Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

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Quick memo from the legal beat.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

Since I have mentioned it in the past, fairness compels me to note:

Erik Charles Maund is getting a new trial in his murder for hire case.

Maund, along with Bryon Brockway and Adam Carey, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire after Holly Williams and William Lanway were found dead in a car in Nashville in 2020.

…

Brockway and Carey were convicted on all charges, including kidnapping resulting in death and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Maund was found not guilty of kidnapping resulting in death. The maximum sentence for federal murder-for-hire is life in prison or death.

But, you see, there was a problem:

Now a judge has ruled that an administrative mistake caused certain things that were not admitted into evidence during the trial to be shown to jurors as they deliberated. The court clerk found out when members of the media started asking about the trial exhibits after the trial was over.

One story I saw elsewhere (and can’t find again) said that the evidence mistakes (and there was more than one) inclueed an exhibit that was supposed to be redacted…and which was shown to the jury in unredacted form.

Nobody knows yet when the new trial is going to be. But, good news: this is a court in Tennessee, not Travis or Williamson county.

Posted in Law | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#130 in a series)

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

The mayor of Atlantic City, Marty Small Sr., and his wife (the superintendent of schools) have both been officially indicted.

I thought I had written about this before, but Google doesn’t turn up a reference. I know, though, that there have been stories circulating for months. Mayor Small and his wife aren’t charged with corruption, which is unusual for an Atlantic City mayor.

They’re charged with beating the s–t out of their teenage daughter.

Prosecutors said that on Jan. 13, 2024, Marty Small Sr. hit his daughter multiple times in the head with a broom, causing her to lose consciousness.
Ten days earlier, they said, Small engaged in an argument with his daughter, grabbing her head and throwing her to the ground, and threatening to throw her down a flight of stairs.
He threatened to “smack the weave out” of her head during the incident, according to prosecutors.
The 50-year-old Democratic mayor also is accused of punching his daughter repeatedly in the legs, causing bruising.
La’Quetta Small, 47, is accused of punching her daughter multiple times on the chest, leaving bruising. In another alleged incident, she is accused of dragging her daughter by the hair and striking her with a belt on her shoulders, leaving marks.
In yet another incident, La’Quetta Small is accused of punching her daughter in the mouth during an argument.

And I wasn’t aware of this previously, but Constance Days-Chapman, the principal of Atlantic City High School, was indicted last week. Charges against her include “official misconduct” and “child endangerment”.

According to the indictment, in December the girl, who was 15 at the time, told Days-Chapman she was suffering continuous headaches from being beaten by her parents in their home.
But instead of telling authorities, Days-Chapman instead told the Smalls.

By the way:

Days-Chapman is a close friend of the Smalls; La’Quetta Smalls is her boss.

I’m sure this is going to be one of my more controversial and divisive opinions, but:

Fark these people. Fark any parent who thinks it is okay to do their kids this way. Fark anybody who’s a mandated reporter that goes to the parents instead of Child Protective Services when a kid tells them their parents are beating them.

Sorry. A bit grumpy today.

Posted in Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#129 in a series)

Monday, September 16th, 2024

This is still breaking. Two chiefs with the New York Fire Department have been arrested on bribery charges.

The six-count indictment accuses them of soliciting and receiving bribes in that role from 2021 to 2023 for projects underway in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
“For nearly two years, Saccavino and Cordasco misused this authority for their own financial gain,” the indictment charges. The men were also charged with lying to the F.B.I. in February about their involvement in the scheme.

These, by the way, are the same two chiefs whose homes and offices were raided by the FBI in February.

A retired firefighter who expedited building projects, Henry J. Santiago Jr., was identified by federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator who solicited and accepted bribes, but he was not named or charged in the indictment. The New York Times had previously reported his involvement, and he was identified by name by the authorities at a news conference about the case on Monday.

I’m going out on a limb here and saying: they flipped him.

According to the indictment, the two chiefs steered potential clients who wanted to expedite approval of their building projects to Mr. Santiago, and then ordered that those projects receive preferential treatment. Among the projects they fast-tracked were a high-end restaurant in Manhattan, a Brooklyn apartment building and two hotels near Kennedy Airport in Queens.
After getting paid by his clients, Mr. Santiago delivered bribes to Mr. Saccavino and Mr. Cordasco in cash and by check in face-to-face meetings at Fire Department offices in Brooklyn and steakhouse dinners in Manhattan, prosecutors said.
Mr. Saccavino funneled the illicit payments through a company started by his wife, while Mr. Cordasco received them through a company he had created and claimed was an entertainment business, prosecutors said.

Just in case you were wondering…

There is no indication that the case is related to any of the four separate federal corruption investigations swirling around Mayor Eric Adams, his campaign and some of his most senior aides. The inquiry focused on the mayor is being conducted by the same agencies that investigated the chiefs, however, and also relates in part to fire safety inspections, according to several people with knowledge of the matter said.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Smoking hyenas update.

Thursday, September 12th, 2024

I haven’t had a lot of time today, but before I turn in, I wanted to note: NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban resigned today. (Previously.)

Part of the reason I want to get this up is rumor control. The interim commissioner is not this guy:

though he does have NYPD and leadership experience. The interim commissioner is also not this guy:

though in my humble opinion, the NYPD would be vastly improved by a commissioner who carries an old-school Fitz Special.

(I’m sure you were expecting the second one, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to make a reference to the Fitz Special.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Cops, Guns, Law, NYPD | No Comments »

Bob and Jack and Julian and John.

Friday, September 6th, 2024

It was a busy weekend. There’s a new gun show near Leander that a bunch of us ended up going to, and I found quite a bit of stuff. Including .220 Swift and – believe it or not – .22 Remington Jet ammo.

Then I ate something that disagreed with me on Tuesday and haven’t been feeling great. Things are looking up, but all of this is to say that I’ve been behind the curve, so I’m only now getting to more gun book blogging.

I think I’m going to try to knock off the last five books that are down here on the kitchen table so I can move those upstairs. And bring some more down later, but don’t tell anybody I said that. This is going to be a long one, so I’m putting a jump here.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Law, O'Connor, Ruark | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#128 in a series)

Thursday, September 5th, 2024

This may not the five-alarm fire I thought it was at first, but it is still pretty significant to say the least.

Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.

Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.

…

Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.

…

In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Mr. Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.

…

In 2013, Ms. Wright and David and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Ms. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Ms. Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”

…

After taking office in 2022, Mr. Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, though Mr. Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Mr. Banks’s then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers’ union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Mr. Banks’s acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.

Nobody will go on the record as knowing what’s going on, but there’s speculation that it is tied to that whole weird Turkish consolate thing.

Or it could be something else. It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on. Of course, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And to be fair, none of the subjects of the raids have been charged with any crimes.

Yet.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics | 1 Comment »

Flaming hyena update.

Thursday, August 29th, 2024

I wrote a while back about Robert Telles, the former public administrator of Clark County, who was charged with murdering Jeff German. Mr. German was a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had been covering Mr. Telles management of the office, and discovered all sorts of problems: hostile work environment, affairs with subordinates, those kind of things.

Mr. Telles went on trial a couple of weeks ago.

He was convicted yesterday of first degree murder. He’s already been sentenced to life in prison, though he can apply for parole in 20 years.

Coverage from the R-J by way of archive.is. Since it is close to the end of the month, I’m going to burn a NYT gift link to their coverage of the story.

Posted in Law, Media, Politics | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#125, #126, and #127 in a series)

Friday, August 23rd, 2024

Quel fromage!

Mike the Musicologist sent over a link from the Department of Justice: Trayon White Sr., who is a member of the DC City Council, was arrested Monday on bribery charges. (I know, a little old, but I missed this until MtM called it out.)

A corrupt DC city council member? What are the odds?

More from the WP (archived) which describes him as “a Marion Barry protege”.

Barry, for all his legal issues, never faced charges that he sought to enrich himself, although his associates were convicted of public corruption, including Ivanhoe Donaldson, a senior adviser who pleaded guilty to embezzling $190,000 in city funds.
“People looked at Marion’s issues as human frailties,” said Ron Lester, a veteran D.C. pollster whose clients included Barry. “Whether you liked or disliked him, Marion wasn’t someone accused of taking bribes. If these allegations prove to be true, Trayon doesn’t have a political future. It’s more clear-cut than anything Marion faced.”

The complaint alleges that, beginning in June 2024, White corruptly agreed to accept $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position as a D.C. Councilmember to pressure government employees at Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) and DYRS to extend several D.C. contracts. The contracts at issue were valued at $5.2 million and were for two companies to provide Violence Intervention services in D.C. As alleged, the $156,000 White agreed to accept in exchange for using his official position to pressure renewal of those contracts to particular companies was three percent of the total contract value. According to the complaint, White’s agreement with a confidential human source (the owner of the companies) – including the source’s payments to White of $35,000 in cash on four separate occasions (June 26, July 17, July 25, and August 9, 2024) and the source showing White a document reflecting how White’s three-percent cut was calculated based on those contracts – was captured on video.

In other news:

A grand jury on Friday indicted [name and age deleted – DB] who used to be AISD’s Executive Director of Compensation and Benefits, with stealing between $30,000 and $150,000 from the district using gift cards. Austin ISD and police haven’t specified the exact amount believed to be stolen.

According to KXAN, she resigned from the district in March of last year, and went to work for…the City of Austin.

Bond records list [name deleted – DB], another former AISD employee who worked in her department, as [name deleted – DB] co-defendant. City of Austin officials said in a statement to KXAN that [name deleted – DB] was also recently indicted in connection with her previous employment with AISD.

So just to be clear, that’s two former AISD employees, who seem to have worked in the same department, that have been indicted.

Yeah, the names are in the KXAN article, but I’m avoiding using them here. Why avoid using them, while at the same time naming Trayon White Sr.? Given the previous mess with an AISD employee, I’m not sure the district can be trusted to get it right, so I’m erring on the side of caution here.

Posted in Austin, Law, Politics | No Comments »

Something’s happening here…

Friday, August 16th, 2024

…and what it is, ain’t exactly clear.

The former CFO of the Austin Independent School District, who was previously charged with insurance fraud in Williamson County, had the charges dropped yesterday by the WillCo DA’s office.

Austin ISD officials said on Thursday they received a letter from the Williamson County District Attorney’s Office declining to prosecute the insurance fraud charge. The Williamson County District Attorney has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

More from KVUE (archived, because they’ve become really bad about ad blockers):

KVUE obtained the arrest warrant for Ramos from the Round Rock Police Department to investigate allegations of fraud, which authorities determined was not directly related to his work with the district.
According to the warrant, Ramos was accused of insurance fraud regarding a claim of $5,422.64.
However, the district said Thursday evening it would reinstate Ramos after learning the Williamson County District Attorney’s Office would not prosecute any charges related to his personal affairs.

According to KVUE, he has been re-instated by the district, but his previously scheduled resignation takes effect today. He apparently does not plan to return to the district, but he leaves “in good standing”.

I feel like I should apologize to the former CFO for including him in the “flaming hyenas” watch. But I was very scrupulous about not including his name (even though it was in the linked press reports) because this seemed like a situation that had the potential to be a tempest in a teapot, and I wanted to wait and see how it shook out. I’m glad I did.

Meanwhile, the evidence tampering trial of former WillCo Sheriff Robert Chody and former WillCo prosecutor Jason Nassour was going on this week.

Emphasis on the “was”. The judge has placed the trial on hold.

Why? Well, it looks like the prosecution’s case is completely borked, and they’ve asked for a hold.

“The state has been looking forward to having a full and fair trial… [However], the state can’t continue at this time,” a state prosecutor said Thursday.
The filing indicates the state cannot prosecute parts of the indictment due to it being “preempted by federal law.”

More from Fox 7:

A Live PD crew was with Williamson County deputies when Javier Ambler was taken into custody for a traffic violation. The chase had ended in Austin and with Ambler dying from a heart attack.
Austin police, who were in charge of the scene, never got a warrant to seize the Live PD camera equipment, and the court has ruled federal law allowed the production team to leave with their gear.
Judge Sage, on several occasions, pointed out to prosecutors that because of the law, it didn’t matter who allowed the crew to leave with the equipment because the officer on scene never got a warrant.

…

Prosecutors are trying to show the loss of the video is a violation of the Michael Morton act which requires prosecutors to keep and provide evidence to defense attorneys.
But defense attorneys, during cross-examination, showed the jury a section of the contract which also hurt that argument. It was noted Live PD was required to retain and turn over any video, if ordered to do so by a court.

So if I’m understanding this right (and I Am Not A Lawyer), the prosecution’s argument is that the loss of the footage constitutes evidence tampering. But they’ve been precluded from making that argument in court because of 1) the contract which specified that “Live PD” had to turn over any video if a court order was obtained, and nobody could be arsed to get a court order until it was too late, and 2) Federal law, which states that law enforcement can’t confiscate gear and footage without a warrant, and APD (who was in charge at the scene) didn’t get a warrant.

I guess the WillCo DA’s office is fighting inflation by running a BOGO special…on nothing-burgers.

(Edited to add: technically, the evidence tampering trial is taking place in Travis County. But since former WillCo officials are involved, I’m letting the nothing-burger comment stand.)

Posted in IANAL, Law, Politics, WillCo | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#124 in a series)

Tuesday, August 6th, 2024

I think this may be marginal, since the person in question is not an elected official. But they were still a high-ranking official in a position of trust locally.

The chief financial officer for the Austin Independent School District was arrested yesterday.

Technically, he’s the former CFO: according to the article, he submitted his resignation July 23rd, it was scheduled to be effective August 16th, and he was placed on leave immediately after his arrest.

He’s charged with insurance fraud, though the reports say the case against him has nothing to do with AISD.

In a statement, Ramos told KXAN, “We have a judicial process. I ask that everyone let the process run its course before rushing to judgment.”

…

According to the district’s website, Ramos oversaw Austin ISD finances, including the budget, purchasing, state and federal grants, and the Historically Utilized Business program. His district biography stated he worked in school finance for 27 years, including as chief of finance and operations in Pflugerville ISD and deputy superintendent of finance and operations in Hutto ISD.

Posted in Austin, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#123 in a series)

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

Misty Roberts, the mayor of DeRidder, Louisiana, resigned her position on July 27th.

She was arrested yesterday.

Surprisngly, the charges against her are not the usual Louisiana politician charges: bribery or some other form of corruption.

Ms. Roberts is accused of raping a minor.

Louisiana State Police Special Victims Unit says it conducted interviews with two juveniles, one of which was the victim, both of whom told detectives that Roberts had sexual intercourse with the victim while Roberts was mayor.

…

Adam Johnson, Roberts’ attorney, released the following statement:

“It is my honor to represent Misty Roberts. My client learned late last night of a warrant, despite not being contacted to be interviewed prior to investigators obtaining the warrant. My client maintains her innocence and, as it stands, she is in fact innocent. She has not been charged with a crime and/or convicted of any crime. And we trust the public will respect her constitutional presumption of innocence which is fundamental to our system of justice. Misty and her family are very grateful for the support they have received from their friends and neighbors and we look forward to putting this unfortunate situation behind them.”

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#122 in a series)

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

This just in: Senator Robert “Gold Bar Bob” Menendez convicted on all counts. (Previously.)

The NYT coverage is probably better, but it is also being constantly updated and is paywalled. I may possibly throw up a link to their story later today or tomorrow.

Edited to add 7/17: here’s the second day NYT story.

A Manhattan jury returned the verdict after deliberating for about 13 hours over three days in Federal District Court. Mr. Menendez was found guilty on all 16 counts he faced, including bribery, honest services wire fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as an agent for Egypt.

That seems relatively short.

He was charged with 16 different felonies, including bribery, extortion, obstructing justice and acting as an illegal foreign agent, with the top counts carrying a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Posted in Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

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