Oregon
Patriot Prayer member convicted of riot charge in Portland
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer caught on camera throwing a pepper spray can and shoving a woman in the face after a protest in Northeast Portland has been found guilty of felony riot.
A Multnomah County jury of nine women and three men returned the verdict against Mackenzie Lewis on Wednesday, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
On May 1, 2019, after a day of demonstrations, Lewis and the Patriot Prayer group approached anti-fascists who had gathered at the Cider Riot bar.
Defense attorney Kelly Doyle argued Lewis’ actions were self-defense or to protect Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson.
Deputy District Attorney Brad Kalbaugh said Lewis didn’t step in front of Gibson.
The threat was over at that point — that’s revenge,” he said. “It’s not OK, it’s not justified and it’s especially not justified when you showed up with an armed mob to precipitate the whole thing.”
Doyle countered that Lewis had donned stiff-looking gloves and a helmet before his group approached the bar patio merely for protection from the sun.
Lewis faces a maximum of five years in prison when sentenced Aug. 1.
On Tuesday, Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Souede acquitted Gibson and associate Russell Schultz on felony riot charges in the same incident. The judge said while
Gibson was obnoxious and taunting, no reasonable jury could find their behavior at the confrontation “threatened an imminent breach of the peace.”
District Attorney Mike Schmidt in a statement said while his office respects the court’s decision regarding Gibson and Schultz, “We disagree with the legal analysis used to reach it and stand by the charges the grand jury indicted based on the facts and evidence in this case.”
Three other brawl participants with the Patriot Prayer group, Chris Ponte, Ian Kramer and Matthew Cooper, previously pleaded guilty to riot charges.
Gibson founded the Vancouver, Washington, based Patriot Prayer in 2016. He has held rallies supporting former President Donald Trump and supported other demonstrations organized by the Proud Boys — a group that’s been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Pennsylvania
Republicans challenge state’s mail-in voting law anew
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans have sued again in an attempt to throw out Pennsylvania’s broad mail-in voting law, even as the state’s highest court considers a separate lawsuit aimed at wiping out a law that lost favor with Republicans following former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud.
It is the latest fight over voting laws in the premier battleground state. The lawsuit comes barely two months before voters can send in mail-in ballots in the fall election featuring high-profile contests for governor and the U.S. Senate.
The suit, filed Wednesday by 14 state Republican lawmakers, contends that the court must invalidate the law because of a provision written into it that says it is “void” if any of its requirements are struck down in court.
The lawsuit says the “non-severability” provision was triggered in a May 20 decision by a panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerning mail-in ballots in a Lehigh County judicial race from last November.
The ballots in question lacked handwritten dates on the return envelopes, as required in the law.
In the decision, the panel found that a handwritten date has no bearing on a voter’s eligibility and said it would violate voters’ civil rights to throw out their ballots in that election simply because they lacked a handwritten date.
The panel also pointed out that ballots with incorrect dates had been counted in that election. An appeal by the Republican candidate in the race is pending to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration had no immediate response to the lawsuit.
However, it separately wrote in a response to a state lawmaker’s query Wednesday that the federal appeals court decision did not trigger the non-severability provision. That’s because the lawsuit had targeted Lehigh County’s decision to not count the ballots, not the validity of the date requirement, it said.
In any case, courts have not always chosen to enforce non-severability provisions in the past.
Pennsylvania’s 2019 mail-in voting law has become a hot topic for Republicans on the campaign trail, with Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano vowing to repeal it if he gets elected.
Most states offer mail-in voting for all voters, and every Republican lawmaker but one voted for the law in 2019. But Republicans in Pennsylvania soured on the practice after Trump began baselessly attacking it as rife with fraud in his 2020 reelection campaign. Perhaps as a result, Democrats in Pennsylvania have more heavily voted by mail than Republicans.
Last year, the same 14 Republican lawmakers — including 11 who actually voted for the law — sued, saying that prior court rulings make it clear that the constitution must be changed to allow no-excuse mail-in voting.
An intermediate court agreed in January.
Wolf’s administration appealed, saying that the lower court wrongly based its decision on court rulings under older versions of the state constitution that invalidated laws passed in 1839 and 1923 to expand absentee voting.
Alabama
Secret Service: Man faces charge for threatening president
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man has been charged with threatening President Joe Biden in a call to the White House, federal authorities said Wednesday.
A criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Secret Service alleges that John Andrew Bazor Jr., 37, of Mobile, called the White House switchboard on July 10 and made the death threat. He was arrested Monday in Mobile, south Alabama.
Prosecutors on Wednesday asked a judge to order a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether Bazor is competent to stand trial, WALA-TV reported. The report said prosecutors cited the man’s outbursts during a probable cause hearing earlier in the week and his resistance to mental health counselors as reasons for the request.
Bazor’s attorney, Gordon Armstrong, said he supports the call for a mental health evaluation, adding that the prosecution’s filing raises serious questions about whether his client is criminally liable due to his possible mental health issues.
The complaint said Secret Service agents tracked Bazor to a Mobile motel on Monday. According to the complaint, Bazor acknowledged that the phone number used to call the White House was his.
Federal investigators also learned Bazor had made several calls to the Secret Service office in Mobile the weekend before he called the White House, according to the complaint. It also said he called the State Department and the CIA.
California
Man admits fraud, bogus tax returns for athletes
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The head of a California tax preparation business has admitted his role in fraud schemes totaling $25 million that included exaggerated tax returns for professional athletes and exploiting federal pandemic relief programs, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Seir Robinson Havana, 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
As CEO of Mana Tax Services, Mana represented himself to pro athletes as an expert in the tax code who could get them big refunds.
He admitted as part of his plea agreement to submitting tax returns on behalf of nine different athletes that grossly inflated the returns to which they were entitled. The athletes were not named.
Havana also submitted fraudulent loan applications under the government’s Paycheck Protection Program on behalf of multiple companies.
Prosecutors estimate the tax fraud and loan fraud combined cost taxpayers around $25 million.
Havana faces more than 20 years in federal prison when he’s sentenced 9.
A co-defendant, Quin Ngoc Rudin, 45, of Chino, California, pleaded guilty in May to wire fraud. His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 14.
Florida
Nurse gets year in prison for replacing fentanyl with saline
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A nurse who previously worked at a Florida hospital has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for stealing fentanyl and replacing the powerful pain medication with saline.
Monique Elizabeth Carter, 36, of Middleburg, was sentenced Tuesday in Jacksonville federal court, according to court records. She pleaded guilty in April to tampering with a consumer product.
According to the plea agreement, Carter was working in the neural intensive care unit of Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville last September when a hospital pharmacist examining the ICU wing’s inventory of fentanyl found a syringe missing a tamper-proof cap but with some form of foreign adhesive remaining at the tip. A second fentanyl syringe had a cap that appeared to have been glued back onto the syringe, it said.
Authorities said a pharmacist supervisor reviewing hospital records found a pattern of Carter checking out doses of fentanyl for patients but then canceling the transactions and checking syringes back into the hospital’s inventory. Records showed that Carter did so 24 times over the preceding month.
When confronted with the findings, Carter eventually admitted that she had been stealing fentanyl for personal use for several months, officials said. Carter denied injecting herself with the drug while on duty. Law enforcement officers reported finding needles, saline syringes and adhesive in her bag.
As a registered nurse, Carter knew that her actions likely resulted in critically ill patients receiving diluted fentanyl that was not safe and effective, prosecutors said. Having been deprived of sterile, medically necessary medication, such patients were exposed to possible infection and endured unnecessary pain and suffering, officials said. They said the failure to anesthetize or control pain in intensive care unit patients can also increase the risk of illness or death from respiratory, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal complications.
West Virginia
Man sentenced to 40 years in officer’s death
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia man was sentenced to the maximum 40 years in prison Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a police officer who had responded to a parking complaint.
Joshua Phillips learned his fate in Kanawha County Circuit Court in the December 2020 shooting of Charleston Police Officer Cassie Johnson.
A jury convicted Phillips last month of a second-degree murder charge. He received an additional six-month sentence for simple possession of a controlled substance. Those sentences will be served consecutively.
According to a police complaint, a resident had said that Phillips, of Charleston, parked his sport utility vehicle on her property.
Prosecutors said Johnson was worried about her safety because Phillips had pulled a gun, prevented Johnson from getting to her service revolver and struggled with her before shots were fired. According to testimony at the trial, Phillips fired six shots. Johnson, 28, was shot in the neck.
