
Prosecutors and victim’s family call for the release of man convicted of murder in 2009
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The local prosecutor and family of the victim are calling for a man’s murder conviction to be vacated after a review by the Minnesota attorney general concluded he’s innocent.
Jurors in 2009 found Edgar Barrientos-Quintana guilty of killing 18-year-old Jesse Mickelson in a drive-by shooting. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But after a three-year investigation, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Conviction Review Unit in August released a damning report of Minneapolis police’s original investigation that also cited evidence supporting Barrientos-Quintana’s alibi.
Barrientos-Quintana last month asked a judge to vacate his conviction based on the report. On Monday, the Hennepin County attorney and Mickelson’s sisters said they support his release.
“It’s been 16 years, but I would rather have no conviction than the wrong conviction,” Mickelson’s sister Tina Rosebear said at a news conference.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she will dismiss charges against Barrientos-Quintana if the judge vacates his conviction.
Security footage placed Barrientos-Quintana at a grocery story shortly before the shooting, and the attorney general’s office pointed to phone records not presented at trial that placed him at his girlfriend’s suburban apartment shortly after the shooting. The Conviction Review Unit determined that he could not have traveled to and from the crime scene in that time.
The reviewers also cast blame on police, who showed an old photo of Barrientos-Quintana with a shaved head to eyewitnesses who had described the suspect as being bald. Security footage showed Barrientos-Quintana had short, dark hair at the time of the shooting.
“Unfortunately, after Mr. Barrientos became a suspect in the shooting, the state’s investigation failed to seriously consider and rule out plausible alternative suspects,” a news release from the attorney general said.
Minneapolis police do not support Barrientos-Quintana’s bid for freedom.
Chief Brian O’Hara in a statement said he’s worried Barrientos-Quintana “will be set free based only on a reinterpretation of old evidence rather than the existence of any new facts.”
“I am confident our investigators acted with the utmost integrity and professionalism and followed all the evidence available to them using investigative best practices,” O’Hara said.
Arizona
Boyfriend of a Navajo woman gets life sentence in her murder
PHOENIX (AP) — After family members of a slain Navajo woman described their grief in a federal courtroom, the judge on Monday sentenced her boyfriend to life imprisonment for first-degree murder in a case that became emblematic of what officials call an epidemic of missing and slain Indigenous women.
Five years after Jaime Yazzie was killed, her relatives and friends cheered as they streamed out of the downtown Phoenix courthouse after U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayas handed down the sentence for Tre C. James.
Yazzie was 32 and the mother of three sons when she went missing in the summer of 2019 from her community of Pinon on the Navajo Nation. Despite a high-profile search, her remains were not found until November 2021 on the neighboring Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona.
James was convicted last fall in Yazzie’s fatal shooting. The jury also found James guilty of several acts of domestic violence committed against three former dating partners.
Yazzie’s three sons, now ages 18, 14, 10, and other relatives attended Monday’s sentencing, along with several dozen supporters. Another dozen or so supporters stayed outside to demonstrate on the sidewalk, chanting and beating drums.
“There is no sentence you can impose that will balance the scale,” Yazzie’s mother, Ethelene Denny, told the judge before the announcement. Denny detailed the pain the family has suffered from the moment Yazzie disappeared, through a desperate 2 1/2-year search and the ultimate shock and heartbreak when her remains were found.
Federal prosecutors also played an earlier recorded video statement from Yazzie’s father, James Yazzie, who has since died.
“It’s not right,” the elder Yazzie said in the video, who was clearly ailing and had trouble speaking. “Taking my daughter away and taking my grandkids’ mom. It hits me right in the heart.”
“Today’s sentence underscores the fact that Jamie Yazzie was not forgotten by the FBI or our federal and tribal partners,” FBI Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Jose A. Perez said in a statement. “Our office is committed to addressing the violence that Native American communities in Arizona face every day and we will continue our efforts to protect families, help victims and ensure that justice is served in each case we pursue.”
Yazzie’s case gained attention through the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women grassroots movement that draws attention to widespread violence against Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada.
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs characterizes the violence against Indigenous women as a crisis.
Women from Native American and Alaska Native communities have long suffered from high rates of assault, abduction and murder. A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women — 84% — have experienced violence in their lifetimes, including 56% who have been victimized by sexual violence.
Maryland
State sues owner and manager of ship that caused bridge collapse
BALTIMORE (AP) — The state of Maryland has added to the legal troubles facing the owner and operator of the container ship Dali, which caused the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after the massive vessel experienced an ill-timed electrical blackout and other failures.
Officials announced a new lawsuit Tuesday that echoes several other recent filings alleging the ship’s Singapore-based owner and manager, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, knowingly sent an unseaworthy ship into U.S. waters.
“Hear me loud and clear. What happened in the early morning of March 26 should never have happened,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference. “A bridge that was used by thousands of vehicles every single day should still be here right now. A key artery to the Port of Baltimore, which helped move billions of dollars of freight every single year, should still be here right now. And the six victims of the collapse should all be here right now.”
Six construction workers were killed when the ship rammed into one off the bridge’s supports, causing the span to topple into the water. Their families have also sued the companies.
A suit filed last week by the U.S. Department of Justice provided the most detailed account yet of the cascading series of failures on the Dali that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster. That complaint alleges mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in a power outage moments before it crashed into one of the bridge’s support columns.
Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, said last week that the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”
FBI agents boarded the Dali in April amid a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the collapse. Agents boarded another container ship managed by Synergy while it was docked in Baltimore on Saturday.
The Dali was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. Six men on a road crew, who were filling potholes during an overnight shift, fell to their deaths as the bridge crumbled beneath them. The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully reopened in June.
Grace Ocean and Synergy filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.
Since then, a number of entities have filed opposing claims, including Baltimore’s mayor and city council, survivors of the collapse, local businesses and insurance companies. They’ve all been consolidated into one liability case and the deadline for claims to be filed is Tuesday.
The state’s claim seeks punitive damages against the companies as well as costs associated with cleaning up the wreckage and rebuilding the bridge. It also cites lost toll revenues, environmental contamination, damage to the state’s natural resources and other damages. Officials said they’re still working to quantify the total monetary loss.
“We will not allow Marylanders to be left with the bill for the gross negligence, mismanagement and incompetence that caused this harm,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said at Tuesday’s news conference. “No one can deny that the Dali’s destruction of the Key Bridge has caused just that: tremendous pain and suffering that will continue for years to come.”
