Georgia
Mayor resigns day before fraud hearing in court
STONECREST, Ga. (AP) — A suburban Atlanta mayor announced he’s resigning from office Tuesday, a day before he was scheduled to appear before a federal judge on fraud charges.
Stonecrest Mayor Jason Lary waived indictment in November on federal charges that he stole $650,000 in federal coronavirus relief funds as part of a kickback scheme. He pleaded not guilty, but was scheduled to return to U.S. District Court on Wednesday for a change of plea hearing.
Lary, 59, told an online news conference that his resignation will take effect at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
“I ask that you all measure me by the whole story,” Lary said Tuesday. “I did the best that I could do with what we had in place.”
Lary is the first mayor of Stonecrest, a DeKalb County city of about 55,000 that was incorporated in 2017.
Federal prosecutors have said Lary asked businesses and churches that got some of Stonecrest’s $6.2 million in coronavirus relief funding to give portions of the money to three companies the mayor had created — Visit Us, Battleground Media and Real Estate Management Consultants. Lary said the companies would use the money for tourism promotion, advertising and rent assistance.
Prosecutors say Lary pocketed $650,000, using some of the money to pay off the $108,000 mortgage on his lake house, and other funds to pay back taxes.
Lary’s defense attorney, Dwight Thomas, had hinted the mayor would not contest the charges. Thomas previously told reporters: “He accepts full responsibility, and there won’t be a jury trial.”
An internal Stonecrest investigation found evidence of poor record keeping, misuse and the kickback scheme in Stonecrest’s program to distribute funds it received last year from the federal CARES Act program, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The report found employees entered contracts and distributed funds without necessary approval from the City Council or city manager. Several employees were fired or replaced.
Prosecutors said Lary helped decide where the relief funds were directed, including an unsolicited $150,000 grant award to his church.
Kansas
State high court to be asked to review prison dentist case
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay will ask the Kansas Supreme court to review a decision that overturned the conviction of a former prison dentist for having sexual relations with a female inmate.
The Kansas Court of Appeals last month overturned the January 2020 conviction of Tomas Co., who was accused of repeatedly touching the inmate at the Topeka Correctional Center.
The appeals court said Co’s touching the inmate on her leg and thighs was inappropriate but did not meet the legal definition of lewd, which was required for a conviction on the charge he faced.
Kagay said if the Kansas Supreme Court doesn’t overrule the appeals court finding, he will seek a legislative change to the relevant law, The Topeka Capital Journal reported.
Co supervised a dental lab at Topeka Correctional Facility, where the female inmates made dental products.
Prosecutors alleged that Co molested six inmates at the prison between 2011 and 2018 but he was found guilty on only one count.
Pennsylvania
Court asked to require accredited lab in GOP ‘investigation’
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems has asked a court to restrict any inspection of its voting machines as part of what Republican lawmakers call a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election to a laboratory that has specific credentials.
The Denver-based voting-system manufacturer filed paperwork in court Monday evening as Republican lawmakers move to inspect Dominion’s machines and software in southern Pennsylvania’s sparsely populated Fulton County using an unaccredited contractor that has no election experience.
In its court papers, Dominion requested an order requiring that any inspection be conducted by a federally accredited voting system test lab or a national laboratory used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Fulton county heavily backed former President Donald Trump, whose baseless claims about election fraud in 2020’s presidential election have propelled various Republican endeavors to search for fraud in states Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
A Commonwealth Court judge has separately given state and county officials until Jan. 10 to work out an agreed-upon set of rules for an inspection.
A lawyer representing Fulton County has said the Republican senator in charge of the “ forensic investigation “ wants to determine if the county’s voting system was the same equipment as was certified by the state of Pennsylvania for use in 2020’s election.
Fulton County is cooperating.
Dominion’s voting equipment has been at the center of conspiracy theories about the presidential election and it has filed defamation lawsuits against right-wing broadcasters and Trump allies.
Texas
April execution date set for state’s oldest death row inmate
HOUSTON (AP) — The oldest Texas death row inmate is to be executed in April for killing a Houston police officer more than 30 years ago, prosecutors said Tuesday.
A Houston state judge scheduled the execution of Carl Wayne Buntion, 77, for April 21 during a Tuesday court hearing.
Buntion had been on parole for just six weeks when he fatally shot Houston officer James Irby, 37, during a June 1990 traffic stop. Buntion, who had an extensive criminal record, was a passenger in the car that Irby pulled over.
“He shot a policeman in the head more than 30 years ago, and it is time that he be held accountable for his horrific crime,” said Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.
Buntion was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1991, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated his death sentence in 2009. A jury in 2012 returned him to death row following a new sentencing trial.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal by Buntion’s lawyers. But in a statement, Justice Stephen Breyer said that Buntion’s “lengthy confinement, and the confinement of others like him, calls into question the constitutionality of the death penalty.”
