The RePath Round Up
Shaquille O'Neal ducks service, Taylor Swift is a genius, and a rudderless ship of chaos in St. Louis
Shaq-and-Seek. You’d think the internationally famous, 7’1” 325 pound Shaquille O’Neal would be the world’s worst at hide and seek. That may be true, but he proved to be surprisingly good at ducking service in the class action lawsuit against the alleged crypto fraudster Sam Bankman Fried and multiple celebrity spokespeople. Despite his prodigious frame, famous face, busy schedule, and multiple television appearances, plaintiffs’ lawyers had been unable to serve the NBA hall of famer and 4-time champion despite months of effort. Plaintiffs claim that O’Neal has been hiding and driving away from process services across Texas and Georgia. They finally served him at his home outside of Atlanta.
Shaq now joins Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Larry David, Stephen Curry, Trevor Lawrence, Shohei Ohtani, Naomi Osaka, and Kevin O'Leary in the suit.
Taylor Swift is not named in the suit. In fact, she appears to the be the only celebrity (or investigator or regulator for that matter) to outwit Bankman-Fried. It is reported that Swift asked him directly if he was selling unregistered securities before turning down a $100M endorsement deal.
Busy times in St. Louis: The are multiple stories out of St. Louis this week involving prosecutor Kim Garner, but they all seemed to come to a head yesterday afternoon as Gardner faced her second criminal contempt hearing in a week. Both contempt hearings stem from her office’s failure to show up for murder trials. While she escaped a contempt trial in the first hearing, St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Noble offered no such reprieve in the second. In a scathing rebuke, he described her office as a “rudderless ship of chaos.”
Noble ruled that Gardner had shown “the requisite conduct and intent” to support a finding of criminal contempt. He concluded that Gardner had also demonstrated a “disdain and disrespect for the courts,” and a “complete indifference and conscious disregard for the judicial process.” In addition, Noble found that Gardner had taken “no reasonable effort” to prevent the chaos resulting from the caseload burdens in her office.
Noble has requested a special prosecutor to proceed with the criminal contempt action and set a hearing for May 30, 2023.
In addition to the looming contempt case and the removal case filed by the Missouri Attorney General, Gardner’s office keeps losing prosecutors. In February, the office had six prosecutors to handle 470 felony cases. Now, only two remain. And one of those, Christopher Desilets, is joining Gardner as a defendant for the criminal contempt trial ordered by Judge Noble yesterday. The outgoing prosecutors have claimed the office is a toxic environment, that Gardner throws them under the bus, and that it is unethical to proceed under the present conditions. Defense attorneys have observed that it is like working in a dumpster fire.
Former prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz is seeking to comply with a subpoena from the Missouri Attorney General in the case to remove Gardner from office, but claims Gardner is trying to stop her. She compiled nearly 3,000 responsive documents before quitting the office and says she will resist all efforts to preclude her compliance.
Finally, whatever support Gardner had historically from the local media seems to be gone. Recent headlines include: “Total collapse' of St. Louis prosecutor's office adds urgency to historic case,” “Kim Gardner blames attorney on leave for office's no-show in murder trial,” “Kim Gardner drives the judicial bus over her employees and into the ditch,” and “Kim Gardner's contempt isn't just for the court but for the entire city.”
Elsewhere in Missouri: Missouri has become the first state to join Reentry 2030, a national effort focused on improving people’s chances of success upon reentry to society after incarceration.
Anne Precythe, the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, said the Department has ‘ambitious goals’ focused on employment, including providing 100% of incarcerated Missourians with career readiness services, helping 85% of people find a job within 30 days of release, and helping 80% of those people keep their job for at least nine months. The commitment comes from state agencies beyond corrections including the departments of elementary and secondary education, health and senior services, labor and industrial relations, and public safety.
In Georgia. Fulton County, GA has approved a $500,000 emergency expenditure to address the county jail’s infestation of “bed bugs, lice and other vermin.” 600 inmates will be moved to other counties to help relieve overcrowding at the cost of $40,000 per day. The measures are part of an investigation into an inmate’s death last year that the family claims was caused by complications from unsanitary conditions and insect bites.
Sobering Study from Chicago. A new long term study finds that one-quarter of minority youth in Cook County juvenile justice system are shot or killed after detention.
Also in Chicago, an appeals court has ruled that the Cook County electronic monitoring rules are so unclear that it was required to throw out an escape conviction that carried a five year sentence.
Rinse, Repeat. Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City came from the same 327 people who were arrested over and over. Collectively, these 327 people were arrested and rearrested over 6,000 times. That’s an average of 18.3 arrests per person. (Unrelatedly, the New York Jets scored less than 18.3 points per game last year.)
In a study that analyzed data from 34 states, 77% of individuals admitted to state prison had 5 or more prior arrests.
ACLU on the case. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a proposed amicus brief supporting Afroman, who is being sued by police officers for using footage of a botched raid of his home in two of his music videos (Will You Help Me Repair My Door and Lemon Pound Cake).
The ACLU says Afroman has a First Amendment right to use this footage to criticize the officers and that the “plaintiffs do not identify the substance of any particular statement in the videos-or for that matter, anywhere else-that they claim is false. Instead, the central focus of their complaint is that [Afroman] is making money off of his video commentary and related merchandise, and is criticizing Plaintiffs harshly in the process. That is not tortious conduct; it is protected speech.”
Stuff of the Week
“Strange even by Florida Standards.” A recent guilty plea concludes 33 year old homicide case in which prosecutors alleged that a Florida woman showed up at her victim’s door dressed as a clown, handed her carnations and balloons, and shot her dead in front of her son.
Wars have rules, even on the couch. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called on all participants to observe the proper rules of war while playing first-person shooter video games. The rules include not shooting enemies while they are down, not shooting NPCs, and using med kits for everyone. These people have definitely never heard of zombie mode.
From inside? An inmate from Georgia pleaded guilty to stealing over $11M while in prison. He apparently conned an entertainment mogul out of the funds in a heist he pulled off from inside a maximum security prison. It was not Sam Bankman-Fried.
Who stole the Jerk Bowl? Why steal a meal when you can take an entire food truck? Not only did thieves steal the entire Jerk Bowl food trailer in Ocala, Florida, but it hasn’t yet been found.
You broke in? A drunken man is accused of sneaking into a police station, then taking a shower, stealing clothing and gear, and also flooding a portion of the building. He managed to elude capture while at the station, police say, but he did make a critical error ... he left his wallet behind.
The poor lesser chicken. The State of Kansas has officially entered a lawsuit over the rare lesser prairie chicken. The Biden administration has recently added the lesser fowl to the list of threatened species, which according to Kansas will negatively impact farming and ranching in the state.
