The former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed woman who called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home is scheduled to be released from prison next week, months after his murder conviction was overturned and he was resentenced on a lesser charge.

Mohamed Noor, 36, is scheduled to be released from custody Monday, according to online Department of Corrections records.

Noor was initially convicted of third-degree murder and manslaughter in the 2017 fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a 40-year-old dual U.S.-Australian citizen and yoga teacher. But last year, the Minnesota Supreme Court tossed out his murder conviction and 12½-year sentence, saying the murder charge didn’t apply to the circumstances of this case.

He was resentenced to four years and nine months on the manslaughter charge.

In Minnesota, it’s presumed that a defendant with good behavior will serve two-thirds of a sentence in prison and the rest on supervised release, commonly known as parole. The DOC’s website says Noor will be on supervised release until Jan. 24, 2024.

Damond’s father, John Ruszczyk, said Friday that the family was disappointed that Noor’s third-degree murder conviction was overturned.

“His release after a trivial sentence shows great disrespect to the wishes of the jury who represented the communities of Minneapolis and their wish to make a statement about the communities’ expectations of police behavior and actions,” Ruszczyk wrote in response to emailed questions from The Associated Press.

After his conviction, Noor began serving his time at Minnesota’s maximum-security prison in Oak Park Heights, but the Minneapolis newspaper, the Star Tribune, reported he was transferred to a facility in North Dakota in July 2019 for his safety. Department of Corrections spokesman Nicholas Kimball said Noor is still out of state but did not specify where.

“For safety reasons, we aren’t able to provide more detail than what is available on the public website, which is the scheduled date of release,” Kimball said.

It wasn’t clear whether Noor would return to Minnesota. His attorney, Tom Plunkett, declined to comment, saying, “at this point I just want to respect Mr. Noor’s privacy.”

Damond’s killing angered citizens in the U.S. and Australia and led to the resignation of Minneapolis’ police chief. It also led the department to change its policy on body cameras; Noor and his partner didn’t have theirs activated when they were investigating Damond’s 911 call.

Noor testified at his 2019 trial that he and his partner were driving slowly in an alley when a loud bang on their police SUV made him fear for their lives. He said he saw a woman appear at the partner’s driver’s side window and raise her right arm before he fired a shot from the passenger seat to stop what he thought was a threat.

Damond was a meditation teacher and life coach who was killed about a month before her wedding. Her maiden name was Justine Ruszczyk, and though she was not yet married, she had already been using her fiance’s last name.

Her fiance, Don Damond, declined to comment on Noor’s pending release, but said during Noor’s resentencing that he had forgiven the former officer, and that he had no doubt Justine also would have forgiven him “for your inability in managing your emotions that night.”

Noor, who is Somali American, was believed to be the first Minnesota officer convicted of murder for an on-duty shooting. Activists who had long called for officers to be held accountable for the deadly use of force applauded the murder conviction but lamented that it came in a case in which the officer is Black and his victim was white.

Since Noor’s conviction, former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, was convicted of murder in the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who was pinned to the pavement under Chauvin’s knee. Chauvin’s colleague, Thomas Lane, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting manslaughter, while two other officers are awaiting trial on charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter. All four have been convicted on federal charges of violating Floyd’s rights.

In another case, former Brooklyn Center Officer Kim Potter was convicted of manslaughter after she said she mistook her Taser for her handgun when she fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist, during a traffic stop last year.

Days after Noor’s conviction, Minneapolis agreed to pay $20 million to Damond’s family, believed at the time to be the largest settlement stemming from police violence in Minnesota. It was surpassed last year when Minneapolis agreed to a $27 million settlement in Floyd’s death just as Chauvin was going on trial.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overruled a constitutional right to abortion in America, leaving it to states to decide whether to permit the procedure that has been legal nationwide for five decades.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion, joined by four other conservative justices. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The ruling came less than two months after an early draft of Alito’s decision was leaked to a news site, setting off nationwide protests by abortion-rights activists.

While the high court’s overturning of its 1973 ruling in the case known as Roe v. Wade and a separate case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey does not impose a ban on abortion, its legal impact will ripple through the country almost immediately.

The Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group, estimates that 26 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, will ban abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s repeal. That could force millions of women seeking abortions to travel to states where abortion rights are protected.

“[O]ne result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” wrote Associate Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the court’s liberal members, in a spirited dissent.

At the White House, President Joe Biden condemned the ruling but implored protesters to remain peaceful.

“Let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” Biden said. “It’s a sad day for the country.”

In a statement, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “strongly disagrees with the court’s decision” and “will work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling came in a closely watched case involving a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, several weeks before the cutoff stage established under Roe v. Wade.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, challenged the 2018 law in federal court, arguing that it would violate nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent.

After two lower courts sided with the clinic, the state of Mississippi, backed by 25 other Republican-controlled states, went to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to overturn both Roe and Casey. Their petition claimed that “nothing” in the Constitution “supports a right to abortion.”

Six of the high court justices, all appointed by Republican presidents, agreed. Chief Justice John Roberts concurred in upholding the Mississippi law but indicated he would not have gone further in ending the constitutional right to abortion.

Few issues in America are as divisive as abortion. For the past 50 years, American conservatives, driven by a desire to protect unborn life, have campaigned against the Roe v. Wade ruling. But they lacked the votes on the high court to overturn it.

That changed after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and put three abortion-rights opponents on the high court. That gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the powerful court, raising the likelihood that abortion rights would be overturned.

Trump reacted with jubilation to Friday’s ruling, saying in a statement, “Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.”

Generally, the Supreme Court follows principles established in its prior rulings, a doctrine known as stare decisis. The dissenting justices wrote that the ruling violated this long-standing legal precept.

But Alito said that there are circumstances where a precedent can be and has been overturned. In a landmark ruling in 1954, for example, the Supreme Court invalidated an 1896 decision that had legalized racial segregation in the United States, Alito noted.

Alito wrote that the court’s ruling was limited to abortion and would not affect other rights. But liberal critics of the decision worry the decision will open the door to overturn other rights recognized by the Supreme Court.

“If you strike down a law based on a fundamental disagreement with the legal reasoning that underpins it, the same exact arguments will allow the other decisions to be overturned,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

Although Friday’s ruling did not come as a surprise after the draft opinion had been leaked, it set off a tidal wave of reaction in Washington and across America.

“This is a great day for preborn children and their mothers,” Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, a prominent group opposing abortion rights, said in a statement. “The Court has correctly decided that a right to abortion is not in the [C]onstitution, thereby allowing the people, through their elected representatives, to have a voice in this very important decision.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, hailed the ruling as “courageous and correct” and “an historic victory for the Constitution and for the most vulnerable in our society.”

“Today is one of the darkest days our country has ever seen,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. “Millions upon millions of American women are having their rights taken from them by five unelected justices.”

“This decision is the worst-case scenario, but it is not the end of this fight. The 8 in 10 Americans who support the legal right to abortion will not let this stand,” Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights group, said in a statement. “There is an election in November, and extremist politicians will learn: When you come for our rights, we come for your seats.”

News of the ruling made headlines across the globe. While the Vatican’s Academy for Life praised the Supreme Court’s decision as a challenge to the world to reflect on life issues, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called it “a huge blow to women’s human rights and gender equality.” 

 

In a statement, Bachelet added, “More than 50 countries with previously restrictive laws have liberalized their abortion legislation over the past 25 years. With today’s ruling, the U.S. is regrettably moving away from this progressive trend.”

In anticipation of the ruling, states across the country, depending on their legislatures’ ideological leanings, have been changing their abortion rules.

In conservative states, in addition to passing “trigger laws” designed to take effect after Roe is overturned, lawmakers have moved to tighten restrictions on abortion, with Oklahoma enacting a law in March that bans abortion at any point during pregnancy.

For their part, some liberal-leaning states have responded by passing legislation to expand access to abortion, with some states considering laws that would allow nurses to carry out the procedure.

The court ruling came despite growing public acceptance of abortion. A Gallup Poll conducted after the court’s draft decision was leaked in May indicated that 55% of Americans identified as “pro-choice,” the highest level of such sentiment since the mid-1990s.

Still, abortion remains a politically divisive issue that is likely to live on well past Roe’s demise. Abortion-rights groups are gearing up to challenge new state bans and restrictions in state courts, setting off protracted legal battles.

“Part of the issue is that you have to find some protections within the state constitutions in order to bring these cases,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute.

Complicating efforts to challenge state abortion bans, four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia — have passed constitutional amendments that say the state constitution does not recognize the right to abortion, Nash noted. In two others — Kansas and Kentucky — voters are expected to cast ballots on the issue later this year.
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In a widely anticipated move, the U.S. Supreme Court cast aside a half-century-old ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, leaving it to states to decide whether or not to permit the procedure.

Friday’s ruling by the high court’s conservative majority came less than two months after an early draft of the decision was leaked to a news site, setting off nationwide protests by abortion rights activists.

While the high court’s overturning of its 1973 ruling in the case known as Roe v. Wade and a separate case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey does not impose a ban on abortion, its legal impact will ripple through the country almost immediately.

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, estimates that 26 states, mostly in the south and midwest, will ban abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wake’s repeal. That could force millions of women seeking an abortion to travel to states where abortion rights are protected.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came in a closely-watched case involving a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, several weeks before the cutoff stage established under Roe v. Wade.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, challenged the 2018 law in federal court, arguing that it would violate nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent.

After two lower courts sided with the clinic, the state of Mississippi, backed by 25 other Republican-controlled states, went to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to overturn both Roe and Casey. Their petition claimed that “nothing” in the constitution “supports a right to abortion.”

Six of the high court justices, all appointed by Republican presidents, agreed.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including…the Due Process of the 14th Amendment,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion

The 14th Amendment says that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

That provision has been invoked by the Supreme Court in recent decades to affirm rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution such as the right to same-sex marriage. But Alito argued that “any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.'”

“The right to abortion does not fall within this category,” he wrote in the leaked draft.

Instead of the Supreme Court, states should decide whether to allow or ban abortion, the opinion said.

The court’s three liberal justices, joined by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, dissented. 

Few issues in America are as divisive as abortion. For the past 50 years, American conservatives, driven by a desire to protect unborn life, have campaigned against the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. But they lacked the votes on the high court to overturn it.

That changed after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and put three anti-abortion justices on the high court. That gave conservatives a 6-3 supermajority on the powerful court, raising the likelihood that the conservative justices will overturn the abortion ruling.

Generally, the Supreme Court follows principles established in its prior rulings, a doctrine known as stare decisis. The dissenting justices wrote that the ruling violated this long-standing legal precept.

But Alito said that there are circumstances where a precedent has and can be overturned. In a landmark ruling in 1954, for example, the Supreme Court invalidated an 1896 decision that had legalized racial segregation in the United States, Alito noted.

Alito wrote that the court’s ruling was limited to abortion and would not affect other rights. But liberal critics of the decision worry the decision will open the door to the overturn of other rights recognized by the Supreme Court.

“If you strike down a law based on a fundamental disagreement with the legal reasoning that underpins it, the same exact arguments will allow the other decision to be overturned,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

The ruling came less than two months after an initial draft of the opinion was leaked to a political news site, setting off both praise and criticism across the political spectrum.

While anti-abortion activists and politicians hailed the draft opinion as a “victory for human life,” their liberal counterparts condemned it as an assault on reproductive and other privacy rights.

In anticipation of the ruling, states across the country, depending on their legislatures’ ideological leanings, have been changing their abortion rules.

In conservative states, in addition to passing so-called “trigger laws” designed to take effect after Roe is overturned, lawmakers have moved to tighten restrictions on abortion, with Oklahoma enacting a law in March that bans abortion at any point during pregnancy.

For their part, the more politically liberal states have responded by passing legislation to expand access to abortion, with some states considering laws that would allow nurses to carry out the procedure.

The court ruling comes despite growing public acceptance of abortion. A Gallup Poll conducted after the court’s draft decision was leaked in May indicated that 55% of Americans identified as “pro-choice,” the highest level of such sentiment since the mid-1990s.

Still, abortion remains a politically divisive issue that is likely to live on well past Roe’s demise. Abortion-rights groups are gearing up to challenge new state bans and restrictions in state courts, setting off protracted legal battles.

“Part of the issue is that you have to find some protections within the state constitutions in order to bring these cases,” said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute.

Complicating efforts to challenge state abortion bans, four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia — have passed constitutional amendments that say the state constitution does not recognize the right to abortion, Nash noted. In two others — Kansas and Kentucky — voters are expected to vote on the issue later this year.

 

 
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U.S. first lady Jill Biden is expected to speak Friday in Surfside, Florida, marking the anniversary of the nighttime collapse of a 12-story oceanfront condo building that killed 98 people.

Events are being held Friday to honor the victims and survivors, as well as the rescue teams who searched for the victims.

A woman and two teenagers were the only people who survived the actual collapse of the building, according to an Associated Press report. Other survivors escaped the part of the building that initially remained standing.

Friday’s observances come a day after a judge approved a more than $1 billion compensation package for the victims.
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In the fifth public hearing this month examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, congressional investigators detailed how former President Donald Trump pressured the nation’s highest law enforcement officials to declare the 2020 election results invalid. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, those fraudulent election claims were also pushed by Republican members of Congress who later sought pardons.
Producer: Katherine Gypson
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a New York State law restricting the ability of individuals to carry concealed firearms outside of their homes is unconstitutional, an opinion that will trigger the overthrow of several similar state laws and which also plants the seeds for challenges to an array of other laws regulating firearms across the country.

In its ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court held that New York’s requirement that an applicant for a permit to carry a handgun in public show “proper cause” violates individuals’ right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The court found that by imposing a subjective test that a law-abiding citizen must pass in order to exercise the right to bear arms, New York also violated the 14th Amendment, which prevents states from passing laws restricting Americans’ ability to exercise their constitutional rights.

“We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need,” wrote Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, in an opinion joined by the five other conservative justices on the court.

The court’s three liberal justices all dissented, with Associate Justice Stephen Breyer arguing the majority had ignored New York’s “compelling interest in preventing gun violence.”

The ruling, a major victory for gun rights organizations, comes less than a month after two highly publicized mass shootings — in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas — galvanized congressional support for a new law aimed at reducing gun violence. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, expected to pass the Senate this week, would make a number of changes to current law, including expanding background checks for gun buyers under 21 years of age.

The killers in Buffalo and Uvalde were both 18 years old and had purchased their weapons legally.

On Thursday, just hours after the Supreme Court ruled on the New York case, 15 Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in the Senate to overcome a filibuster of the bill, setting it up for a final vote.

Advocacy groups react

Gun rights organizations cheered the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), whose Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a statement, “This decision unequivocally validates the position of the NRA and should put lawmakers on notice: no law should be passed that impinges this individual freedom.”

The reaction from gun control advocates was angry.

“Today’s ruling is out of step with the bipartisan majority in Congress that is on the verge of passing significant gun safety legislation, and out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who support gun safety measures,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: the Supreme Court got this decision wrong, choosing to put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country.”

Response in Washington

The reaction to the court’s ruling broke down largely along partisan lines in Washington, with Democrats decrying the court’s stance and Republicans supporting it.

In a statement issued by the White House, President Biden said, “This ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all. In the wake of the horrific attacks in Buffalo and Uvalde, as well as the daily acts of gun violence that do not make national headlines, we must do more as a society — not less — to protect our fellow Americans.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said, “It is unfathomable that, while families in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities mourn their loved ones stolen by gun violence, a supermajority of the Supreme Court has chosen to endanger more American lives. Today’s decision by a radical, Republican-controlled Court extends what was intended to be a limited right to self-defense at home to a new right to bring guns into our public spaces.”

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a statement in support of the ruling, saying, “The Constitution protects the right of law-abiding Americans to own a firearm for self-defense through the Second Amendment. While states like New York have tried to restrict that right through burdensome laws and regulations, the Supreme Court has, on multiple occasions, recognized it, and today strengthened it.”

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, a staunch gun rights advocate, tweeted, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class constitutional right. I applaud the Supreme Court for standing with the Constitution and individual liberty in reaffirming the right of Americans to protect themselves and their families.”

Licensing laws limited

The primary holding of the court’s opinion is that states may not pass laws that create a system of “discretionary” permitting for concealed firearms, such as New York’s, which demands applicants show evidence of a “special need” to carry a weapon and leaves it to government officials to assess the validity of that claim.

Going forward, the only constitutional gun licensing laws will be so-called “shall issue” regimes, under which a person who objectively complies with a set of requirements — including things like a criminal background check, firearms training, and a mental health evaluation — is guaranteed to receive a license.

However, gun rights activists were quick to point out that the decision is written in a way that opens the door to legal challenges to laws that extend well beyond those governing concealed carry permits.

History as guide

In the opinion, Thomas ruled that the way many courts analyze the constitutionality of gun laws, by applying a two-step process that considers both the history of the Second Amendment and the government’s interests in enforcing the law, is mistaken.

“Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many,” he wrote.

In ruling on Second Amendment cases, he wrote, courts should not weigh the government’s interest in promoting public health or other aims against restrictions on gun rights.

In such cases, Thomas wrote, the courts have only one consideration: “the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”

In his dissent, Breyer provided lengthy descriptions of the gun violence problem in the U.S. and said that the majority was wrong to limit the government’s ability to consider its interests in public safety when assessing the constitutionality of gun laws.

“Courts must be permitted to consider the State’s interest in preventing gun violence, the effectiveness of the contested law in achieving that interest, the degree to which the law burdens the Second Amendment right, and, if appropriate, any less restrictive alternatives,” Breyer wrote.

‘You name it’

Gun rights groups see the abolishment of the “two-part test” as an opportunity to try to overturn numerous other gun restrictions.

In an interview with VOA, Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California and a member of the board of directors of Gun Owners of America, said that the ruling opens the door to challenges to assault weapons bans, high-capacity magazine bans, gun-purchase waiting periods, and more.

“You name it, it’s across the board,” Paredes said. “Virtually any gun control law that affects the individual rights of law-abiding citizens to acquire, use, store, possess, travel with and dispose of firearms will now be placed in jeopardy, because of the ruling from the Supreme Court. We will have the opportunity to restore the Second Amendment to its original intent.”

‘More firearm-related deaths’

Tim Carey, a law and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions, told VOA that he agrees that the ruling makes further challenges to existing gun laws very likely.

“There’s going to be a tidal wave of incoming litigation of what have previously been long-standing and generally accepted firearms regulations,” he said.

Asked what that means for the country, Carey answered on behalf of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

“As a public health organization, we expect, as a result of this ruling for there to be … more firearms in public and thus, more firearm-related deaths and injuries in public.”
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