Month: March 2023

After deliberating for three hours on Thursday, a jury of seven men and five women convicted 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh of two counts of murder in the fatal shootings of his wife Margaret, 52, and their youngest son, Paul, 22, in June 2021. The disgraced South Carolina lawyer was accused of murdering his wife and son to gain pity and distract from financial crimes threatening to topple his reputation; he faces 30 years to life in prison without parole. The jury also convicted Murdaugh of two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, which carry five more years in prison.

The verdict followed a lengthy trial that began in late January and included nearly six weeks of testimony from 75 witnesses, including Murdaugh. Lawyers for Murdaugh moved for a mistrial after the verdicts were read, which was denied by Circuit Judge Clifton Newman, who said that the verdict was a matter for the jury and that there was enough evidence to have found Murdaugh guilty: “The evidence of guilt is overwhelming, and I deny the motion.”  Thanking the jurors, Judge Newman said their verdict was support by the evidence: “All of the evidence pointed to only one conclusion. That’s the conclusion that you all reached.”

Sentencing will take place begining 9:30 a.m. Friday in South Carolina’s Colleton County. Prosecutors have indicated they will spare Murdaugh the death penalty, and instead seek life in prison without the possibility of parole. Murdaugh faces 30 years to life in prison for the murder charge.

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On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, chatting briefly on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in India. A Senior State Department official said that the encounter between the two top diplomats involved less than 10 minutes of discussion. Blinken and Lavrov’s last in-person meeting was last January in Geneva.

Blinken urged Moscow to reverse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last month to suspend New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty; saying that the treaty is in the interests of both the countries and that the world expects the nations to behave responsibly when it comes to nuclear security. The treaty was originally set to expire in February 2021, but President Biden reached an agreement with Putin to extend New START for five years shortly after taking office. Last year, the United States and Russia committed to create a new agreement “to achieve deeper, irreversible, and verifiable reductions in their nuclear arsenals.”

On Thursday during a press conference, Blinken said he urged Russia to return to implementing New START during his meeting with Lavrov:  “Mutual compliance is in the interest of both our countries, it’s also what people around the world expect from us as inferior products…I told the foreign minister that no matter what else is happening in the world in our relationship, the United States are always ready to engage and act on Strategic Arms, just as the United States in the Soviet Union did even at the height of the Cold War.”

Blinken also stressed the need for the Kremlin to release U.S. citizen and former Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in jail on espionage charges. Blinken noted: “The United States has put forward a serious proposal. Moscow should accept it. We’re determined to bring Paul and every other American citizen who is unjustly detained around the world home. We won’t rest until we do.” Blinken and Lavrov’s last phone call occurred last July when they discussed a proposal for the release of Whelan and WNBA star Brittney Griner.

Additionally, Blinken underscored continued U.S. support for Ukraine, and stressed that Ukraine and the U.S. want Russia’s war to end on that basis. Referring to his conversation with Lavrov, Blinken told reporters: “End this war of aggression. Engage in meaningful diplomacy that could produce a just and durable peace. [Ukrainian] President Zelenskyy has put forward a 10-point plan for a just and durable peace. The United States stands ready to support Ukraine on the diplomacy to end the war on this basis. [Russian] President Putin has demonstrated zero interest in engaging, saying there’s nothing to even talk about, unless and until Ukraine accepts and I quote ‘the new territorial realities’ while doubling down on his brutalization of Ukraine.”

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An arrest warrant was issued for Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter in connection to a fatal January crash that killed two members of the Bulldogs’ football program. Carter is charged with the misdemeanor charges or reckless driving and racing.

On the morning of Jan. 15, offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting analyst Chandler LeCroy were killed in a car crash that injured two other passengers At the beginning of the investigation, Carter told police that he was nearly a mile away from the car when the crash happened, but later said he was close enough to see the car’s taillights and acknowledged he was alongside the other car. Police now believe Carter and LeCroy were racing before the early-morning incident, after initially believing it to have been a single-car crash.  The investigation found that LeCroy and Carter “were operating their vehicles in a manner consistent with racing shortly after leaving the downtown Athens area at about 2:30 AM,” and police also said the two drivers engaged in reckless driving, including switching between lanes, driving in opposite lanes of travel and driving at high rates of speed “in an apparent attempt to outdistance each other.” Police said LeCroy’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.197 at the time of the incident, and investigators determined “that alcohol impairment, racing, reckless driving and speed were significant contributing factors to the crash.”

Carter acknowledged the warrants on Wednesday afternoon, tweeting: “There is no question in my mind that when all of the facts are known that I will be fully exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing. The statement also claimed that some reports about the January crash and charges against him are inaccurate. Numerous media reports also have circulated this morning containing inaccurate information concerning the tragic events of January 15, 2023. It is my intention to return to Athens to answer the misdemeanor charges against me and to make certain that the complete and accurate truth is presented. There is no question in my mind that when all of the facts are known that I will be fully exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing.” 

After the news was the warrant was made public, Georgia coach Kirby Smart also released a statement: “The charges announced today are deeply concerning, especially as we are still struggling to cope with the devastating loss of two beloved members of our community. We will continue to cooperate fully with the authorities while supporting these families and assessing what we can learn from this horrible tragedy.”

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New York City has agreed to pay hundreds of protesters who were surrounded, arrested and subjected to excessive force by police during a George Floyd protest in 2020. The lawsuit alleged that the NYPD “arrested and charged the protestors without probable cause and subjected them to excessive force, as part of a planned police action involving some of the most senior members of the NYPD… The NYPD in an operation planned by the highest levels of police officials, kettled protesters on East 136th Street between Brook Avenue and Brown Place and unleashed a brutal assault on more than 300 people, who were injured, arrested, and detained for hours.”  Hundreds of protesters who were demonstrating against police brutality and racism after Floyd’s death were encircled and corralled by a group of police officers wearing riot gear and riding bicycles in a controversial practice known as “kettling.”

According to court documents, the proposed settlement filed in federal court late Tuesday said the city would compensate approximately 320 people who participated in the protest June 4, 2020, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.  The city agreed to pay eligible class-action members $21,500 each, as well as another $2,500 to each person who received a desk appearance ticket. The two named plaintiffs in the case would receive another $21,500 “service award,” according to the proposed settlement, which must be reviewed and approved by the court before taking effect.

A spokesperson for the New York City Police Department said in statement that the 2020 protests were a “challenging moment for the department as officers who themselves were suffering under the strains of a global pandemic did their utmost to help facilitate people’s rights to peaceful expression all while addressing acts of lawlessness including wide-scale rioting, mass chaos, violence, and destruction.”  Joshua Moskovitz, an attorney for the protesters, said on Wednesday, “The settlement, in our view, reflects an acknowledgment by the city that the NYPD’s actions in Mott Haven on June 4 were tragically wrong.” Attorneys for the protesters said in a statement about the proposed settlement:  “This is believed to be the highest per-person settlement in a mass arrest class action lawsuit in New York City history.”

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Conservative Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical about the legality of President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan — announced by Biden in August and originally scheduled to take effect last fall. The program would allow eligible borrowers to cancel up to $20,000 in debt, but has been blocked since the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary hold in October. Questions remain as to whether the challengers have legal standing to sue, while there are also doubts it will ever go into effect.

Biden’s program would cancel up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year (or couples who file taxes jointly and earn less than $250,000 annually). Pell Grant recipients, who are the majority of borrowers, would be eligible for an additional $10,000 in debt relief. The overall program could help more than 40 million borrowers, the administration has said.

The high court heard arguments in two cases on Tuesday, one brought by six states, and the other brought by two people, Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor, who hold student loan debt. The challengers argue that the administration’s proposal violates the Constitution and federal law, partly because it circumvents Congress, which they said has the sole power to create laws related to student loan forgiveness.

Of the six conservative justices, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly probed whether challengers had legal standing. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, two justices the Biden administration may have been targeting as potential votes against standing, focused their questions on the major questions doctrine. That could indicate they believe the challengers have standing. The law in question, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act, states that the government can provide relief to recipients of student loans when there is a “national emergency,” allowing the government to take action to ensure people are not in “a worse position financially” as a result of the emergency. The challengers say the language in the HEROES Act is not specific enough to authorize a proposal as broad as Biden’s plan.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the cases by the end of June.

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