Judge gives ex-deputy bail | Jury acquits in Young Dolph murder plot | Adelson murder-for-hire-trial begins | Tory Lanez argument
My YouTube channel is booming with my coverage of the Young Dolph murder plot trial last week and my coverage of Donna Adelson's murder-for-hire trial this week.
A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy convicted of violating a woman’s civil rights through excessive force won’t report to prison this week after a federal judge granted him bail.
U.S District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said his rejection of the U.S. Department of Justice’s dismissal motion “presents a substantial question of law” that justifies allowing Trevor Kirk to stay out of custody as he appeals his civil rights criminal conviction to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Wilson previously rejected Kirk’s bail request, but that was before prosecutors filed a dismissal motion the judge ruled was motivated “by disagreement with the Court’s decision to sentence Defendant to four months in prison.”
To grant bail pending appeal, judges must determine a defendant is not a risk to flee and that the legal issue presented in appeal is substantial and will result in reversal if decided in the defendant’s favor.
When Kirk first asked for bail on July 29, Wilson had already considered the legal issues up for appeal when he rejected Kirk’s motion for acquittal in May. The judge said Kirk isn’t a risk to flee, but he said his hands were tied by the lack of substantial issues.
That changed on Aug. 8 with Wilson’s 11-page order rejecting the DOJ’s dismissal request, Wilson wrote in his new order Aug. 15.
“As made clear in the Court’s order denying the Government’s motion to dismiss, which order Defendant now appeals, the appeal presents a substantial question of law, which question, if decided in Defendant’s favor, would result in reversal,” the judge wrote.
The opening brief in Kirk’s appeal is due on Friday. An answering brief is due on Sept. 29, but it’s unclear if there will be one: Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Keenan said in his dismissal motion that prosecutors won’t defend Kirk’s convictions on appeal. The victim’s lawyer Caree Harper has joined with University of Utah law professor Paul G. Cassell, who is a former U.S. District judge, to request appointment as special counsel to defend Kirk’s convictions, but the 9th Circuit has not yet responded.
A jury on Feb. 6 convicted Kirk of deprivation of rights under the color of law for a confrontation with Jacey Houseton on June 24, 2023, outside a Winco grocery store in Lancaster, about 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
Wilson, a 1985 Ronald Reagan appointee, previously questioned a rare post-verdict plea deal Essayli reached with Kirk that called for the felony conviction to be reduced to a misdemeanor, but he gave Essayli a way to secure a misdemeanor by keeping the jury verdict and dismissing the underlying felony charge.
Court documents:
Aug. 15 order granting bail
Aug. 8 Judge Wilson’s order rejecting dismissal
Aug. 5 motion to intervene in 9th Circuit appeal
More documents are available in previous articles:
Jury acquits in Young Dolph murder plot trial hours before Adelson murder-for-hire trial begins
My YouTube channel continues to grow with my coverage of accused murder-for-hire matriarch Donna Adelson’s trial in Tallahassee, Florida and, last week of the trial of Hernandez Govan, who was accused of orchestrating rapper Young Dolph’s brazen murder inside a Memphis, Tennessee, cookie store in 2021.
A jury in Shelby County Circuit Court acquitted Govan of murder and conspiracy charges on Aug. 21 after a three-day trial.
Govan wasn’t present on Nov. 17, 2021, when gunmen Justin Johnson and Cornelius Smith stormed Makeda’s Cookie Shop with assault rifles in broad daylight and shot Dolph to death, but prosecutors argued he put the men up to it as part of a rivalry between Dolph’s record label, Paper Route Empire, and rapper Yo Gotti’s Collective Music Group.
A separate jury convicted Johnson last year, and he was sentenced to life in prison plus 35 years. Smith pleaded guilty and testified against Johnson and, last week, Govan, but Govan’s lawyer Manny Arora of Atlanta, Georgia, highlighted discrepancies in Smith’s testimony and his changing statements.
Defense witnesses included an 85-year-old woman who disputed Smith’s testimony that he’d stashed $500 with her and a policeman who disputed Smith’s testimony about cleaning the inside of his car with bleach. It was part of Arora’s efforts to discredit not only Smith but prosecutors, whom he lambasted in his closing argument as incompetent and embarrassing.
“You all should be embarrassed as a community that your district attorney thinks this evidence is sufficient to take a man’s life for first-degree murder. You should be embarrassed that this is the person you voted for that brings this type of case. Just embarrassed,” Arora said. He revisited the issue later in his argument by saying, “This whole county is a freaking embarrassment with regards to this trial, and the whole world is watching.”
Arora argued investigators ignored the involvement of Anthony “Big Jook” Mims, who is Yo Gotti’s brother and died last year. He also said Dolph, legal name Adolph Robert Thorton Jr., was frequently targeted. He moved out of Memphis five years ago and “had three old bullets in his body from other times he’d been shot at by people.”
“Everybody knew there was a price on his head,” Arora said.
Arora said prosecutors see Govan as “just another Black man that is of no value from Orange Mound,” an impoverished neighborhood in Memphis.
“He is indigent. He is poor, and he deserves better than he’s got in this case,” Arora said.
Shelby County Assistant District Attorney Carla Taylor addressed the comments in her rebuttal.
“Are you kidding me right now? Counsel just called the whole city of Memphis stupid and dumb. Everybody from the D.A. to the police officers to the prosecutors,” said Taylor, who prosecuted Govan with Assistant District Attorney Iris Williams.
“This case is about Hernandez Govan. He is the person on trial. Not the city of Memphis. Not the D.A. Not the prosecutors. Not you. Hernandez Govan. That’s who we are here about today. That’s what this proof has been about,” Taylor continued. “Who should be embarrassed? Hernandez Govan. He is the person that made the choice to get engaged in this conspiracy,” Taylor said.
Arora and Govan spoke to a news cameraman live in the courtroom after the not guilty verdicts, until a deputy told them Judge Jennifer Johnson Mitchell didn’t want interviews inside her courtroom.
"I knew I had a chance from the beginning, because I knew in my heart I was innocent,” Govan said. He thanked Arora for believing him and said he helped him at no charge.
“I didn’t have the resources to necessarily, you know, cover everything and Manny still helped me,” Govan said.
You can find many more trial videos in my YouTube channel trial playlist.
Hours after the jury in Tennessee acquitted Govan on Thursday, a jury in Tallahassee, Florida, was seated in the murder-for-hire trial of Donna Adelson, who is accused of conspiring with her son to hire hitmen to murder her former son-in-law. Opening statements were Friday.
The case is the stuff of true crime legend and has been chronicled by all the major crimes shows, and for good reason. The investigation included an undercover blackmail ruse on Adelson in 2016. It began in July 2014 when Dan Markel, a Florida State University law professor with a juris doctor from Harvard Law School, was shot to death in his car after he pulled into his garage.
Police connected a Toyota Prius to hitmen Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia and identified the link between them and Markel as Katherine “Katie” Magbanua, who was Garcia’s on-again, off-again girlfriend and also was in a relationship with Adelson’s son, Charlie Adelson.
Rivera, a former gang leader, is serving a 19-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Garcia, who fired the fatal shots, was convicted at trial in 2019 and is in prison. Magbanua was convicted at trial in 2022 and also is in prison. Rivera testified against both.
He also testified in Charlie Adelson’s trial in 2023, and Adelson was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After their son’s trial, Donna Adelson and her husband, retired dentist Harvey Adelson, bought one-way tickets to Vietnam.
Police arrested her on the jetway at Miami International Airport on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and solicitation of first-degree murder, and she’s been in jail ever since.
Her trial is expected to go through Sept. 5 in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee. Her lawyers are Josh Zelman and Jackie Fulford of Tallahassee. Assistant State Attorneys Georgia Cappleman and Sarah Kathryn Dugan are prosecuting.
Rivera testified on Friday, and he implicated not Adelson in the murder plot but her daughter, Wendi Adelson, who is Markel’s ex-wife. Wendi is expected to testify this week, possibly as early as Monday. She has not been charged with a crime.
Adelson’s defense is that she had no knowledge of what Rivera and Garcia were going to do, and that prosecutors are only focusing on her hatred for Markel to show she had a motive to want him murdered, when there's no evidence she was actually involved.
One huge breath of fresh air in the trial is Judge Stephen Everett, who is the chief judge of Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee. He’s a former public defender and prosecutors who earned his law degree from Louisiana State University, and he’s running a tight ship while keeping a sense of humor. I was impressed with how he handled unexpected objections to exhibits in the middle of trial on Friday, and how he addressed Adelson’s emotional response to Markel’s autopsy photos and testimony about his gunshot wounds and cause of death.
I plan to live stream every trial day on YouTube, and I’m sharing testimony videos and highlight clips on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Court should be underway by 9 a.m. EST / 6 a.m. PST each week day for the next two weeks.
Justices ask few questions in Tory Lanez’s appeal
The 2nd Distrct Court of Appeal in California has not issued its opinion on rapper Tory Lanez’s appeal of his convictions and 10-year prison sentence for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, but based on the justices lack of probing questions in oral argument, the judgment and sentence will be affirmed.
The three-justice panel already rejected Lanez’s claims about erroneous DNA evidence when it denied his two habeas petitions, but his lawyer Crystal Morgan still focused on them in oral argument.
Justice Rashida A. Adams questioned Morgan about her claim that Lanez’s convictions should be overturned because a prosecutor told jurors in opening statement that Megan’s bodyguard would testify Lanez implicated himself in a conVersation after the shooting, but the bodyguard never testified.
Morgan said prosecutors knew Edison was unlikely to actually testify because they had him wear an electronic monitor to try to ensure his courtroom appearance. Justice Adams asked if she’s saying no prosecutor should be able to mention a witness in opening statement if the witness is wearing a monitor. Morgan said not in all cases, but in this situation, yes.
The other justices on the panel are Lee Smalley Edmon and Anne H. Egerton.
Adams is the newest justice of the three after being appointed in 2023. She has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale and is a former appellate court research attorney.
She asked a question of Deputy Attorney General Michael C. Keller that goes to the heart of appellate issues in criminal cases: If the justices conclude an instagram post used as evidence was wrongly admitted, why is that not prejudicial to Lanez? Keller referenced the other evidence against Lanez, including his texts to Megan after the shooting and his apologetic call to her now-former friend Kelsey Harris.
Because in criminal appeals, a judge may have errored, but did the error or errors cause so much prejudice against the defendant that they warrant an entire jury verdict being overturned.
Lanez’s appeal argued Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Herriford erred when he allowed prosecutors to use as evidence a comment from Lanez's Instagram account that said “that’s not true” in response to a comment on the gossip page the Shade Room alleging Kelsey Harris is the one who shot Megan in July 2020.
You can read more about Lanez’s appellate arguments and find the documents in my article on the habeas ruling.
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