NATION IN BRIEF

Federal judge shows no mercy for Alex Murdaugh’s many crimes, betrayals

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Federal Judge Richard Gergel never once raised his voice in anger on Monday at the financial crimes sentencing hearing for Alex Murdaugh.

Gergel didn’t have to. The judge’s clenched jaw and icy stare throughout the hearing at the convicted killer and admitted fraudster spoke volumes.

A no-nonsense Gergel interrupted Murdaugh’s lawyer Jim Griffin, finished sentences for him and in short order shot down nearly all Griffin’s arguments for a lighter sentence.

When the hour-plus long hearing was over in Charleston, Gergel gave Murdaugh, 55, what amounted to 40 years in federal prison, which means that the formerly respected lawyer likely won’t be out until he is in his

90s.

In all, Murdaugh stole some

$10 million from 27 victims over a 15-year period; $6 million is still missing, federal prosecutors charged.

It was, legal observers said, perhaps the stiffest sentence for a white-collar criminal defendant ever handed down in a South Carolina court. With the sentence, Murdaugh joins a pantheon of American fraudsters, whose names were used as comparisons in court Monday: Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, crypto-scammer Sam Bankman-fried and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

In court, federal prosecutors only asked for a sentence of 30 years. In comparison, Bankmanfried was sentenced last week to 25 years, Holmes received 11 years and Skilling ultimately served 12 years. Only Madoff received more time, having been sentenced to 150 years. He died in prison in 2021.

But for Murdaugh to get out of prison in 40 years, his lawyers — Griffin, Dick Harpootlian and Phil Barber — must be successful in their appeals to overturn the consecutive life sentences in state prison Murdaugh is currently serving for killing his wife, Maggie, and son Paul. Murdaugh was convicted in March 2023 of killing Maggie and Paul execution style at their remote Colleton County estate in 2021.

While those appeals are pending, most assume that Murdaugh’s appearance Monday will be his last in public for the foreseeable future.

The crimes for which Gergel sentenced Murdaugh on Monday were money laundering, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

What made Murdaugh unique, Gergel said, was that he had not preyed on investors looking to get rich, but individuals he had formed personal relationships with.

Murdaugh had stolen from his legal clients, who included society’s most vulnerable, Gergel told the courtroom — motherless children, a widower and a paraplegic.

These victims came to Murdaugh’s office looking for assistance, Gergel said. Instead,they found “rampant, uncontrolled dishonesty” that brought them nothing but anguish.

Murdaugh was able to steal from them because he had gotten them big settlements in personal injury or wrongful death cases, money that came into his law firm in installments, according to evidence in his case. Once the money was in his law firm, Murdaugh was able to manipulate the funds into his own accounts.

“The defendant’s conduct has brought disgrace and disrepute to himself, his law firm, the Hampton County bar, the South Carolina bar, if not the entire court system,” Gergel said.

Temporary shipping channel in Port of Baltimore opens for emergency, salvage crews

BALTIMORE — A temporary shipping channel opened Monday in the Port of Baltimore to clear a path for responders trying to salvage the Francis Scott Key Bridge as well as the ship that struck it.

The Dali, a Singapore-flagged vessel, has been aground in the Patapsco River since March 26, when it struck one of the bridge’s support columns and toppled the bridge. Workers removed on Sunday the first part of the bridge from the ship’s bow, which is weighed down by parts of the downed structure. Officials also conducted a grounding survey to determine the hardness of the ground around the vessel.

On Monday, Coast Guard

Petty Officer Kimberly Reaves said officials planned to open a channel in the Patapsco River solely for emergency response vessels. The channel opened later Monday morning, according to the Coast Guard. It is 11 feet deep, 264 feet wide, and have a vertical clearance of 96 feet.

“This is not large in regards to the size of most vessels,” Reaves said of the channel measurements in an email.

The channel will only for be “commercially essential vehicles,” or emergency response vessels, and will be closed off to all other public vessels, she said.

Officials anticipate keeping it open until the “full channel is open,” Reaves said. Emergency responders include police and fire officials in addition to unified command officials with the Coast Guard, U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers, Maryland Department of the Environment, Maryland State Police, Maryland Transportation Authority, and the Dali’s owner and shipper.

Companies behind cargo ship that destroyed Baltimore’s Key Bridge seek exemption from legal liability

The companies that own and manage the Dali have asked a federal judge to absolve them of liability from the cargo ship’s crash last week into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which immediately collapsed, killing six people.

Grace Ocean Private Ltd., the owner, and Synergy Marine

Pte Ltd., which manages the 984-foot cargo ship, are both based in Singapore. Together, they filed a claim in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court asking a judge to clear them from liability or limit damages to the value of the ship and its cargo, which they estimated at $43.7 million.

Shortly after leaving the Port of Baltimore for a months-long voyage to Sri Lanka, the Dali, which weighed more than 112,000 tons loaded with cargo, experienced a reported power outage near Key Bridge and smashed into one of its principal supporting piers around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. The bridge crumbled immediately, sending a crew of workers who were repairing potholes on Interstate 695 tumbling into the frigid river below.

Authorities rescued two men quickly, but an expansive search, featuring boats, helicopters and divers has turned up only two of the bodies from the six-man crew. The other four more remain missing and are presumed dead. Their recovery efforts now focus on clearing the mess of mangled steel blocking the shipping channel that long provided cargo vessels passage into the Port of Baltimore.

Officials have pledged to hold those behind the ship accountable for the accident, depending on what an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board turns up. That independent federal agency is probing everything from what went wrong aboard the Dali — and looking at its past — to the Key Bridge’s “fracture critical” design.

The costs of paying for the accident and its cleanup, and rebuilding the span, will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars if not more.

The Dali’s owner and manager wrote in their court filing Monday that the companies are “aware of potential demands or claims,” but that the identity of potential claimants and the amounts they were claiming were not yet known, their attorneys wrote.

PSC clears forced land sales for railroad in poor Georgia county

A Georgia railroad can force property owners in a rural community to sell portions of their land so the company can build a rail spur to serve private businesses, a Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) officer ruled Monday.

The decision announced by the hearing officer who heard the case is legally enforceable, but may not be the final word on the condemnations in the majority Black town in Hancock County, one of the state’s poorest.

Attorneys for the property owners whose land is in question said they plan to appeal the ruling to the five elected members of the PSC. And any decision by the PSC could be challenged further in Fulton County Superior Court.

Still, the ruling is a significant development in a case that tested Georgia’s eminent domain laws and could set precedent for use of the controversial power.

Eminent domain is when a government or utility forces a private property owner to sell some — or all — of their land for a specific project. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against abuse of eminent domain and requires “just compensation” for seized property. As a public utility, railroads have the authority to invoke it. But to exert that power, Georgia law requires a court’s determination that a project serves a public use.

The case revolved around the plans of the Sandersville Railroad Company to build a 4.5-mile rail line near the town of Sparta, about 65 miles east of Augusta. The proposed Hanson Spur would link a nearby rock quarry to an existing CSX Transportation line, and might be used by other local businesses to ship grain, wood chips, liquid asphalt and more. The company says trains on the spur would travel less than 20 miles per hour and only run during daylight hours on weekdays.

To build the spur, Sandersville Railroad needed to secure portions of 18 parcels along the route. The company’s attorneys said the railroad has written or verbal agreements with some landowners in the area, but several others rebuffed their offers.

Many of the Sparta residents whose properties the railroad is seeking to acquire have deep ties to their land. Some are descendants of slaves who worked on cotton plantations in the area before the Civil

War. In hearings last fall and in filed briefs, attorneys from the Institute for Justice (IJ), which represents several landowners facing the eminent domain claims, argued that the spur would only benefit a few private businesses and was not a legitimate public use.

Sandersville Railroad’s attorneys acknowledged those strong personal and historical connections many have to their land, but argued they were irrelevant to the central question of whether the proposed spur met the “public use” threshold.

Michigan man charged after remark about hanging election official ‘for treason’

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — A 37-year-old Livonia man will face a felony charge after he allegedly made a comment at a December recount about Joe Rozell, the director of elections in Oakland County, being hanged for treason.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen Mcdonald announced on Monday her decision to charge Andrew Hess with a felony offense punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $20,000. Her announcement cited a state law that bans people from making a terrorist threat or making a false report of terrorism.

During a ballot recount in Oakland County on Dec. 15, Hess walked outside of the recount room and stated, “hang Joe for treason,” referring to Rozell, according to the prosecutor’s office.

In a press release, Mcdonald, a Democrat, said there are some individuals who “seek to undermine the integrity of the election process by threatening and intimidating election workers and supervisors.”

“Those threats don’t just impact our election workers, they put our democracy at risk, and they will not be tolerated,” Mcdonald added. “I will do everything within my power to hold those who make such threats accountable.”

The Detroit News first revealed the investigation into a threat against Rozell, a longtime and well-known election official in Michigan, in January.

Hess told The News in an interview on Jan. 10 that it was a possibility that he had made a remark at the recount about treason and hanging.

“I very regularly tell people the penalty for treason is hanging by the neck,” Hess said during the interview.

Source: Tribune News Service