California
Man charged in killing of actor James Handy found mentally incompetent for prosecution
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge found Monday that a man charged with murder in the stabbing of actor James Handy is not mentally competent for criminal court proceedings.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maria Cavalluzzi ruled that 44-year-old Michael Gledhill cannot understand the case against him and cannot rationally assist his lawyer in his own defense.
Handy, the 81-year-old actor whose credits include “Jumanji” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” was in a relationship with Gledhill’s mother, and was found stabbed in the chest and lying unconscious outside her home on June 3, police and prosecutors said. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Gledhill was arrested after telling police he was the person they were looking for. Officers had responded to the home after a 911 caller said, “I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin,” police said.
Gledhill has not entered a plea and has not appeared in court in the case. At his scheduled arraignment on June 5, a judge paused his prosecution and sent the case to a court that specializes in mental health evaluation.
That court ruled promptly after psychiatric evaluations that he was not competent. Cavalluzzi also found at a hearing Monday that Gledhill cannot make proper medication decisions. She signed an order saying he could be involuntarily medicated for one year, citing a psychiatrist’s determination that his mental health could be hugely helped by proper drugs.
She ordered him to appear in court on July 14 for a hearing on his long-term placement. His case will head to trial if he is later found to be competent.
Emails seeking comment from attorneys for both sides were not immediately answered.
Brian Delate, a longtime friend and fellow actor of Handy, told The Associated Press soon after Handy was killed that Gledhill’s mother had fixed up her garage so her son could live there. Handy had his own home, but spent much of his time there, his friend said. Delate said Handy had mentioned in passing that his girlfriend’s son had mental health problems.
Handy, a ubiquitous character actor, appeared in films and TV shows for decades.
He was known for his role as an exterminator in the 1995 film “Jumanji” and more recently as the bartender Jimmy in the 2022 film “Top Gun: Maverick.” He also appeared in many of TV’s top crime dramas, including “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “The Closer” and “Cold Case.”
New Jersey
Prosecutors allege that mob hitman turned councilman has returned to crime
ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. (AP) — A notorious mob hitman who once testified against John “Junior” Gotti before cleaning up his life and becoming a councilman in New Jersey has been arrested on extortion and loansharking charges that, if proven, reflect a return to the lifestyle of his youth.
John Alite, 63, was arrested on Friday in New Jersey, where he was sworn in early last year as a councilman in the borough of Englishtown. Released after a court appearance Saturday, Alite is scheduled to return to court for a detention hearing Wednesday.
His attorney, Douglas Anton, responding to an email seeking comment, said he did not want to speak about the case before the next court appearance.
Alite faces multiple counts of extortion, corporate misconduct, loansharking and terroristic threats.
Alite provided loans at exorbitant rates before threatening violence to collect on them, authorities said, citing the discovery in his home of metal knuckles, an expandable baton, six baseball bats and about two dozen knives, including switchblades.
The baseball bats, authorities said, included one stored near his home’s front door and five more in a kitchen storage bench.
An officer of the New Jersey State Police, an investigative arm of the attorney general’s office, said in court papers that it appeared that the weapons found in Alite’s residence were intended for use in collecting debts.
According to court papers, Alite had threatened one person he had lent money to, saying he would strike him across the head with a baseball bat if he didn’t meet his demands.
Alite also had bragged that he had in the past endeavored to “gut” people like “fish,” the court papers said.
In a release, prosecutors said Alite carried out crimes in part through his corporation, Straightened-Out Entertainment Inc.
They said he illegally obtained property and money from his victims by threats of violence in ways that reflected his 2009 testimony at a Gotti trial that ended with a deadlocked jury.
Alite told a Manhattan federal court jury that he killed a childhood friend to earn respect from fellow mobsters.
Washington
DOJ withdraws subpoenas that sought reporters’ grand jury testimony, sources say
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department issued and then withdrew subpoenas that sought to compel reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify before a grand jury, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Washington Post confirmed that one of its reporters received a subpoena from the Trump administration as part of a broader and aggressive crackdown on media leaks that in January also included the extraordinary step of an FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home and the seizure of her devices. Journalists at The Wall Street Journal also received grand jury subpoenas, according to people familiar with the matter, a rare and unusual move that critics said was a threat against press freedom.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the government withdrew the subpoenas or what precise news coverage the subpoenas concerned, but the decision to rescind them, first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post, was confirmed by people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a non-public law enforcement action.
Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray wrote in a staff email obtained by The Associated Press that a subpoena to Ellen Nakashima, a prominent national security journalist who has reported on the Iran war and deadly U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea, had been withdrawn.
“The unwarranted subpoena of our reporter Ellen Nakashima – a clear violation of constitutionally guaranteed press freedom – was another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations. We will continue to stand fully behind the journalism of The Washington Post and fight all efforts by any administration that violate our First Amendment rights,” a newspaper spokesperson said in a statement.
A spokesperson for The Wall Street Journal didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday. An email seeking comment was sent to the Justice Department.
Mark Schoeff Jr., a reporter at CQ Roll Call and president of the National Press Club, called the decision to seek grand jury testimony from journalists, “one of the most aggressive actions against a free and independent press in recent memory.”
“Reporters were one step away from being forced to participate in a criminal investigation because they were doing their jobs. That should alarm every American who values a free press,” Schoeff said in a statement.
The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
Though the Justice Department across presidential administration has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel a reporter to reveal their sources before a grand jury.
In April, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists. A memo she issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo states.
Washington
Supreme Court kills suit claiming Cisco’s technology helped China persecute Falun Gong members
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted tech giant Cisco’s bid to shut down a lawsuit claiming that the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China.
The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum for the suits, rejecting arguments made by the plaintiffs that the suits should go forward under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.
The decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her majority opinion that the justices “close the door” that the court slightly opened in 2004 when it suggested that some human-rights claims might be viable under the ATS. “In truth, this class is a null set,” Barrett wrote, while acknowledging such cases “frequently involve heinous and inhumane acts.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the court “closes the courthouse doors not just to respondents, but to virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS.”
Falun Gong members had sought to overcome the court’s skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.
An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.
In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the “Golden Shield,” China’s internet censorship effort, as a sales opportunity. The company quoted a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an “evil cult.” A Cisco presentation reviewed by the AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web.
Other presentations reviewed by the AP show that Cisco represented Falun Gong material as a “threat” and built out a national information system to track Falun Gong believers. In 2011, Falun Gong members sued Cisco, alleging the company tailored technology for Beijing that it knew would be used to track, detain and torture believers.
At arguments in April, Sotomayor said Cisco “knew that those people will be tortured.” A lawyer for the company said, “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations.”
Man charged in killing of actor James Handy found mentally incompetent for prosecution
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge found Monday that a man charged with murder in the stabbing of actor James Handy is not mentally competent for criminal court proceedings.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maria Cavalluzzi ruled that 44-year-old Michael Gledhill cannot understand the case against him and cannot rationally assist his lawyer in his own defense.
Handy, the 81-year-old actor whose credits include “Jumanji” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” was in a relationship with Gledhill’s mother, and was found stabbed in the chest and lying unconscious outside her home on June 3, police and prosecutors said. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Gledhill was arrested after telling police he was the person they were looking for. Officers had responded to the home after a 911 caller said, “I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin,” police said.
Gledhill has not entered a plea and has not appeared in court in the case. At his scheduled arraignment on June 5, a judge paused his prosecution and sent the case to a court that specializes in mental health evaluation.
That court ruled promptly after psychiatric evaluations that he was not competent. Cavalluzzi also found at a hearing Monday that Gledhill cannot make proper medication decisions. She signed an order saying he could be involuntarily medicated for one year, citing a psychiatrist’s determination that his mental health could be hugely helped by proper drugs.
She ordered him to appear in court on July 14 for a hearing on his long-term placement. His case will head to trial if he is later found to be competent.
Emails seeking comment from attorneys for both sides were not immediately answered.
Brian Delate, a longtime friend and fellow actor of Handy, told The Associated Press soon after Handy was killed that Gledhill’s mother had fixed up her garage so her son could live there. Handy had his own home, but spent much of his time there, his friend said. Delate said Handy had mentioned in passing that his girlfriend’s son had mental health problems.
Handy, a ubiquitous character actor, appeared in films and TV shows for decades.
He was known for his role as an exterminator in the 1995 film “Jumanji” and more recently as the bartender Jimmy in the 2022 film “Top Gun: Maverick.” He also appeared in many of TV’s top crime dramas, including “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “The Closer” and “Cold Case.”
New Jersey
Prosecutors allege that mob hitman turned councilman has returned to crime
ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. (AP) — A notorious mob hitman who once testified against John “Junior” Gotti before cleaning up his life and becoming a councilman in New Jersey has been arrested on extortion and loansharking charges that, if proven, reflect a return to the lifestyle of his youth.
John Alite, 63, was arrested on Friday in New Jersey, where he was sworn in early last year as a councilman in the borough of Englishtown. Released after a court appearance Saturday, Alite is scheduled to return to court for a detention hearing Wednesday.
His attorney, Douglas Anton, responding to an email seeking comment, said he did not want to speak about the case before the next court appearance.
Alite faces multiple counts of extortion, corporate misconduct, loansharking and terroristic threats.
Alite provided loans at exorbitant rates before threatening violence to collect on them, authorities said, citing the discovery in his home of metal knuckles, an expandable baton, six baseball bats and about two dozen knives, including switchblades.
The baseball bats, authorities said, included one stored near his home’s front door and five more in a kitchen storage bench.
An officer of the New Jersey State Police, an investigative arm of the attorney general’s office, said in court papers that it appeared that the weapons found in Alite’s residence were intended for use in collecting debts.
According to court papers, Alite had threatened one person he had lent money to, saying he would strike him across the head with a baseball bat if he didn’t meet his demands.
Alite also had bragged that he had in the past endeavored to “gut” people like “fish,” the court papers said.
In a release, prosecutors said Alite carried out crimes in part through his corporation, Straightened-Out Entertainment Inc.
They said he illegally obtained property and money from his victims by threats of violence in ways that reflected his 2009 testimony at a Gotti trial that ended with a deadlocked jury.
Alite told a Manhattan federal court jury that he killed a childhood friend to earn respect from fellow mobsters.
Washington
DOJ withdraws subpoenas that sought reporters’ grand jury testimony, sources say
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department issued and then withdrew subpoenas that sought to compel reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify before a grand jury, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Washington Post confirmed that one of its reporters received a subpoena from the Trump administration as part of a broader and aggressive crackdown on media leaks that in January also included the extraordinary step of an FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home and the seizure of her devices. Journalists at The Wall Street Journal also received grand jury subpoenas, according to people familiar with the matter, a rare and unusual move that critics said was a threat against press freedom.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the government withdrew the subpoenas or what precise news coverage the subpoenas concerned, but the decision to rescind them, first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post, was confirmed by people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a non-public law enforcement action.
Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray wrote in a staff email obtained by The Associated Press that a subpoena to Ellen Nakashima, a prominent national security journalist who has reported on the Iran war and deadly U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea, had been withdrawn.
“The unwarranted subpoena of our reporter Ellen Nakashima – a clear violation of constitutionally guaranteed press freedom – was another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations. We will continue to stand fully behind the journalism of The Washington Post and fight all efforts by any administration that violate our First Amendment rights,” a newspaper spokesperson said in a statement.
A spokesperson for The Wall Street Journal didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday. An email seeking comment was sent to the Justice Department.
Mark Schoeff Jr., a reporter at CQ Roll Call and president of the National Press Club, called the decision to seek grand jury testimony from journalists, “one of the most aggressive actions against a free and independent press in recent memory.”
“Reporters were one step away from being forced to participate in a criminal investigation because they were doing their jobs. That should alarm every American who values a free press,” Schoeff said in a statement.
The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
Though the Justice Department across presidential administration has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel a reporter to reveal their sources before a grand jury.
In April, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists. A memo she issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo states.
Washington
Supreme Court kills suit claiming Cisco’s technology helped China persecute Falun Gong members
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted tech giant Cisco’s bid to shut down a lawsuit claiming that the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China.
The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum for the suits, rejecting arguments made by the plaintiffs that the suits should go forward under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.
The decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her majority opinion that the justices “close the door” that the court slightly opened in 2004 when it suggested that some human-rights claims might be viable under the ATS. “In truth, this class is a null set,” Barrett wrote, while acknowledging such cases “frequently involve heinous and inhumane acts.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the court “closes the courthouse doors not just to respondents, but to virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS.”
Falun Gong members had sought to overcome the court’s skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.
An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.
In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the “Golden Shield,” China’s internet censorship effort, as a sales opportunity. The company quoted a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an “evil cult.” A Cisco presentation reviewed by the AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web.
Other presentations reviewed by the AP show that Cisco represented Falun Gong material as a “threat” and built out a national information system to track Falun Gong believers. In 2011, Falun Gong members sued Cisco, alleging the company tailored technology for Beijing that it knew would be used to track, detain and torture believers.
At arguments in April, Sotomayor said Cisco “knew that those people will be tortured.” A lawyer for the company said, “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations.”
