Smollett indicted on 16 counts stemming from reported attack
CHICAGO — A grand jury in Chicago indicted “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts related to making a false report that he was attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs.
The Cook County grand jury indictment dated Thursday and made public on Friday gives details of the disorderly conduct charge against Smollett. It elaborates on the allegation that he falsely reported that he was attacked on Jan. 28 by two masked men who hurled racial and homophobic slurs at the black and openly gay actor, beat him, threw an unidentified liquid chemical on him and looped a rope tied like a noose around his neck.
The indictment — eight counts from what he told the officer who responded to the report of the attack and eight for what he later told a detective — comes a little more than two weeks after prosecutors announced one felony count of the same charge.
Chicago police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime but later said Smollett staged the attack, recruiting two brothers to carry it out, because he was unhappy with his pay on the Fox show.
Indictments like the one revealed Friday are common in criminal cases. It was widely expected, said Mark Geragos, a prominent attorney representing Smollett.
Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify on WikiLeaks
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who served years in prison for leaking one of the largest troves of classified documents in U.S. history, was sent to jail Friday for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton ordered Manning to jail for civil contempt of court after a brief hearing in federal court in Alexandria in which Manning confirmed she has no intention of testifying. She told the judge she “will accept whatever you bring upon me.”
Manning has said she objects to the secrecy of the grand jury process and already revealed everything she knows at her court-martial. She said prosecutors have granted her immunity for her testimony, which eliminates her ability to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech,” she said in a statement released after she was taken into custody.
The judge said she will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work.
Bill Shine resigns from White House communications post
WASHINGTON — Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive who took over as President Donald Trump’s communications director last summer, exited the White House on Friday, the latest person to step away from a job that has become a revolving door within the turbulent West Wing.
Shine will join the president’s Republican re-election campaign, the White House said in a laudatory statement that quoted Trump and other top White House officials.
When Shine joined the administration, he was viewed as an experienced hand whose television experience could help shape Trump’s message. But like others before him, Shine was forced to grapple with a president who preferred to run his own communications strategy via tweet. In recent weeks, Trump had expressed frustration that Shine had not done more to improve his press coverage, said two people close to the president who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The announcement took many in the West Wing by surprise, though there were signs of unrest lately. Shine did not join Trump on his high-stakes trip to Vietnam for a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Still, Trump said in a statement: “We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 Presidential Campaign, where he will be totally involved.”
Court denies new trial in ‘Serial’ podcast murder case
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland’s highest court denied a new trial Friday for a man whose murder conviction was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial.”
In a 4-3 opinion, the Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that Adnan Syed’s legal counsel was deficient in failing to investigate an alibi witness, but it disagreed that the deficiency prejudiced the case. The court said Syed waived his ineffective counsel claim.
The court reversed a Court of Special Appeals’ judgment, sending the case back to that court with directions to reverse a Baltimore Circuit Court judgment granting a new trial.
Syed is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2000 of strangling 17-year-old Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a Baltimore park. More than a decade later, the popular “Serial” podcast brought Syed’s case to millions of listeners with its debut 2014 season. The show revealed little-known evidence and attracted millions of listeners, shattering podcast-streaming and downloading records.
In 2016, a lower court ordered a retrial for Syed on grounds that his attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, who died in 2004, didn’t contact an alibi witness and provided ineffective counsel. The state appealed. The special appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling last year and the state appealed that decision, too.
Actor Jan-Michael Vincent, known for ‘Airwolf,’ dies at 73
Actor Jan-Michael Vincent, the “Airwolf” television star whose sleek good looks belied a troubled personal life, has died. He was 73.
A death certificate shows that Vincent died of cardiac arrest on Feb. 10, 2019, in an Asheville, North Carolina, hospital. The certificate signed by a doctor says he died of natural causes and no autopsy was performed.
It wasn’t clear why it took several weeks for news of the death to surface before it was first reported Friday by TMZ. Messages left at phone listings for Vincent and his wife weren’t immediately returned Friday.
Born in 1945 in Denver, Colorado, Vincent starred in such films as 1972’s “The Mechanic” and 1978’s “Hooper,” in which he played a stuntman opposite Burt Reynolds. Off-screen, his handsomeness earned him a spot on a cosmetic surgeon’s “Ten Best Noses” list in the late 1970s.
He also starred in the 1983 television mini-series “Winds of War” as the love interest of a character played by Ali MacGraw, “piling up enormous ratings,” according to a contemporary Associated Press account. He earned a Golden Globe nomination.
