Mississippi
Men indicted for shooting at delivery driver
BROOKHAVEN, Miss. (AP) — A father and son have been indicted by a grand jury after allegedly chasing and shooting at a FedEx driver in January after he dropped off a package in a Mississippi city.
Brandon and Gregory Case, who are both white, were re-arrested Nov. 18 and indicted for attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into the vehicle of D’Monterrio Gibson, who is Black. The charges were upgraded from conspiracy and aggravated assault.
Gibson, 24, was not injured. But the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of the state capital, Jackson.
Gibson and his attorney, Carlos Moore, said they pushed prosecutors to secure an indictment for nearly 10 months.
“It was an extremely long process to get this far into the case,” Gibson told WLBT-TV. “I feel like most of the time, I was treated like a suspect rather than a victim.”
Moore compared the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun.
Moore has called for a federal hate crime probe into the case. A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press in February that the department received a request to look into the case and was reviewing the request to determine any next steps. The department did not provide an update Tuesday.
Gibson said he was wearing a FedEx uniform and was driving an unmarked van that FedEx had rented when he dropped off a package at a house in Brookhaven on Jan. 24. As he was leaving, he said he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.
The pickup driver then tried to cut him off as he pulled out of the driveway, he said. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man who had a gun pointed at the van and was motioning for him to stop. Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the pursuit.
Attorneys for Brandon and Gregory Case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Cases were initially arrested in February and released after paying bonds on lesser charges. Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said bond was set at $500,000 for the upgraded charges, according to the Brookhaven Daily Leader.
Moore doesn’t expect the case to go to trial until May of 2023 at the earliest.
Idaho
Lawyers seek to block execution of terminally ill man
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A terminally ill man scheduled to be executed in mid-December for his role in the 1985 slayings of two gold prospectors in Idaho is asking a federal court to block the execution.
Attorneys for 66-year-old Gerald Ross Pizzuto Jr. asked the court in documents filed Nov. 21 in U.S. District Court in Idaho for a preliminary injunction halting the state’s death warrant, issued last week. The warrant sets Pizzuto’s execution by lethal injection on Dec. 15. But officials said they don’t have the chemicals needed to carry out the execution and are trying to obtain them.
Attorneys with the Federal Defenders Services of Idaho who are representing Pizzuto also, in a related case, filed documents Monday seeking a six-month administrative stay of the execution to allow time for litigation for the preliminary injunction.
The attorneys said that scheduling the execution between Thanksgiving and Christmas makes it more difficult to bring in witnesses and experts who won’t be able to rearrange holiday travel plans.
“It is simply not feasible for them all to fly to Boise at the drop of a hat occasioned by the Attorney General’s rush to obtain a death warrant,” the attorneys said in a statement.
Scott Graff, spokesperson for the Idaho attorney general’s office, said Tuesday that the office had no comment on pending litigation.
Pizzuto’s attorneys contend that the state’s protocols involving religious accommodations in the execution chamber need to be revised. They said the state’s procedures ban spiritual advisers from the execution chamber.
Specifically, Pizzuto’s attorneys are asking the court to order Idaho to amend both the state’s execution protocol and the administrative regulation on executions before the state can execute Pizzuto. Changing the state’s administrative regulations typically involves a public process with hearings.
Arguments about a spiritual adviser being allowed in the execution chamber with Pizzuto have been playing out in federal court. Attorneys for Idaho in a court filing Nov. 4 said the state met Pizzuto’s request and agreed to permit a “spiritual advisor, audible prayer, pastoral touching, and the use of religious items in the execution chamber during Plaintiff’s execution.”
Additionally, Pizzuto’s attorneys have also said that Pizzuto has a history of prescription medication that will make the pentobarbital less effective and create the potential for torture, and that he has an increased risk of a painful heart attack before he is sedated.
Pizzuto has spent more than three decades on death row and was originally scheduled to be put to death in June 2021. He asked for clemency because he has terminal bladder cancer, heart disease, diabetes and decreased intellectual function.
The Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole then changed Pizzuto’s death sentence to life in prison. But Republican Gov. Brad Little rejected that recommendation, and the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in August that the governor’s decision to overrule the life-in-prison recommendation was legal.
“Gov. Brad Little can render all further legal proceedings unnecessary by accepting the clemency vote,” Federal Defender Services of Idaho said in its statement.
Pizzuto was camping with two other men near the town of McCall, in central Idaho, when he encountered 58-year-old Berta Herndon and her 37-year-old nephew Del Herndon, who were prospecting in the area.
Prosecutors said Pizzuto, armed with a .22-caliber rifle, went to the Herndons’ cabin, tied their wrists behind their backs and bound their legs to steal their money. He bludgeoned them both, and co-defendant James Rice then shot Del Herndon in the head. Another co-defendant, Bill Odom, helped bury the bodies, and all three were accused of robbing the cabin.
Indiana
Judge weighs whether to unseal records in teens’ killings
DELPHI, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana judge said Nov. 22 that she will decide soon whether to unseal court records that led to a man’s arrest in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls, while a prosecutor urged the court to keep the documents sealed because others could be involved in the case.
Special Judge Fran Gull said she’d decide the matter “in due haste” after she listened to arguments from attorneys for 50-year-old Richard Matthew Allen and the county prosecutor. Gull acknowledged that there is great public interest in the case against the Delphi, Indiana, man who was arrested last month and charged with two counts of murder in the killings of 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German and 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams.
The probable cause affidavit and charging information against Allen have not been publicly released since they were sealed last month at the request of Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McLeland.
McLeland said during Tuesday’s hearing that authorities “have a good reason to believe” Allen is not the only person connected to the killings. He said that if the affidavit were to be released without redactions, witnesses could be harassed.
Gull — an Allen County judge assigned to the case after a judge in Carroll County, where Delphi is located, recused himself — held Tuesday’s hearing in Delphi to determine whether the documents should be made public. She set a Feb. 17 bail hearing for Allen, whose attorneys on Monday filed a petition to set bond so he might be released before the trial.
John McGauley, a spokesman for Gull, said the judge cannot comment further on the case because it is ongoing and that there is no timeline for when she might decide whether to release the documents.
Andrew Baldwin, an attorney for Allen, said after the hearing that “our client is the wrong guy.” Standing outside the courtroom, he said the sealed probable cause affidavit is “flimsy” and that “you expect more than what I saw.”
Baldwin said Allen has professed his innocence to him.
The county prosecutor’s office and the county clerk’s office did not immediately reply to requests for additional information.
On Oct. 31, authorities announced the arrest of Allen, who lives in Delphi and works at a pharmacy in the city of roughly 3,000 people about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis.
The February 2017 killings of the two local girls have haunted the community. A relative dropped the them off at a trail near the Monon High Bridge, just outside of Delphi. Hours later, they failed to show up at their pick-up spot. The next day, their bodies were found in a rugged area near the trail.
The girls’ deaths were ruled homicides, but police have never disclosed how they were killed or what evidence was gathered. At the news conference announcing Allen’s arrest, police declined to answer questions about what led them to Allen, citing the sealed records and their ongoing investigation.
Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, filed a brief with the court on Monday urging Gull to unseal the probable cause affidavit and charging information that would show what evidence authorities have linking Allen to the killings.
Texas
Judge backs full $49M jury award against Alex Jones
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge said Nov. 22 she will not lower a nearly $50 million punishment against Alex Jones that a jury handed down earlier this year over the Infowars host spreading false conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Since that August trial in Texas, other judgments against Jones in Connecticut have stacked up to a staggering $1.44 billion — setting up what experts say is likely a long fight ahead for Sandy Hook families to try to collect that money.
The decision in Texas by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble is another defeat for Jones and notable because a state law has raised questions about how much of the punishment would stand.
In most civil cases, Texas law limits how much defendants have to pay in “exemplary,” or punitive, damages to twice the “economic damages” plus up to $750,000. But jurors are not told about this cap, and eye-popping verdicts are often hacked down by judges. But Gamble said she would enter a judgment for the full amount.
Jones could appeal and has already said he has little money to pay the damages. He said during the Connecticut trial he has less than $2 million to his name, which contradicted testimony at the trial in Texas. Infowars parent company Free Speech Systems, meanwhile, is seeking bankruptcy protection.
Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012.
