New York
Federal prosecutors seek records from company that deployed AI weapons scanner on NYC subway
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal investigators in New York are seeking records from the manufacturer of an AI-powered weapons scanner that was briefly deployed this summer in New York City’s subway system.
The tech company, Evolv, revealed in a public filing that it “received a voluntary document request from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York” on Nov. 1.
It was unclear what the request was seeking. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment on the request, which was first reported by the Daily News. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Evolv said the company was “pleased to cooperate with all government agencies and regulators who request information from our company.”
The Massachusetts-based tech company, whose scanners have also been used at sports stadiums and schools, has faced allegations of misconduct. Last month, Evolv’s board of directors fired its chief executive following an internal investigation that found certain sales had been “subject to extra-contractual terms and conditions.”
On Tuesday, the company announced it had resolved a previous probe launched by the Federal Trade Commission last year over allegations of deceptive marketing practices. The company is also under separate investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Despite the legal and regulatory scrutiny, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a pilot program this summer to bring a handful of scanners to the city’s subways to deter gun violence. The initiative drew immediate criticism from civil liberties groups who said the searches were unconstitutional, along with questions about its efficacy.
In October, the city revealed the scanners did not detect any passengers with firearms — but falsely alerted more than 100 times.
At the time, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department said it was still “evaluating the outcome of the pilot” and had not entered into any contract with Evolv.
Kentucky
State AG targets another big pharmacy benefit manager in case over opioid crisis
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s attorney general has expanded an opioid-related lawsuit to target another big pharmacy benefit manager that he claims contributed to the state’s deadly addiction crisis.
OptumRx has been added as a new defendant in the suit that was filed two months ago, Attorney General Russell Coleman said Tuesday. His claims against Optum and its affiliated organizations are similar to those initially made against Express Scripts, which remains a defendant in the case.
The Republican attorney general accused Optum of playing a central role in what he called the reckless promotion, dispensing and oversupply of opioids. OptumRx controls a pharmacy network consisting of about 67,000 retail pharmacy locations nationwide, the suit said.
Kentucky was ravaged by the addiction crisis, resulting in some of the nation’s highest overdose death rates.
“These groups pushed a profit-fueled agenda at the expense of Kentucky families, who are left with empty seats at the dinner table,” Coleman said in a release.
Optum did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Tuesday. When it was sued in September, Express Scripts responded that it has long worked to combat opioid overuse and abuse and would “vigorously contest these baseless allegations in court.”
Coleman initially filed the legal action in a state court, but the two sides are wrangling over whether it should be in state or federal court, his office said. He wants the case heard in state court.
Coleman has accused the defendants of using deceptive marketing to boost sales of highly addictive drugs. They also dispensed opioids through mail-order pharmacies without effective controls in violation of Kentucky and federal law, he said.
He is seeking, among other things, civil penalties for each willful violation of the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act, plus any other relief deemed appropriate by the court.
“Defendants have hidden their conduct through non-transparent business practices and by requiring each entity with whom they conduct business, such as opioid manufacturers, to enter into confidentiality agreements or otherwise keep their agreements confidential,” the lawsuit says.
Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, run prescription drug coverage for health insurers and employers that provide coverage. They help decide which drugs make a plan’s formulary, or list of covered medications. They also can determine where patients go to fill their prescriptions.
PBMs have drawn the ire of politicians, patients and others for years. PBMs say they play an important role in controlling drug costs and pass along most of the discounts they negotiate to their clients.
Government lawsuits against pharmacy benefit managers are the latest frontier – and maybe the last big one – in years of litigation over the opioid-related drug epidemic in the U.S.
Drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacy chains have already faced stacks of lawsuits and settled many of them, with most of the money required to be used to fight the overdose and addiction crisis.
Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. A decline in U.S. drug overdose deaths appears to have continued this year, giving experts hope the nation is seeing sustained improvement in the persistent epidemic.
Drug overdose deaths in Kentucky fell nearly 10% in 2023, marking a second straight annual decline, but state leaders say fatalities remain tragically high and the fight against the drug epidemic is far from over. Nearly 2,000 Kentuckians died last year from drug overdoses.
New York
Harvey Weinstein files legal claim alleging lack of medical care and hygiene at Rikers
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers filed a legal claim Tuesday against New York City, alleging that he is receiving substandard medical treatment in unhygienic conditions while in custody at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
The notice of claim, which is the first step in filing a lawsuit against the city, accuses the facility of failing to manage the former movie mogul’s medical conditions, which include chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes, and negligence ranging from “freezing” conditions to a lack of clean clothes.
The city’s law department and Department of Correction did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“When I last visited him, I found him with blood spatter on his prison garb, possibly from IV’s, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided clean underwear – hardly sanitary conditions for someone with severe medical conditions,” Weinstein’s attorney, Imran H. Ansari, said in a statement, comparing the facility to a “gulag.”
Weinstein, 72, has been in city custody since earlier this year, after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case is set to be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.
Weinstein was briefly hospitalized in April and again in July for health problems. His team has said he’s been treated for diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, COVID-19, and fluid on his heart and lungs.
The legal claim, which seeks $5 million in damages, argues he’d been returned to Rikers each time before he had fully recovered.
Weinstein’s film production company went into bankruptcy proceedings after his convictions, setting up a $17 million fund for a sexual misconduct claims fund.
Mississippi
AG seeks execution date for 1993 killing but lawyers say case could go to Supreme Court
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general is requesting an execution date for a man who’s been on death row for 30 years, but his lawyer says the request is premature because the inmate still intends to take an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Charles Ray Crawford, now 58, was sentenced to death in the 1993 kidnapping and killing of a community college student, 20-year-old Kristy Ray. Jurors in his 1994 trial cited a past rape conviction as an aggravating circumstance when they sentenced Crawford, but his attorneys said Monday that they’re appealing that conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a lower court ruling last week.
Crawford was arrested the day after Ray was abducted from her parents’ home and stabbed to death in northern Mississippi’s Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had blacked out and did not recall killing her.
At the time of that arrest, Crawford was days away from his scheduled trial on a charge of assaulting another woman by hitting her over the head with a hammer.
The assault trial was delayed several months, and he was convicted. In a separate trial, Crawford was convicted in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who was friends with the victim of the hammer assault. The two victims were at the same place during the attacks. Crawford said he also experienced blackouts and did not recall committing the rape or the hammer assault.
During the sentencing portion of Crawford’s capital murder trial, jurors found the rape conviction was an “aggravating circumstance” and they sentenced him to death, court records show.
In his latest federal appeal of the rape case, Ray said his previous lawyers provided unconstitutionally ineffective assistance for an insanity defense. Crawford received a mental evaluation at the state hospital, but the trial judge repeatedly declined to provide a psychiatrist or other mental health professional — other than the state expert — to assist in Crawford’s defense, according to court records.
In a split decision Friday, a majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Crawford’s appeal. Dissenting judges wrote that Crawford received an “inadequately prepared and presented insanity defense” and that “it took years for a qualified physician to conduct a full evaluation of Crawford.”
The dissenting judges quoted a neurologist, Dr. Siddhartha Nadkarni, who examined Crawford.
“Charles was laboring under such a defect of reason from his seizure disorder that he did not understand the nature and quality of his acts at the time of the crime,” Nadkarni wrote. “He is a severely brain- injured man (corroborated both by history and his neurological examination) who was essentially not present in any useful sense due to epileptic fits at the time of the crime.”
Multiple appeals are common in death penalty cases, and Crawford’s case already has been appealed multiple times using different arguments.
Hours after the federal appeals court denied Crawford’s appeal, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers asking the state Supreme Court to set a date for Crawford’s execution by lethal injection, writing that “he has exhausted all state and federal remedies.”
On Monday, the attorneys representing Crawford in the Mississippi Office of Post-Conviction Counsel filed papers saying they intend to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s decision.
Federal prosecutors seek records from company that deployed AI weapons scanner on NYC subway
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal investigators in New York are seeking records from the manufacturer of an AI-powered weapons scanner that was briefly deployed this summer in New York City’s subway system.
The tech company, Evolv, revealed in a public filing that it “received a voluntary document request from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York” on Nov. 1.
It was unclear what the request was seeking. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment on the request, which was first reported by the Daily News. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Evolv said the company was “pleased to cooperate with all government agencies and regulators who request information from our company.”
The Massachusetts-based tech company, whose scanners have also been used at sports stadiums and schools, has faced allegations of misconduct. Last month, Evolv’s board of directors fired its chief executive following an internal investigation that found certain sales had been “subject to extra-contractual terms and conditions.”
On Tuesday, the company announced it had resolved a previous probe launched by the Federal Trade Commission last year over allegations of deceptive marketing practices. The company is also under separate investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Despite the legal and regulatory scrutiny, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a pilot program this summer to bring a handful of scanners to the city’s subways to deter gun violence. The initiative drew immediate criticism from civil liberties groups who said the searches were unconstitutional, along with questions about its efficacy.
In October, the city revealed the scanners did not detect any passengers with firearms — but falsely alerted more than 100 times.
At the time, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department said it was still “evaluating the outcome of the pilot” and had not entered into any contract with Evolv.
Kentucky
State AG targets another big pharmacy benefit manager in case over opioid crisis
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s attorney general has expanded an opioid-related lawsuit to target another big pharmacy benefit manager that he claims contributed to the state’s deadly addiction crisis.
OptumRx has been added as a new defendant in the suit that was filed two months ago, Attorney General Russell Coleman said Tuesday. His claims against Optum and its affiliated organizations are similar to those initially made against Express Scripts, which remains a defendant in the case.
The Republican attorney general accused Optum of playing a central role in what he called the reckless promotion, dispensing and oversupply of opioids. OptumRx controls a pharmacy network consisting of about 67,000 retail pharmacy locations nationwide, the suit said.
Kentucky was ravaged by the addiction crisis, resulting in some of the nation’s highest overdose death rates.
“These groups pushed a profit-fueled agenda at the expense of Kentucky families, who are left with empty seats at the dinner table,” Coleman said in a release.
Optum did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Tuesday. When it was sued in September, Express Scripts responded that it has long worked to combat opioid overuse and abuse and would “vigorously contest these baseless allegations in court.”
Coleman initially filed the legal action in a state court, but the two sides are wrangling over whether it should be in state or federal court, his office said. He wants the case heard in state court.
Coleman has accused the defendants of using deceptive marketing to boost sales of highly addictive drugs. They also dispensed opioids through mail-order pharmacies without effective controls in violation of Kentucky and federal law, he said.
He is seeking, among other things, civil penalties for each willful violation of the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act, plus any other relief deemed appropriate by the court.
“Defendants have hidden their conduct through non-transparent business practices and by requiring each entity with whom they conduct business, such as opioid manufacturers, to enter into confidentiality agreements or otherwise keep their agreements confidential,” the lawsuit says.
Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, run prescription drug coverage for health insurers and employers that provide coverage. They help decide which drugs make a plan’s formulary, or list of covered medications. They also can determine where patients go to fill their prescriptions.
PBMs have drawn the ire of politicians, patients and others for years. PBMs say they play an important role in controlling drug costs and pass along most of the discounts they negotiate to their clients.
Government lawsuits against pharmacy benefit managers are the latest frontier – and maybe the last big one – in years of litigation over the opioid-related drug epidemic in the U.S.
Drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacy chains have already faced stacks of lawsuits and settled many of them, with most of the money required to be used to fight the overdose and addiction crisis.
Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. A decline in U.S. drug overdose deaths appears to have continued this year, giving experts hope the nation is seeing sustained improvement in the persistent epidemic.
Drug overdose deaths in Kentucky fell nearly 10% in 2023, marking a second straight annual decline, but state leaders say fatalities remain tragically high and the fight against the drug epidemic is far from over. Nearly 2,000 Kentuckians died last year from drug overdoses.
New York
Harvey Weinstein files legal claim alleging lack of medical care and hygiene at Rikers
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers filed a legal claim Tuesday against New York City, alleging that he is receiving substandard medical treatment in unhygienic conditions while in custody at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
The notice of claim, which is the first step in filing a lawsuit against the city, accuses the facility of failing to manage the former movie mogul’s medical conditions, which include chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes, and negligence ranging from “freezing” conditions to a lack of clean clothes.
The city’s law department and Department of Correction did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“When I last visited him, I found him with blood spatter on his prison garb, possibly from IV’s, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided clean underwear – hardly sanitary conditions for someone with severe medical conditions,” Weinstein’s attorney, Imran H. Ansari, said in a statement, comparing the facility to a “gulag.”
Weinstein, 72, has been in city custody since earlier this year, after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case is set to be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.
Weinstein was briefly hospitalized in April and again in July for health problems. His team has said he’s been treated for diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, COVID-19, and fluid on his heart and lungs.
The legal claim, which seeks $5 million in damages, argues he’d been returned to Rikers each time before he had fully recovered.
Weinstein’s film production company went into bankruptcy proceedings after his convictions, setting up a $17 million fund for a sexual misconduct claims fund.
Mississippi
AG seeks execution date for 1993 killing but lawyers say case could go to Supreme Court
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general is requesting an execution date for a man who’s been on death row for 30 years, but his lawyer says the request is premature because the inmate still intends to take an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Charles Ray Crawford, now 58, was sentenced to death in the 1993 kidnapping and killing of a community college student, 20-year-old Kristy Ray. Jurors in his 1994 trial cited a past rape conviction as an aggravating circumstance when they sentenced Crawford, but his attorneys said Monday that they’re appealing that conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a lower court ruling last week.
Crawford was arrested the day after Ray was abducted from her parents’ home and stabbed to death in northern Mississippi’s Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had blacked out and did not recall killing her.
At the time of that arrest, Crawford was days away from his scheduled trial on a charge of assaulting another woman by hitting her over the head with a hammer.
The assault trial was delayed several months, and he was convicted. In a separate trial, Crawford was convicted in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who was friends with the victim of the hammer assault. The two victims were at the same place during the attacks. Crawford said he also experienced blackouts and did not recall committing the rape or the hammer assault.
During the sentencing portion of Crawford’s capital murder trial, jurors found the rape conviction was an “aggravating circumstance” and they sentenced him to death, court records show.
In his latest federal appeal of the rape case, Ray said his previous lawyers provided unconstitutionally ineffective assistance for an insanity defense. Crawford received a mental evaluation at the state hospital, but the trial judge repeatedly declined to provide a psychiatrist or other mental health professional — other than the state expert — to assist in Crawford’s defense, according to court records.
In a split decision Friday, a majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Crawford’s appeal. Dissenting judges wrote that Crawford received an “inadequately prepared and presented insanity defense” and that “it took years for a qualified physician to conduct a full evaluation of Crawford.”
The dissenting judges quoted a neurologist, Dr. Siddhartha Nadkarni, who examined Crawford.
“Charles was laboring under such a defect of reason from his seizure disorder that he did not understand the nature and quality of his acts at the time of the crime,” Nadkarni wrote. “He is a severely brain- injured man (corroborated both by history and his neurological examination) who was essentially not present in any useful sense due to epileptic fits at the time of the crime.”
Multiple appeals are common in death penalty cases, and Crawford’s case already has been appealed multiple times using different arguments.
Hours after the federal appeals court denied Crawford’s appeal, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers asking the state Supreme Court to set a date for Crawford’s execution by lethal injection, writing that “he has exhausted all state and federal remedies.”
On Monday, the attorneys representing Crawford in the Mississippi Office of Post-Conviction Counsel filed papers saying they intend to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s decision.
