Kansas
Man charged with capital murder over a deputy’s fatal shooting
KANSAS CITY (AP) — A 38-year-old man who previously served time in prison for aggravated robbery and other crimes has been charged with capital murder in Kansas in connection with the fatal shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Kansas City, Kansas.
Shawn M. Harris also is charged with violating a Kansas law that prohibits people with felony records from possessing weapons. The charges were filed Monday in Wyandotte County District Court by District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. Harris made his first court appearance Tuesday, with District Judge Daniel Cahill setting his bond at $2 million. He is jailed in neighboring Johnson County.
Authorities say Harris opened fire Saturday when Wyandotte County Deputy Elijah Ming and a Kansas City, Kansas, police officer approached his home after receiving a report from a woman living there that he had threatened friends who were helping her move out. Ming was hit multiple times and died hours later at a hospital.
Authorities said it was a routine “standby” call, where police go to keep the peace for someone.
“We do thousands of these types of calls a year,” Kansas City, Kansas, Police Chief Karl Oakman said during a news conference Tuesday.
Dupree said he will confer with Ming’s family before deciding within the next 10 days whether to pursue a death sentence. The only alternative sentence would be life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Nine men are on death row in Kansas. But the state hasn’t executed anyone since June 1965, when the sentence was carried out by hanging instead of lethal injection.
The state’s death penalty defense unit has been appointed to represent Harris because he could not afford to hire an attorney. Chief Capital Defender Mark Manna declined comment Tuesday.
Harris was paroled in Kansas in October 2023 after pleading guilty to seven felony charges in 2012 and 2013 in Kansas and Missouri, according to records available online.
The crimes included aggravated robbery, attempted aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and felony theft in Wyandotte County and felony tampering with a motor vehicle in Lafayette County, Missouri, east of Kansas City. He was taken from Kansas to Missouri in 2013 and pled guilty to an assault charge while serving time there. He returned to Kansas in 2021.
New York
Russian soprano’s case alleging national original discrimination against the Met Opera to proceed
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge says Russian soprano Anna Netrebko can move forward with her case claiming national original discrimination by the Metropolitan Opera, which dropped her after she refused to repudiate President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s campaign against Ukraine.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Analisa Nadine Torres in Manhattan was made public Wednesday, a day after it was issued. The case, which will proceed alongside her claim of gender discrimination, has yet to be scheduled for trial.
The Met did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Met General Manager Peter Gelb had demanded that she repudiate Putin shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but she refused and was withdrawn from three Met productions. The Met replaced her with Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in at least one of those productions.
Last August, Torres dismissed the performer’s national original discrimination claim, when she also threw out allegations of defamation and breach of contract. But in her latest decision, the judge wrote that the “allegations support the inference that Netrebko’s replacement by non-Russian artists occurred under circumstances giving rise to at least a ‘minimal’ inference of discrimination.”
The American Guild of Musical Artists filed a grievance on Netrebko’s behalf and arbitrator Howard C. Edelman ruled in February 2023 that the Met violated the union’s collective bargaining agreement when it canceled deals with Netrebko for three productions. Edelman awarded compensation the union calculated at $209,103.48.
Torres allowed Netrebko to proceed with her separate allegation of gender discrimination under the New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law. She said the Met treated Netrebko’s male counterparts with connections to Putin and the Russian government more favorably. She cited bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin and baritones Igor Golovatenko and Alexey Markov, who have continued to sing at the Met.
California
Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas charged with running illegal poker games at his LA mansion
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was arrested Wednesday along with five other people, including a suspected member of an Israeli organized crime group, on suspicion of hosting illegal high-stakes poker games at a Los Angeles mansion owned by Arenas, federal prosecutors said.
All six defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and one count of operating an illegal gambling business, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They were all scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Arenas, 43, is also charged with making false statements to federal investigators, the statement said. He is named in the indictment as “Agent Zero,” a nickname from his playing days with the Washington Wizards.
Arenas appeared in court Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and was released on a $50,000 bond after pleading not guilty to the charges. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 23.
His attorney Jerome Friedberg said outside the courthouse that he hadn’t had much time to speak with his client and couldn’t comment on the case.
“At this point in the case, he is presumed innocent, right?” Friedberg said. “He has the same right as any other citizen to that presumption and that’s how he should be treated.”
The other five defendants are residents of Los Angeles ranging in age from 27 to 52. Among them is a 49-year-old man described by prosecutors as “a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.”
The indictment says that from September 2021 to July 2022, the defendants staged the home in the Encino neighborhood to host “Pot Limit Omaha” poker games and other illegal gambling activity. The poker players paid a “rake,” a fee charged as a percentage or fixed amount from each hand gambled, court documents claim.
One of the defendants hired young women who, in exchange for tips, served drinks and provided massages and “offered companionship” to the poker players, according to prosecutors.
“The women were charged a ‘tax’ – a percentage of their earnings from working the games. Chefs, valets, and armed security guards also were hired to staff these illegal poker games,” the statement said.
The Israeli man faces separate charges including marriage fraud and lying on immigration documents. He is suspected of conspiring with a 35-year-old Los Angeles woman to enter into a sham marriage for the purposes of obtaining permanent legal status in the U.S.
If convicted, the defendants would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count, prosecutors said.
Arenas averaged 20.7 points during an 11-year career with four teams, most notably a seven-plus season stint in Washington from 2004-11.
Charismatic and mercurial, Arenas — who counted “Agent Zero” (representing his number) and “Hibachi” for the way he could heat up during a game among his many nicknames — was a three-time All-Star, a gifted scorer and one of the key cogs in a handful of Wizards teams that enjoyed modest success in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Yet Arenas’ run in Washington ended in disgrace. Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton were suspended for the balance of the NBA season in January 2010 following a locker-room incident in which both players pulled guns on each other.
Arenas returned to play briefly for Washington the following season before being traded to Orlando. He then bounced to Memphis in 2011, coming off the bench for 17 games before stepping away to play in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2012-13. He never returned to the NBA.
His son, Alijah Arenas, was a Los Angeles high school basketball star who is a highly touted freshman player for the University of Southern California. His college career is on hold pending knee surgery and rehab is expected to take months, the school said last week.
Tennessee
Court: Death row inmate can be executed without deactivating implanted defibrillator
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee death row inmate can be executed without deactivating his implanted defibrillator, the state’s high court ruled on Thursday.
The ruling overturns a lower court’s order and paves the way for Byron Black to be executed on Tuesday morning, as scheduled.
The Tennessee Supreme Court found that requiring that the device be deactivated “amounted to a stay of execution,” which is not within the lower court’s power.
At issue is how Black’s heart-regulating device will perform when the state attempts to execute him with a lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Russell Perkins previously found that the implanted cardioverter-defibrillator is likely to continuously shock Black’s heart, causing unnecessary pain and prolonging the execution. He ordered the state to deactivate the device shortly before the execution.
The order kept in mind the possibility that Black could win a last-minute reprieve. Deactivating it too far in advance might mean Black could die just before a ruling that would have saved him.
Lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General’s office at first said they would need to transport Black to Nashville General Hospital for the deactivation because the doctors there were not willing to come to the execution chamber. On Wednesday, the state changed course, admitting that the hospital was unwilling to take part in the procedure, regardless of location. Most medical professionals consider any participation in executions to be a violation of medical ethics.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling did not address the issue of whether Black’s defibrillator will continuously shock his heart or whether that would cause unnecessary suffering, in violation of the state and federal constitutions. The ruling left open the possibility that the state could deactivate the device, if they can do so in a way that does not interfere with the execution.
Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work-release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband.
Kelley Henry, one of Black’s attorneys, said on Thursday that she had not yet received the Tennessee Supreme Court’s opinion. A spokesperson for the state Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Black’s motion to deactivate his defibrillator was filed within a larger lawsuit within a general challenge he and other death row inmates filed against the state’s new execution protocol. The trial isn’t until 2026.
Man charged with capital murder over a deputy’s fatal shooting
KANSAS CITY (AP) — A 38-year-old man who previously served time in prison for aggravated robbery and other crimes has been charged with capital murder in Kansas in connection with the fatal shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Kansas City, Kansas.
Shawn M. Harris also is charged with violating a Kansas law that prohibits people with felony records from possessing weapons. The charges were filed Monday in Wyandotte County District Court by District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. Harris made his first court appearance Tuesday, with District Judge Daniel Cahill setting his bond at $2 million. He is jailed in neighboring Johnson County.
Authorities say Harris opened fire Saturday when Wyandotte County Deputy Elijah Ming and a Kansas City, Kansas, police officer approached his home after receiving a report from a woman living there that he had threatened friends who were helping her move out. Ming was hit multiple times and died hours later at a hospital.
Authorities said it was a routine “standby” call, where police go to keep the peace for someone.
“We do thousands of these types of calls a year,” Kansas City, Kansas, Police Chief Karl Oakman said during a news conference Tuesday.
Dupree said he will confer with Ming’s family before deciding within the next 10 days whether to pursue a death sentence. The only alternative sentence would be life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Nine men are on death row in Kansas. But the state hasn’t executed anyone since June 1965, when the sentence was carried out by hanging instead of lethal injection.
The state’s death penalty defense unit has been appointed to represent Harris because he could not afford to hire an attorney. Chief Capital Defender Mark Manna declined comment Tuesday.
Harris was paroled in Kansas in October 2023 after pleading guilty to seven felony charges in 2012 and 2013 in Kansas and Missouri, according to records available online.
The crimes included aggravated robbery, attempted aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and felony theft in Wyandotte County and felony tampering with a motor vehicle in Lafayette County, Missouri, east of Kansas City. He was taken from Kansas to Missouri in 2013 and pled guilty to an assault charge while serving time there. He returned to Kansas in 2021.
New York
Russian soprano’s case alleging national original discrimination against the Met Opera to proceed
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge says Russian soprano Anna Netrebko can move forward with her case claiming national original discrimination by the Metropolitan Opera, which dropped her after she refused to repudiate President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s campaign against Ukraine.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Analisa Nadine Torres in Manhattan was made public Wednesday, a day after it was issued. The case, which will proceed alongside her claim of gender discrimination, has yet to be scheduled for trial.
The Met did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Met General Manager Peter Gelb had demanded that she repudiate Putin shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but she refused and was withdrawn from three Met productions. The Met replaced her with Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in at least one of those productions.
Last August, Torres dismissed the performer’s national original discrimination claim, when she also threw out allegations of defamation and breach of contract. But in her latest decision, the judge wrote that the “allegations support the inference that Netrebko’s replacement by non-Russian artists occurred under circumstances giving rise to at least a ‘minimal’ inference of discrimination.”
The American Guild of Musical Artists filed a grievance on Netrebko’s behalf and arbitrator Howard C. Edelman ruled in February 2023 that the Met violated the union’s collective bargaining agreement when it canceled deals with Netrebko for three productions. Edelman awarded compensation the union calculated at $209,103.48.
Torres allowed Netrebko to proceed with her separate allegation of gender discrimination under the New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law. She said the Met treated Netrebko’s male counterparts with connections to Putin and the Russian government more favorably. She cited bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin and baritones Igor Golovatenko and Alexey Markov, who have continued to sing at the Met.
California
Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas charged with running illegal poker games at his LA mansion
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was arrested Wednesday along with five other people, including a suspected member of an Israeli organized crime group, on suspicion of hosting illegal high-stakes poker games at a Los Angeles mansion owned by Arenas, federal prosecutors said.
All six defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and one count of operating an illegal gambling business, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They were all scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Arenas, 43, is also charged with making false statements to federal investigators, the statement said. He is named in the indictment as “Agent Zero,” a nickname from his playing days with the Washington Wizards.
Arenas appeared in court Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and was released on a $50,000 bond after pleading not guilty to the charges. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 23.
His attorney Jerome Friedberg said outside the courthouse that he hadn’t had much time to speak with his client and couldn’t comment on the case.
“At this point in the case, he is presumed innocent, right?” Friedberg said. “He has the same right as any other citizen to that presumption and that’s how he should be treated.”
The other five defendants are residents of Los Angeles ranging in age from 27 to 52. Among them is a 49-year-old man described by prosecutors as “a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.”
The indictment says that from September 2021 to July 2022, the defendants staged the home in the Encino neighborhood to host “Pot Limit Omaha” poker games and other illegal gambling activity. The poker players paid a “rake,” a fee charged as a percentage or fixed amount from each hand gambled, court documents claim.
One of the defendants hired young women who, in exchange for tips, served drinks and provided massages and “offered companionship” to the poker players, according to prosecutors.
“The women were charged a ‘tax’ – a percentage of their earnings from working the games. Chefs, valets, and armed security guards also were hired to staff these illegal poker games,” the statement said.
The Israeli man faces separate charges including marriage fraud and lying on immigration documents. He is suspected of conspiring with a 35-year-old Los Angeles woman to enter into a sham marriage for the purposes of obtaining permanent legal status in the U.S.
If convicted, the defendants would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count, prosecutors said.
Arenas averaged 20.7 points during an 11-year career with four teams, most notably a seven-plus season stint in Washington from 2004-11.
Charismatic and mercurial, Arenas — who counted “Agent Zero” (representing his number) and “Hibachi” for the way he could heat up during a game among his many nicknames — was a three-time All-Star, a gifted scorer and one of the key cogs in a handful of Wizards teams that enjoyed modest success in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Yet Arenas’ run in Washington ended in disgrace. Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton were suspended for the balance of the NBA season in January 2010 following a locker-room incident in which both players pulled guns on each other.
Arenas returned to play briefly for Washington the following season before being traded to Orlando. He then bounced to Memphis in 2011, coming off the bench for 17 games before stepping away to play in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2012-13. He never returned to the NBA.
His son, Alijah Arenas, was a Los Angeles high school basketball star who is a highly touted freshman player for the University of Southern California. His college career is on hold pending knee surgery and rehab is expected to take months, the school said last week.
Tennessee
Court: Death row inmate can be executed without deactivating implanted defibrillator
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee death row inmate can be executed without deactivating his implanted defibrillator, the state’s high court ruled on Thursday.
The ruling overturns a lower court’s order and paves the way for Byron Black to be executed on Tuesday morning, as scheduled.
The Tennessee Supreme Court found that requiring that the device be deactivated “amounted to a stay of execution,” which is not within the lower court’s power.
At issue is how Black’s heart-regulating device will perform when the state attempts to execute him with a lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital. Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Russell Perkins previously found that the implanted cardioverter-defibrillator is likely to continuously shock Black’s heart, causing unnecessary pain and prolonging the execution. He ordered the state to deactivate the device shortly before the execution.
The order kept in mind the possibility that Black could win a last-minute reprieve. Deactivating it too far in advance might mean Black could die just before a ruling that would have saved him.
Lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General’s office at first said they would need to transport Black to Nashville General Hospital for the deactivation because the doctors there were not willing to come to the execution chamber. On Wednesday, the state changed course, admitting that the hospital was unwilling to take part in the procedure, regardless of location. Most medical professionals consider any participation in executions to be a violation of medical ethics.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling did not address the issue of whether Black’s defibrillator will continuously shock his heart or whether that would cause unnecessary suffering, in violation of the state and federal constitutions. The ruling left open the possibility that the state could deactivate the device, if they can do so in a way that does not interfere with the execution.
Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work-release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband.
Kelley Henry, one of Black’s attorneys, said on Thursday that she had not yet received the Tennessee Supreme Court’s opinion. A spokesperson for the state Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Black’s motion to deactivate his defibrillator was filed within a larger lawsuit within a general challenge he and other death row inmates filed against the state’s new execution protocol. The trial isn’t until 2026.
