Court Digest

Illinois
Woman headed to prison for fraud obtained COVID-relief loan
CHICAGO (AP) — An Illinois woman facing incarceration for stealing millions of dollars through her boyfriend’s business credit card allegedly obtained a pandemic relief loan as she prepared to report to prison, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago revealed Monday.

A U.S. District Court judge was asked by federal prosecutors to revoke the bond of Crystal Lundberg, who they say illegally obtained a $150,000 pandemic-relief loan. Prosecutors allege in a court filing that Lundberg, 34, lied on applications for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan application and failed to disclose her fraud conviction or her prison sentence. Charges have yet to be filed against Lundberg.

The federal loan, which was disbursed in September, was to be used to keep a beauty salon Lundberg owned solvent during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Lundberg spent the money on trips, electronics, clothing and legal bills, prosecutors allege. An FBI search of the bank account where the funds were sent had been drained of funds, prosecutors said.

Lundberg was sentenced last year to 52 months in prison for racking up nearly $5.8 million in charges on luxury items on the France-based drug delivery firm Nemera corporate credit card of Scott Kennedy.

Prosecutors said the couple spent much of the money after Lundberg moved in 2016 with her children and pets to San Diego. Nemera unwittingly footed her $12,000-a-month rent for a 7,000-square-foot mansion. Lundberg also spent about $585,000 on a failed medical spa, cars, jewelry and trips.

Kennedy, who was fired from his job as manager for Nemera’s Buffalo Grove plant, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and agreed to cooperate with the government. He received a 25-month prison sentence.

Lundberg was scheduled to report to prison on Dec. 31. An attorney for Lundberg is arranging for her surrender, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Eichenseer. The attorney was not immediately available for comment.

Colorado
Court weighs challenge to discrimination law
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado web designer should not have to create wedding websites for same-sex couples under the state’s anti-discrimination law because it would amount to forced speech that violates her religious beliefs, a lawyer told an appeals court Monday.

Kristen Waggoner, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, told a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the issue for designer Lorie Smith, who is a Christian, is the message and not the customer.

“No one should be forced to express a message that violates their convictions,” Waggoner said during the virtual hearing.

She is trying to revive a lawsuit challenging the state’s law, which her group also targeted on behalf of Colorado baker Jack Phillips in a case decided in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The high court decided the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had acted with anti-religious bias against Phillips after he refused to bake a cake for two men who were getting married. But it did not rule on the larger issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to LGBT people.

On Monday, Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich asked what Smith would do if she was approached by a straight wedding planner asking her to create four heterosexual wedding sites and one for a same-sex wedding.
Waggoner said Smith would not take that job.

Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson questioned whether Smith should even be allowed to challenge the law since she has not started offering wedding websites yet.

But if she did, he said her argument would mean she would refuse to create a website for a hypothetical same-sex couple named Alex and Taylor but agree to make the same one for an opposite sex couple with the same names. He said that would be discrimination under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In the case of Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Olson said the Supreme Court could not agree on whether cakes are a form of expression. However, he said a subjective decision about whether a company’s service amounted to speech was not a workable way of determining discrimination.

“The company cannot discriminate who it serves based on a protective class status,” he said.

However, a divided three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found in favor of two Christian filmmakers who said they should not have to make videos celebrating same-sex marriage under Minnesota’s anti-discrimination law because the videos are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

The court reinstated the lawsuit brought by Carl and Angel Larsen of Telescope Media Group in St. Cloud. They also are being represented by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, which was found in 1994 by Christian leaders concerned about religious freedom.

Missouri
Ex-Cub Scout leader sentenced to life for child sex abuse
ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — A former Cub Scout leader has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing five children over the past decade.

Matthew Baker, 51, was sentenced Monday after he pleaded guilty to several counts of child molestation, statutory sodomy, witness tampering and exposing himself to a child, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Baker admitted sexually abusing the five children, who were all under the age of 12 and included two of his relatives, at his home in O’Fallon, Missouri, from 2010 to 2018. The witness tampering charges were brought earlier this year after police say he tried to arrange from jail to have someone attack two of the children to keep them from testifying against him.

Prosecutors said Baker also asked a fellow inmate to send a letter he had written to the parents of a 10-year-old victim, asking them to have their child recant the accusations of abuse.

Baker’s sentence came on the same day as the deadline for abuse survivors to submit claims against the Boy Scouts of America in the organization’s bankruptcy case. About 90,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in that case. The 110-year-old organization filed for bankruptcy protection in February in the face of hundreds of lawsuits alleging decades-old sex abuse by Scout leaders.

New Mexico
Details emerge from federal raid on 21 Navajo-area farms
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The U.S. attorney’s office says it destroyed a quarter-million plants during marijuana eradication efforts at 21 farms in the Shiprock area of the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico.

In a news release Monday, federal prosecutors say the raids by U.S., state and tribal law enforcement authorities took three days to carry out, starting on Nov. 9, and involved more than 1,100 makeshift greenhouses.
In one instance, 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of processed marijuana was discovered under a tarp. The news release makes no mention of arrests or charges.

In October, more than a dozen people were arrested on drug charges at a motel in the area. Authorities alleged the suspects were trimming marijuana plants in multiple motel rooms as marijuana was being stored in other rooms. Investigators were trying to determine whether the suspects were tied to the hemp operations.

The Navajo Nation just weeks ago sued nearly three dozen people, accusing them of illegally growing hemp or marijuana on the reservation. The lawsuit claims that the operations are contaminating the tribe’s water, land and other natural resources. It was the second such lawsuit the tribe’s Department of Justice has filed this year.

The tribe does not have a regulatory system for industrial hemp on the vast reservation that spans parts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

New Mexico has no legal market for recreational cannabis and limits medical marijuana producers to 1,750 plants per licensed producer.

Massachusetts
Prosecutor vacates another 100 tainted drug lab convictions
BOSTON (AP) — Boston’s top prosecutor has moved to throw out about 100 more convictions tainted by the misconduct of a former drug lab chemist, she said Tuesday.

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said the cases are “forever tainted” by Annie Dookhan, who was convicted of tampering with evidence and sentenced to three years in prison.

Thousands of convictions across the state have already been tossed because of Dookhan’s actions. Rollins’ office, which handles cases in Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop, said she has moved to vacate another 108 cases.

“No defendant impacted by this ignominious chapter of Massachusetts law enforcement history should continue to bear the burden of Dookhan’s deceit, her sad and desperate need for attention, and the enormous amount of harm she inflicted upon so many,” Rollins said in an emailed statement.

With the coronavirus pandemic disrupting court operations, it doesn’t make sense to spend the resources on the cases, she said.

Furthermore, the defendants face mandatory minimums that “make it infinitely easier to persuade and leverage defendants to plead guilty,” Rollins said.

A study commissioned by late Supreme Judicial Court Chief Ralph Gants this year found that Black and Latino defendants are more likely to get hit with charges that carry mandatory minimum prison time.


Alabama
Man set for trial in slaying of exhibitionist wife
COLUMBIANA, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man is set to stand trial on a murder charge in the killing of his wife, who lived a double life as a stay-at-home mom and an online exhibitionist.

Attorneys picked a jury Monday for the trial of William Jeffrey West, 47, of Calera, who is is charged with using a liquor bottle as a club to kill Kathleen Dawn West, 42. Opening statements were set for Tuesday, and testimony could last several days.

William West denies killing the woman, who bore a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe and publicly posted lingerie photos online while charging viewers to see sexier images. Her partially clothed body was found along a street outside the couple’s home in suburban Birmingham in January 2018.

Prosecutors contend West killed the woman during a fight and have asked to show jurors text messages and voicemails they describe as proof of frequent arguments between the two. The woman died accidentally following a “date night” that included him taking racy photos of her, the defense argued in court documents.

Kathleen West’s parents have publicly defended the man, whom they described during interviews as a devoted, loving husband and a good father to the couple’s teenage daughter. The Army veteran worked as a campus police officer at Birmingham-Southern College before his arrest.

The victim’s mother, Nancy Martin, described her daughter outside court as an alcoholic who took medication for bipolar disorder and had a history of binge drinking. West stayed with his in-laws after the woman’s death and before his arrest.

West has been jailed since his arrest.

The case has generated attention on tabloid TV and in online discussion groups, and authorities said precautions were being taken at the Shelby County Courthouse, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Birmingham, to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus during the trial.

Jury selection was held at a large arts center to allow for social distancing, and testimony will be shown by livestream in two courtrooms.

Massachusetts
Church leader charged with child sexual assaults
BOSTON (AP) — The leader of a Boston church who was once considered a mentor and role model for children has been arraigned on allegations that he sexually assaulted three teenage boys more than 15 years ago.

George Swain, 71, a bishop at the Greater Victory Temple church in the city’s Mattapan section, was held on $75,000 bail at his arraignment Monday. Not guilty pleas to rape of a child and indecent assault and battery were entered on his behalf.

Swain attended the virtual hearing from the hospital where he is being treated for a medical issue.

One victim was 8 years old when the alleged assaults started in 1997, and continued until 2004, prosecutor Audrey Mark said in court.

The second alleged victim was assaulted between the ages of 13 and 16 from 2001 until 2004, while the third teen was assaulted between the ages of 13 and 16 starting in 1997, Mark said.

“They were encouraged by their families to spend time in the church because he was seen as a role model,” Mark said.

Swain’s attorney, Lauren Greenberg, said outside of court that her client denies the allegations. Swain’s health puts him at risk of developing COVID-19 if he is jailed, she said.