National Roundup

Wisconsin
Republican law prof to run for attorney general
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Ryan Owens announced Monday that he will run for attorney general, becoming the second Republican to enter the race against incumbent Democrat Josh Kaul.

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney announced a run for attorney general earlier this month. The primary is over a year away on Aug. 9, 2022. Kaul was first elected in 2018.

Owens said in a statement announcing his candidacy that Kaul puts his political goals ahead of “freedom, safety, and prosperity.”

Pressed for examples in a follow-up email, Owens said Kaul should have joined a lawsuit that Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, filed in March challenging provisions in the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that prohibit states from using the money to cover tax reductions. Owens also pointed to briefs Kaul filed last year in supporting a Dane County order to start school online.

Owens serves as a political science professor and an affiliate faculty member at UW-Madison’s law school. He’s also been the director of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership since it was created in 2017, but he’s stepping down at the end of the current academic year. The center brings speakers to campus and hosts conferences on a variety of public policy topics, with a focus on promoting public leadership and good governance.

Owens holds a doctorate in political science from Washington University-St. Louis and a law degree from UW-Madison. Owens served one year as Thompson’s extraditions assistant when Thompson was governor in 1998 and 1999. He taught at Harvard’s law school from 2008 to 2011.

Illinois
Prosecutor put on leave over statements about boy shot by police
CHICAGO (AP) — A prosecutor who implied in court that 13-year-old Adam Toledo was holding a gun the instant he was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer was placed on leave a day after a video showing the boy’s hands were empty was released to the public.

“In court last week, an attorney in our office failed to fully present the facts surrounding the death of a 13-year-old boy,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx spokeswoman Sarah Sinovic said in a statement. “We have put that individual on leave and are conducting an internal investigation into the matter.”

During an April 10 bond hearing for 21-year-old Ruben Roman, who was with Adam when he was shot March 29, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy appeared to suggest that the boy was still holding the gun as Officer Eric Stillman  pulled the trigger.

“The officer tells (Adam) to drop it as (Adam) turns towards the officer. (Adam) has a gun in his right hand,” Murphy said, according to the  Chicago Sun-Times. “The officer fires one shot at (Adam), striking him in the chest. The gun that (Adam) was holding landed against the fence a few feet away.”

But Murphy did not explain what the video and screen shots show: That Adam had nothing in his hands when he was shot and had dropped or tossed the weapon away less than a second before the officer pulled the trigger. Police found the gun next to a fence a short distance away after the shooting.

According to the  Chicago Tribune, Foxx told staffers in an email that the language in the proffer that Murphy read in court “did not fully reflect all the evidence that had been given to our office.”

But on Friday, Sinovic suggested that Murphy may not have had access to all of the video that was released to the public on Thursday when he made the comments, telling the Sun-Times: “It’s still under investigation what videos were available to (Murphy). We’re still trying to figure out what he had access to when he made the statements in court.”

On Saturday, Sinovic in an email said the office would not comment on the question of who else in the office viewed the video footage before the April 10 hearing or respond to any other questions.

Images of the boy raising his empty hands as he was shot have elicited anger in the Little Village neighborhood where he lived and died, and elsewhere the city.

Roman was arrested at the scene on misdemeanor charges of resisting or obstructing a peace officer but he was later charged with felony counts of child endangerment, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm after investigators determined that he fired the gun several times before police arrived.

He remains in custody at Cook County Jail after a judge ordered him held on $150,000.


Wisconsin
Food plant worker sues employer after contracting COVID-19
ELKHORN, Wis. (AP) — A food plant employee is suing his Walworth County employer alleging he contracted the coronavirus at work and infected his wife who died from the disease.

Rigoberto Ruiz, of Beloit, says ConAgra Foods didn't enforce a policy to ensure that employees wore masks at its Darien plant. Ruiz says supervisors failed to take corrective action when employees failed to wear masks at the plant, which processes frozen vegetables.

Ruiz's wife, Martha Amador De Ruiz, died of COVID-19 complications on May 5, 2020.

Company spokesman Dan Hare said it has taken many preventive measures to keep people safe across the plant, including the use of face masks and shields, social distancing and plexiglass barriers between work stations where people work less than 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart.

Last July, 221 of the more than 800 workers at the facility tested positive for the coronavirus. The outbreak at the Darien facility was the third largest among facilities and businesses in Wisconsin as of June 1, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Conagra Brands, which owns ConAgra Foods, is asking the federal court in Wisconsin's Eastern District to take the case from Walworth County Circuit Court, the Journal Sentinel reported.