National Roundup

Pennsylvania
GOP begins advancing new plans to remake state courts
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans who control the state Legislature on Monday began advancing a new plan to remake Pennsylvania’s courts, the latest GOP strategy that could cut short the state Supreme Court’s Democratic majority.

The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines for two proposals to amend the state constitution, one to limit state Supreme Court justices to two terms and another to make the justices and judges at all levels run for re-election in partisan elections if they want to serve another term.

Democrats accused Republicans of trying to politicize the courts and protested that the committee had held no hearings on the proposals before passing them.

Currently, state Supreme Court justices and lower-court judges serve 10-year terms, without limit on the number, until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 75.

They are elected in partisan elections to a first term, but run for subsequent terms in nonpartisan retention elections where they face no opponent, only an up-or-down vote on general election ballots.

Democrats have held a majority on the state Supreme Court since 2016 and, under the current rules, that majority might last well beyond 2030.

Republicans have complained bitterly about the court’s decisions, including in election-related cases last year, and other GOP-penned plans targeting the courts are pending in the Legislature.

Amendments to the state’s constitution must pass the Legislature in two consecutive two-year sessions before going to voters in a statewide referendum.

New York
Sate judge convicted of obstruction in federal probe
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York state judge was convicted Monday of obstructing a federal probe into one of the nation’s oldest and largest credit unions for over a half million New York City workers, including hospital employees, as well as state and federal workers.

At the end of a two-week trial, State Supreme Court Justice Sylvia Ash, 64, of Brooklyn, was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making a false statement to a federal agent. She was acquitted of another obstruction count.

The verdict was returned in Manhattan federal court after jurors heard evidence supporting charges that she took steps over multiple months to obstruct the investigation into financial misconduct at the Municipal Credit Union while she chaired the organization’s board of directors.

“Obstruction of justice, particularly by a sitting state court judge, is a serious crime, and Ash now faces punishment for her obstruction scheme,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a release.

The credit union is a non-profit financial institution headquartered in New York City that provided banking services to over a half million members. It did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Authorities said the obstruction occurred while Ash, a Brooklyn judge, was on the credit union’s board of directors from May 2008 to August 2016, when she resigned. She had served as the board’s chair from May 2015 until her resignation.

Prosecutors said Ash received tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursements and other benefits from the credit union from 2012 through 2016. The reimbursements included payments for airfare, hotels and entertainment for her and a guest to attend conferences domestically and abroad, along with annual birthday parties at a minor league baseball stadium and payment for phone, cable bills and electronic devices, authorities said.

Sentencing was set for April 20.

California
Police, prosecutors bugged courtroom
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Police and prosecutors bugged a holding area of a Southern California courtroom to secretly record two people who were accused of murder in a move defense lawyers say violated their rights.

The office of San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said the planting of listening devices in the Vista courtroom in 2019 was legal but it shouldn’t have occurred and the office is working on a policy banning staff from taking part in future eavesdropping inside courtrooms, spokesman Steve Walker told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“It poses a greater risk that privileged attorney-client communications could be inadvertently intercepted,” he said in an email.

The case involved Marjorie Gawitt, 63, who was killed in March 2019 during a burglary at her Carlsbad home. She had been stabbed or slashed 142 times.

A couple living in a nearby homeless encampment, Mallissa James and Ian Bushee were charged with the killing.

Defense lawyers for James said that a prosecutor and Carlsbad police planted four electronic listening devices in the holding area of the empty courtroom an hour before the pair were to make their first court appearance and before they had spoken to a lawyer, the Union-Tribune said.

The two were then placed in the area and their conversation recorded as authorities listened from a nearby room. Their conversation was recorded for about 30 minutes but ended when a deputy public defender for James showed up to speak with her before her arraignment, the paper said.

The conversation didn’t turn up incriminating evidence and it appeared both defendants suspected they were being heard, the paper said.

James pleaded guilty on Nov. 19 under a deal that will send her to prison for life without chance of parole instead of facing the death penalty. Bushee is awaiting trial. His attorneys contend that James acted alone.

Attorneys for James have filed misconduct allegations against the district attorney’s office, alleging that the recording violated her constitutional rights and court rules that ban recordings inside courtrooms.

Prosecutors “used the courtroom to place their thumb on the scales of justice,” they said in court papers.

Prosecutors argue that the recordings were legal because the holding area was technically considered a “detention facility” under control of the sheriff, despite the area being inside a court rather than in a jail.

It is legal to secretly record defendants in jails and in holding tanks in some court areas outside of the courtrooms, the Union-Tribune said.

It is “extraordinarily unusual” to make secret recordings inside a courtroom even though there isn’t any explicit rule against putting listening devices in the holding area, Shaun Martin, a University of San Diego law school professor, told the Union-Tribune in an email.

“It’s sufficiently rare that I’ve never even heard of it occurring,” Martin said.

“Unlike homes, courtrooms aren’t categorically off limits for warrantless surveillance,” he said. “But they’re pretty darn close.”