Florida
Court upholds city’s $30,000 fine for man’s overgrown lawn
DUNEDIN, Fla. (AP) — A federal court has upheld a Florida city’s decision to issue nearly $30,000 in code violation fines to a homeowner whose grass was overgrown.
Following a two-year legal battle, a judge from the Middle District of Florida ruled this week that Jim Ficken, 71, will have to pay the fines to the city of Dunedin, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
The city issued the fines in 2018 and Ficken sued in May 2019 after the city sought to foreclose on his home to collect them, according to court records. His lawyers argued Dunedin’s fines were excessive and given with no notice.
“The city’s behavior toward Jim is outrageous,” Ficken’s attorney, Ari Bargil, said in a statement. “This ruling emboldens code enforcement departments across the state to impose crippling financial penalties and it empowers them to do so without first notifying a property owner that they are potentially going to be fined.”
City officials defended the fines, saying Ficken was a repeat violator in 2015, subjecting him to $500 per-day fines for future violations. This includes having grass that grows taller than 10 inches.
Ficken claimed he wasn’t properly notified about the fines. He said he had left home for two weeks in July 2018 to manage his mother’s estate. That’s when the first fines were issued by the city, the newspaper reported. During that time, Ficken said the man who mowed his law died.
When he returned home, he tried to mow his overgrown lawn and his mower broke, the lawsuit said.
Nearly two months passed before Ficken knew he owed fines. When the bill arrived it was totaled $29,833.50, the lawsuit said.
He was ordered to attend an August 2019 Code Enforcement Board hearing, but he missed it because he was in South Carolina to manage another issue with his mother’s estate, he said. The board voted on Sept. 4, 2019, that the fines would stand.
Ficken said he won’t stop fighting his fines until he has exhausted every possible option.
“What happened to me is wrong and I will continue to fight,” he said.
Arizona
Prisoner disputes shelf life of execution drug
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona death row prisoner, who would be among the state’s first executions in almost seven years, has filed documents arguing the lethal injection drug to be used would expire sooner than prosecutors maintain and that makes it impossible to carry out his execution.
In a filing Wednesday, attorneys for Frank Atwood asked the Arizona Supreme Court to order a lower court to hold a hearing over the state’s claim that the pentobarbital to be used in their client’s execution would expire 90 days after the chemical powder is compounded into an injectable fluid. His lawyers contend the drug is unusable 45 days after it’s compounded.
Atwood’s attorneys said there isn’t enough time within the 45-day shelf life to request an execution warrant, compound the drug, test it to verify it will be effective in killing him and then carry out the execution. “The patently incorrect claim that the drugs will be good for 90 days is serving to distract from the Attorney General’s real problem with his choice of pentobarbital for Arizona’s return to executions,” Joseph Perkovich, one of Atwood’s lawyers, said in a statement.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office has said it’s asking the state’s highest court to set a litigation schedule before the warrant is filed so that the briefings don’t extend the execution date beyond the drug’s 90-day shelf life. Prosecutors said the drug must be compounded shortly after they make the execution warrant request to give enough time to conduct a mandatory quantitative test of the drug.
Under the sequence of filings laid out by the attorney general’s office, Atwood’s attorneys would have 10 days to respond after prosecutors file a request for his execution warrant, and prosecutors would then get another five days to file a reply. An execution date would be set for 35 days after the Supreme Court issues a death warrant, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said in court filings that they weren’t trying to abandon procedure or create new rule, but rather were trying to ensure the litigation process was orderly.
“General Brnovich is committed to upholding the rule of law and opposing erroneous legal arguments and misguided antics to delay the administration of justice,” Katie Conner, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said in a statement. “We must always stand up for the victims, their families and our communities.”
Atwood and Clarence Dixon are the first death row prisoners in Arizona to be eyed for execution since the 2014 death of Joseph Wood, who was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours. His attorney said the execution was botched.
States including Arizona have struggled to buy execution drugs in recent years after U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies began blocking the use of their products in lethal injections. Arizona corrections officials revealed earlier this year that they had finally obtained a lethal injection drug and were ready to resume executions.
Arizona has 115 inmates on death row.
Earlier this month, Brnovich’s office told the state’s highest court that it intended on seeking execution warrants for Dixon and Atwood soon.
Dixon was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1978 killing of Deana Bowdoin, a 21-year-old Arizona State University student.
Atwood was convicted in Pima County and sentenced to death for killing 8-year-old Vicki Lynn Hoskinson in 1984. Authorities say Atwood kidnapped the girl, whose body was found in the desert northwest of Tucson.
Attorneys for Atwood and Dixon had previously asked the state Supreme Court to hold off on scheduling the litigation over their upcoming death warrants, arguing the pandemic had made it hard for them to prepare defenses for their clients due to a ban on visits inside state prisons over the last year.
Brnovich’s office said Atwood’s attorneys could have visited with their clients by phone or video link for the past year and noted that corrections officials have recently allowed limited in-person visits between death row prisoners and their lawyers.
Oklahoma
Appeals court overturns two death sentences, citing McGirt
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday overturned the death sentences of two more convicted killers, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Oklahoma lacks jurisdiction for crimes on tribal reservations in which the defendants or victims are tribal citizens.
The court reversed the convictions of Benjamin Robert Cole Sr., 56, and 59-year-old James Chandler Ryder. Cole had been sentenced to death for killing his 9-month-old daughter in Rogers County in 2002. Ryder had been sentenced to death for the 1999 killing of Daisy Hallum, 70, and to life without parole for killing her son, Sam Hallum, 38, in Pittsburg County.
Phone calls to the attorney representing Cole and Ryder were not immediately returned.
In both cases, the crimes occurred on land within a tribe’s historical reservation and the victims were found to be, or were posthumously enrolled, as tribal citizens.
According to the Supreme Court ruling, known as McGirt, the cases now fall to federal authorities to pursue. Indictments have been issued in Cole’s case.
The state court has overturned at least eight murder convictions and the manslaughter conviction of a former Tulsa police officer based on McGirt, in addition to numerous other cases.
Louisiana
Lawsuit: Officers escalated rally with tear gas, projectiles
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Demonstrators have filed a lawsuit against local and state law enforcement agencies after over a New Orleans protest last summer in which tear gas was used.
New Orleans police acknowledged using tear gas and firing rubber bullets on protesters during the June 3 demonstration on the Crescent City Connection, WGNO-TV reported.
Demonstrators say it was a peaceful protest against racial injustice until police used excessive force.
Defendants include New Orleans police, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and about more than three-dozen police officers and commanders. Representatives for all of the agencies told the station that they do not comment on pending litigation.
Washington
Mother of slain man sues Seattle over handling of organized protest
SEATTLE (AP) — The mother of a 19-year-old Seattle man fatally shot during last summer’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city.
The lawsuit claims officials were negligent in allowing Seattle police to abandon the department’s East Precinct and surrounding area, a decision that invited “lawlessness and ... a foreseeable danger” that led to his death, the Seattle Times reported.
Donnitta Sinclair, whose son Horace Lorenzo Anderson was shot and killed across the street from Cal Anderson Park on June 20, alleges in her lawsuit that bad decisions, confusion, miscommunication and poor planning by city officials contributed to his death.
Anderson, who went by his middle name, had graduated from an alternative youth-education program the previous day, and was visiting the CHOP zone when he ran into a rival identified as 18-year-old Marcel Long, according to police.
According to surveillance video and witnesses, the two exchanged words and Anderson was walking away when Long, who had been restrained momentarily by others, pulled a handgun and shot him several times, police said.
Long was charged with premeditated first-degree murder, but is believed to have fled the state and remains at large. A spokesman for the Seattle Police Department said Thursday the case remains active.
Sinclair’s lawsuit alleges that Long knew the CHOP was a “no-cop zone.”
North Dakota
Dakota Access pipeline wants review from US Supreme Court
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The owners of the Dakota Access pipeline said Thursday they want the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court opinions confirming that the project deserves a thorough environmental review and is currently operating without a key federal permit.
A Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals panel earlier this year supported the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and other tribes on those two issues. That has left open the possibility that the pipeline will be shut down while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts the environmental study.
Texas-based Energy Transfer, which operates the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile (1,886 kilometer) pipeline, said in a filing to the circuit court that it hopes the Supreme Court will take up one or both of the questions on the environmental review and federal permit for an easement.
Standing Rock, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border and gets its water from the river, fears pollution from the pipeline.
“The courts have ordered a full environmental review of the pipeline’s risks and potential impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, nothing more,” said Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, who represents Standing Rock. “Energy Transfer’s increasingly desperate opposition to carrying out such a review tells us everything we need to know.”
Indiana
Man guilty of murder for killing another at bachelor party
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A jury has convicted a man of murder in the 2019 shooting death of a man celebrating his bachelor party at an Indianapolis pub.
Derek Oechsle, 33, also was found guilty Wednesday of criminal recklessness in the Nov. 29, 2019, slaying of Christopher Smith, 41.
Smith and some friends were celebrating his upcoming marriage when witnesses said Oechsle, sitting nearby, appeared to become visibly upset, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said. A fight ensued and Oechsle pulled out a gun and began to strike another man.
When Smith attempted to break up the fight, Oechsle shot Smith and into the surrounding crowd until a member of Smith’s party returned fire, striking Oechsle multiple times, Mears said.
Smith immediately collapsed on the floor due to his injuries. Oechsle fled the scene before collapsing in the parking lot, Mears said.
A sentencing hearing has been set for May 20.
