Archive for the ‘Fifth Amendment’ Category

Top stories of 2019 played out in court in Massachusetts – The Daily News of Newburyport

BOSTON 2019s biggest stories in Massachusetts played out in the courtroom.

Dozens of wealthy and privileged parents some of them Hollywood stars were ensnared in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal. A judge tossed a sexual assault case against actor Kevin Spacey after his accuser refused to testify.

The states highest court upheld Michelle Carters manslaughter conviction for sending her suicidal boyfriend a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself. Pharmaceutical company executives were found guilty of bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive opioid. And Massachusetts attorney general launched fresh legal challenges to the Trump administrations immigration policies.

A look back at those and other top stories:

COLLEGE BRIBERY

Federal prosecutors dubbed it Operation Varsity Blues, and the scope was staggering: affluent and influential parents indicted for paying bribes to rig their childrens test scores or get them admitted to elite universities as recruited athletes. Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty and served two weeks in prison, but Full House actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband maintained their innocence and are expected to stand trial in 2020.

KEVIN SPACEY

Prosecutors dropped a criminal case against Spacey alleging he groped an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket bar in 2016. The House of Cards actors accuser invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify about text messages from the night of the alleged encounter. Los Angeles prosecutors later tossed a separate sexual battery charge against Spacey after the accuser in that case died.

TEXTING SUICIDE

The states highest court upheld Michelle Carters 2017 involuntary manslaughter conviction in the suicide death of her despondent boyfriend, to whom she had sent insistent text messages urging him to take his own life, and the state Parole Board denied her request for early release. Carters lawyers maintain her texts were free speech and have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which hasnt yet decided whether it will take up the case.

OPIOID KICKBACK SCHEME

A jury convicted a pharmaceutical company founder of racketeering conspiracy for paying doctors millions in bribes to prescribe his companys highly addictive fentanyl spray even using a stripper-turned-sales-rep to give a physician a lap dance. Convicted along with John Kapoor, the 76-year-old former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, were four other ex-employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company and the former exotic dancer.

TAKING TRUMP TO COURT

Massachusetts Democratic attorney general, Maura Healey, and the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union mounted fresh legal challenges of the Trump administrations tough policies on immigration. Lawsuits in federal court in Boston highlighted some detainees need for medical treatment and the governments strict cap on the number of refugees fleeing disaster and strife abroad.

INDICTED MAYOR

Jasiel Correia had seemed almost bulletproof. In March, voters in Fall River reelected the embattled mayor after he was charged in 2018 with defrauding investors in an app he developed to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. But Correias political good fortunes ran out federal authorities indicted the 27-year-old for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from marijuana companies. In November, voters unceremoniously threw him out of office.

2020 FREE-FOR-ALL

Continuing Massachusetts tradition of producing presidential candidates, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren jumped into the race for the Democratic nomination early, followed by U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who exited in August. Much later, former governor Deval Patrick, the states first black governor, declared his candidacy. Ex-Gov. William Weld, a Republican, launched a challenge to President Donald Trump. And Democratic congressman Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, announced a primary run against U.S. Sen. Edward Markey.

PILGRIM NUCLEAR PLANT

Nearly half a century after it began generating electricity, the Pilgrim nuclear power plant permanently shut down. Environmentalists had clamored for decades for the closure of the states only remaining reactor. The decommissioning of the complex in Plymouth, which came online in 1972, left Seabrook in New Hampshire and Millstone in Connecticut as New Englands only still-operating commercial nuclear plants.

MENTHOL, R.I.P.

Responding to growing concerns about the health effects of vaping, Massachusetts became the first state to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine vaping products. Anti-smoking groups hailed the ban, which restricts the sale and consumption of flavored vaping products and will do the same for menthol cigarettes starting June 1, 2020. It came after Republican Gov. Charlie Baker declared a public health emergency and imposed a temporary ban.

AGAINST ALL ODDS

Massachusetts third casino, Encore Boston Harbor, opened in the gritty suburb of Everett after months of uncertainty. Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts glitzy $2.6 billion complex had been beset by legal troubles and a failed attempt to sell the complex to rival MGM Resorts. Encore features a 671-room bronzed-toned hotel tower, a gambling floor with 3,100 slot machines and 231 table games, and 15 bars and restaurants.

___

Follow Bill Kole on Twitter at https://twitter.com/billkole.

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Top stories of 2019 played out in court in Massachusetts - The Daily News of Newburyport

The Top Stories of 2019 – Legal Talk Network

Episode Notes

To close out the year, Joe runs down the top 10 stories of the year at Above the Law. Are there key insights or interesting trends to be gained from reviewing the sites traffic figures? Probably not, but here we are.

Special thanks to oursponsor,Logikcull.

Above the Law Thinking Like a Lawyer

The Top Stories of 2019

12/30/2019

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Thinking like a Lawyer with your hosts Elie Mystal and Joe Patrice, talking about legal news and pop culture all while thinking like a lawyer, here on Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Joe Patrice: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. This is the last edition of the year. Im Joe Patrice from Above the Law. Im not joined by any co-hosts because obviously it is the holidays and I hope everybodys had some good holiday so far and you have new years to look forward to. I hope everyones bowl games are going as well as youd hoped.

With all of that said, I thought we would today take this opportunity to look back at a years worth of Above the Law stories, in particular looking at the top ten stories at least decided by you, the readers of Above the Law through your traffic, to see what really happened, what the main storylines were as far as the Above the Law audience interest.

So with that said, I thought I would take a quick aside before we get going and say that todays episode is brought to you by your tarantula, whos very upset and thinking of sneaking away in a way that will really freak you out, all because youre still at the office slogging through an endless doc review project, make better decisions, keep your pet and work smarter with Logikcull, eDiscovery software that gets you started in minutes. And its web-based. That was a little strained but thats what we have to go with here. Create your free account today at logikcull.com/atl, thats logikcull.com/atl.

All right, with all of that taken care of, lets talk about big stories of the year. The number 10 story of the year on Above the Law dates back to the early parts of the year when we learned that Kim Kardashian plans to become a lawyer and will take the bar exam in 2022, at least thats the plan.

What people may not understand about California given that she has never graduated from college, much less law school, how would she become a lawyer in 2022? And what we learned in this story is that she is taking advantage of a California program that allows her to apprentice with real lawyers and through her work with them and her studies with them, she can prepare herself to take what is called the baby bar, which is a shorter version of the bar exam that kind of pre-screens these individuals who dont go to accredited law schools for the opportunity to take the actual California Bar down the road.

So this timeline of her getting done in 2022 is ambitious as far as we know, she has not taken the baby bar, which would suggest she might not be on course for this 2022 mission. But that is the number ten story suggesting that ATL readers unfortunately just like Americas television viewers.

The number nine story that we had this year brings us to a person who will become a recurring theme of our top ten stories, its Brett Kavanaugh and this story was titled oh great, Brett Kavanaugh is becoming even more of an originalist. This was a quote that Kavanaugh threw out there about his originalist worldview and it was one of those post how do I put this.

This was one of those post-confirmation, oh no what have we done situations, where he is being discussed in an article in Slate about some of the decisions that Brett Kavanaugh had released towards the end of his time on the DC Circuit and his overwhelming disregard for legal precedent. This is something that is of some concern to people who were monitoring the Kavanaugh appointment because especially coming off of the Janus decision which was where Gorsuch and Alito at Alitos suggestion basically eviscerated 40 years worth of precedent.

The argument had always been for those moderates who supported people like Gorsuch and Alito also, but more recently Kavanaugh that, no, no, they really understand precedent so theres no real threat here. This was a suggestion that they do not and that their vision of originalism is basically nothing thats come before matters to them. So that reached the number nine slot.

The number eight slot for the year was, can all lawyers just admit the wall will never be built because of the Fifth Amendment.

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This is one of those articles that brings us back to a little-known trivia fact that those astute listeners to this show and readers of Above the Law may know, which is that Elie is massively obsessed with the Takings Clause. He is one of those folks who just believes that people losing their property to the government is the worst possible thing that could happen.

Its one more reminder that but for and how awful things are here, he would absolutely be a dude with a gun telling you to get off his property. In any event this article tracks how the efforts to build the wall are going to run into something of a wall when they start trying to take land from ranchers in Texas, which is going to be required because where else would you build a wall but private ranch land.

So that came in at the eighth slot. The seventh slot is another big story of the year, this was co-chair of big law firm charged in college admissions scandal.

Gordon Caplan who at the time was Chairing the Willkie Farr Firm was one of those names that happened to show up in the middle of the Varsity Blues Scandal. This was the scandal where rich people were doing all sorts of unsavory things up to and including pretending their kids played sports or having fake notes to allow their students to have extra time on tests to straight up having other people take tests for them.

Gordon Caplan had worked with one of the principals in this case to get some extensions of time for his daughter to take the test in the hopes that she would go to a better school than she could have gotten into otherwise or maybe she could have. This is the whole problem. People spend a bunch of money to cheat the system without knowing whether or not it mattered.

Caplan has since of course left Willkie Farr and has been sentenced. Theres some conversations about whether or not he will lose his license over this.

The number six story is actually more of a shout out to another organization. This story was the Brett Kavanaugh Valentines Day card is so wrong but so funny and as that sounds really awful, it is, but it is and this was the first of many forays, actually maybe not the first but one of many forays that the website Above the Law has done in conjunction with the Facebook group, Law School Memes for Edgy T14s, which is a group of mostly law students and some may be young lawyers who are kind of playing around in the law student world, who go on Facebook and make memes about the legal industry and put them up and they are a really funny group that weve had the pleasure of kind of informally working with in that we contribute some stuff to that site, and we are big fans of what they do and we sometimes post some of the best entries from that website.

One of which was a Brett Kavanaugh Valentines Day card that was as the title suggests wrong, but funny, and that story managed to make it to the number six most read story of the year. So this is a thank you because this is somewhat joint authored by the good people at Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.

The number five story is a perennial story, I think almost every year of the last several this story has managed to make it into the top ten, just different versions, same story different day. Stop Posting This Facebook Privacy Notice Your Pseudo-Legalese Means Nothing!

Those of you whove ever spent any time on networks like Facebook know that every now and again someone is going to show up, post the thing that says please repost this or else Facebook will take over your life and steal all your identity or whatever.

This is and if it cuts across Ive also seen this on Instagram, its a long-running trope of messing with people who use these social media outlets and this stupid meme that gets sent around is something that we decided to take aim at and we did and that informative post to teach people how they should address the notice that they get every time it pops into their inbox probably from an older relative managed to make it to number five.

Number four is another perennial appearance on this list, The LEAKED 2020 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Here. Every year or most years anyway, we receive through little birdies advance notice of what the U.S. News & World Report Law School rankings will be and we put them up, which gives the world in particular the pre-law community and the law school community, whos after bragging right, its an opportunity to see where theyre going to fall in the new US News Rankings.

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This year were not all that exciting as the T14 remains mostly the T14. There were previous years where a school fell out of that list and it was a much more exciting year. But this, once again proves that those of you out there reading Above the Law are very interested in where your law schools are ranked and we are here to give it to you before the U.S. News & World Report put it up.

The third highest rated story of the year Donald Trumps presidency is legally over pending Mitch McConnells acknowledgment of his constitutional duties. As you might imagine, this as an Elie story and it is a story about how impeachment operates, and unfortunately, it probably has not stood the test of time, at least to the extent that as we discussed on our most recent episode, before this, theres some argument that thats not how impeachment has to work and that Mitch McConnell may not even have the opportunity to rule on the impeachment articles that were just passed.

But nonetheless, this was an article that saw into the future when it was written and suggested that impeachment was going to happen and that it was up to McConnell to finish it. So that was number three.

Number two was Small Law Firm Lawyer Tells Big Law Team to Eat a Bowl of Dicks During Settlement Negotiations. Im frankly shocked that this was not the number one story of the year however it was something of a recency problem as this story came out relatively soon and theres a chance that with a couple more weeks of the year it could have been number one.

This story involved a small law firm who was representing some plaintiffs suing Allstate who told the big law firm representing the insurer that they should do some stuff; in this case, eat a bowl of dicks was one of the nicer things that they were informed that they should do to themselves.

As it turns out this was a bigger deal when the big law firm cataloged all of the various a sundry profanities thrown in their direction and put it in front of the judge asking for some sanctions.

The follow up on this story was that the judge was not too pleased and has argued that the attorney should resign from the profession which the attorney is refusing to do, but its safe to say that this is going to cost that attorney quite a bit of money and possibly a license down the road.

The number one story of the year was back to the same person who kicked off the entire years list with us and that is Brett Kavanaugh, in this case it was Brett Kavanaughs Chickens Have Come Home to Roost.

This was a story about Susan Collins as it turns out rather than Kavanaugh exactly. It was a quote of Susan Collins, lamenting the way in which supporting Kavanaugh seems to have hurt her electoral standing in Maine, a state that she once thought there was no hope of her ever losing.

So Susan Collins has spent years trying to cultivate an image of being moderate. She chose to break with that image in ways that fellow moderates Republicans like Lisa Murkowski did not and support Brett Kavanaugh and she has since learned that her primary opponent, or most likely opponent I shall say, not a primary opponent, her most likely opponent on the Democratic side in her coming election will have cash to the gills and a pedigree of having been elected to major office in the state already and she, Collins, has started to think that maybe she made a mistake. Not that she would say it quite outright, but she does say in this quote, have I lost votes over this. I mean I think yes I have. Thats certainly not the place where she would like to be.

So, with all of that said that is the Top Ten Stories of the Year on Above the Law. You can check all of them out. We have links to them in a post that will be up outlining the top ten stories. If you want to go back and revisit some of the fun of the year, were all here at Above the Law looking forward to another year of mayhem in the legal profession and we hope you all are too.

With that said, have a Happy New Year and we will talk to you on the other side, Happy 2020.

Oh yes, and at that point we do the things that we usually do.

Thank you for listening. Subscribe, give it reviews. Follow us on Above the Law, reading Above the Law. You should follow Above the Law on Twitter too, thats @atlblog.

You should follow me at @JosephPatrice. Go ahead and follow Elie, he is @ElieNYC. You should listen to all the shows at the Legal Talk Network as well as The Jabot that Kathryn Rubino does, and you should check out Logikcull. And with all that said, now, we will go ahead and say, Happy 2020.

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Outro: If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. You can also find us at abovethelaw.com, atlredline.com, iTunes, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook.

[Music]

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The Top Stories of 2019 - Legal Talk Network

Appeals court to take another look at 2017 conviction – Herald Palladium

NILES The Michigan Supreme Court has ordered the Michigan Court of Appeals to take another look at the conviction of a Mishawaka man for assaulting a Michigan State Police trooper in 2017.

In a ruling released Tuesday, the Supreme Court vacated part of the Michigan Court of Appeals judgment against Michael Scott Barber and remanded that part back to them for further review. They specifically cited the Michigan Supreme Courts 2015 ruling in the People v. Miller casethat concerned double jeopardy issues.

Barber, now 23, was convicted by a Berrien County Trial Court jury in 2017 of six counts including assault by strangulation, assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder and resisting and obstructing police causing injury as habitual offender.

Barbers convictions stemmed from a Feb. 20, 2017 incident began when trooper Garry Guild attempted to pull Barber over on the U.S. 31 freeway between Buchanan and Berrien Springs on what turned out to be a stolen motorcycle.

Barber ended up crashing the bike and then started attacking Guild. He was helped by half-brother Trevor Wise, who got out of a car trailing them and started choking Guild. Guild was assisted by two good Samaritans, Jerry Burnham of Berrien Springs and Keith Pepple of Plainwell, who helpedGuild regain control of the situation before other police arrived.

Barberwas sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for the two assault counts, five to seven one-half years for receiving, concealing and possession of stolen property, as well as for third degree fleeing police, and two to three years for attempting to disarm a police officer. He received a consecutive prison of four to six years for resisting and obstructing police causing injury.

In its ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court said the Court of Appeals failed to address Barbers argument that the legislature did not intend for a single act to result in convictions for both assault by strangulation and assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder.

The Court of AppealssaidBarber had not raised the issue at trial and thus had failed to preserve his right to appeal that issue.It further stated that the two offenses contained different elements and thus didnt constitute double jeopardy.

The Supreme Court cited the 2015 Miller case which involved a man convicted of both operating while impaired and operating while impaired causing injury. The court said that convicting the man of both charges violated the multiple punishments prong of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The court noted that the legislature did not intend to allow for multiple convictions and punishments for multiple offenses arising from the same conduct, except when explicitly authorized. It further noted that a concurrent sentence does not necessarily eliminate collateral consequences for being convicted of two charges from the same offense.

In the order regarding the Barber case, the Supreme Court otherwise upheld the 2018 Court of Appeals ruling. That ruling upheld Barbers convictions and the sentences imposed by Berrien County Trial Judge Angela Pasula, which exceeded sentencing guidelines. Barbers request for a new trial was denied.

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Appeals court to take another look at 2017 conviction - Herald Palladium

Richard Jewell, The Movie: Member of the Gun Culture – AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

U.S.A. -(Ammoland.com)- Richard Jewell, the movie, shows Richard as a clear, unapologetic member of the American gun culture. I saw Clint Eastwood's latest movie, Richard Jewell, on Friday evening, December 27th, 2019, in Fort Worth, Texas.

I have been a Clint Eastwood fan for decades. His work as a director has been excellent. I highly recommend the movie.

The plot of what happened to Richard is well known, as the political leaks of the FBI, the legacy media, and the multi-million dollar settlement for the defamation of Richard Jewell, testifies. Jewell's name was leaked to the media. He was portrayed as the bomber in the legacy media, for months.

It is not as well known that Richard Jewell was a skilled shooter and marksman.

A few things, as revealed in the movie, show Jewell was a dedicated, disciplined, far above average shooter. The most obvious is when his mother casually mentions that while a deputy, Jewell shot a near-perfect score of 98 of 100 during qualification. That is a level of accomplishment that takes discipline and dedication to attain. Jewell's mother was proud of his accomplishment.

A retired police officer, firearms instructor, and talented shooter told me police fall into the 90-7-3 rule. 90% of police officers see the gun as a necessity of the job. They are not interested in shooting and do the minimum to qualify. 7% are interested, take the training seriously, and do some work on their own to become competent, above-average shooters. 3% are dedicated, disciplined shooters who work at keeping and improving their skills. They read books on the subject, train consistently, and are top-notch shooters. They are gunfighters. The 98% score puts Richard Jewell in the 3%.

My experience is similar to the retired police officer/firearms instructor, colored by the predominance of Border Patrol officers while teaching my concealed carry course at Yuma. Border patrol (at the time) probably had the highest percentage of gunfighters outside the Secret Service.

Richard Jewell is shown at the range, putting rapid fire holes in the bullseye of a target with his AR-15. Jewell had a significant gun collection, considering his limited means. In the movie, his lawyer is not particularly happy when they are laid out on his bed for the FBI to take away. It is clear that guns and shooting were a significant part of Richard Jewell's life.

The characteristics of Jewell's personality, as shown in the movie, are congruent with dedicated shooters. Discipline, attention to detail, and consistent application of the rules of conduct are things you find in accomplished shooters.

The movie shows his adulation of law enforcement. While the gun culture tends toward respect for law enforcement, Jewell's adulation and naivete are beyond average. It is a critical element of the reality and the movie plot.

When his lawyer asks Jewell if he is associated with any extremist or fringe groups, Jewell answers, no. His lawyer asks him if he is associated with the NRA. Richard Jewell answers, Is the NRA fringe?

This is not proof that Richard Jewell was an NRA member. It confirms Jewell as a member of the gun culture.

The bigotry Richard Jewell experienced will be recognized by most members of the gun culture. It is the bigotry of the far Left, of urban Progressives, academia, and the legacy Media.

Today, members of the gun culture do not see the Media as superiors. If anything, the gun culture tends to see the opposition as morally bankrupt, bumbling, bureaucratic, hive animals obsessed with status, sex, money, and power.

It is Jewell's attention to details, his discipline, his self-control, and his honesty, that save him in the end. These characteristics are proudly treasured by members of the gun culture. They seem to be denigrated by those who oppose the gun culture.

Those positive characteristics had to overcome his naivete about the FBI, law enforcement in general, and the legacy Media. It would not have happened without his lawyer.

Richard Jewell prevailed because of the protections of rights built into the Constitution and the rule of law. The First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth amendment and probably the Sixth Amendment were all directly or indirectly in play. The rule of law was critical. In most countries of the world, Jewell would have been successfully railroaded.

Reality is not optional in the gun culture. Ignorance of reality causes injury and death. In Richard Jewell, the movie, reality wins over the fantasy created by the Media. Richard Jewell had to accept the reality of the Media and the FBI against the fantasy image that had been promoted in his mind.

Overcoming the fantasy created by the Media is as important to the gun culture as the reality of ballistics, backstops, and bullets.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

Excerpt from:
Richard Jewell, The Movie: Member of the Gun Culture - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Massachusetts top stories of 2019 played out in court – Enterprise News

BOSTON 2019's biggest stories in Massachusetts played out in the courtroom.

Dozens of wealthy and privileged parents some of them Hollywood stars were ensnared in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal. A judge tossed a sexual assault case against actor Kevin Spacey after his accuser refused to testify.

The state's highest court upheld Michelle Carter's manslaughter conviction for sending her suicidal boyfriend a barrage of text messages urging him to kill himself. Pharmaceutical company executives were found guilty of bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive opioid. And Massachusetts' attorney general launched fresh legal challenges to the Trump administration's immigration policies.

A look back at those and other top stories:

COLLEGE BRIBERY

Federal prosecutors dubbed it Operation Varsity Blues," and the scope was staggering: affluent and influential parents indicted for paying bribes to rig their childrens test scores or get them admitted to elite universities as recruited athletes. Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty and served two weeks in prison, but Full House" actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband maintained their innocence and are expected to stand trial in 2020.

KEVIN SPACEY

Prosecutors dropped a criminal case against Spacey alleging he groped an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket bar in 2016. The House of Cards" actor's accuser invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify about text messages from the night of the alleged encounter. Los Angeles prosecutors later tossed a separate sexual battery charge against Spacey after the accuser in that case died.

TEXTING SUICIDE

The state's highest court upheld Michelle Carter's 2017 involuntary manslaughter conviction in the suicide death of her despondent boyfriend, to whom she had sent insistent text messages urging him to take his own life, and the state Parole Board denied her request for early release. Carter's lawyers maintain her texts were free speech and have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which hasn't yet decided whether it will take up the case.

OPIOID KICKBACK SCHEME

A jury convicted a pharmaceutical company founder of racketeering conspiracy for paying doctors millions in bribes to prescribe his company's highly addictive fentanyl spray even using a stripper-turned-sales-rep to give a physician a lap dance. Convicted along with John Kapoor, the 76-year-old former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, were four other ex-employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company and the former exotic dancer.

TAKING TRUMP TO COURT

Massachusetts' Democratic attorney general, Maura Healey, and the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union mounted fresh legal challenges of the Trump administration's tough policies on immigration. Lawsuits in federal court in Boston highlighted some detainees' need for medical treatment and the government's strict cap on the number of refugees fleeing disaster and strife abroad.

INDICTED MAYOR

Jasiel Correia had seemed almost bulletproof. In March, voters in Fall River reelected the embattled mayor after he was charged in 2018 with defrauding investors in an app he developed to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. But Correia's political good fortunes ran out federal authorities indicted the 27-year-old for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from marijuana companies. In November, voters unceremoniously threw him out of office.

2020 FREE-FOR-ALL

Continuing Massachusetts' tradition of producing presidential candidates, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren jumped into the race for the Democratic nomination early, followed by U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who exited in August. Much later, former governor Deval Patrick, the state's first black governor, declared his candidacy. Ex-Gov. William Weld, a Republican, launched a challenge to President Donald Trump. And Democratic congressman Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, announced a primary run against U.S. Sen. Edward Markey.

PILGRIM NUCLEAR PLANT

Nearly half a century after it began generating electricity, the Pilgrim nuclear power plant permanently shut down. Environmentalists had clamored for decades for the closure of the state's only remaining reactor. The decommissioning of the complex in Plymouth, which came online in 1972, left Seabrook in New Hampshire and Millstone in Connecticut as New England's only still-operating commercial nuclear plants.

MENTHOL, R.I.P.

Responding to growing concerns about the health effects of vaping, Massachusetts became the first state to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine vaping products. Anti-smoking groups hailed the ban, which restricts the sale and consumption of flavored vaping products and will do the same for menthol cigarettes starting June 1, 2020. It came after Republican Gov. Charlie Baker declared a public health emergency and imposed a temporary ban.

AGAINST ALL ODDS

Massachusetts' third casino, Encore Boston Harbor, opened in the gritty suburb of Everett after months of uncertainty. Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts' glitzy $2.6 billion complex had been beset by legal troubles and a failed attempt to sell the complex to rival MGM Resorts. Encore features a 671-room bronzed-toned hotel tower, a gambling floor with 3,100 slot machines and 231 table games, and 15 bars and restaurants.

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Massachusetts top stories of 2019 played out in court - Enterprise News