Mangino discusses thefts from area booster organizations on WFMJ-TV21

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Former President Obama sounds the alarm on artificial intelligence

Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years, reported The New York Times.

In his remarks, which have not been previously reported, Mr. Obama urged Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I. policy, should Democrats win back the House in the midterm elections, according to a partial transcript provided by Mr. Obama’s office.

He also suggested that candidates running for president in 2028 ought to make A.I. one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” for responding to safety and economic concerns around the technology.

The recommendations from the former president amount to some of his most detailed comments yet about A.I. as a political issue for his party. At a moment when President Trump continues to downplay concerns about the technology, some Democrats see an opportunity for the party to draw a clear contrast in the midterms and beyond on an issue of growing significance. In a Democratic Party with no clear leader, many look to Mr. Obama for guidance, and his comments carry considerable weight.

The remarks come amid escalating worries about the risks associated with A.I. development, as well as growing calls for lawmakers and politicians to do more to tackle the topic. Some A.I. industry leaders are now calling for a slowdown after a summer in which swarms of misaligned A.I. agents broke free from their containers and proceeded to scheme against their owners, cheat on tests and hack outside companies.

At a closed-door fund raising event in Manhattan organized by the campaign arm of the House Democrats, Mr. Obama and Mr. Jeffries spoke for nearly an hour in front of party donors and lawmakers, according to four people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering.

“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Jeffries, according to the transcript. Mr. Jeffries had asked him a question about how Democrats should address A.I. in a Congress that has taken little action on the issue, according to two of the people.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Mr. Obama said. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial. I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases. I do think that this can help us figure out pathways for a clean energy future.”

The former president often spoke in general terms, rather than drilling down on specific policies, according to the transcript. And he planted himself firmly in a middle ground in the heated debate over A.I., saying he considered himself neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer.”

One challenge facing Democrats as they chart a path forward on A.I. is speaking in one voice on the issue. The tug of war over how to regulate A.I. has been more divisive among Democrats than Republicans, who are generally more in alignment. Some Democratic politicians have called for more A.I. regulation, while others have received millions of dollars in support from groups tied to the industry’s biggest players.

A.I. is becoming a larger part of the country’s political calculus heading into the midterms. This year’s elections have been flooded with money from A.I. companies and allied groups. And anxiety about the technology, a rare issue that many Republican and Democratic voters can agree on, has peaked in recent days after a researcher at the A.I. company Anthropic loudly and publicly resigned, writing in a viral social media post that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Mr. Jeffries explicitly mentioned the resignation in his question to Mr. Obama, according to one of the people familiar with the event.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the A.I. company Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of A.I. development in a 3,800-word essay published on Saturday. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., quickly wrote in social media posts that they agreed with him.

The White House has long maintained an unabashedly accelerationist stance. Mr. Trump recently told reporters he didn’t have “any” concerns about A.I.’s risks — just about falling behind to competitors like China. He has said that those who oppose A.I. data centers must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”

“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence,” Mr. Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people.”

“We will not repeat their error,” he continued.

On Capitol Hill, where little has been done to regulate A.I., some Democrats have been circulating a letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to stop members from going home on recess until they pass A.I. safeguards.

Many Republicans want action, too. Several have introduced bipartisan A.I. legislation, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has called for a special session on the topic. A growing number of Republicans are campaigning against data centers, in addition to many Democrats.

As House speaker in 2023, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, set up A.I. learning and brainstorming sessions, stressing a bipartisan approach. After Mr. Johnson became speaker later that year, he and Mr. Jeffries announced a bipartisan task force on A.I. that produced a report in late 2024. House Republican leadership declined to renew the task force in the next Congress. In response, Democrats formed their own A.I. commission, which is now putting the finishing touches on a policy framework. That framework is expected to be released this fall after some final checks by Mr. Jeffries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Obama has taken a special interest in A.I. in recent years, and he has offered himself as a sounding board to industry leaders, including Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei, according to two people familiar with his conversations.

Mr. Obama sees Mr. Amodei’s essay urging an A.I. slowdown — and the affirmations by other A.I. executives — as an encouraging development, and the two are engaged in discussions about A.I. safety, according to one of the people. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.

With many Democrats already jockeying for position ahead of the next presidential race, Mr. Obama, in his remarks at the fund-raiser, outlined what he would do on A.I. if he were one of them.

“I would talk about this, and I would say: ‘Here’s our plan for safety. Here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, according to the transcript.

He contrasted the technology with other innovations that could be dangerous in the wrong hands, saying that compared to “nuclear power, you don’t need a bunch of highly enriched uranium” to build powerful A.I.

“I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement,” Mr. Obama said, according to the transcript, adding, “if it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

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Will Alabama Governor grant commutations to those on death row as the result of judicial override?

Gov. Kay Ivey made sure Alabama abandoned the process — called judicial override — by signing a law on her first day in office in 2017. But the law applied only to new cases. It did not have any effect on those people sentenced to die under the practice prior to 2017, reported AL.com.

Now, nearly ten years later, Ivey could use her last days in office to move the remaining 25 people on death row to the actual sentences their juries wanted and voted for: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I hope the governor is using her last few months to think about how she can leave a legacy of criminal justice reform in this state,” said A’Niya Robinson, the director of policy and organizing for the ACLU of Alabama.

Ivey’s stance is unclear.

There is no doubt she leaves a mark on the criminal justice system in this state. Alabama is building a new mega prison in Elmore County, set to be finished this fall and costing well over a billion dollars. It will be named after her.

But her record is more complicated.

Ivey set a record among Alabama governors in the modern era by approving the most executions, 26. And Alabama was an innovator of execution methods under Ivey’s watch, performing the nation’s first execution by nitrogen in January 2024.

Yet, she stopped judicial override upon taking office. She ordered a halt to lethal injection executions for several months in 2022, after the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t get it right. While she resumed the practice, some were astonished she had even paused it at all.

And she has also spared the most people from execution among all modern governors, too. She commuted the sentences of two men slated to die, something that does not happen often in Alabama, earning sharp criticism from fellow Republicans in the Attorney General’s office. In one case, Ivey said she had too many questions about guilt to move forward with an execution. In the other, the governor said she couldn’t “proceed in good conscience” to approve the execution of a man who wasn’t the actual shooter in the case, while the shooter was serving a life sentence.

Ivey isn’t running again, and will leave the governor’s mansion in January when the state’s new governor, either Democrat Doug Jones or Republican Tommy Tuberville, is sworn in.

‘They didn’t need a jury’

One of the people whom a jury wished to live, but a judge sentenced to die, was Robin “Rocky” Myers.

Myers was on death row from 1994 until 2025, when Ivey commuted his sentence, sending him to life in prison instead of an execution chamber because she said she wasn’t sure he was guilty. Myers has always maintained his innocence in the killing of his Decatur neighbor.

Years after Myers was sent to death row, a juror began speaking out, too.

Mae Puckett told AL.com in 2023 that she didn’t know a judge could change the sentence that she and the other jurors handed down. To Puckett, a life sentence was a compromise: She and several other jurors had agreed, in a jury room stalemate, to convict the 30-year-old father if he could be sentenced to life.

“Those of us who thought he was innocent had very strong feelings about it... (but) we knew those guys weren’t going to change their mind,” she said. “We decided to vote him guilty… the best thing we thought we could do was spare his life.”

To find someone guilty of capital murder, all 12 jurors have to agree. The decision has to be unanimous. Then, if prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, there is a second hearing following the trial to decide if the person should be sent to death row.

After hearing the testimony, jurors go back to deliberate for the second time. But a death vote doesn’t have to be unanimous in Alabama.

A death sentence can be handed down only if 10 or more jurors vote for death. If the jury can’t reach that vote, they can consider a sentence of life without parole.

But prior to 2017, Alabama had a loophole. The jury’s sentence was, technically, just a recommendation. A judge could, for a litany of different and vague reasons, disregard the jury’s sentencing decision. While a judge could alternatively overturn a death vote and send a person to prison for life, it was almost always applied the other way.

That’s what happened in the Myers case.

Puckett said she had no idea the judge could change the outcome.

“I cried,” Puckett recalled. “It was a mix of anger and sympathy and remorse. I felt like I had just fed him to the wolves when we tried so hard not to do that.”

According to information gathered by the Equal Justice Initiative, Alabama judges changed a jury’s sentencing verdict 107 times from 1976 to 2011. And 98 of those changes increased the penalty from life to death.

Jeffery Lee is set to die by lethal injection later this month, even though that’s not what his jury voted for either. He was convicted of killing two people and injuring a third during a pawn shop robbery in Orrville in 1998. His jury, in a 7-5 vote, opted to send him to live out his days in prison.

One of the people who served on that jury wants Ivey to commute Lee’s sentence and send him to prison for life.

“I didn’t know that a judge could do that,” the juror said during a phone call with AL.com. “The system just did what it wanted to do, and it didn’t matter what the jury had decided.”

The woman, who didn’t want her name used for fear of retaliation, called the issue a systemic one and said she wants her verdict honored. “If the judge was going to make the final decision, why have a trial? That was a waste of time for everybody.”

“If it was a judge’s decision, they didn’t need a jury.”

Only in Alabama

The practice of judicial override had only been legal in a few states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana. Indiana got rid of the practice in 2002. Delaware and Florida also abolished override and made it apply to older cases, and they never routinely executed people who were sentenced under the practice.

In 2017, Alabama was all alone. And in 2026, the state still is the only place carrying out executions that resulted from a judge’s single-handed decision, disregarding a jury verdict.

Starting in 2006, Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, introduced bills in the state legislature to outlaw the practice. They didn’t go anywhere.

“I had tried so many years because I felt that was extremely unfair,” Sanders told AL.com. “Because in effect, they were taking away the right to trial by jury.”

“There’s a unique unfairness about that.”

Eventually, Republican Sen. Dick Brewbaker took interest in the topic. Sanders said he was surprised, and glad, to have his support. Instead of co-sponsoring the bill with Brewbaker, Sanders dropped his name from the bill so it would have a better chance of passing under a Republican sponsor.

It worked.

The bill passed a vote of 78-19 and in April 2017, on her first day in the office, Ivey signed into law a ban on judicial override.

The law had a caveat: the ban on judicial override did not apply to those sentenced before 2017. Retroactivity wasn’t included in the bill, said Sanders, because it could have hurt the bill’s chances at passing.

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Suspected serial killer is Florida's 15th execution of the year

The 25th Execution of 2026

A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death on September 10, 2026, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year, reported The Associated Press.

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year span.

Conahan was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at 6 p.m. A spiritual adviser was at his feet and prayed throughout the process.

The team warden asked Conahan if he had any final statement, and Conahan replied, “No sir.” The deadly drug cocktail began to flow at 6:01 p.m. Conahan began to pant and then twitch briefly before going still. Several minutes later, the warden shook Conahan and shouted his name but there was no response.

A medic entered the death chamber at 6:11 p.m. to check for vitals, and Conahan was declared dead a minute later.

Conahan died in the nation’s busiest death chamber. Florida has carried out more than half the 25 total executions in the U.S. so far this year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January.

Conahan was identified by authorities as a person of interest in the other deaths, but he was never charged. He argued the evidence against him in Montgomery’s death was circumstantial.

Multiple bodies found in popular hunting area

Conahan was arrested in July 1996 after local and state law enforcement officials spent more than two years investigating a series of homicides in which mutilated and decomposing bodies were discovered in a wooded area of Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers.

As the number of bodies increased, so did media coverage. The deaths eventually were dubbed the “Hog Trail Murders” because of the swampy, wooded locations where the bodies were found. The case has been featured many times over the past three decades on true-crime television shows, YouTube channels and podcasts.

Hunters found the first body in February 1994, and at least five more were discovered over the next three years. While most of the remains were severely decomposed, investigators believed Montgomery was found within 24 hours of his death. Investigators eventually determined the killer was targeting homeless men.

Investigators found similarities in cases

Detectives started looking into Conahan in 1996 after a man in prison for stealing Conahan’s car claimed Conahan had lured him to a remote area and offered to pay him to pose for nude photos. The man said he drove off in the car after seeing a knife.

Later, detectives learned about a case with similarities in Fort Myers, in which a victim claimed a man who offered cash for nude photos had tied him to a tree and attempted to strangle him. Conahan was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and several months later was also charged in Montgomery’s death.

Conahan waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted by a judge of murder and kidnapping in August 1999.

Conahan was never charged with any other homicides, but a sheriff’s office report about the investigation concluded that all of the victims discovered within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius were likely killed by the same person.

In 2007, a land survey crew discovered eight bodies in Fort Myers. The four victims identified by authorities were homeless, and officials said they all suffered similar injuries to the Charlotte County victims. Investigators at the time publicly identified Conahan as a person of interest, but he was never charged.

One relative of a Hog Trail victim says her family would celebrate Conahan’s death

According to corrections officials, 11 victim family members attended Thursday’s execution, but the officials wouldn’t say if they were relatives of Montgomery or of Conahan’s other suspected victims.

Joan Rodemann, the sister of a Hog Trail victim named William Melaragno, released a written statement saying that her family would celebrate Conahan’s death.

“Finally, the gates of HELL will open and you can join the other soulless spawns of the devil. Sadly, you won’t feel the pain or fear you horrifically brought onto your victims,” Rodemann said. “Our prayers are for the victims and their families.”

Florida leads the way in executions

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with 19 lethal injections, a state record since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so. Another Florida execution is planned shortly, that of Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, on Sept. 29. Beasley was convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer and stealing her car in 1995.

All Florida executions are by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

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What the Flock: Tough-on-Crime v. Big Brother

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, directed police departments last week to stop spending state money on Flock Safety cameras, the license-plate readers that have drawn bipartisan backlash around the country, reported The New York Times.

Days later in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration ordered the systems removed from state roads. Mr. DeSantis has described the surveillance technology as “out of control.”

Both governors are tough-on-crime Republicans with deep backing from law enforcement agencies. Yet their moves underscore how the political winds are shifting against Flock and other plate-reading systems that have been embraced by police departments.

The cameras, which began rapidly appearing by the tens of thousands on American roads in recent years, track vehicles and feed surveillance databases. The networks of cameras can be used to assist officers by quickly locating vehicles connected with crimes. But concerns about a sweeping system of government surveillance and about abuses by individual officers have brought mounting opposition.

Flock cameras and others like them have become a campaign issue in several states, in some cases uniting Republicans and Democrats.

The result of the actions in Texas and Florida: Police departments are falling in line behind their governors and dismantling their license-plate readers. They have begun doing so even as they extol the cameras’ crime-fighting capabilities. In Jacksonville, Fla., the sheriff, a Republican, announced on Monday he was pausing his agency’s program of 150 cameras — one week after the office released a documentary-style video lauding their role in solving a kidnapping, among other crimes.

The moves in Texas and Florida are unfolding as Republican elected officials elsewhere are mulling their own restrictions.

In Indiana, Republicans have signaled they will draft legislation to set minimum law enforcement standards for the technology. In Kansas, some Republican lawmakers now say they want to tighten restrictions and oversight after earlier legislation had made it easier for the police to deploy license-plate readers.

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Missouri GOP primary candidate conspired to plant drugs on opponent

A Republican legislative candidate in Joplin plotted to plant cocaine and Adderall on his primary opponent in an effort to derail her campaign, federal prosecutors allege, reported the Missouri Independent.

Thomas Ross, who won the Republican nomination for Missouri’s 161st House District by only 32 votes, was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

A criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleges Ross spent weeks discussing a plan to plant the drugs on Louise Secker, his opponent in the Aug. 4 Republican primary.

Ross’ former campaign manager reported the alleged plot to the Joplin Police Department on July 30, according to a probable cause statement by FBI Special Agent Brandon Bernhardt.

The former campaign manager provided Joplin police with a nylon glove containing a plastic bag of white powder that tested positive for cocaine and a pink and white pill identified as Adderall, Bernhardt wrote.

Screenshots of text messages reviewed by Bernhardt suggest Ross and the former campaign manager discussed the plot as early as May 31 and show them referring to it in coded language as the “substance of the matter” or the “substance of it all,” according to the probable cause statement.

The former campaign manager said Ross asked him to plant the drugs in Secker’s purse or vehicle while Ross was on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Bernhardt wrote.

Ross sent the campaign manager a text message on June 15 saying: “Hope you all are having success knocking doors and getting the substance of the matter sorted this week.”

Court documents quote a June 18 message from Ross that read: “Any luck with the substance of the matter? I wont be gone much longer.”

During a July 31 meeting at Ross’ house, the former campaign manager used a covert device provided by the FBI to record Ross. He told Ross he still had “the bag and addies” and asked Ross if he still wanted him to “try,” suggesting they could call in an anonymous tip about drugs in Secker’s car. 

According to court documents, Ross replied, “If you can pull it off…pull it off.”

In a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice Thursday, Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said “the American people deserve confidence in an electoral process that has served our nation for generations.”

“Candidates are expected to conduct their campaigns with integrity, honesty and respect for their opponents,” he said, “allowing voters to make informed decisions without fear of misinformation or undue influence.”

Chris Ornerod, special agent in charge in the FBI Kansas City field office, described the allegations as “substantial and serious.”

“As this case moves through the judicial process,” Ornerod said, “it’s important that it proceeds fairly, impartially and in accordance with the rule of law.”

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Mangino discusses Lindsay Clancy mistrial on WFMJ-TV21

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