Kansas
Court: Self-defense doesn’t apply when bystander hurt
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas law allowing deadly force against an attacker doesn’t protect people from prosecution if a bystander is injured, the state’s highest court declared Friday.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in the case of a Wichita police officer whose shots at a charging dog wounded a 9-year-old girl. The justices ordered a trial in Sedgwick County District Court for former Officer Dexter Betts on a felony reckless aggravated battery charge.
The December 2017 shooting happened after Betts and other officers responded to a call about domestic violence and a suicide threat at a Wichita home. Once inside, the dog charged at Betts, and he fired twice. His shots missed and hit the floor, and bullet fragments hit the girl above an eye and on a toe, according to the court’s decision.
Betts argued that he acted in self defense. A judge dismissed the case before trial, and the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld that decision. But Supreme Court Justice Dan Biles, writing for a unanimous state Supreme Court, said Kansas law grants immunity from prosecution for force used specifically against an attacker and doesn’t mention bystanders.
“If the Legislature wishes to extend self-defense immunity when an innocent bystander is hurt, it can do so,” Biles wrote. “In the meantime, we find nothing in the statutes providing a blanket shield for reckless conduct injuring an innocent bystander who was not reasonably perceived as an attacker.”
Jess Hoeme, Betts’ attorney, said he believes Betts will be acquitted at trial, but expressed concern that the ruling could hinder law enforcement and endanger officers.
“Law enforcement officers have a very, very difficult job to do,” Hoeme said. “When officers begin to hesitate or when they start to second-guess their own actions like that, law enforcement officers are going to get killed.”
Hoeme said the ruling is “unfortunate” because Betts didn’t intend to hurt any person while shooting and the bullets fragmented.
But prosecutors have argued that Betts acted recklessly in shooting at the dog with the girl nearby. A conviction on a reckless aggravated battery charge for a first-time offender carries a presumed sentence of 18 months’ probation.
“This settled a question that had been unsettled since the passage of the `stand your ground’’/ self-defense immunity law in Kansas,” Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said of Friday’s ruling, adding it was a “difficult legal question.”
Kansas
Man faces trial for allegedly assaulting officer in Jan. 6 riot
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas man accused of assaulting a federal officer during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will go to trial on several felony and misdemeanor charges, a federal judge has ruled.
A federal judge this week set a Nov. 28 trial date for Michael Eckerman, of Wichita, The Kansas City Star reported. He will be the first Kansan charged in the Capitol riot to face trial.
The felony charges against Eckerman include civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.
His attorney declined to comment on Thursday, The Star reported.
Charging documents allege that Eckerman entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and at one point pushed a Capitol Police officer, who fell down a small set of stairs and was sprayed with a fire extinguisher by an unknown person, according to the documents. That allowed the crowd to move past the police.
Eckerman and two women with him then went to Statuary Hall on the second floor, where he pushed his way forward to another police line and yelled at officers for several minutes, according to court records.
He then took a picture in front of the portrait of George Washington and left the building.
New York
Judge, Democratic power broker sentenced to prison for bribery scheme
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A former state Supreme Court justice and a former Democratic power broker from western New York were sentenced to prison on Thursday for their roles in a bribery scheme, which authorities say influenced judicial decisions and official appointments.
G. Steven Pigeon, the ex-chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee, received a one-year sentence. Former Justice John Michalek received one year and four months.
However, Michalek’s sentence was put on hold until Sept. 9, after State Supreme Court Justice Donald Cerio Jr. granted an application from Michalek’s lawyer.
Pigeon had pleaded guilty in 2018 to bribing the judge with hockey tickets and job promises in exchange for favors in legal cases. Michalek pleaded guilty and resigned from the bench in 2016. Both the judge and Pigeon, who was also a lawyer, have been disbarred.
The two “engaged in a deep web of deception and bribery that violated their duty to the public and the very laws Michalek swore to uphold” between 2012 and 2015, state Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
Pigeon’s sentence will run concurrently with a separate, four-month federal sentence he received Wednesday for admitting he arranged for a Canadian citizen to make an illegal $25,000 donation to a New York official’s reelection campaign.
Pigeon was also charged last December with sexually assaulting a child who was younger than 11, a charge he has denied. That case is pending in Erie County Court.
Tennessee
Judge suspended for rest of term for opioid case comments, sexual allegations
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A judicial oversight panel has suspended a Tennessee judge for the rest of his term, citing two very different types of indiscretion in handling cases.
In one, his out-of-court comments were deemed improper enough to void a prominent ruling he made against an opioid company. In the other, a judicial oversight panel found he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a married woman with an adoption case before him.
The unusual two-count suspension came down from the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct, which this week found that Judge Jonathan Lee Young had mishandled both cases. An appeals court disqualified him from the opioid case, voiding his default judgment that would have sent the case directly to trial over how much to award the plaintiffs in damages. In the other case, he didn’t recuse himself and ruled that the husband could adopt one of his wife’s children.
Young’s 30-day suspension begins Saturday and his term ends Aug. 31 after losing his Republican primary election in May. The judicial board will hand over the case to Tennessee’s Board of Professional Responsibility, which oversees attorneys, for possible further action.
Penny White, a University of Tennessee law school professor who specializes in judicial ethics, said the case illustrates that “a judge is a judge 24-7.”
“Fortunately, it’s rare for an investigation of a judge to get this far, and it’s certainly rare to have this serious of allegations with regard to the sexual misconduct, and it’s certainly rare to have discipline the result of which is you don’t get to serve out your term of office,” White said.
Since 2014, Young has served on the bench in the 13th Judicial District, which includes Clay, Cumberland, DeKalb, Overton, Pickett, Putnam and White counties.
In the case various local governments filed against Endo Pharmaceuticals, Young told Law360 in February that it was the “the worst case of document hiding” he had ever run into, likening it to a John Grisham movie.
His comments came after he made an oral default judgment ruling against Endo, but before he issued a written decision later that month. In April, the Tennessee Court of Appeals removed him from the case and overturned the order, noting the judge’s further commentary about the case on a Facebook page partly devoted to his reelection.
The judicial conduct board said Young then posted more on social media and did more media interviews about the case after the appellate ruling. According to the board, Young wrote to the board in May that he had a constitutional right to his speech to news outlets and on social media.
Young’s disqualification resulted in a different outcome than a similar lawsuit by other Tennessee local governments. There, another judge likewise found Endo was liable without holding a civil trial, ruling that there was a “coordinated strategy” by the company and its attorneys to delay proceedings, deprive plaintiffs of information and interfere with the administration of justice. The company settled that case for $35 million to prevent heading to a jury trial over the damage.
In the other infraction cited against Young, the board wrote about claims that Young initiated communications with a woman in an adoption case filed in his court in March, in which he requested explicit photos and then met with her multiple times outside of court, including at a hotel where they had sex in April.
The board’s ruling says Young gave the woman advice on an unrelated custody matter in another court in his district, including how to get the judge disqualified.
When her husband learned about the relationship, he confronted the judge, the board wrote. The judge didn’t recuse himself and allowed the husband to adopt one of his wife’s children, according to the order.
The board concluded that affidavits, the hotel receipt and text messages between the judge and the woman corroborate the allegations.
In 2020, the board had reprimanded Young over allegations of inappropriate messages sent to women on social media platforms from 2015 to 2020 that ranged “from flirtatious to overtly sexual,” most of them depicting him in his judicial robe.
Michigan
Judge in abortion case denies request to step aside
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan judge who suspended the state’s long-unenforced abortion ban in May denied a request Friday from state lawmakers seeking to disqualify her from presiding over the key abortion case.
Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Elizabeth Gleicher wrote in her decision that at least one of the arguments the lawmakers made “borders on frivolous.”
Gleicher granted a preliminary injunction in May to Planned Parenthood of Michigan that stalled the enforcement of a 1931 state law criminalizing abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, her ruling became the only legal barrier to that ban taking effect.
After Gleicher was assigned to oversee Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, she informed both sides that she regularly contributes to the group and previously represented it in an abortion case decided 23 years ago.
But Gleicher wrote in Friday’s decision that she incorrectly remembered her affiliation with that case. She said that while Planned Parenthood filed statements in support of her client, she did not actually represent Planned Parenthood. She said the Legislature’s argument about her involvement in that case “borders on frivolous.”
In filing their motion seeking to have Gleicher disqualified from the case, the Republican-controlled Michigan House and Senate contended in part that her contributions to Planned Parenthood violated an ethics standard against the “appearance of impropriety.”
She wrote that the argument that judges who have made “small contributions” to an organization involved in a case must recuse themselves was “simply unprecedented.”
Gleicher added that her contributions to Planned Parenthood were generally $1,000 or less, and that her last contribution was in December 2021.
