Court allows lawsuit against troopers to proceed
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by two state police officers accused of failing to protect a woman from a man who went on a deadly rampage, allowing a civil lawsuit to proceed.
Troopers were accused of failing to do enough when Brittany Irish reported that her boyfriend kidnapped and sexually assaulted her and later set fire to a barn owned by her parents in July 2015.
Her request for police protection was denied.
Hours later, the boyfriend killed Irish's boyfriend, 22-year-old Kyle Hewitt, and wounded her mother before proceeding to kill another man and wound two others across several towns in northern Maine.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on Monday but didn't say why, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The court's decision means the troopers will not be protected by the legal concept of qualified immunity.
The attorney general's office, which is defending the troopers, declined comment Tuesday on the lawsuit. Irish's attorney didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
The man charged in the crime spree, Anthony Lord, pleaded guilty in 2017 to two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, aggravated assault and other charges. He's serving two life sentences.
The lawsuit contends state police triggered the rampage when they called Lord's cellphone, tipping him off that Brittany Irish had gone to police, instead of attempting to find or detain him. She said she'd warned police that Lord had threatened her if she spoke to authorities.
Later, police declined to post an officer outside her parents' farmhouse in Benedicta, citing a lack of manpower.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said jurors could conclude that police created the danger, removing the qualified immunity concept that normally protects officers from actions in the line of duty.
"The defendants' apparent utter disregard for police procedure could contribute to a jury's conclusion that the defendants conducted themselves in a manner that was deliberately indifferent to the danger they knowingly created," the court said.
Justices won't rule on governor's pandemic authority
BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday against hearing an appeal of a decision that found Gov. Charlie Baker did not overstep his authority with sweeping orders to close businesses and limit gatherings to control the coronavirus early in the pandemic.
The nation's highest court announced without comment Monday that it would not consider the appeal.
The lawsuit argued that Baker had no authority to issue public health-related orders under the state's Civil Defense Act, which it said was designed to protect the state from foreign invasions, insurrections, and catastrophic events like hurricanes and fires.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court, in December rejected the challenge, brought on behalf of a group including salon owners, pastors and the headmaster of a private school. They accused the Republican governor of exercising "legislative police power" by declaring a state of emergency under the Civil Defense Act.
The Massachusetts court said the pandemic clearly merited action by the governor under the Cold War-era law. It also rejected the lawsuit's argument that the governor's actions infringed on people's constitutional rights to due process and free assembly.
"Given that COVID-19 is a pandemic that has killed over a million people worldwide, it spreads from person to person, effective vaccines have not yet been distributed, there is no known cure, and a rise in cases threatens to overrun the Commonwealth's hospital system, it is a natural cause for which action is needed," the Massachusetts court stated in its December ruling.
The governor declared a state of emergency March 10, 2020, giving him greater power to take actions like shutting down events with large gatherings of people or gaining access to buildings or stockpiling protective gear.
He went on to issue a slew of emergency orders prohibiting gatherings of a certain size, closing certain businesses and mandating masks aimed at slowing the spread of the disease in the hard-hit state.
More than 18,200 Massachusetts residents have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
