New Orleans jail escape: Reward for tips leading to arrest of 2 remaining fugitives increases to $50,000
Louisiana State Police
(NEW ORLEANS, La) — The reward for the arrest of the two remaining inmates who broke out of a New Orleans jail this month has more than doubled to $50,000, authorities announced on Thursday, as police said they believe they are closing in on the “dangerous” fugitives.
Antoine Massey and Derrick Groves are among 10 inmates who escaped from the Orleans Justice Center on May 16, according to Louisiana State Police.
In the nearly two weeks since, eight of the inmates have been captured, but Massey and Groves remain on the run, police said.
There are now rewards totalling $50,000 per inmate for tips leading to their arrest, according to Louisiana State Police Superintendent Col Robert Hodges. That includes rewards being offered from the Crimestoppers of Greater New Orleans, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he said.
Hodges said police have “some strong leads” about where the remaining two fugitives are, though they still need tips because of the men’s movement.
“We’re confident that we are closing in on the remaining two escapees, and that we should have them in custody soon,” he said during a press briefing on Thursday. “We’re resilient, and although they’re going to get tired and frustrated as they try to move around Louisiana or move around the metropolitan area, they know the walls are closing in.”
Authorities urged anyone with information on the whereabouts of the two fugitives to reach out while acknowledging that may be difficult.
“We understand, along with our law enforcement partners, that some of you might be reporting a friend, a loved one, a relative, and albeit not easy, it is critical to your safety and the safety of the public that you report that,” Walter Martin, chief deputy U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said during the briefing.
Martin vowed to recapture the “dangerous inmates.” One of them, Groves, was recently convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in a 2018 Mardi Gras Day shooting and faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said. Unrelated to that case, he also subsequently pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, online court records show.
Hodges warned that anyone who helps the remaining fugitives will be arrested and prosecuted.
“Now is the time to make the right choice,” he said.
Crimestoppers of Greater New Orleans President and CEO Darlene Cusanza said Thursday the organization has received nearly 700 tips related to the inmates’ escape, resulting in the arrest of three of them. One inmate was arrested within 30 minutes of receiving the tip, she said. Three tipsters will be paid $10,000, she said.
The 10 inmates escaped from the Orleans Justice Center in the early morning hours of May 16 after climbing through a hole behind a toilet. Their disappearance was not noticed for several hours and touched off a massive manhunt.
Over a dozen people have been arrested on suspicion of helping the escapees, including another inmate in the jail and a jail maintenance worker who is accused of shutting off water to the toilet allowing escapees to remove it.
Three of the 10 inmates who escaped were apprehended in New Orleans within the first 24 hours of the jailbreak. The others were captured in the following days, including in Baton Rouge and two in Texas.
The eight captured inmates have been transported to a secure state facility in Louisiana, Hodges said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is standing its ground in the ongoing dispute about whether it willfully violated a court order last week, arguing in a court filing late Tuesday that a federal judge’s directive to turn around two deportation flights was not a binding order.
In a 14-page filing, lawyers with the Department of Justice argued that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s oral directive was “not enforceable as an injunction” when the judge ordered that the government turn around two deportation flights on their way to El Salvador after the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.
The government failed to turn the flights around, and an official subsequently acknowledged that “many” of the detainees did not have criminal records in the United States.
“[A]ny any order that restrained the invocation of the Proclamation could not have thereby compelled the President to return foreign terrorists from outside the United States — and any governmental refusal to do so was thus not a violation of the Court’s orders,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign wrote in Tuesday’s filing.
At no point in the filing did the Trump administration argue it complied with the court’s oral directive to return the two flights of Venezuelan migrants, which was issued from the bench at approximately 6:45 p.m. ET last Saturday; instead, the DOJ lawyers attacked the authority of the bench ruling while insisting they complied with the court’s written order that was issued later that evening.
“It is well-settled that an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction,” Ensign wrote. “There are powerful, common-sense reasons why only written injunctions are binding.”
Because Judge Boasberg did not mention the return of the flights in his written order — issued at approximately 7:25 p.m. ET on Saturday — Ensign argued that the Trump administration may have believed the judge changed his mind.
“When the written order did not include that command, the Government could reasonably have understood that as reflecting the Court’s more considered view in a quickly evolving situation,” the filing said.
According to DOJ lawyers, the flights carrying the alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were outside of U.S. airspace when the judge issued his written order, meaning Judge Boasberg lacked the authority to turn the flights around.
“Here, any members of the putative class aboard the referenced flights had already left the United States when the minute order was entered, and thus had already been removed. No court has the power to compel the President to return them, and there is no sound basis to read the Court’s minute order as requiring that unprecedented step,” Ensign wrote.
DOJ lawyers also slammed Judge Boasberg’s authority to redirect the flights, arguing the directive is an “astonishingly ultra vires exercise of judicial power” that conflicts with “basic constitutional principles.”
“The President’s ultimate direction of the flights at issue here — especially once they had departed from U.S. airspace — implicated military matters, national security, and foreign affairs outside of our Nation’s borders. As such, it was beyond the courts’ authority to adjudicate,” the filing said.
On Monday, a federal appeals court heard arguments from the Trump administration seeking to overturn Boasberg’s block on the use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportations. The appeals court did not issue an immediate ruling.
(WASHINGTON) — A group of advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging Donald Trump’s recent executive order seeking to overhaul the U.S. election system, accusing the president of trying to enact “unlawful actions” to enforce “lawless mandates.”
The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s unilateral efforts to reshape voting in federal elections — including requiring proof of citizenship when registering and restricting mail-in voting deadlines — exceeds his authority as president and threatens to strip millions of their voting rights.
“The Order violates and subverts the separation of powers by lawlessly arrogating to the President authority to declare election rules by executive fiat,” the lawsuit alleged. “The Order is an attack on the constitutionally mandated checks and balances that keep American elections free and fair.”
The lawsuit — filed in the D.C. federal court by the Campaign Legal Center and State Democracy Defenders Fund on behalf of a League of United Latin American Citizens, Secure Families Initiative and Arizona Students’ Association — asks a federal judge to block the implementation of parts of the order and force the Trump administration to rescind any guidance they issued.
It names a number of defendants, including the Executive Office of the President, the Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense, as well as the United States Election Assistance Commission and its commissioners — an independent government commissioner focused on election administration.
Trump’s executive order, signed last week, alleged that the United States “fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections.” The order instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute elections crimes in states the administration deems are not in compliance with federal law, requires the Department of Homeland Security to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to review state voter registration lists, and directs the Election Assistance Commission to withhold federal funding if states do not institute “uniform and nondiscriminatory” standards for counting votes.
“Under the Constitution, State governments must safeguard American elections in compliance with Federal laws that protect Americans’ voting rights and guard against dilution by illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error,” the order said.
Specifically, the executive order calls for proof of citizenship nationwide on the form used when registering to vote — a change from current election laws and a provision voting rights experts have taken issue with. Documents that can be used for proof, according to the order, include a passport, Real ID, a military ID card, or a valid federal or state ID.
But the lawsuit points out that the order does not accept identification documents issued by Tribal governments or birth certificates as forms of proof. The suit also raises questions about the approved methods, arguing that only half of Americans possess a passport and “most” Real IDs do not indicate citizenship.
Regardless, the lawsuit suggests the order’s direction to the Election Assistance Commission to change the form to add the proof of citizenship requirement could violate the Voter Registration Act of 1993, which according to the lawsuit gives the EAC “exclusive authority” to administer the form.
“In keeping with the NVRA’s intent to create a simple and easy-to-complete registration form, the NVRA specifies that the Federal Form may not “include any requirement for notarization or other formal authentication,” the lawsuit states.
Trump’s order suggested that noncitizens can easily vote in federal elections, but experts have called noncitizen voting a “vanishingly rare phenomenon” that is easily prosecuted. According to a study of over 23 million votes cast in the 2016 election, officials identified only 30 suspected incidents of noncitizen voting, only 0.0001% of the total votes cast.
Separately, the executive order also takes aim at mail-in voting, making federal funding conditional on states setting a deadline for ballots to be received by Election Day. Trump — who was charged with multiple federal crimes for his effort to overturn the 2020 election in cases that were dropped once he was elected — has repeatedly suggested that mail-in ballots have led to an increase in voting fraud.
The lawsuit claims the provision about mail-in ballots is unlawful, arguing that “states have wide discretion and flexibility” to establish the time, place, and manner of federal elections under the Elections and Electors Clauses in the Constitution.
“Congress can enact election laws if it chooses, but absent a conflict with federal law, States have the power to establish and follow their own election laws,” the lawsuit states.
According to the suit, seventeen states, plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have laws that allow ballots to be counted as long as they are mailed by Election Day and received by a certain deadline afterward.
“Many of these States have had such receipt deadlines for many years, and Congress has declined to pass any laws dictating ballot receipt deadlines,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit notes that Congress has “long established” that the federal Election Day is the first Tuesday in November, in addition to establishing the date that presidential electors must be appointed, but “has left further regulation in this area largely up to States.” The lawsuit says the U.S. Supreme Court “has said that while votes must be cast by Election Day, some aspects of the election process, such as tabulating all votes, will naturally take place after Election Day.”
“The Attorney General does not have the authority to ‘enforce’ the federal Election Day statutes, and the President cannot order her to do so. Nor does a State “violate” those statutes when it counts validly cast ballots mailed by Election Day that are received after Election Day if State law so allows,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also suggests the executive order could make it harder for citizens abroad and those serving in the military to vote. The executive order signed by Trump directs to secretary of defense to update the form used by these groups to register and request an absentee ballot — called the “Federal Post Card Application” — to include a requirement of documentary proof of citizenship as well as “proof of eligibility to vote in elections in the State in which the voter is attempting to vote.”
The lawsuit notes this form is required by law as part of the the The Uniformed And Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, passed in 1986 to “protect the voting rights of Americans serving in the military, their families, and other U.S. citizens living abroad.” The suit claims the changes required by the order would be “impossible given the format required by Congress.”
“Neither the President nor the Secretary of Defense has any legal authority to disregard UOCAVA’s statutory requirement to make such a post card available to military and overseas voters,” the lawsuit states.
Together, these provisions would have a “significant impact” on voting rights., the lawsuit claims.
Members of LULAC — a Hispanic and Latin American civil rights organization — for example, would be harmed if some of its members “who are eligible to vote often do not have the requisite citizenship documents.” the lawsuit states. The organization expects that efforts to register voters “will plummet.”
The Arizona Students’ Association will similarly be harmed by the proof of citizenship requirement, the lawsuit states, despite it being required when voters register on the state form there.
“Even those members who are able to register face imminent harm. Some members will be able to obtain or access DPOC only by spending significant time, money, and/or effort to do so, and will face greater difficulty registering because of the DPOC Requirement,” the lawsuit said.
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(OKLAHOMA CITY) — A search is underway for an inmate at an Oklahoma correctional facility who “unlawfully” walked away from prison, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
At approximately 8:25 p.m. on Monday, William D. Brainard, 44, was “determined to have unlawfully walked away” from the Clara Waters Correctional Center in Oklahoma City, the department of corrections said in a statement on Monday.
Brainard is serving a five-year sentence for burglary of the third degree and larceny of an auto, aircraft or other motor vehicle, according to the department of corrections website.
He is described as 5 feet, 9 inches tall, weighs 215 pounds and has several tattoos — including one on his abdomen that reads “smile now cry later” and one on his arm that reads “love mom, corn fed, devil,” according to the wanted poster released by officials.
Brainard could also be found under the aliases of Dewayne W. Brainard, William Brainard, William D. Brainard or Corn F. Hillbilly, officials said.
The escaped inmate has also previously been sentenced for second-degree robbery, assault or battery with a dangerous weapon and distribution or possession with intent of a controlled dangerous substance, according to the corrections’ department website.
If anyone sees Brainard or knows his whereabouts, police said to not approach him and call 911 or the department of corrections at 405-425-2570.
