Maine
Mom who pleaded guilty to her child’s overdose death begins 4-year sentence
HOULTON, Maine (AP) — A Maine woman who pleaded guilty in the overdose death of her 1-year-old son has begun serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.
Mariah Dobbins, 29, of Easton, was ordered last month to serve four years under a plea agreement following the March 19, 2022, death of her son, Jaden Raymond. Maine State Police released few details at the time, but an autopsy later revealed the boy died from a fentanyl overdose.
Dobbins told police she and her two sons had fallen asleep watching TV and that Jayden was unresponsive when she woke up. Law enforcement officials accused Dobbins of being inattentive to the point of being criminally negligent.
Defense attorney Steve Smith said prosecutors wanted a harsh penalty following a number of high-profile deaths of children. Dobbins was sentenced July 20 to 12 years in prison, but with most of the sentence suspended.
“The state wanted to make an example of Ms. Dobbins because there seems to be a wave of these cases,” Smith said Tuesday.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Service came under criticism following a spate of children’s deaths from abuse or neglect. There also have been several cases of babies and children overdosing, typically when they ingested drugs that were left in the open, amid an epidemic of opioid abuse in the state.
Oklahoma
Attorneys appeal reparations case in 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Attorneys seeking reparations for three living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre filed an appeal in the case with the Oklahoma Supreme Court and said a district court judge erred in dismissing the case last month.
The appeal was filed Friday on behalf of the last known living survivors of the attack, all of whom are now over 100 years old. They are seeking reparations from the city and other defendants for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood.
“For 102 years... they’ve been waiting,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the three, during a press conference Monday on the steps of the Oklahoma Supreme Court building. “They’ve been waiting, just like every other victim and survivor of the massacre, for just an opportunity to have their day in court.”
Solomon-Simmons, who brought the lawsuit under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, said he wants the high court to return the case to district court for discovery and for a judge to decide the case on its merits.
District Court Judge Caroline Wall last month dismissed the case with prejudice, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage. Defendants in the case include the City of Tulsa, the Tulsa Regional Chamber, the Board of County Commissioners, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office and the Oklahoma Military Department.
A Chamber of Commerce attorney previously said the massacre was horrible, but the nuisance it caused was not ongoing.
The lawsuit contends Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from the massacre, during which an angry white mob descended on a 35-block area, looting, killing and burning it to the ground. Beyond those killed, thousands more were left homeless and living in a hastily constructed internment camp.
The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit argued. It seeks a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a victims compensation fund, among other things.
Texas
Judge rules that Southwest failed to follow his order
DALLAS (AP) — A judge has sanctioned Southwest Airlines, writing that the airline twisted his words and disregarded his order in the case of a flight attendant who claimed that she was fired for expressing her opposition to abortion.
U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr found Southwest in contempt for the way it explained the case to flight attendants last year after losing a jury verdict. In a blistering 29-page order, the judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech.
On Monday, the judge ordered Southwest to pay the flight attendant’s most recent legal costs, dictated a statement for Southwest to relay to employees, and ordered three Southwest lawyers to complete “religious-liberty training” from a conservative Christian legal-advocacy group.
For Southwest, the sanctions add insult to injury. They stem from a roughly $800,000 judgment against the airline and the flight attendant’s union. Although that was less than the jury’s $5.1 million award, Charlene Carter also got her job back.
Carter, a longtime union critic, said she was fired after she called the union president “despicable” for attending the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. At the event, women protested the inauguration of President Donald Trump and called for protecting abortion rights among many issues.
The airline and Local 556 of the Transport Workers Union said Carter had made offensive posts on Facebook and harassed the union president in private messages.
The jury in a Dallas court found that Southwest violated Carter’s right to religious speech.
After the trial last year, the judge — a Trump nominee who joined the bench in 2019 — ordered the airline to tell flight attendants that under federal law, it “may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.”
Instead, the airline told employees that it “does not discriminate” on religious beliefs, and doubled down by telling flight attendants to follow the airline policy that it cited in firing Carter.
In an order this week that alternated between sarcasm and outrage, Starr ruled that Southwest “didn’t come close to complying with the Court’s order.” He schooled the airline on the definitions of “may,” “does” and “tolerate” — complete with footnotes citing the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
The judge ordered Southwest to email a new, verbatim statement declaring that the airline may not discriminate against flight attendants for religious beliefs “including — but not limited” to abortion.
Starr ordered three company lawyers to undergo eight hours of training this month by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has called an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
Starr worked in the Texas attorney general’s office for several years before Trump nominated him for the federal bench. The Senate confirmed his nomination 51-39, voting along party lines in the then-GOP-controlled body.
Southwest did not immediately comment on the judge’s order.
New York
Doctor charged with sexually assaulting patients and filming it
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City doctor was charged Monday in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of at least six women, including several patients who were drugged, filmed and assaulted during appointments at a prestigious local hospital, prosecutors said.
Zhi Alan Cheng was arraigned Monday on charges of sexually abusing three of his patients at New York-Presbyterian Queens hospital and raping three other women inside his apartment in Queens, New York. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The 33-year-old gastroenterologist was terminated from his hospital job in December after his arrest for allegedly raping a female acquaintance in his Queens home. At the time, the woman told authorities she had discovered videos of Cheng abusing her and multiple other women.
As investigators searched his home and devices, they uncovered a trove of video evidence showing the doctor abusing women inside his home and workplace, according to the new indictment.
The footage showed Cheng groping three hospital patients, including a 19-year-old and a “seriously ill” 47-year-old, prosecutors said. All of the women appeared to be unconscious during the abuse, suggesting Cheng used anesthesia to sedate them, according to court documents.
Multiple types of liquid anesthesia were recovered from his home, alongside recreational narcotics such as cocaine and ecstasy, the court documents say.
An attorney for Cheng did not immediately return a request for comment.
In a statement, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said the evidence pointed to “a serial rapist, someone willing to not only violate his sacred professional oath and patients’ trust, but every standard of human decency.”
The arrest follows the sentencing of another doctor in the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital system, Robert Hadden, a gynecologist who allegedly abused 245 women over the span of two decades. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June.
Cheng’s alleged abuse took place over a much shorter period of time, between 2021 and 2022. But prosecutors said they had additional evidence to suggest that Cheng assaulted other women at different locations in New York City, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Thailand, although he has not been charged in connection with those incidents.
Angela Karafazi, a spokesperson for New York-Presbyterian, said Cheng’s alleged conduct was “a fundamental betrayal of our mission and our patients’ trust.”
The hospital intends to review its patient safety policies and implement additional training for all employees, she said.
Texas
Judge dismisses murder charge against babysitter who served 15 years over toddler’s death
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge dismissed a murder charge on Monday against a babysitter who served 15 years in prison after being convicted in the death of a toddler who choked on a wad of paper towels, which medical experts later concluded was the result of an accident and not intentional.
Rosa Jimenez has been out of prison since 2021 after a judge ruled that a new trial was warranted at a minimum. Earlier this year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that “false testimony” in her original 2005 trial entitled her to relief.
That led to State District Judge Karen Sage granting a request on Monday to dismiss the original charges against Jimenez, who was babysitting 21-month-old Bryan Gutierrez when he choked and died in 2003.
“For the past 20 years, she has fought for this day, her freedom, and to be reunited with her children,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and Jimenez’s attorney.
Jimenez had been sentenced to 99 years in prison. In 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to keep Jimenez in prison after a federal judge ordered that she receive a new trial or be released.
Jimenez was released on bond the following year after three pediatric airway specialists testified that the babysitter could not have forced the clump of towels down the boy’s throat, as prosecutors alleged in her original trial. Prosecutors also filed documents stating one of the experts who testified in the 2005 trial changed their opinion after reviewing new statements from airway experts.
