Kentucky
Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend settles lawsuits over police shooting
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The boyfriend of Breonna Taylor who fired a shot at police as they burst through Taylor’s door the night she was killed has settled two lawsuits against the city of Louisville, his attorneys said Monday.
The city agreed to pay $2 million to settle lawsuits filed by Kenneth Walker in federal and state court, one of his attorneys, Steve Romines, said in a statement. He added that Taylor’s death “will haunt Kenny for the rest of his life.”
“He will live with the effects of being put in harm’s way due to a falsified warrant, to being a victim of a hailstorm of gunfire and to suffering the unimaginable and horrific death of Breonna Taylor,” Romines said.
Walker and Taylor were settled in bed for the night when they were roused by banging on her apartment door around midnight on March 13, 2020. Police were outside with a drug warrant, and they used a battering ram to knock down the door. Walker fired a single shot from a handgun, striking Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly and two other officers then opened fire, killing Taylor.
The case highlighted the issue of “no-knock” warrants — which allow law enforcement agents to enter a home without announcing their presence - and led to a reexamination of the practice.
Walker was initially charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but charges against him were eventually dropped as protests and news media attention on the Taylor case intensified in the spring of 2020.
Walker told investigators he didn’t know police were at the door, and he thought an intruder was trying to break in.
Earlier this year, U.S. Justice Department prosecutors charged three Louisville officers with a conspiracy to falsify the Taylor warrant. One of the now-former officers, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty and admitted to helping create a false link between Taylor and a wanted drug dealer.
Walker wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post in August that a police officer had “finally taken some responsibility for the death of my girlfriend.”
“Knowing all the problems that this failed raid would create, the Louisville police tried to use me as a scapegoat to deflect blame,” he wrote. “It almost worked.”
Two other former officers involved in the warrant, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, are scheduled to go on trial in federal court next year.
The city of Louisville paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, in September 2020.
Walker’s attorneys said Monday that part of the settlement he received would be used to set up a scholarship fund for law school students interested in practicing civil rights law. Another portion will be contributed to the Center for Innovations in Community Safety, a police and community reform Center at Georgetown Law School.
Vermont
City sues chemical maker over school contamination
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The school board in Vermont’s largest city on Monday sued the manufacturer of chemicals that are forcing the city to tear down its high school and build a new one at an estimated cost of more than $190 million.
City officials announced in October they planned to sue chemical giant Monsanto after PCBs were found during renovations to the existing building, which also housed the Burlington Technical Center.
“Today’s filing brings us one step closer to holding the producer of these toxic chemicals accountable for the harm it has inflicted on our community,” Burlington Superintendent Tom Flanagan said in a statement.
On Election Day last month, city voters approved a $165 million bond to help pay for the new school.
In a statement issued Monday, Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, said the lawsuit had no merit and the entire situation could have been avoided.
“Hopefully (the lawsuit) will shed light on the role of the state of Vermont, the Burlington School District and the manufacturers of the building products at issue in creating the perfect storm that resulted in unwarranted actions to abandon the school, move students to a converted Macy’s, cancel renovation plans and spend $165 million, more than twice the renovation cost, to build a new high school,” the statement said.
Currently, Burlington High School students are attending classes in a renovated Macy’s department store in the city’s downtown.
Officials hope to begin demolition of the existing school early next year. The plan is to have the new school ready for students in 2025.
The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, estimates the total cost of tearing down the existing structure and building a new one would be more than $190 million.
PCBs are toxic industrial chemicals, now banned, that have accumulated in plants, fish, birds and people for decades. PCBs were used in many industrial and commercial applications, including in paint, coolants, sealants and hydraulic fluids.
Maine
11 priest abuse suits filed since change in statute of limitations
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The number of people suing over priest abuse is growing with three more lawsuits on Monday, bringing the total to nearly a dozen since the state loosened the statute of limitations last year.
The latest lawsuits focus on the Rev. John J. Curran, who allegedly abused three victims who were between 11 and 14 between 1962 and 1964 while working at a parish in Augusta, according to their attorney. Two others already sued over alleged sexual misconduct by Curran while working in Old Town.
Curran, who died in 1976, was featured in a 2004 report by the Maine attorney general that detailed dozens of cases of alleged sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.
Maine first agreed to remove its statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse cases in 2000, but that meant victims couldn’t sue for older crimes. Changes to state law last summer made it possible for Mainers to seek legal action for claims that were previously expired.
So far, 11 lawsuits allege the Diocese of Portland knew about abuse and failed to stop it or warn parishioners. A diocese spokesperson didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.
Montana
Woman sues family services over rape at 11
BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — A Montana woman has filed a lawsuit against the state child and family services agency saying it failed to protect her from her mother’s boyfriend, who was eventually convicted of raping and impregnating her when she was 11.
The woman, who is now 21, filed the lawsuit last week against the Division of Child and Family Services, The Montana Standard reported. She is seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress, anxiety and fear.
The state health department declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault.
The woman said she and her brother had been in the care of child and family services since she was 7 owing to her mother’s drug use. Over the next several years, the siblings lived with their mother, their biological father and their grandparents, the lawsuit states.
In 2011, the agency placed the girl with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, William Thomas Spencer, the lawsuit states.
They were living in Billings in early 2014 when a physician determined the 12-year-old girl was pregnant and had been raped when she was 11, court records said.
The agency left the girl in the house with Spencer, including after the baby was born in May 2014, the lawsuit states.
The girl’s grandmother requested genetic testing that eventually proved Spencer was the baby’s father, court records said. She was then removed from the home and charges were filed against Spencer.
“DPHHS left the 12-year-old rape victim in the home, with the rapist, for 203 days from the initial rape report,” the lawsuit charges.
Spencer pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent in July 2015 as part of a plea agreement and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His defense attorney said his use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien significantly contributed to his conduct, the Standard reported at the time.
Tennessee
Judge puts death row inmate’s lawsuit on hold
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee judge on Monday put on hold a case from a death row inmate alleging mistreatment by prison officials.
The stay of no more than 90 days is to allow Henry Hodges time to exhaust his administrative appeals, Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles said.
Hodges cut off his penis in October while on suicide watch. In a lawsuit filed in Chancery Court in Nashville, he has accused the state of providing inadequate medical and mental health care. He also accuses the state of cruel and unusual punishment for his treatment upon his return to the prison from the hospital. That included keeping him naked and tied down with restraints on a thin vinyl mattress over a concrete slab in a room where the lights were always on and there was no television or radio.
At a hearing Monday, attorneys for the state argued that the lawsuit is premature, because Hodges must first file a grievance with the prison system. Hodges’ attorneys argued that prison officials have already said his complaints are not covered by their grievance policy, so that state law doesn’t apply.
Chancellor Myles disagreed, saying Monday that the statute offers her little option but to stay the case. However, Myles said she would still hear arguments Friday about which of the court records should be kept from the public.
The Associated Press has asked to intervene to oppose the state’s request for a protective order that would seal broad categories of documents, including all video recordings of Hodges’ treatment while inside the prison. Another news organization, the Nashville Banner, is also seeking to intervene. The Banner wants the court to unseal the documents that have already been filed under seal, arguing that the case is of “extraordinary public concern.”
A Nashville jury in 1992 convicted Hodges of murdering telephone repairman Ronald Bassett two years earlier and sentenced him to death. He also was sentenced to 40 years in prison for robbing Bassett.
Kentucky
Man who shot officer sentenced to life in prison
CATLETTSBURG, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky man who shot a police officer during a kidnapping has been sentenced to life in federal prison.
Jonathan Lee Smithers, 41, was sentenced Monday in federal court in Ashland. Smithers had already entered a guilty plea to attempted murder earlier this year in state court.
Federal prosecutors said in May of this year, Smithers physically abused a woman he had been in a relationship with and held her at gunpoint in a car and on foot until the woman escaped after several hours.
A responding police officer approached Smithers as he was coming out of a wooded area. Smithers shot Flatwoods police offficer Tommy Robinson in the throat. Robinson was hospitalized and survived the shooting.
“Mr. Smithers not only tragically kidnapped his trusted partner and led her on a series of terrorizing demands, but he then seriously wounded a local police officer,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen said in a media release.
