Afternoon Briefs: Lawyer told shooting suspect to give up; judge says slurs didn't describe defendants
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• A defense lawyer for the suspect accused of shooting six Philadelphia police officers says he advised his former client to surrender. The police commissioner says the lawyer, Shaka Johnson, deserves a lot of credit for speaking with suspect Maurice Hill. But it was tear gas that ultimately ended the nearly eight-hour standoff. (FOX29, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, CNN)
• A visiting judge will no longer handle cases in Bexar County, Texas, after a staffer accused him of using offensive terms to describe immigrants living in the country illegally. The judge, Mark Luitjen, said he never used a slur to describe any defendant, but the complainant may be referring to a private conversation about political correctness that he had with a court reporter. “What I said was, after we talked to each other about this for two to three minutes, ‘It was easier when they used to call them wetbacks and mojaos,’ ” Luitjen said. (the San Antonio Express-News, KSAT)
• Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have dropped a charge of terroristic threats against a woman accused of threatening to kill a district attorney. Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte said the woman, Brittany Hartos, was merely “venting” when she made the threats in a call to a suicide prevention hotline. (TribLive.com)
• A would-be class action suit filed against YouTube claims that the website discriminates against the creators of LGBTQ content by restricting the material. The lawsuit says the content regulations create “a chaotic cesspool where popular, compliant, top quality and protected LGBTQ+ content is restricted, stigmatized and demonetized as ‘shocking,’ ‘inappropriate,’ ‘offensive’ and ‘sexually explicit,’ while homophobic and racist hatemongers run wild.” A YouTube spokesperson says all content on the site is subject to the same policies. (CNN, the Huffington Post, the Aug. 13 lawsuit)
• More than 400 lawsuits filed Wednesday in New York take advantage of a new law allowing suits by adult survivors of child sexual abuse, no matter how long ago the abuse happened. The suits have to be filed within a one-year window. Defendants include the Roman Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Jeffrey Epstein’s estate and Epstein associates. (CNN, the Associated Press)
