Court Digest

Georgia
Ex-deputy pleads guilty in federal firearms case
MACON, Ga. (AP) — A former Georgia deputy has pleaded guilty to possessing unregistered firearms, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Cody Richard Griggers, 28, of Montrose, Georgia, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm before U.S. District Judge Tilman Self, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia said in a news release.

“This former law enforcement officer knew that he was breaking the law when he chose to possess a cache of unregistered weapons, silencers and a machine gun, keeping many of them in his duty vehicle. Coupled with his violent racially motivated extreme statements, the defendant has lost the privilege permanently of wearing the blue,” Acting U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary said.

Griggers, who was detained at a pretrial hearing and remains in custody, faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Sentencing is set for July 6.

As part of a California investigation into a man making violent political statements on social media, FBI agents discovered a group text with Griggers, who worked for the Wilkinson County Sheriff’s Office for just over a year, Wilkinson Sheriff Richard Chatman said. He was fired last November.

In the group text, Griggers — who is white — said he was manufacturing and acquiring illegal firearms, explosives and suppressors. He also expressed viewpoints consistent with racially motivated violent extremism, including the use of racial slurs, slurs against homosexuals and making frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

On Nov. 19, agents searched Griggers’ home and his patrol vehicle. Inside his patrol vehicle, officers found multiple firearms, including a machine gun with an obliterated serial number, according to authorities. The machine gun was not issued to the defendant, and he was not allowed to have the weapon in his law enforcement car, authorities said.

In all, authorities said they found 11 illegal firearms, including an unregistered short barrel shotgun in his home.

South Carolina
Rapper Kodak Black gets probation in assault of teen
FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — Rapper Kodak Black was sentenced to probation Wednesday for assaulting a teenage girl in a South Carolina hotel room.

Black was originally charged with rape, but accepted a deal and pleaded guilty to first-degree assault at the Florence County courthouse.

Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, faces a 10-year suspended prison sentence. He won’t have to go to prison on the charge as long as he completes 18 months of probation, media outlets reported.

The victim in the case watched the plea online, and Black spoke to her. “I apologize this happened, and I’m hopeful we can all move forward,” he said.

Later on his Twitter feed, Black posted that the victim just wanted to get the case over with, and “I ain’t have to come off no money.”

The assault happened in 2016 when Black was in Florence for a performance. The girl said the rapper attacked her at a hotel room after the show, biting her on the neck and breast and continuing even after she told him to stop, authorities said.

The girl reported the attack to a school nurse who called police, investigators said.

Black had a three-year federal prison sentence for  falsifying documents used to buy weapons at a Miami gun store commuted by President Donald Trump on his last day in office. He had served about half his sentence.

Black’s lawyer, Bradford Cohen, was once a contestant on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” show. The pardon notes that Kodak Black paid for schoolchildren’s notebooks, supplies to daycare centers and food for the hungry, and donated $50,000 for restaurants in his hometown of Pompano Beach, Florida.

Black has sold over 30 million singles since 2014, and has had several multiplatinum and platinum-certified singles, including “Zeze” and “No Flockin’.”

California
Man guilty in $100M scheme to bilk Afghanistan
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man pleaded guilty Tuesday in a scheme to bilk the Afghanistan government out of more than $100 million with a phony bid to build an electric grid, authorities said.

Saed Ismail Amiri, 38, of Granite Bay, entered a plea in Los Angeles federal court to one count of wire fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.

He could face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in August.

The scheme involved Amiri’s Afghan company, Assist Consultants Incorporated, federal prosecutors said.

In 2015 and 2016, Amiri and others tried to win a U.S.-funded contract to build five electric power substations in Afghanistan by submitting a false work history and phony supporting documents indicating the firm met requirements for the contract, prosecutors said.

ACI’s bid stated that it had been a subcontractor on substations for a cement factory in Uganda and a textile company in Nigeria. In fact, ACI had never worked on a substation in Africa, and the two companies it mentioned didn’t exist, prosecutors said.

After the national power utility of Afghanistan requested more documents to verify ACI’s work history, Amiri sent more false or altered documents, including photographs, false bank records and a purported letter from a Ugandan government official, authorities said.

Amiri later withdrew the ACI bid after meeting with law enforcement at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, authorities said.

California
Court: Truckers fall under state gig economy law
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s gig economy law applies to some 70,000 truck drivers who can be classified as employees of companies that hire them instead of independent contractors, giving them a right to overtime, sick pay or other benefits, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a ruling last year by a federal judge that said federal interstate transportation law pre-empted 2019’s Assembly Bill 5.

In overturning that decision, the appellate court’s 2-1 decision found that AB5 doesn’t conflict with federal law because it is “a generally applicable labor law that affects a motor carrier’s relationship with its workforce and does not bind, compel, or otherwise freeze into place the prices, routes, or services.”

The ruling is “a massive victory for California’s truck drivers, who for far too long have faced exploitation and misclassification at the hands of trucking companies that place corporate profit ahead of drivers’ safety and well-being,” the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in a statement.

 But the California Trucking Association, which sued over the law, said it would take “whatever legal steps are necessary to continue this fight on behalf of independent owner-operators and motor carriers operating in California.”

The association had argued the law could make it harder for independent drivers who own their own trucks and operate on their own hours to make a living by forcing them to be classified as employees.

The case could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, especially since in 2016 the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that a similar Massachusetts law did conflict with federal law.

AB5 expanded a California Supreme Court ruling that limited businesses from classifying certain workers as independent contractors. The law is one of the strictest in the country for determining when a company must treat its workers as employees with benefits such as minimum wage, overtime and sick days.

Last year, California voters passed Proposition 22, which exempted app-based ride-hailing and delivery services from AB5. The measure was the most expensive in state history with Uber, Lyft and other services pouring $200 million in support of it.

A federal lawsuit by a labor union and some drivers is challenging the proposition.

Louisiana
Crawfish processors focus of lawsuit over wage rule
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Federal regulators are using an illegally adopted rule and unreliable research in allowing Louisiana crawfish processors to hire foreign workers at “depressed and stagnated wages” — wages that also hold down the rates of pay available to U.S. citizens doing the same work, a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday claims.

Four of the plaintiffs in the suit filed in Washington are identified as U.S. citizens who regularly work at Louisiana crawfish processing plants. Another plaintiff is a Mexican woman who works at such plants on work visas.

While the lawsuit focuses on employees of Louisiana facilities, it says workers in other states are affected. It singles out seafood workers in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.

The suit asks that the court to strike down the wage rule or halt the use of what the plaintiffs believe is a faulty study used to set the wages.

Wages for immigrant workers, the lawsuit says, are supposed to be set by the department by determining the prevailing wage in a given job, as established by a national survey compiled by the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. At issue in the suit is a 2015 rule the department adopted allowing employers to set wages based on surveys done by state entities. In Louisiana’s case the “Louisiana Crawfish Wage Study” was conducted in 2018, 2019 and 2020 by the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center.

The lawsuit says the study received responses from only four processors, when as many as 70 were believed to be operating in the state. The lawsuit also raises various questions about methods used in the study.

The rule allowing the state survey to be used was adopted without proper public notice and comment required by federal law, the lawsuit says.

The New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice is also a plaintiff in the suit, which was filed by lawyers with the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid and the North Carolina Justice Center.

Department of Labor officials did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.


New Hampshire
Couple indicted after man was killed, decapitated
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A couple accused in the killing and decapitation of the woman’s lover have been indicted, the attorney general’s office has announced.

The woman’s husband is accused of luring Jonathan Amerault, 25, on Sept. 19 to a park, kidnapping him and then shooting him to death in a car. He is also accused of hiding the body at a campsite in northern New Hampshire.

The attorney general’s office announced late Wednesday that the husband was indicted on multiple charges including capital murder, first-degree murder, kidnapping and second-degree assault in Amerault’s killing.

The Associated Press is not naming the couple because doing so could identify the woman, who says she suffered extreme abuse and was under duress at the time of the killing. After her husband discovered her affair, she told authorities that he repeatedly assaulted her, put a gun in her mouth and choked her until she passed out.

The husband was also indicted on domestic violence and other charges, including several for allegedly forcing his wife to seriously injure Amerault.

The man’s wife was indicted on charges of falsifying evidence, including allegedly decapitating Amerault. She also is accused of wrapping his body in a tarp and dragging it to a remote area and cleaning Amerault’s car after he was killed.

Both have pleaded not guilty.

Last month, Coos County Superior Court Judge Peter Bornstein denied the woman’s bail request and sided with prosecutors, who acknowledged she was a victim of domestic violence, but still should have done more to alert authorities about the killing.

A lawyer for the woman said his client was innocent.

“She cooperated with police and told them the truth. She is a victim of domestic violence,” said Richard Guerriero, noting that his client was “beaten severely” by her husband. “We view the indictments as the next step towards the speedy jury trial which we have demanded. We look forward to that trial and to the jury setting her free.”

New York
Hate crime charged in attack on Chinese immigrant in NYC
NEW YORK (AP) — A man accused of brutally assaulting a Chinese immigrant on a Manhattan street, leaving him in a coma, has been arraigned on hate crime charges.

Jarrod Powell was arrested Tuesday and charged with attempted murder and assault as a hate crime in the attack Friday on 61-year-old Yao Pan Ma.

Powell, 49, didn’t post bail at the late night arraignment and was ordered jailed at the city’s Rikers Island jail complex. He is due back in court May 3.

The Legal Aid Society, which is representing Powell, declined comment.

Prosecutors say Powell attacked Ma from behind as Ma was collecting cans in East Harlem, knocking him to the ground and kicking and stomping his head.

A police detective said in a criminal complaint that Powell admitted attacking an Asian man at the approximate time and location of the attack on Ma, stating he did so because the man had robbed him the day before.