State apologizes to man wrongly imprisoned for murder
By Jack Bowman and Sasha Allen
Marando Warthen won an official apology and $3 million in compensation from the state of Maryland on Wednesday, after serving decades in prison for wrongful murder convictions in 1984.
Warthen, who is now 62, will receive claims for his attorney fees along with state-mandated financial compensation. He was 22 when he was initially arrested, and was later sentenced to 103 years in prison.
'Like the governor said, [it's] a form of recognition of the wrong that I was subject under,' Warthen said Wednesday. 'However, it's a new beginning.'
Warthen filed multiple appeals and petitions throughout his decades of incarceration. His convictions were vacated in the Baltimore City Circuit Court in February 2023 and he was released from a few weeks later, according to the Board of Public Works. Warthen's award and apology came during a Wednesday meeting of the board, of which Moore is the chair.
Under Maryland law, financial compensation for proven or pardoned wrongful incarceration is determined by the length of time served and the state's most recent median income. People can also get housing, vocational training and health care.
Witnesses bring emotional testimony for, against Second Look Act
Since the start of 2023, a total of eight individuals have been awarded erroneous conviction compensation, including Warthen, according to the board.
Moore said that Warthen's years in prison were 'stolen from Mr. Warthen, depriving him of the opportunity to start a family, to pursue a career, to utilize all of his God-given talents and skills to benefit his community and to benefit our state.'
Moore then addressed Warthen on behalf of himself and the state of Maryland.
'There are no words that can be said or shared to tell you how sorry I am, but also how sorry this entire state is, for the way that our justice system failed you, repeatedly,' Moore said.
Warthen says that the apology from Moore is a meaningful one.
'It really meant a lot,' Warthen said, 'because a lot of times with guys that face my same predicament, they never get an apology. And sometimes they're never awarded any type of compensation.'
– Capital News Service is a student-staffed reporting service operated by the University of Maryland's Phillip Merrill College of Journalism. Stories are available at the CNS site and may be reprinted as long as credit is given to Capital News Service and, most importantly, to the students who produced the work.
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NBC News
3 hours ago
- NBC News
How the NBA got rid of microbets — and why it could be a blueprint for MLB
Sixteen months after a landmark decision opened the door for legal sports gambling in the United States, a high-ranking NFL executive sat before a House committee in the fall of 2019 to ask for help banishing a particular type of bet that has drawn the ire of sports leagues across the country. Proposition bets, better known as 'prop bets,' allow wagers not on the outcomes of games but on occurrences during them. A wager could be on the result the first play of a game, the first pitch of an inning or whether a player will compile over or under a certain number of rebounds, strikeouts or rushing yards. Leagues, as the NFL indicated that day in front of lawmakers, consider such props troublesome and more easily manipulated because many hinge on the actions of just one player. 'These types of bets are significantly more susceptible to match-fixing efforts and are therefore a source of concern to sports leagues, individual teams and the athletes who compete,' NFL Executive Vice President Jocelyn Moore testified in 2019. (Moore, who has served on the board of directors of DraftKings since 2020, declined to comment.) Had you placed a bet then that prop bets would go away, you would have ended up a loser. When the NFL staged the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots five months after the NFL's testimony, bettors could still choose among hundreds of prop bets. And six years later, they are still a source of headlines, concern for leagues and income for sportsbooks. In 2024, the NBA banned the Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter for life for sports betting after an investigation found he had, among other findings, 'limited his own participation to influence the outcome of one or more bets on his performance in at least one Raptors game.' In June, reports surfaced that a federal investigation into longtime NBA guard Malik Beasley was related to activity around prop bets. 'I do think some of the bets are problematic," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in July, the month Major League Baseball placed a Cleveland Guardians pitcher on paid leave while it investigated unusually high wagers on the first pitches of innings on June 15 and June 27, ESPN reported. Weeks later, after MLB placed a second Guardians pitcher on leave as part of a sports gambling investigation, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told a group of baseball writers that there were 'certain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable, things where it's one single act [and] doesn't affect the outcome, necessarily.' Whether MLB considers prop bets 'unnecessary' enough to try to have its gambling partners restrict the kinds that are offered is unclear. But if MLB does, it might look to the NBA for a possible blueprint. During the 2024-25 NBA season, the league's gambling partners including FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and several others who make up upward of 95% of the legal U.S. sportsbooks agreed to no longer offer 'under' prop bets on players either on 10-day or two-way contracts. (Porter had been on a two-way contract.) Fans could still bet on the sport's big names, like Stephen Curry's 3-pointers or LeBron James' rebounds — but legal sports betting operators in the United States were no longer offering action on the NBA's lowest-paid players. The decision wasn't a mandate handed down solely by the NBA. 'We do not have control over the specific bets that are made on our game,' Silver said in July. Years earlier, the league had sought just that type of power, but it was unsuccessful in persuading state lawmakers to pass legislation that would have given the NBA the right to approve what types of bets could be offered on the league. It also doesn't hold veto rights over what its gambling partners can and cannot offer, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. Instead, much like the NFL's attempt in its congressional testimony six years earlier, the NBA had to ask for help. Representatives for DraftKings and FanDuel didn't respond to requests for comment on their back-and-forth with the league that led to the decisions to restrict certain prop bets. Multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive discussions said the league had to rely on making the case to its partners that prop bets on 10-day and two-way players weren't worth the relatively small amount of business they brought in. 'It's a small part of the marketplace,' a person involved in the process said, 'but had outsized integrity risks.' Such dialogue between a league and a sportsbook would have been unthinkable before the Supreme Court's 2018 decision to overturn a federal prohibition on sports gambling freed states to decide whether to permit legal sports betting. (Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia allow sports gambling, and Missouri is set to launch its own operation in December.) Almost overnight, leagues and sportsbooks that once steered clear of one another were now in business together. Sometimes, the back-and-forth between a league and its sportsbook partners has stopped bets from appearing before they are even listed. In 2020, with leagues still months away from making a pandemic comeback, ESPN scrambled to fill programming that included NBA players' competing against one another in video games and even HORSE. As those competitions were announced, the NBA was contacted by betting operators and regulators who wanted to know whether betting odds should be offered on the unusual action, according to the sources with knowledge of the situation. The NBA strongly advised against it because the tournaments had been tape-delayed, meaning a handful of people already knew the outcomes and could benefit from that information if bets were offered. Sportsbooks agreed. The NFL recently has also found success restricting certain types of prop bets, this time through legislation. The Illinois Gaming Board in February approved the NFL's request to prohibit 10 types of what it classified as 'objectionable wagers,' including whether a kicker would miss a field goal or an extra point and whether quarterback's first pass of a game would be incomplete — the same type of 'single-actor' bets that leagues have come out against and that have reportedly sparked investigations into multiple athletes. By seeking to influence which bets are offered, leagues and their gambling partners are attempting a delicate balance of limiting bets they consider risks to the integrity of their games while still ensuring that enough betting options are offered to keep fans wagering their dollars in legal markets, rather than through offshore sportsbooks where tracking suspicious activity is much more opaque. Proponents of sports betting suggest that although the headlines about players or league staffers being investigated, or caught, for betting manipulation isn't good public relations for the sports, they're a sign that a 'complex system that detects aberrational behavior,' as Silver said in July, is working as intended. As part of their partnership agreements, leagues, betting operators and so-called integrity firms have data-sharing agreements that allow them to communicate with one another to monitor suspicious activity. "The transparency inherent with legalized sports betting has become a significant asset in protecting the integrity of athletic competition," DraftKings said in a statement. "Unlike the pre-legalization era, when threats were far more difficult to detect, the regulated industry now provides increased oversight and accountability that helps to identify potentially suspicious activity.' In the case of the pair of Cleveland Guardian pitchers, the Ohio Casino Control Commission was notified June 30 by a licensed Ohio sportsbook about suspicious wagering on Guardians games and 'was also promptly contacted by Major League Baseball regarding the events,' a commission spokesperson said in a statement. 'Under the Commission's statutory responsibilities, an independent investigation commenced.' It's why leagues and sportsbook operators consider restricting bets a fine line. 'If you have sweeping prohibitions on that type of a bet, you're taking away the ability for your league to ensure the integrity of that activity,' said Joe Maloney, a senior vice president for strategic communications at the American Gaming Association. 'You will not have the ability to work with an integrity monitor to identify any irregular betting activity on such a legal market. You will not have the collaboration of a legal operator who will share that information. You will not have the collaboration of a legal operator to say to them, 'Here's the do-not-fly list for betting activity for our league: employees, club employees, trainers, athletic officials, referees,' etc. ... 'Betting engagement on prop bets is largely a reflection of fandom. And so, by pushing that away, I think you absolutely lose the ability to properly oversee it and to root out the bad actors that would seem to exploit it. Because it will still take place.' In 2022, legal sports betting accounted for $6.8 billion in legal revenue, while illegal sports betting accounted for about $3.8 billion, according to research from the American Gaming Association, a trade association. Last year, it estimated that revenue from legal sports betting rose to $16 billion, while the illegal market grew to about $5 billion. A 2024 analysis by the International Betting Integrity Association, a nonprofit integrity firm made up of licensed gambling operators, questioned the efficacy of restricting prop bets. The IBIA reported that 59 out of 360,000 basketball games that had been offered for betting from 2017 to 2023 were 'the subject of suspicious betting.' 'There was no suspicious betting activity linked to match manipulation identified on player prop markets,' the IBIA report said. 'There is no meaningful integrity benefit from excluding such markets, which are widely available globally. Prohibiting those products will make offshore operators more attractive.' By persuading its partners to keep some prop bets off the books, the NBA nonetheless provided a precedent for how to remove bets leagues have considered, to use Manfred's term, 'unnecessary.' Would MLB, amid an ongoing investigation into two pitchers, follow? Unlike the NBA, MLB doesn't have easily defined classifications of contracts such as 10-day and two-way players. One method could instead be to target so-called first-pitch microbets. MLB is having 'ongoing conversations' related to gambling, according to a person with knowledge of the league's thinking. If baseball were to make such a push against microbets, its reasoning might mirror the NBA's last year, said Gill Alexander, a longtime sports betting commentator for VSiN. 'I think basically baseball's point would be, you know, this is the type of prop that is just begging for trouble, right?' Alexander said. Ohio, for one, would most likely agree. Last month, Gov. Mike DeWine asked the Ohio Casino Control Commission to ban prop bets on 'highly specific events within games that are completely controlled by one player," he said in a news release, while asking the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA and MLS commissioners to support his stance. 'The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly,' DeWine said. Alexander said: 'I do think that we're in the era now where these leagues can exert some influence on these sports books, as long as it is of no financial pain to the sports books. This is one of these instances where, really, I don't agree with Rob Manfred every day, but I actually think he's probably going to get what he wants here.'
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Former Choctaw High School choir teacher sentenced to prison for sex crimes
A former choir teacher at Choctaw High School has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a student that lasted more than a year. Samuel Taylor Melton, 30, of Moore, will be on probation for 25 more years after his release from prison. He must register as a sex offender. He pleaded guilty on Tuesday, Aug. 19, in Oklahoma County District Court to 15 sex crimes. At times, he wiped away tears with a tissue. "He's incredibly remorseful," his attorney, Chris Box, told reporters afterward. "He wanted closure, not only for himself, but for the victim." Melton's wife, father and mother were present in the crowded courtroom for the sentencing, the defense attorney confirmed. The guilty plea was to four counts of rape by instrumentation, three counts of second-degree rape, four counts of forcible oral sodomy and four counts of sexual battery. He admitted in his guilty plea that the offenses began in 2023 when the victim was 16 and one of his students. He did not apologize. His punishment was the result of a plea agreement with prosecutors. Special Judge Jason Glidewell imposed the sentence after the victim told her former teacher she came forward to protect other students. "You were the darkness that crept into the place that was meant to be safe for me," Avery Smith, now 19, told him in a 10-minute statement. "You are a predator, and I was just one of your prey." The Oklahoman typically does not name victims of sexual assault, but Avery wanted her name known. She came forward in April, almost a year after graduating. She at first told her parents. "So many parts of me screamed not to say a word," she said in court Tuesday, looking directly at Melton. "But the parts of me that longed for my own justice and the protection of the girls you would've hurt in the future ... screamed louder." Melton kept his head down as she spoke. He tightly gripped a tissue in his hand as she said he had stolen her love of music and poisoned her dream of being a music teacher herself by holding her captive to his "sick sexual fantasies." "You took that from me," she said. After the sentencing, she told reporters it was important to her to be an example for other victims of sex crimes. "I absolutely think that there are people out there that haven't spoke out and I hope they come forward," she said. "You matter. Your story deserves to be heard." Melton confessed and resigned when school administrators confronted him in April about the accusations. He was charged April 28. Attorney General Gentner Drummond took over the case in July at the request of the victim. The AG told Avery in court after the sentencing that he was proud of her. In a news release, Drummond called the sentence "the longest ever for a sexual predator in our schools." 'Anyone who preys on children should be punished as harshly as possible − especially those who have been entrusted with the education and care of our children," said Drummond, who is running for governor. Avery told police the sexual encounters began the second semester of her junior year, two months after he was reprimanded for unprofessional and inappropriate interactions with her. "Do not place yourself in the position of having your statements or actions be misinterpreted as having inappropriate feelings towards students," he was told in the reprimand signed by Principal Jackie Harris. She told police the sexual encounters continued into her senior year even after his wife found out. She told police some sexual encounters took place in a practice room while class was still in session and students were practicing just outside the door. She graduated in May 2024. Lawsuit is pending in Oklahoma City federal court Avery is suing the Choctaw-Nicoma Park School District, school officials and Melton in Oklahoma City federal court. In the lawsuit, she alleges she suffered the sexual abuse because of a series of gross failures and indifference at the district. Her lawsuit lists seven other incidents of sexual misconduct by teachers in the district. Her attorney, Cameron Spradling of Oklahoma City, has demanded $25 million. "We have to recognize Oklahoma has a serious problem," said Spradling, who has successfully sued other school districts. "Do we not recognize that, everybody?" he asked reporters Tuesday after the sentencing. "That we've got a big problem here." The school district has not filed an answer to the lawsuit yet. In a media statement in May, the school district said, "Mr. Melton's actions were reprehensible and antithetic to the high standards of professionalism, trust and care demonstrated every day by CNP teachers, administrators, and staff."The age of consent for sex had been 16 at the time of their relationship but that did not apply to teachers. A new law will raise the age to 18 when it goes in effect later this year. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Former Choctaw choir teacher Sam Melton sentenced for sex crimes
Politico
18 hours ago
- Politico
A Larry Hogan return could jeopardize Wes Moore's White House prospects
What up, Recast fam. A couple of programming notes before we jump into today's edition. First, we will be on hiatus next week, returning to your inboxes on Wednesday Sept. 3. THE RECAST SIGNS OFF: After four years, The Recast is wrapping up its run. But this work isn't going anywhere. With questions of race, identity and power still at the center of American politics, we're moving our coverage beyond a single weekly newsletter and bringing it to you across multiple POLITICO platforms. You'll keep seeing this work in stories like our look at how Black mayors are navigating Donald Trump's return to Washington and the growing political power of South Asian voters. You can follow my reporting and analysis in Weekly Score, West Wing Playbook and on our homepage. And you can find more of our reporting on how today's political disruption collides with questions of race and identity in the POLITICO Nightly newsletter. Our final edition is Sept. 9. I hope you'll follow along in these other spaces. And now to our regularly scheduled program. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, the nation's only Black governor, may soon receive a formidable challenger who could be a major obstacle to the first-term Democrat's reelection prospects next year — and doom whatever political future he continues to say he's not interested in seeking. Republican Larry Hogan, Moore's Republican predecessor, teased a return to politics last week. He posted on Facebook and Instagram a pair of images of RVs: one a standard version you'd see on the highway in the final days of summer, the other decked out in campaign paraphernalia, including the yellow, black, red and white of Maryland's state flag. The stylized version also included Hogan's tagline from his unsuccessful 2024 Senate run, 'Let's Get Back To Work!' 'Slightly used 2024 RV, only 15,000 miles all in Maryland. Never slept in,' Hogan wrote. 'Could make a good deal. Or…I guess we could always rewrap it and get back out on the road again?' In conversations with half a dozen elected officials, strategists and pollsters, many portrayed Hogan as a political force. As they see it, he's likely the only Republican in the state that has enough name ID and fundraising ability to challenge Moore should he officially jump into the 2026 governor's race. Posting images on social media platforms is far from a declaration of candidacy. But it's certainly got people talking. Interestingly, the ones who aren't talking are members of Hoganworld, who're being unusually silent after insisting for months that there's no truth to the rumors that Hogan is itching to jump back into politics. Was The Recast forwarded to you by a friend? Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter here. You'll get a weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. I did get one former Hogan aide to talk — granted anonymity to discuss the former governor's future prospects — who took the opportunity to knock Moore. 'I think his liability has always been the perception that he is a very ambitious politician – even before he became governor,' the person said. 'That's always a tricky thing when you're running for reelection, but you have your eyes on a bigger prize.' The person adds that's certainly a line of attack for Hogan to utilize, but adds: 'Whether that's enough to build that whole campaign, I don't know.' Hogan is a popular ex-governor who served two terms and is generally well-regarded in the state. He left office with sky-high approval ratings that hovered near 80 percent and as a Republican leading a deep-blue state won over voters in part for lowering taxes and his adversarial stances against Donald Trump during the president's first term. Still, Maryland state Sen. Malcolm Augustine (D), a Moore ally, does not see this as a ripe political environment for Hogan's political comeback. 'Just given what is happening at the federal level, I simply don't see a path for Larry Hogan,' he said, pointing to the Trump-led cuts in the federal workforce, which by one measure has impacted Maryland more than any other state in the nation. 'Larry Hogan was actively against Donald Trump,' Augustine continued. 'It's not like he gets to say, 'Oh, you know it's gonna be so much better under me.' No, it's [going to] be worse.' That's because Trump and Hogan, who has been public about not ever voting for the president in 2016, 2020 and 2024, don't like each other. Augustine predicts that Hogan's road back to the governor's mansion would be hamstrung by Trump. Trump, who's known for holding grudges, would likely exact even more vengeance on the state. Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has halted plans for the new FBI headquarters to be built in Maryland's suburbs, just outside of Washington as well as ending other new construction projects for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and cancelling research studying health gaps between racial and socioeconomic groups at the National Institutes of Health, also based in Maryland. This week, Moore and Trump got into a bit of a tit-for-tat exchange when the governor announced he wouldn't be deploying the Maryland National Guard into D.C. 'They say maybe he'll be a president — he's not presidential temper at all,' Trump said, hinting that he might take over other Democrat-led cities, including Baltimore. Moore is seen as a future leader of the Democratic Party delivering the keynote address at a closely-watched party dinner in the presidential early-voting state of South Carolina in May and even drawing looks from Hollywood icon and Democratic megadonor George Clooney, who described him as 'a proper leader.' Still, he's had to navigate headwinds heading in recent months, particularly with those federal job cuts. He and the Democratic-controlled legislature in May raised taxes and fees to help close a more than $3 billion budget shortfall. And he's seen a slip in his approval rating slip to 50 percent approval with a 42 percent disapproval according to the Maryland Now Poll released last week. The survey continued a recent trend for Moore this year showing his gap between approval and disapproval narrowing. 'Wes Moore turned a historic surplus and tax cuts into an out of control deficit and tax hikes,' Courtney Alexander, Republican Governors Association Communications Director said in a statement. 'Marylanders don't want another four years of tax increases and runaway spending with nothing to offer except blame and empty smiles with no results.' Hogan is a savvy politician, notes Mileah Kromer, a well regarded pollster and director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Institute of Politics. Kromer believes the well-timed social media post has the hallmarks of Hogan keeping his name in the mix, even if there's little evidence a campaign is being set up. 'Is he gonna just surprise us at the filing deadline again?' Kromer asks, nodding to the months of denial Hogan kept pushing about entering the U.S. Senate race, before filing his candidate paperwork on the last day of the filing deadline. She adds that even though Hogan lost to Sen. Angela Alsobrooks by double digits in last year's Senate race, he can write that off as part of the Trump effect in a state Kamala Harris carried by nearly 30 points. Moore, she said, would be a tough opponent, but sees no other Maryland Republican who could mount a credible challenge to Moore next year. So what do we make of Hogan's social media post where he hinted at taking his campaign RV 'back out on the road again?' One senior Democratic operative summed up Hogan's post this way: 'He's fucking around…there's no operation being built as far as we can tell…He's a bored narcissist. I don't think it's that complicated.' All the best,The Recast Team PHOTO OF THE DAY On Monday evening, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) who is unabashedly kicking the tires on a future White House run, traveled to the key swing state of Georgia. It was the latest stop on his 'Benefits Over Billionaires' where he railed against the president's 'big, beautiful bill' that Trump signed into law on July 4 and critics like Khanna say provide tax benefits for the nation's top earners. Khanna, pictured second to the left, posed for a photo with progressive activist Nina Turner and Atlanta-based rapper and activist Killer Mike, whose government name is Michael Render, ahead of the event at the Teamsters Local 728 Union Hall. Also pictured is civil rights leader and former chairman of the 1960s Atlanta Student movement Charles Black (far left) and Rohit Malhotra, a candidate for Atlanta City Council President (far right). WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK Trump renews vote by mail crusade – Republicans poured tens of millions of dollars last year into convincing their voters that casting ballots by mail was safe after Trump lambasted it. But now Trump is attacking mail voting again as he ratchets up his push to protect Republicans' House majority in the midterms. POLITICO's Lisa Kashinsky, Jessica Piper and Holly Otterbein break it all down. And more… TODAY'S CULTURE NEWS New, hip vocabulary – 'Skibidi,' 'trad wife,' and 'delulu,' are among the 6,000 words being added to the Cambridge Dictionary. See what other words made the cut. ESPN drops plans to air Kaepernick doc – The sports network has reversed course and will no longer air Spike Lee's documentary series focusing on ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Tramell Tillmen on Hollywood stardom – The actor, who portrays Seth Milchick in Apple TV+'s mind-bending drama 'Severance,' opens up about his historic Emmy nomination: He's the first openly gay Black man to be recognized in the supporting actor drama category.
