Missouri
Protesters begin picking up checks in $4.9 million settlement
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Some of the people who were arrested during a 2017 protest over the acquittal of a white police officer in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith have started receiving their share of a $4.9 million settlement the city agreed to this year.
The first checks were distributed Friday to some of the 84 people covered by the settlement. Their lawsuit had claimed the protesters’ rights were violated when they were caught in a police “kettle” as officers surrounded and arrested everyone in the area. Three people who filed individual lawsuits also settled for $85,000 each.
The city denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which promises payouts between $28,000 and more than $150,000.
Dekita Roberts told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she initially thought it might be a scam when she first got the call about the settlement.
“It was just a shock and a surprise,” said Roberts, adding that she wants to invest some of the money and try to set some aside for her children.
Another man who picked up his check Friday, Ali Bey, 36, said he plans to use the money to start his own construction company.
“This takes five steps out of the way for me,” Bey said. “As far as getting a truck and tools, I can begin doing that by the end of the day. I already got some of the clientele.”
They were among the crowd of people protesting after former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was acquitted in the Dec. 20, 2011, shooting death of Smith, who was Black.
Protesters said police surrounded more than 120 people who officers said did not follow dispersal orders. Several people claimed police used excessive force and indiscriminate pepper spray, including against bystanders who were not protesting.
St. Louis has paid more than $10 million altogether in connection with police actions on Sept. 17, 2017. That includes a $5 million payment to Luther Hall, a Black undercover officer who said he was assaulted by fellow police officers who thought he was a protester.
In 2021, the city also agreed to pay $115,000 to a Kansas City filmmaker who said he was beaten and pepper-sprayed during the protests.
Javad Khazaeli, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said this case dragged on for years.
“Other cities that have done this have gone through the whole process and trials in a year and a half,” Khazaeli said. “We’ve had people move away from St. Louis because people are still afraid of the police.”
Washington
Supreme Court won’t block ruling favoring Native American man cited for speeding
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday left in place a lower court ruling that invalidated a speeding ticket against a Native American man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because the city is located within the boundaries of an Indian reservation.
The justices rejected an emergency appeal by Tulsa to block the ruling while the legal case continues. The order is the latest consequence of the high court’s landmark 2020 decision that found that much of eastern Oklahoma, including Tulsa, remains an Indian reservation.
Justin Hooper, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, was cited for speeding in 2018 by Tulsa police in a part of the city within the historic boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He paid a $150 fine for the ticket, but filed a lawsuit after the Supreme Court’s ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma. He argued that the city did not have jurisdiction because his offense was committed by a Native American in Indian Country. A municipal court and a federal district court judge both sided with the city, but a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision.
There were no noted dissents among the justices Friday, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a short separate opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he said that Tulsa’s appeal raised an important question about whether the city can enforce municipal laws against Native Americans.
Kavanaugh wrote that nothing in the appeals court decision “prohibits the City from continuing to enforce its municipal laws against all persons, including Indians, as the litigation progresses.”
Louisiana
Lawsuit filed to block $1.8 billion container facility project at Port of New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A south Louisiana parish is suing the Port of New Orleans to block it from building a planned $1.8 billion container facility.
The St. Bernard Parish District Attorney’s Office filed the lawsuit this week in 34th Judicial District Court, the latest volley in a battle between politicians and residents who say the giant container port — called the Louisiana International Terminal — at Violet would disrupt life and cause environmental damage.
Port Nola CEO Brandy Christian called the lawsuit “preposterous” and “election-year theatrics.”
District Attorney Perry Nicosia, in a news release Friday, said the cooperative endeavor agreement between the St. Bernard Port Authority and Port Nola is not valid and Port Nola does not have the authority to operate a shipping facility within the borders of St. Bernard Parish, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
“The lawsuit filed lays out the entire legislative process by which the St. Bernard Port Authority was created (and) further proves that Port Nola was stripped of all its jurisdiction in St. Bernard Parish by legislation passed in 1992 by then Senator Sammy Nunez, then Representative Thomas Warner, and then Representative Ken Odinet,” Nicosia said.
The project has been the subject of controversy since Port Nola first announced at the end of 2020 that it had purchased 1,100 acres at Violet and agreed with St. Bernard Port to build the LIT. Port Nola, which has argued that the downriver container facility is long overdue to allow it to compete with other Gulf South ports for big ship business, has the support of Gov. John Bel Edwards as well as regional and parish economic development agencies.
Last year, Port Nola and the state signed a deal with two private operators who agreed to provide $800 million to help build the terminal as well as financing infrastructure upgrades. Port Nola’s board recently approved $8 million in contracts that will finalize the project’s design and lay the groundwork for construction.
But earlier this summer, the project suffered a setback when $130 million of a needed $180 million for infrastructure improvements was removed from the state budget.
Christian bemoaned the holdups, adding that the port would “review (the lawsuit) and respond in due course.”
“For decades, it has been clear that a new container terminal is needed downriver from the Crescent City Connection Bridge in order to secure the future of the state’s trade-based economy and to make Louisiana the premier shipping gateway in the Gulf,” she said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, it’s situations like this that have left Louisiana struggling to compete with neighboring states. Election year theatrics, when this process has been going on for years with regular outreach and input, are unproductive.”
Texas
Opera singer and his husband plead guilty to sexual assault of singer
HOUSTON (AP) — Renowned opera singer David Daniels and his husband have pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting another singer in Houston.
Daniels, 57, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Scott Walters, 40, entered the pleas Friday after a jury was assembled for the trial of the pair on first-degree felony charges of aggravated sexual assault.
Both pleaded guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony, and were sentenced to eight years’ probation and required to register as sex offenders.
Daniels, Walters and their attorney declined to comment following the hearing.
Daniels and Walters were charged in 2019 when Samuel Schultz filed a criminal complaint in 2018 alleging the two assaulted him in 2010 after he met them at a Houston Grand Opera reception while he was a graduate student at Rice University.
Schultz said he was invited to their apartment and given a drink that led him to slip in and out of consciousness. He awoke alone and naked.
The AP doesn’t normally name victims of sexual assault, but Schultz offered to publicly identify himself to help others fearful of reporting an assault.
Daniels, a countertenor, was fired as a University of Michigan professor and was removed by the San Francisco Opera from a production of Handel’s “Orlando” after sexual assault allegations by a student at the university in 2018.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Michigan, alleged Daniels groped the male student and sent and requested sexual photos. The lawsuit also alleged that Daniels served the student alcohol, gave him sleep medication and touched him sexually.
North Dakota
Fargo challenges new law, seeking to keep local ban on home gun sales
Fargo is suing the state of North Dakota over a new law that bans zoning ordinances related to guns and ammunition, continuing a clash over local gun control.
The state’s biggest city has an ordinance that bans people from selling guns and ammunition out of their homes. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law this year that limits cities and counties from regulating guns and ammunition. The law, which took effect Tuesday, also voids existing, related ordinances.
The city’s lawsuit says the “stakes are much higher” and gets at whether the Legislature can “strip away” Fargo’s home rule powers. Fargo voters approved a home rule charter in 1970 that gave the city commission certain powers, including the power to zone public and private property.
“As it relates to this present action, the North Dakota legislative assembly is upset that the City of Fargo has exercised its home rule powers to prohibit the residents of the City of Fargo - and no one else - from the home occupation of selling firearms and ammunition and the production of ammunition for sale,” the lawsuit states. “Effectively, the City of Fargo does not want its residents to utilize their homes in residential areas as gun stores.”
The city successfully challenged a similar law two years ago.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley told The Associated Press his office will evaluate the complaint. Fargo city spokesperson Gregg Schildberger said the City Commission will discuss the lawsuit on Monday during a regular meeting.
Bill sponsor and Republican state Rep. Ben Koppelman told a state Senate panel in April that the issue came to greater attention in 2016 when, because of the ordinance, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives refused to renew the federal firearms licenses of Fargo dealers who sold out of their homes.
“What is at issue is whether we want local governments creating gun control or whether we want gun regulations to remain a state-controlled issue,” Koppelman said in April. “Without this bill and in light of the (2021) court opinion, I think local political subdivisions could propose all sorts of local gun control, and based on the anti-gun track record of the City of Fargo Commission, I think we could expect it.”
Koppelman did not immediately respond to a phone message for comment.
