Oregon
Ex-OSU dean wins whistleblower lawsuit, $600K
CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — A jury has awarded over $600,000 to a former Oregon State University dean who sued the school for whistleblower retaliation.
University officials disagree with the verdict issued earlier this month and plan to appeal, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Grace Kuo, former dean of OSU’s College of Pharmacy, said in her lawsuit that the university aided and abetted in retaliation against her when she reported student concerns of discrimination and harassment.
She also reported the College of Pharmacy’s executive associate dean for allegedly mishandling the student complaints, according to the lawsuit. Kuo said administrators advised her to ask the executive associate dean to step down. Kuo said university leadership later turned on her, removing her as a dean and demoted.
Kuo is now the dean of Texas Tech University’s pharmacy school.
OSU’s vice president of university relations and marketing, Steve Clark, said in a statement that the university was disappointed.
“Oregon State University and its leadership unequivocally and fully dispute Dr. Kuo’s claim that she was dismissed from her Dean position for being a whistle-blower,” Clark said. “Dr. Kuo’s dismissal as dean was solely about leadership.”
Clark said the university supports and encourages university community members to report misconduct.
Minnesota
Man sentenced for student athlete’s death
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A man who shot and killed a 15-year-old Minneapolis high school student athlete who brushed shoulders with him on a sidewalk was sentenced Tuesday to 38.5 year in prison.
Cody Fohrenkam, 30, was convicted last month of two counts of second-degree murder in the February 2020 death of Deshaun Hill Jr., an honor roll student and star quarterback at Minneapolis North High School.
Prosecutors said Hill was walking to a bus stop after school when he barely brushed shoulders with Fohrenkam, who was looking for someone who had stolen his cellphone earlier in the day. Fohrenkam shot Hill in the back several times and fled.
Hill’s family, friends and supporters filled the courtroom as his parents and others gave impact statements that prompted several outbursts from observers. His parents were briefly escorted out of the courtroom but returned to hear District Judge Julie Allyn deliver the sentence, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Hill’s family said after the sentencing that they are pushing for legislation that would make anyone over the age of 25 who kills a minor eligible for two life sentences.
Virginia
White supremacist serving life, fined for misconduct
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A white supremacist who killed a woman when he rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville has been fined for allegedly threatening a correctional officer and brandishing what an inmate disciplinary record called a “dangerous weapon” at the prison where he is serving a life sentence.
Federal prosecutors disclosed the misconduct incidents in court documents as they asked a judge to order James Alex Fields Jr. to turn over $650 from his inmate trust account to make a court-ordered payment toward restitution to the victims of his crimes.
In documents filed last week, prosecutors said the victims have not received any restitution payments in the nearly four years since Fields was sentenced. He owes a total of $81,600 in restitution and assessments in the criminal case, prosecutors wrote.
“Fields is scheduled to remain incarcerated for life. At his current payment rate of $100 per year, it would take him 816 years to pay his financial obligation. Such a payment rate effectively avoids the majority of Fields’s restitution,” U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh and Assistant U.S. Attorney Krista Consiglio Frith wrote. They argued that Fields should be required to turn over $650 from his account. Fields had asked in a hand-written motion that he only be required to turn over $298.
Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, 2017, ostensibly to protest city plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Fields, of Maumee, Ohio, is serving a life sentence for murder and hate crimes for ramming his car into a crowd of people who were protesting against the white nationalists, injuring dozens and killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist.
Fields is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri.
The documents filed by prosecutors describe a series of incidents in prison from 2019 to 2021, including Fields being “insolent” to a staff member or being disruptive, which resulted in having his phone or email privileges temporarily suspended. The incidents for which Fields was fined include: making a threatening remark to a correctional officer, $61; and being found in possession of what the inmate discipline record called a “dangerous” homemade weapon, $250.
Prosecutors wrote that because Fields has not released money from his account to pay the disciplinary fines, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has restricted Fields from using the majority of the money in his account until he agrees to release the money to pay the fines. He is only allowed to spend $25 per month at the prison commissary, with certain items excluded from the limitation, including over-the-counter medications.
Prosecutors said the restriction would not interfere with the court’s ability to order Fields to turn over $650 from his account.
“Fields’s restitution obligation was imposed in his amended judgment on October 1, 2019,” prosecutors wrote. “It, therefore, predates Fields’s institutional misconduct fines and has priority over the institutional fines that Fields has opted not to pay to date, which he had two years to pay.”
Denise Lunsford, one of Fields’ attorneys in the criminal case, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
New York
Former FTX executive is 3rd to plead guilty in cooperation deal
NEW YORK (AP) — A former FTX executive pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy and wire fraud charges as part of a deal to cooperate with federal prosecutors building their case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in what authorities have dubbed one of the biggest frauds in history.
The plea by Nishad Singh, formerly the cryptocurrency company’s engineering director, raises to three the number of people who prosecutors say have pleaded guilty in connection with the case.
The charges against Singh, 27, carry potential penalties of up to 75 years in prison if he fails to fully cooperate, including by testifying at any trials.
Singh’s plea “underscores once again that the crimes at FTX were vast in scope and consequence,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
“They rocked our financial markets with a multibillion-dollar fraud. And they corrupted our politics with tens of millions of dollars in illegal straw campaign contributions,” he said. “These crimes demand swift and certain justice and that is exactly what we are seeking in the Southern District of New York.”
Last week, prosecutors filed new fraud charges against Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty in the case. The fresh charges raised the number of years Bankman-Fried could face in prison to 155 years from 115 and described in detail a fraud that the government alleges occurred from 2019 until last November.
Bankman-Fried is awaiting trial while living with his parents in Palo Alto, California, after signing a $250 million personal recognizance bond.
He is accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to support the company he founded, a global cryptocurrency exchange affiliated with the cryptocurrency trading hedge fund Alameda Research.
He also was charged with illegally funding speculative venture investments and misdirecting customer deposits to make charitable donations, along with spending tens of millions of dollars on illegal campaign donations to Democrats and Republicans in an attempt to buy influence over cryptocurrency regulation in Washington.
On the same December day Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to face charges in New York City, prosecutors announced that two of his associates had pleaded guilty and forged their own deals to cooperate with prosecutors. Carolyn Ellison, Alameda Research’s former chief executive; and Gary Wang, an FTX cofounder, pleaded guilty to wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud.
New Hampshire
Judge: Psychiatric patients cannot be held in ERs
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The clock is ticking for New Hampshire to stop the involuntary holding of psychiatric patients in emergency rooms after a federal judge declared the state’s practice unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty ruled Thursday that the state is violating the rights of hospitals by seizing their property. She declined to issue an order halting the practice, however. Instead, she gave the state and hospitals a month to submit proposed orders or a timeline for how they would develop an order together.
“The record is clear; the Commissioner’s boarding practice commandeers space, staff and resources in the Hospitals’ emergency departments that is needed for other patients and services,” McCafferty wrote.
New Hampshire has long struggled with a mental health system that advocates say is overburdened at every stage, from initiation of treatment to re-entry into the community. Emergency room boarding, with people in crisis waiting days or weeks for treatment, has become a flashpoint and focus of multiple lawsuits.
McCafferty’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by patients who argue they were involuntarily held in emergency rooms without opportunity to contest their detentions. A group of hospitals joined the lawsuit, arguing their rights also were violated.
The New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness called the ruling an opportunity to expand on progress made in recent years after lawmakers increased funding for mobile crisis teams, designated receiving beds for patients in mental health crises and supported housing.
“NAMI NH has long held that the problem of emergency department boarding should not be considered in a vacuum,” the group said in a statement. “It is directly related to the long-term failure of the State, hospitals, and the health care system generally, to develop a comprehensive system of community-based services for people with serious mental illnesses.”
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office, which represents the state in court, said officials are reviewing the order and will respond in court.
New Hampshire Hospital Association President Steve Ahnen said the hospitals were pleased with the “clear and compelling order.”
“This case has always been about ensuring patients in acute psychiatric crisis are able receive the care they need immediately and in a facility specially designed for that purpose,” he said.
