Louisiana
Federal jury to hear case against ex-BP engineer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Jury selection is underway in the Justice Department’s case against a former BP engineer charged with deleting text messages and voicemails about the company’s response to its massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dozens of potential jurors filled a New Orleans courtroom on Monday for the start of Kurt Mix’s federal trial.
Mix is charged with two counts of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors claim he deliberately deleted strings of text messages to and from a supervisor and a BP contractor to hamper a grand jury’s investigation of the spill.
The 52-year-old resident of Katy, Texas, is one of four current or former BP employees charged with crimes related to the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. His case is the first to be tried.
Alabama
Trial is delayed in lawsuit over 2009 piracy case
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama judge has delayed the trial over a lawsuit filed after Somalian pirates took over a U.S. cargo ship in 2009.
A civil lawsuit filed by crewmembers from the Maersk Alabama was set to go to court Monday in Mobile.
But court officials say the lawsuit is now headed to mediation and could end without a full-blown trial before jurors.
Crew members are suing Maersk Line Ltd. and the Mobile-based Waterman Steamship Corp. over the 2009 pirate attack that was dramatized in the recent movie “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks.
The lawsuit contends the ship was sailing too close to the Somalian coast when pirates boarded and took it over on April 8, 2009.
Maersk denies the claims. Court documents show Waterman had chartered the ship from Maersk.
Arizona
Court to consider gun advertising at bus stop issue
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona appellate court is considering whether Phoenix violated a gun-rights activist’s constitutional rights by removing his bus-stop ads that said that “guns save lives.”
A trial judge ruled last year that the city can limit advertising on its property by only allowing commercial advertising and has a reasonable policy to do that.
Alan Korwin’s lawyers argue that the city is trampling on his free-speech rights.
The Arizona Republic reports that Korwin is being represented in the case by Goldwater Institute, a conservative government-watchdog group.
His position also is also drawing support from the Arizona branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Its legal brief cites Korwin’s rights under the Arizona Constitution and urges the Court of Appeals to overturn Phoenix’s policy.
That court will hear arguments Tuesday.
Mississippi
Judge orders an update in bus suit settlement
GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Greyhound Bus Lines Inc. and a woman who sued the company over a 2008 accident in south Mississippi have until Friday to advise the judge of any settlement they reach in the case.
Megan Clancy sued Greyhound in Jackson County Circuit Court in July 2011, saying she was injured in the accident on Interstate 10 near D’Iberville on Aug. 2, 2008. The case was moved to federal court in 2011.
The lawsuit says she was a passenger in a vehicle when the driver slowed for traffic and the bus hit it from behind, causing her permanent injuries.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden said any settlement after Friday may result in him assessing jury costs. The trial is scheduled to begin next week.
Greyhound’s lawyer had no comment on the lawsuit.
Court records show her brother, Jon Clancy, also sued over the accident in Jackson County Circuit Court, where a jury ruled in Greyhound’s favor.
Greyhound tried to get Megan Clancy’s case dismissed, saying the lawsuits were identical and the federal case should be dismissed because the arguments had already been tried in state court.
However, the verdict in Jon Clancy’s case was set aside on Sept. 30, and Ozerden ruled on Oct. 4 that Megan Clancy’s case could continue, according to court records.
Florida
Killer who used Craigslist wants sentence tossed
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A Jacksonville man who killed a Navy wife after answering her personal ad on Craigslist may end up changing the way death-penalty cases are defended in Florida.
The Florida Times-Union reports that lawyers for David Kelsey Sparre are asking the Florida Supreme Court to throw out his death sentence for the murder of 21-year-old Tiara Pool. Her body was found with an estimated 89 slashes inside her apartment in July 2010.
The justices are scheduled to hear the case Tuesday.
Sparre arranged to meet Pool while her husband was deployed at sea. Sparre later told police and the mother of his child that he killed Pool for the “rush.”
“After she quit fighting, I tilted her head and sliced her throat,” Sparre wrote in the letter to the mother of his daughter.
Sparre wrote, “I want to tell you the truth about why I killed that girl,” then explained that he planned the killing for a week, looking for a victim in Jacksonville.
In court filings Sparre’s public defender argues that Circuit Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt was wrong to sentence Sparre to death without allowing evidence to be presented on his mental-health and substance-abuse issues.
Sparre told his lawyers he didn’t want to mount a defense. But Assistant Public Defender Nada Carey said that when death-penalty defendants refuse to defend themselves, the state still has an obligation to consider factors that would justify life in prison without parole instead of Death Row.
At a death-penalty hearing prior to sentencing in 2012, Chief Assistant Public Defender Refik Eler, who defended Sparre at trial, had planned to introduce evidence that he was mentally unbalanced and had been abusing drugs and alcohol since he was 11.
But Sparre instructed Eler not to present any evidence on his behalf. With no defense, and friends and family of Pool testifying for the prosecution during the hearing, the jury that convicted Sparre unanimously recommended he get death and Senterfitt followed its recommendation.
The Supreme Court should send Sparre back for a resentencing and require the appointment of special counsel to present mitigating evidence in cases where a defendant does not contest the death penalty, Carey said.
Assistant Attorney General Charmaine Millsaps argued that the idea of appointing a special counsel every time death-penalty defendants refuse to defend themselves is impractical.
