Court Digest

New York
Judge rejects ex-CIA worker’s try to dismiss hacking charges
NEW YORK (AP) — A former CIA employee cannot get espionage charges against him dismissed on the grounds that there weren’t enough Hispanic or Black individuals on the grand jury that indicted him, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty issued his ruling in the case against Joshua Schulte, finding that there was nothing illegal about a suburban grand jury in White Plains returning the indictment during the coronavirus pandemic rather than a grand jury in Manhattan that normally would have done so.

Schulte faces an October trial on charges that he leaked a massive trove of CIA hacking tools to WikiLeaks.

Schulte, 32, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Schulte’s lawyers had argued that nine criminal charges alleging that Schulte leaked national defense information to WikiLeaks should be dismissed because the grand jury did not reflect a fair cross-section of the Black and Hispanic populations in the community.

Crotty, though, said the reliance on a White Plains grand jury rather than one seated in Manhattan was necessitated by an “external force,” the pandemic, rather than an effort to exclude certain segments of the population from being empaneled.

He called the decision by prosecutors to seek indictment in White Plains “entirely proper.”

A lawyer for Schultz did not immediately comment.

Prosecutors say the 2017 release of secrets by WikiLeaks resulted from the largest leak of classified information in CIA history.

Schulte worked as a coder at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where some of the CIA’s digital sleuths design computer code to spy on foreign adversaries.

A jury last year deadlocked  on espionage charges, though it convicted Schulte of less serious charges of contempt of court and making false statements. Prosecutors sought a retrial.

Wednesday’s ruling may foreshadow the outcome of a similar request to toss out charges in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell,  the ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein charged with procuring teenage girls in the 1990s for him to sexually abuse.

Lawyers for Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty in a case presided over by a different judge, argued in pretrial motions earlier this year that the White Plains grand jury that returned an indictment against her after her July arrest did not include enough Hispanic and Black grand jurors.

Maxwell, 59, faces a July trial.

Hawaii
Ruling upholds limits on carrying guns in public
HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s strict limit on openly carrying firearms is lawful, a panel of federal appeals court judges ruled Wednesday in a lawsuit by a man who tried unsuccessfully several times to obtain a license to carry a loaded gun in public.

George Young’s lawyer said he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. “We are hopeful the Supreme Court will grant review in Mr. Young’s case,” attorney Alan Beck said.

Young wants to carry a gun for self-defense and says that not being able to do so violates his rights. His 2012 lawsuit was dismissed, with a judge siding with officials who said the Second Amendment only applied to guns kept in homes.

He appealed. Three federal appeals court judges later ruled in his favor but the state asked for a fuller panel of judges to hear the case.

That panel of 11 judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday “held that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an unfettered, general right to openly carry arms in public for individual self-defense. Accordingly, Hawai’i’s firearms-carry scheme is lawful.”

The ruling doesn’t change open-carry laws in other states under the 9th Circuit. But if Young prevailed, it could have led to more guns in public in the few Western states under 9th Circuit jurisdiction where they are currently restricted.

The Second Amendment allows states “to enact common sense regulations like those we have in Hawaii,” state Attorney General Clare Connors said in statement. The ruling properly upholds the constitutionality of Hawaii’s “longstanding law allowing persons to carry firearms openly in public when licensed to do so,” she said.

Hawaii has a “de facto ban” on carrying guns in public, Beck said.

It’s not a flat ban because individuals can carry firearms if they have good cause, Neal Katyal, an attorney representing Hawaii, argued before the panel in September.

The ruling comes on the same day the Hawaii attorney general’s office issued a report showing that all private citizens who applied for licenses to carry a gun in public in 2020 were denied.
Statewide last year, 123 employees of private security firms applied for and were issued carry licenses and one was denied, according to the report.

Young’s applications failed to identify “the urgency or the need” to openly carry a firearm in public, the ruling noted: “Instead, Young relied upon his general desire to carry a firearm for self-defense.”

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, one of the four dissenting judges, wrote that the majority’s finding that the Second Amendment only guarantees the right to keep a firearm for self-defense within one’s home, “is as unprecedented as it is extreme.”

Ohio
Family: lawsuit over police killing of teen must continue
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The white Ohio police officer who shot and killed 13-year-old Tyre King does not have legal immunity from claims in a civil rights lawsuit brought by the Black teenager’s grandmother because the shooting wasn’t justified, lawyers for the family argued in a federal court filing.

Columbus Officer Bryan Mason shot Tyre in 2016 while responding to a reported armed robbery. Tyre’s family argues his death was the result of excessive force, racial discrimination and alleged failure by the police department to properly investigate and discipline officers for racially motivated or unconstitutional behavior.

The family’s lawsuit challenged the police account of what happened, citing witnesses who said that Mason used a racial slur after firing and that the BB gun Tyre reportedly had wasn’t visible.

Mason has said he feared a “gun fight” and contends he acted reasonably to protect himself and denies directing a slur toward the teens. He wasn’t charged. His lawyers have asked federal Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. to dismiss the case.

Mason is not immune from civil liability because “he violated Tyre’s constitutional right to be free from unjustified deadly force,” attorneys for Tyre’s grandmother said in their Wednesday filing.

Washington
Man pleads not guilty to manslaughter in 4-year-old’s death
RITZVILLE, Wash. (AP) — An Othello man has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the death of his 4-year-old son.

Felipe Tapia-Perez, 27, entered the plea in Adams County Superior Court this week, The Columbia Basin Herald reported. He’s being held in the Adams County Jail on $50,000 bail.

Tapia-Perez allegedly shot his son in the head on Feb. 27. The boy died later that day.

Tapia-Perez had a gun he said he recently purchased in his car when he drove to the house of the child’s mother to pick up his children, according to the statement of probable cause. The boy ran outside to the driver’s door when he saw his father drive up, documents said.

Tapia-Perez said he was handling the weapon when it fired, breaking the car window and striking the boy in the head, the statement of probable cause said.

Tapia-Perez told Othello Police officers he didn’t know the boy was standing beside the car. He also said he was unfamiliar with firearms, the probable cause statement said.

Wisconsin
Supreme court tosses AG’s lame-duck lawsuit
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to consider Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul’s lawsuit challenging statues Republican lawmakers passed during a 2018 lame-duck session limiting his powers.

The statutes require the state Department of Justice, which Kaul controls, to obtain permission from the Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee before settling certain lawsuits. The statues also weakened Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ powers. Republicans passed the laws in December 2018, weeks before Kaul and Evers were set to take office.

A coalition of labor unions challenged the statues affecting Kaul in 2019. The Supreme Court upheld upheld them in a July ruling but left the door open to future legal challenges.

Kaul filed his lawsuit in November, arguing the law is unconstitutional as applied to two categories of cases involving civil lawsuits over environmental and consumer protection cases and cases involving the executive branch. Kaul argued the law violates the separation of powers doctrine in those instances.

Kaul asked the justices to consider the case directly without allowing it to move through lower courts.

The Supreme Court issued an order denying Kaul’s request to commence the case as an original action. The order offered no explanation.

Conservative justices hold a 4-3 majority on the court.

Kaul spokeswoman Gillian Drummond said the DOJ is reviewing the order.

Idaho
City sued over arrests at church singing event
MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — A former Idaho county commissioner candidate and a couple have filed a lawsuit against the city of Moscow alleging their First Amendment rights were violated after they were arrested on accusations of not following coronavirus safety measures last fall at a church singing event in the City Hall parking lot.

Gabriel Rench, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for Latah County Commissioner in November, and Sean and Rachel Bohnet filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court, The Lewiston Tribune reported  Thursday.

The lawsuit alleges Moscow police officers’ “reckless indifference” to their rights resulted in their arrest and detainment.

The lawsuit names the city of Moscow, City Supervisor Gary Riedner, City Attorney Mia Bautista, City Prosecuting Attorney Elizabeth Warner, Police Chief James Fry and multiple police officers.

Riedner said the city had not yet received the lawsuit as of Wednesday.

“This is a lawsuit in order to make reparations for their wrongful arrests and the fact that they were humiliatingly prosecuted for criminal activity when there was no violation of the law,” said Michael Jacques, an attorney representing the plaintiffs.

Police cited Rench, the Bohnets and two others for suspicion of violating the city’s public health emergency order at the event on Sept. 23 in the City Hall parking lot.

Moscow Mayor Bill Lambert issued the order requiring face coverings in public when physical distancing could not be maintained with people not in the same household.

Jacques said the singing event was held to protest the order.

All five residents pleaded innocent to the charges and the city dismissed the charges in January because the order did not specifically say it applied to media or religious activities.

The City Council unanimously approved later in the month an ordinance that does not exempt those activities from public health orders.

Rench claimed Wednesday that the council crafted the ordinance to “continually target religious members in our community and continually target political opponents that they disagree with.”

Sean Bohnet said he hopes the lawsuit brings “real justice to our situation.”

Washington
Judge: Amtrak, not engineer, liable for deadly derailment
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A judge has ruled that Amtrak is strictly liable for the claim of its engineer who sued for his injuries after a deadly 2017 derailment south of Tacoma, Washington.

“The judge will instruct the jury that the court has already ruled that Amtrak is 100 percent at fault, what we call strict liability here,” Fred Bremseth, one of the engineer’s attorneys, told The News Tribune.

The derailment of Amtrak Cascades 501 on Dec. 18, 2017 onto Interstate 5 below killed three and injured dozens during the inaugural run on the Point Defiance Bypass route, a 10-minute faster route from Seattle to Portland.

The News Tribune reports that engineer Steven Brown’s lawsuit, filed last year in Pierce County Superior Court, alleged he wasn’t properly trained and that technology that could have stopped the train hadn’t been installed at the time. Brown “suffered physical and emotional injuries as a result of the derailment,” according to his lawsuit.

He seeks unspecified damages for medical expenses and lost earning capacity, among other things.

Amtrak argued in its court filing that Brown’s negligence caused the derailment.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Karena Kirkendoll granted Brown’s motion for partial summary judgment in the case March 12, which asked her to find Amtrak “strictly liable,” and to dismiss Amtrak’s “sole cause defense.”