NC judges temporarily block ruling that allowed felons to vote
RALEIGH, N.C. — A big win in court for voting rights advocates in North Carolina is being put on hold, at least temporarily, as GOP lawmakers fight the decision.
That again suspends the voting rights of around 55,000 North Carolinians on probation or parole for a felony.
Last month a trio of judges ruled in favor of several groups and individuals who had filed a lawsuit seeking expanded voting rights for people with felony records. They should instead be able to vote once they're out of prison and have rejoined society, the challengers argued, and the judges agreed.
Voting rights advocates worry that as the lower court's decision makes its way through the appeals process, people with felony records may lose their right to vote through at least the 2022 election cycle.
Much of the testimony at trial focused on the explicitly racist history of felon disenfranchisement laws, in North Carolina and around the country.
Republican state lawmakers defending the law agreed that it was created in the aftermath of the Civil War specifically to keep Black people from voting. But it has been improved since then, they argued, notably with a series of major changes in the early 1970s following the Civil Rights movement.
So they appealed the ruling, and on Friday the N.C. Court of Appeals granted their request to stop people on probation or parole from being able to register to vote while that appeal is pending.
—The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Parkland school shooter wanted words like ‘slaughter’ barred from trial
The judge who will oversee the trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz isn’t going to play word police.
Lawyers for Cruz, the former student accused of murdering 17 people and wounding 17 more in Florida’s deadliest school shooting, this week had asked that the Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer bar lawyers and witnesses from using certain words such as “massacre,” “killer” and “slaughter,” saying they could be “inflammatory” and hamper the defendant’s right to an impartial trial.
Scherer declined, saying many words — such as “school shooter” and “murderer” — are “normal words or terms that may be used to describe particular facts.” Still, in a 3-page order sent to prosecutors on Thursday, Scherer said she trusts attorneys in the case will “act professionally” and witnesses will “exhibit appropriate and proper courtroom decorum.”
Cruz, 22, is facing the death penalty for the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018. He’s pleaded not guilty.
The Broward Public Defender’s Office, which represents Cruz, has offered to have him plead guilty in exchange for a prison sentence of life in prison. The State Attorney’s Office has rejected the offer. No trial date has been set.
—Miami Herald
‘QAnon Shaman’ pleads guilty to obstructing Congress at riot
WASHINGTON — Jacob Chansley, the Donald Trump supporter who wore a coyote-skin headdress into the Senate chamber and called himself the “QAnon Shaman,” pleaded guilty Friday to obstruction of an official proceeding in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Images of Chansley at the Senate dais and elsewhere around the Capitol were among the most widely circulated from the insurrection. In a hearing in federal court in Washington, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth accepted Chansley’s plea and set a sentencing hearing for Nov. 17.
Lamberth also took under advisement a request by Chansley, who’s been in custody since his arrest Jan. 9, that he be released prior to sentencing for reasons related to his mental health. Albert Watkins, Chansley’s lawyer, said in an interview that the court had recognized Chansley’s “mental health vulnerabilities and the fact that he has been, in effect, in solitary confinement due to Covid for eight months.”
At the hearing, Watkins discussed details from an evaluation of Chansley by Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologists, which he said had found his client “susceptible to throwing him into the abyss” if subjected to further stress. The report, the lawyer said, found that “with proper help and not being in solitary confinement, the defendant was competent.”
Chansley, an avid supporter of Trump, had hoped the former president would pardon him before leaving office and was disappointed when that didn’t happen, Watkins said.
—Bloomberg News
De Blasio opens door to New York governor run in 2022
NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio hinted Friday he’s considering a run for governor next year after weeks of sidestepping questions about what he plans to do once his term in City Hall ends this December.
During an appearance on MSNBC Friday morning, de Blasio said he is “absolutely” thinking about “different options” when asked point-blank if he’s mulling a gubernatorial bid.
“I want to keep serving in one way or another in the future. So I’m going to look at different options. Absolutely,” he said.
In recent days, de Blasio has heaped praise on the current governor, Kathy Hochul, after he spent years feuding with her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, who left Albany in disgrace after a string of sexual harassment allegations culminated in a damning report issued by state Attorney General Letitia James last month.
As Cuomo was imploding, de Blasio typically brushed aside queries about a possible run. That changed Friday, though de Blasio sought to downplay the possibility he might run given recent flooding that left more than a dozen New Yorkers dead and the city’s continued focus on its COVID-19 recovery.
—New York Daily News
