Illinois state Supreme Court overturns Jussie Smollett’s conviction in hoax attack

(BERKELEY, Calif.) — Two weeks ago, as college students returned to campus at the University of California, Berkeley, some of the most senior officials in the FBI were huddling inside a nondescript conference room beneath the stands of the school’s football stadium.

“Here’s where the rubber meets the road,” one of the FBI officials told the group of law enforcement officials, academics, tech developers, venture capitalists, and crime victims.

The problem they’re trying to solve, according to officials, is that the FBI is losing its ability to fight some of the greatest threats facing Americans, because phones and other electronic devices are increasingly being designed with no way for authorities to access their contents when the law authorizes them to collect evidence regarding suspected crimes — including those committed by radical terrorists, fentanyl dealers and online child predators.

It’s hardly a new problem.

“[It’s] the same conversation we had yesterday, five years ago, and 10 years ago, and 15 years ago, and now 20 years ago,” a professor told the group. “There’s something depressing about that. … We keep making the same goddamn mistakes over and over again.”

That’s why the FBI has taken the unusual step of turning to an academic institution for help. And not just any academic institution, but Berkeley — considered to be the birthplace of the Free Speech and student protest movements of the 1960s.

“To their credit, they were willing to think outside the box,” former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who now runs a center at Berkeley focused on security, said of the FBI.

‘A historic milestone’

A generation ago, such a partnership would have seemed unthinkable. In the 1950s and ’60s, in the midst of the Cold War, the FBI reportedly targeted a wide swath of Berkeley professors and students with surveillance and other secret tactics, convinced that radical Communists were among them.

Now, however, the FBI is battling a very different set of threats — and a new generation of advanced technologies.

Last year, the FBI signed an agreement with Napolitano’s center, the Center for Security in Politics, vowing to exchange resources and technology related expertise in a shared effort to support the FBI’s mission.

In a press release at the time, Napolitano touted the arrangement as “the first collaboration of its kind” and “a historic milestone for both institutions.”

The meeting two weeks ago was one of the first in-person gatherings to come out of the agreement.

The gathering involved three sessions spread over two days, and ABC News was allowed to observe the closing session on the condition that it not name any of the speakers.

One FBI official framed the final session by noting that while the FBI brings “enormous resources to bear” in significant or high-profile cases, “we don’t have the people, we don’t have the financial resources to do that” in the many thousands of other cases the FBI pursues each day.

“[That] is why we need to work with our private sector partners to have a lawful-access solution for our garden-variety cases,” the FBI official said during the session.

Instead of trying to address the many types of threats investigated by the FBI, the summit focused on just one: finding ways to stop child exploitation and the spread of sexual abuse material online.

“I think there’s a universal recognition that that stuff is bad, and we need to figure out a way to better deal with it,” Napolitano told ABC News.

‘A really egregious trend’

More children than ever are being exploited online, as predators use newer technologies like live-streaming apps, online video games and advanced messaging platforms to solicit sexual material from them, according to Abbigail Beccaccio, who heads the FBI’s section focused on violent crimes against children.

Beccaccio told ABC News there’s been a significant shift in these cases as they’ve exploded in number.

While the FBI had long seen cases of “traditional sextortion,” when predators with a sexual interest in young girls trick them into sharing explicit images of themselves, the FBI has in recent years seen a “huge uptick” in so-called “financially motivated sextortion” targeting boys, Beccaccio said.

In such cases, the victims are tricked into sharing sexually explicit images of themselves — but “that’s where the scheme turns,” said Beccaccio. Armed with the compromising material, the perpetrator then threatens the victim with claims of, “If you don’t send me money, I will ruin your life, I will send this to all your friends and family,” Beccaccio said.

In less than 18 months, from October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI counted more than 12,600 victims of such schemes — a “huge” and “shocking number,” as Beccaccio put it.

She said she knows of cases where children even dipped into their college savings accounts to pay the criminals who targeted them. But worst of all, she said, “We began to see a really egregious trend in suicides.”

Beccaccio said that helps illustrate why she and her FBI colleagues are so adamant that law enforcement needs some way to access criminals’ devices when a judge authorizes it.

“Without lawful access, we lose the ability to obtain the information we need to prosecute the offenders and rescue these child victims,” she warned.

The public, she said, should find that “troubling.”

‘A very dark place’

A decade ago, as highly-encrypted phone apps became commonplace, the FBI tried to engage the public in a national conversation about the future of lawful access. Then-FBI director James Comey warned that “going dark” by losing lawful access to personal data would lead to law enforcement agencies “missing out” on chances to stop “some very dangerous people.”

“Criminals and terrorists would like nothing more than for us to miss out,” he warned during an October 2014 speech in Washington, D.C. “Encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place.”

The issue came to a head a year later, when for several months the FBI was unable to unlock an Apple iPhone left behind by one of ISIS-inspired terrorists who killed 14 people and injured nearly two dozen others during an attack in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015.

There were congressional hearings held on the issue, and the FBI even took the matter to federal court, seeking to force Apple to find a way for authorities to access the phone’s content. The case became moot after an Israeli security company found a way to unlock the perpetrator’s phone.

“It’s so seductive to talk about privacy as the ultimate value,” Comey told a House panel in March 2016. “[But] in a society where we aspire to be safe and have our families safe and our children safe, that can’t be. We have to find a way to accommodate both.”

But the FBI’s public campaign over lawful access appeared to lose steam after FBI leadership become engulfed in a controversy surrounding the 2016 presidential election and Comey was fired as the agency’s director in May 2017.

Now — more than seven years later — the FBI is trying to spark the conversation again.

Katie Noyes, the head of the FBI’s next-generation technology section, said that in a survey of the FBI’s field offices last year, the bureau identified nearly 17,000 active cases that were either stalled or missing key evidence due to “warrant-proof encryption.”

Just two months ago, as the FBI struggled to determine why a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, Abbate, the deputy director, told lawmakers that the shooter had used encrypted applications and that, more than two weeks after the shooting, the FBI was still unable “to get information back because of their encrypted nature.”

“We need a solution that provides lawful access to law enforcement,” Abbate implored lawmakers during a Senate hearing on the assassination attempt.

So the FBI is turning to Napolitano and her team at Berkeley for help.

‘Waiting for the market’

The summit at Berkeley was led by Napolitano’s team and an array of FBI officials, including deputy director Abbate; Jeff Fields, the head of counterintelligence at the FBI’s San Francisco field office; and members of the agency’s technology units.

Victims of online sexual exploitation, including a woman whose likeness appeared in a “deepfake” video that went viral, also shared their stories and perspectives.

“What was really wonderful about this convening was having really disparate points of view around the same table,” Noyes told ABC News, adding that some of the tech companies and venture capitalists there said they had never heard directly from victims before.

The group got into an impassioned debate over whether tech companies, especially global giants such as Apple and Meta — neither of whom participated in the summit — would ever voluntarily redesign their devices and platforms to ensure that law enforcement could access them with a court order.

One law enforcement official noted that the FBI spoke with the companies a decade ago, but they had little interest in having a conversation about changing their ways.

“Waiting for the market here is not going to get it done,” said another law enforcement official, insisting that the only thing that will bring change is Congress passing a new law.

Others rejected that view, saying that the point of holding the summit is to potentially find other ways to address the problem.

“There hasn’t been much movement at all, but on the other hand the technology has changed,” Napolitano told ABC News after the summit. “And so there may be better and more available ways for government — meaning law enforcement — to get around some of the traditional barriers to lawful access, and those were part of the discussions today.”

‘What’s next?’

Noyes emphasized that she and her colleagues at the FBI are “big fans of encryptions” for personal security and privacy — and that the FBI is not trying to expand or change what it’s legally allowed to do.

As she described it, the FBI just wants ensure that law enforcement maintains the type of access that it has long used to bring criminals to justice.

“There’s no discussion around a request for any additional authority,” she said. “In many cases we have had this access, and it has been removed or taken away over time” due to newer technology.

According to Noyes, the summit produced a number of ideas and proposed approaches.

Some participants suggested that an independent third party could hold a technology company’s access keys in “escrow,” so those keys would not be in the hands of law enforcement but could be used under court order.

There was also discussion about “homomorphic encryption,” a type of encryption that can keep data encrypted even as that data is processed or even shared.

Napolitano said the summit two weeks ago was just the beginning.

“The challenge for us is, ‘OK, now we’ve had these discussions, what’s next?'” she said.

NOTE: If your child is the victim of a predator or you know someone who is a victim, you can always call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit information online at tips.fbi.gov.

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(NEW YORK) — Daniel Penny “used far too much force for far too long” and though he may be an “honorable veteran” and “nice young man,” he was reckless with Jordan Neely’s life because “he didn’t recognize his humanity,” Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said in her opening statement Friday during the trial over the fatal chokehold.

“He was aware of the risk his actions would kill Mr. Neely and did it anyway,” Yoran said.

Penny is charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide in the May 2023 death of Neely, a homeless man who was acting erratically on a New York City subway car.

“Jordan Neely took his last breaths on the dirty floor of an uptown F train,” Yoran told a rapt jury.

Neely entered a moderately crowded subway car at the Second Avenue stop and began making threats about hurting people, scaring many of the passengers, Yoran said.

She pointed at Penny as she told the jury, “This man, took it upon himself to take down Jordan Neely. To neutralize him.”

Thirty seconds later, the train arrived at the next station and all the passengers left the train car, except two men who were helping Penny restrain Neely. The prosecutor said Penny hung onto Neely for 51 seconds after Neely’s body went limp.

“By doing so, he pushed Mr. Neely to the point of no return,” Yoran said. “He left Mr. Neely lying on the floor unconscious and didn’t look back.”

Penny has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. His attorneys have said Neely was “insanely threatening,” but Yoran said Penny’s actions were unnecessarily reckless because he continued the chokehold for 5 minutes and 53 seconds after the subway car was empty of passengers. “A grasp that never changed,” Yoran called it.

“The defendant did not intend to kill him. His initial intent was even laudable,” Yoran said. “But under the law, deadly physical force such as a chokehold is permitted only when it is absolutely necessary and for only as long as is absolutely necessary. And here, the defendant went way too far.”

The prosecutor told jurors they would see video of the chokehold.

“You will see Mr. Neely’s life being sucked out before your very eyes,” Yoran said, appearing to upset one of the jurors who grimaced and briefly shut his eyes.

She also said jurors would see body camera video of Penny’s initial encounter with police, four and a half minutes after letting go of Neely.

When the officer asked Penny what happened, the prosecutor said Penny replied that Neely had been threatening. “Then he said, ‘I just put him out,'” Yoran told the jury.

The defense is set to give its opening statement on Friday following a break.

Protest audible from courtroom

The sounds of a sidewalk protest over the death of Neely were audible in the 13th-floor courtroom ahead of opening statements. Protesters were heard calling Penny a “subway strangler.”

Judge Max Wiley said he would instruct jurors to ignore “noise outside the courthouse.”

Penny, in a slate blue suit, strode confidently into the courtroom and took his seat at the defense table ahead of opening statements.

The jury of seven women and five men, four of whom are people of color, will be asked to do something prosecutors concede is difficult: convict someone of an unintentional crime.

To convict, prosecutors must prove Penny’s use of lethal force was unjustifiable and that Penny acted recklessly and consciously disregarded the substantial risk of putting Neely in the chokehold for so long. Prosecutors do not have to prove Penny intended to kill Neely, which defense attorneys have said Neely did not intend to do.

Wiley denied Penny’s bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter case in January.

The trial is expected to last between four and six weeks, according to Wiley.

The case has fueled political narratives about urban crime and captivated a city in which the subway is indispensable.

Differing accounts of the incident

While there is no doubt that Penny’s actions led to Neely’s death on May 1, 2023, witness accounts differ regarding the events that led up to Penny applying the fatal chokehold, according to various sources.

Many witnesses reported that Neely, 30, who was homeless at the time of his death and was known to perform as a Michael Jackson impersonator, had expressed that he was homeless, hungry and thirsty, according to prosecutors. Most of the witnesses also recounted that Neely indicated a willingness to go to jail or prison.

Some witnesses also reported that Neely threatened to hurt people on the train, while others did not report hearing those threats, according to police sources.

Additionally, some witnesses told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train. However, others have said that while Neely had exhibited erratic behavior, he had not been threatening anyone in particular and had not become violent, according to police sources who spoke with ABC News following the incident.

According to prosecution court filings, some passengers on the train that day said they didn’t feel threatened. One said they weren’t “really worried about what was going on,” while another called it “like another day typically in New York. That’s what I’m used to seeing. I wasn’t really looking at it if I was going to be threatened or anything to that nature, but it was a little different because, you know, you don’t really hear anybody saying anything like that.”

Other passengers, however, described being fearful, according to court filings. One said they “have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that,” while another said Neely was making “half-lunge movements” and coming within a “half a foot of people.”

Neely had a documented history of mental health issues and arrests, including alleged instances of disorderly conduct, fare evasion and assault, according to police sources.

Less than 30 seconds after Penny allegedly put Neely into a chokehold, the train arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette Station, according to court records.

“Passengers who had felt fearful on account of being trapped on the train were now free to exit the train. The defendant continued holding Mr. Neely around the neck,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass in a court filing objecting to Penny’s dismissal request.

According to prosecutors, footage of the interaction, which began about two minutes after the incident started, captures Penny holding Neely in the chokehold for about four minutes and 57 seconds on a relatively empty train, with a couple of passengers nearby.

Prosecutors said that about three minutes and 10 seconds into the video, Neely ceases all purposeful movement.

“After that moment, Mr. Neely’s movements are best described as ‘twitching and the kind of agonal movement that you see around death,'” prosecutors said.

The case is expected to feature testimony of passengers who were aboard the subway at the time, as well as a roughly six-minute video of the chokehold.

Jury to hear eyewitness statements

Before opening statements on Friday, Wiley granted a defense request to allow some of the statements that eyewitnesses to the chokehold made to police that were captured on body-worn cameras.

One witness, a Ms. Rosario, was captured on body-worn camera 15 minutes after the incident aboard the F train.

“I can see most of that statement coming in as an excited utterance,” Wiley said.

The judge declined to allow a part of her statement in which an officer is heard asking whether she thought Neely was on drugs.

A Mr. Latimer is captured a minute later and Wiley said his statement is “well within the immediacy of the event” and could be admitted.

“This person displays emotion, excitement as he’s describing what happened. It’s narrative,” Wiley said.

Most of the passengers who were aboard the train and who witnessed the event are expected to testify at trial.

Jury will see evidence that Neely did not have a weapon

The judge also previously ruled that the jury will see evidence that shows Neely was unarmed.

Penny’s defense had sought to preclude evidence or testimony about the lack of a weapon recovered from a search of Neely’s body but in a written opinion issued Thursday, Wiley said such evidence and testimony is relevant to the case.

“The fact that Mr. Neely was unarmed provides additional relevant information to aid the jury, namely, it clarifies what could have been perceived by someone in the defendant’s position,” Wiley wrote. “The possibility that a person in the defendant’s situation could have been reasonable in mistakenly believing that Mr. Neely had been armed is appropriate for consideration by the jury and well within their capability.”

The defense worried that including evidence that Neely was unarmed could bolster sympathy for the victim but Wiley said it would help the jury decide whether Penny’s actions were justified.

Penny’s lawyers and Neely’s family speak ahead of the trial

Members of Neely’s family were seated with the spectators for opening statements Friday.

“I loved Jordan. And I want justice for Jordan Neely. I want it today. I want justice for everybody and I want justice for Jordan Neely,” his uncle, Christopher Neely, said before entering court.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office are expected to concede that Neely may have seemed scary to some subway riders, but will argue Penny continued the chokehold well past the point where Neely stopped moving and posed any kind of threat.

Penny’s attorneys have said that they were “saddened at the loss of human life,” but that Penny saw “a genuine threat and took action to protect the lives of others,” arguing that Neely was “insanely threatening” to passengers aboard the subway train.

While Penny’s defense will argue that he had no intent to kill Neely, prosecutor Steinglass has noted that the second-degree manslaughter charge only requires prosecutors to prove Penny acted recklessly, not intentionally.

“We are confident that a jury, aware of Danny’s actions in putting aside his own safety to protect the lives of his fellow riders, will deliver a just verdict,” Penny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, said earlier this year, after Penny’s request to dismiss the charge was denied.

“This case is simple. Someone got on a train and was screaming so someone else choked them to death,” Neely family attorney Donte Mills said in a past statement to ABC News. “Those two things do not and will never balance. There is no justification.”

“Jordan had the right to take up his own space. He was allowed to be on that train and even to scream. He did not touch anyone. He was not a visitor on that train, in New York, or in this country,” Mills added.

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Hurricane Milton is already causing travel disruptions as the storm takes aim at Florida’s west coast.

The hurricane is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Possible record storm surge is anticipated in the Tampa area. Flooding is also a risk throughout much of the state.

Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for at least parts of 14 counties along Florida’s west coast, including in Charlotte, Citrus, Collier, Hernando, Hillsborough, Lee, Levy, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas and Volusia.

Several airports have announced temporary closures ahead of landfall.

Airport closures

Tampa International Airport suspended operations beginning at 9 a.m. on Tuesday and will remain closed to the public “until it can assess any damage after the storm,” airport officials said.

The St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport, just outside of Tampa, closed at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and will remain closed on Wednesday and Thursday.

“The airport is in a mandatory evacuation zone and is not a public shelter,” airport officials tweeted. “Prepare and stay safe.”

The Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Sarasota closed at 4 p.m. Tuesday and will reopen “once safe to do so,” airport officials tweeted.

Commercial operations stopped at the Orlando Executive Airport at 10 p.m. Tuesday and at the Orlando International Airport at 8 a.m. Wednesday, airport officials said. Both will reopen as soon as it’s safe.

“While these airports will cease commercial operations, they are not closed to emergency/aid and relief flights and will remain open as necessary,” airport officials said. “Commercial operations will resume as soon as possible based on damage assessment.”

Orlando Sanford International Airport in Sanford also suspended operations at 8 a.m. Wednesday, airport officials said, while advising passengers to “stay tuned for updates.”

Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport will remain open and operational, with airport officials saying they are closely monitoring the storm.

Flight cancellations
More than 1,700 flights have been canceled throughout the U.S. as of Wednesday morning, according to FlightAware. Orlando International Airport has the most, followed by Tampa.

Airlines were operating larger aircraft and adding more flights to their schedules ahead of the hurricane and airport closures.

The Department of Transportation is monitoring flights in and out of areas affected by Milton to “make sure airlines are not charging excessively increasing fares,” Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on X.

Rail service changes

Amtrak announced it will operate a modified schedule due to Milton.

Among the changes, trains on its Silver Service route will terminate at Jacksonville through Thursday, not continuing on south to stops including Orlando, Tampa and Miami. Select trains on its Silver Service route will also originate at Jacksonville through Friday.

The company’s Auto Train Service, which runs between the Washington, D.C., and Orlando areas, is canceled through Thursday.

Brightline, Florida’s high-speed rail, is also adjusting some of its scheduled trips due to Milton, including ceasing operations on Wednesday and Thursday between West Palm Beach and Orlando.

“We will resume full operations after an assessment of track conditions once the storm has passed,” the rail service said in an update on X while advising passengers with reservations to refer to their email for updates.

Other travel updates

Florida’s Department of Transportation began locking down drawbridges Tuesday afternoon in coordination with the United States Coast Guard.

The department has suspended lane closures and active construction work on interstates within the storm’s path. Tolls have also been suspended across central and west Florida, it said.

The Florida Division of Emergency Services announced Monday it has partnered with Uber to provide free rides to and from shelters. Free shuttles to shelters were also operating Tuesday in counties with an evacuation order in place, it said.

ABC News’ Clara McMichael and Ayesha Ali contributed to this report.

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