A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019
With school districts across the
United States scrambling to re-
verse the rise of vaping among
teenagers, three of them on Mon-
day filed suit against Juul, the e-
cigarette manufacturer, accusing
it of endangering students and
forcing educators to divert time
and money to fight an epidemic of
nicotine addiction.
The school systems in St.
Charles, Mo., Olathe, Kan., and on
Long Island were believed to be
the first in the United States to sue
Juul, which dominates the e-ciga-
rette market with devices that
look like thumb drives and that
have become wildly popular with
American teenagers.
The districts say Juul explicitly
marketed its products to youths,
leaving schools to shoulder the
costs of stopping students from
vaping, disciplining them when
they break school rules and pro-
viding support services when
they become addicted.
“As smart as our students are,
they don’t understand the long-
term ramifications of vaping and
the amount of addictive chemicals
they are dealing with,” said John
Allison, the superintendent of
Olathe Public Schools, which
serves 30,000 students in a sub-
urb of Kansas City. “It’s our role to
protect our students today and in
the future.”
Juul, which has denied steering
its products toward teenagers, did
not immediately comment on the
lawsuits.
Public officials have taken a
stronger stance against e-ciga-
rettes in recent weeks after health
experts identified a link between
vaping and lung problems in Au-
gust. The number of people with
lung illnesses associated with va-
ping has risen to 1,080, the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Pre-
vention reported last week.
Twenty-two deaths have been
confirmed in 19 states, according
to the C.D.C. and state agencies.
Rhode Island, Michigan and
New York have banned most fla-
vored vapes while the Massachu-
setts governor has issued a four-
month ban on the sale of all vaping
products. In the private sector,
Kroger and Walmart have said
they would stop selling e-ciga-
rettes, and some television net-
works have stopped broadcasting
ads for Juul.
Given the unanswered ques-
tions about the exact cause of the
illnesses, many health experts
have said that people should not
vape.
Still, a recent survey of thou-
sands of students found that about
one in four high school seniors had
vaped during the previous 30
days; in 2017, one in nine seniors
said they had done so.
In one of the suits filed on Mon-
day, the Francis Howell School
District in St. Charles, which has
about 18,000 students, accused
Juul of “taking a page from big to-
bacco’s playbook” to develop “a
product and marketing strategy
that sought to portray its e-ciga-
rette products as trendsetting,
stylish and used by the type of
people teenagers look up to.”
Three Village Central School
District in New York State also
filed a lawsuit on Monday. Similar
suits were expected in the coming
weeks, said Jonathan P. Kieffer, a
partner with Wagstaff & Cartmell,
the Kansas City, Mo., law firm that
filed the first suits.
Among the steps that schools
have had to take against vaping,
Mr. Kieffer said, were installing
sensors in bathrooms, removing
bathroom doors, banning flash
drives, hiring more staff and pay-
ing for programs that help stu-
dents deal with nicotine addiction.
The suits did not specify the
amount of damages the districts
were seeking.
Legal experts said that though
the suits were reminiscent of liti-
gation against makers of guns,
opioids and tobacco, the districts
could face a stiff challenge in es-
tablishing their case.
“It has nothing to do with the
school themselves,” said Kathleen
Hoke, a law professor at the Uni-
versity of Maryland who studies
tobacco regulation. “The connec-
tion is to the students who have
been marketed into addiction. I do
think it’s very unique.”
Heidi Li Feldman, a torts and
product liability professor at
Georgetown University Law Cen-
ter, said the suits reminded her of
school districts in the Houston
area suing former lead-paint man-
ufacturers to recoup the costs of
lead-paint removal in their build-
ings.
She said that school boards
could learn from cities that have
filed litigation against manufac-
turers of guns, opioids and tobac-
co, adding that schools can be held
liable for not protecting their stu-
dents or failing to protect the chil-
dren.
“Will they be dismissed or al-
lowed to head to trial? It’s a live
question,” she said.Vanessa Swales contributed re-
porting.Schools Sue
Over Vaping,
Calling It
An Epidemic
By ADEEL HASSANJudge Tammy Kemp is a wom-
an of faith. For more than 25 years,
she has attended the same church
in Dallas, where she serves as a
deaconess. She keeps a Bible in
her chambers, positioned on top of
her laptop to remind herself to
start her day with prayer. And she
believes in redemption: In her
courtroom, she encourages de-
fendants to use their time in pris-
on to remake their lives.
So when one of those defend-
ants — a former police officer con-
victed of murdering her unarmed
neighbor — asked the judge for
advice and a hug last week, the
judge’s thoughts turned to a ser-
mon she had heard in church the
previous Sunday. The Parable of
the Lost Sheep tells the story of a
shepherd who still has 99 sheep in
his flock, but looks for the one
sheep that is lost.
“Our pastor had said: ‘If we’re
going to attract the one, we’ve got
to show love and compassion.’
And then I also thought, God says
my job is to do justice, love mercy
and walk humbly,” Judge Kemp
said. “So how can you refuse this
woman a hug?”
That moment of compassion, in
which Judge Kemp gave the for-
mer officer a Bible and a hug, was
fiercely debated in the days after
the trial. Some praised it as a rare
and much-needed moment of hu-
manity; others criticized it as po-
tentially unconstitutional and
wondered whether a black de-
fendant would receive similar at-
tention in the criminal justice sys-
tem.
For many, it was simply the lat-
est moment to be debated in an
unusual and emotional case, in
which an off-duty white police offi-
cer, Amber R. Guyger, fatally shot
an unarmed black man, Botham
Shem Jean, in his own apartment,
claiming she thought she was fac-
ing an intruder in her own apart-
ment. Community activists had
looked to the judge, who is black,
to help ensure a fair outcome, and
in the end a diverse jury returned
a rare verdict of murder, punish-
ing her to 10 years in prison.
Speaking publicly on Monday
for the first time since the trial,
Judge Kemp, 57, said she was not
thinking about Ms. Guyger’s race
when she agreed to give her a hug,
nor did she offer the Bible un-
prompted.
Far from regretting her deci-
sion, Judge Kemp said she only
wished she had not hesitated be-
fore agreeing to the hug. “I’m a lit-
tle embarrassed to say she had to
ask me twice,” Judge Kemp said in
an interview.
Judge Kemp, with her black
robe and thick pearl necklace, be-
came a well-known figure during
the trial, which was streamed on-
line and closely followed across
the country. Her exasperated ex-
pression when she found out that
the district attorney had given a
television interview that may
have broken a gag order in the
case was widely shared in a GIF.
She also showed uncommon emo-
tion, at times tearing up on the
bench.
But it was the final moments in
the courtroom, after the trial had
formally ended, that drew the
most attention.
After a jury sentenced Ms.
Guyger to prison for murder, Mr.Jean’s brother took the witness
stand to address her directly.
Rather than expressing anger, he
asked to give her a hug in the
courtroom.
“He said ‘please,’ and he said
‘please’ again,” said Judge Kemp,
when asked about her decision to
allow him to step down from the
witness stand. “I just could not
refuse him that.”
Judge Kemp, a former prosecu-
tor who took the bench as a Demo-
crat in January 2015, said she ap-
proached this case like any other:
She got to work each day early in
the morning, sometimes while it
was still dark, so she could ar-
range for coffee and make sure ju-
rors had the Greek yogurt and
Gatorades they needed to getthrough a long day in court.
When witnesses testified, she
took notes in longhand on a legal
pad. And to avoid directing the ju-
ry’s attention in any one direction,
she said she tried to glance around
the courtroom periodically.
While video cameras showed
the trial from the back of the court-
room, leaving only the back of Ms.
Guyger’s head visible when she
was not on the witness stand,
Judge Kemp had a different view
from the bench. She said she
watched Ms. Guyger’s composure
transform during the trial: Early
on, the defendant showed no emo-
tion, and avoided looking at the
judge. Later on, though, when the
punishment phase of the trial be-
gan, her demeanor changed. Ev-
ery time Judge Kemp looked at
her, “she was looking at me,” the
judge said. “Following that guilty
verdict, she was a different wom-
an in that courtroom.”
At the end of the trial, after the
jury had been dismissed, Judge
Kemp came down from the bench
to offer her condolences to Mr.
Jean’s parents, as is her habit
when a family has lost a loved one.
“I told them that they raised a re-
markable son in Botham,” she
said.
Next, she said, she stopped by
the defense table to offer a word of
encouragement to Ms. Guyger. “I
said to her, ‘Ms. Guyger, Brandt
Jean has forgiven you,’ ” Judge
Kemp recalled, referring to Bo-
tham Jean’s brother. “ ‘Now pleaseforgive yourself so that you can
live a productive life when you get
out of prison.’ ”
What followed, she said, was an
exchange whose equivalent she
could not remember in her dec-
ades as a lawyer and her nearly
five years on the bench.
“She asked me if I thought her
life could have purpose,” Judge
Kemp recalled. “I said, ‘I know
that it can.’ She said, ‘I don’t know
where to start, I don’t have a Bi-
ble.’ ” Judge Kemp said she
thought of the Bible in her cham-
bers. “I said, ‘Well, hold on, I’ll get
you a Bible.’ ”
She came back out and, togeth-
er, they read John 3:16, a passage
about redemption.
That is when Ms. Guyger did
something that caught the judge
off guard: She asked for a hug.
Judge Kemp hesitated. She had
hugged defendants plenty of
times before — but usually, it was
after they had successfully com-
pleted probation or drug treat-
ment. She could not recall hug-
ging any newly convicted killers
on their way to prison.
“The act that she committed
was horrific — she murdered Mr.
Jean,” Judge Kemp said. “But
none of us are one thing that we’ve
done.”
She thought of what it means to
comfort those who are hurting.
She had hugged Mr. Jean’s par-
ents only minutes earlier, and in
the end, she reached out and
hugged Ms. Guyger, too.The gesture immediately drew
criticism from social justice activ-
ists, who pointed to cases where
defendants of color were shown
far less compassion for less seri-
ous crimes. Others said that reli-
gion had no place in the court-
room.
“It’s way out of bounds,” said
Andrew L. Seidel, a lawyer with
the Freedom From Religion Foun-
dation, which filed a complaint
against the judge in Texas with
the State Commission on Judicial
Conduct. The group argued that
Judge Kemp’s decision to “preach
the Bible" violated the First
Amendment.
Even if Ms. Guyger expressed
an interest, Mr. Seidel said, it was
“wildly inappropriate” to bring a
Bible into the courtroom. “It’s still
her religion that she is promoting
on what is apparently a very vul-
nerable person,” he said of the
judge’s actions.
Judge Kemp said she aimed to
treat everyone, victim and de-
fendant, “with dignity and re-
spect.” She also argued that crimi-
nal justice reform was needed
across the board, especially in
cases in which a defendant is ex-
pected to one day walk out of pris-
on.
“The goal of the criminal justice
system should be to punish and to
discourage and deter,” she said.
“But the person who is going to re-
enter my society, it’s my hope they
can be a better person than when
they went in.”Sermon Inspired Judge to Hug Officer Convicted of Murder
“I’m a little embarrassed to say she had to ask me twice,” Judge Tammy Kemp said of embracing Amber R. Guyger after her sentencing.POOL PHOTO BY TOM FOXBy SARAH MERVOSHAn act some label as
a symbol of inequities
in the justice system.
After years of painstaking in-
vestigation into the grisly confes-
sions of a graying man in a wheel-
chair inside a Los Angeles County
prison cell, the F.B.I. announced
on Sunday that Samuel Little, who
has admitted to strangling vulner-
able women across the country for
decades, is the most prolific
known serial killer in American
history.
Mr. Little, 79, has confessed to
93 murders, the F.B.I. said. The
agency said in a statement that it
had verified 50 of the killings and
that it believed “all of his confes-
sions are credible.”
Now the F.B.I. is looking for help
identifying the rest of his victims,
a task it says is all the more urgent
because of Mr. Little’s age, poor
health and sometimes faulty
memory. Over the weekend, the
agency asked for assistance from
the public after releasing five
sketches that Mr. Little had drawn
of women he claimed to have
killed, with information about
where he met each one.
After Mr. Little was approached
by a Texas Ranger seeking infor-
mation about 18 months ago, he
has confessed crimes to numer-
ous prosecutors and police offi-
cers who have flown to the Lan-
caster, Calif., prison where he is
serving consecutive life sentences
for three murders from the 1980s.
Prosecutors say they have closed
dozens of homicide investigations
dating back nearly five decades,
some of them cases they feared
would never be solved.
“For many years, Samuel Little
believed he would not be caught
because he thought no one was ac-
counting for his victims,” Christie
Palazzolo, an F.B.I. crime analyst,
said in a statement. “Even though
he is already in prison, the F.B.I.
believes it is important to seek jus-
tice for each victim — to close ev-
ery case possible.”
Mr. Little has been convicted of
at least eight murders, including
several he has confessed to. Pros-
ecutors around the country are
still weighing whether to formally
charge him for killings; it was un-
certain how many charges he will
ultimately face. No one represent-
ing Mr. Little could be reached for
comment.
Gary Ridgway, the Green River
Killer, was convicted of 49 mur-
ders in Washington State during
the 1980s and 1990s, the highest
number of murder convictions for
an American serial killer.
Mr. Little was arrested dozens
of times for crimes including
armed robbery, rape and kidnap-
ping as he traveled around the
country, drifting through poor
neighborhoods and transient
communities. But until 2014, he
served fewer than 10 years in pris-
on, avoiding a murder conviction.
In addition to his prison cell
conversations with law enforce-
ment officials, Mr. Little has
drawn dozens of detailed portraits
of his victims, sketching them in
chalk pastels. Over 45 years, he
targeted marginalized women, in-
cluding prostitutes and drug us-
ers, the authorities say. Most of
them were African-American. He
often knew only their first names,
or nicknames. The F.B.I. noted
that many of the deaths of Mr. Lit-
tle’s victims had originally been
ruled as overdoses or from acci-
dental or unknown causes. In
other cases, the women went
missing and their bodies were
never found, but their cases drew
little attention.
While Mr. Little has offered
many details, investigators fear
that his memory is becoming not
entirely reliable. He is often fuzzy
on the year a killing took place.
That can make matching his ver-
sion of events to local police
records challenging — and help
from the public even more essen-
tial, according to investigators.
Among the five new sketches
released to the public, one depicts
a transgender woman named
Marianne that Mr. Little met in
Miami in 1971 or 1972. Mr. Little
said she was 18 or 19 years old and
they met at a bar. He offered her a
ride home in his gold Pontiac Le-Mans, then drove to what might
have been a sugar cane field near
Highway 27, where he killed her,
according to the authorities.
In a series of videotaped inter-
views with Mr. Little from a prison
cell that were released by the
F.B.I. this week, Mr. Little became
visibly excited as he discussed the
killings. Asked by a detective
about a woman he said he killed in
North Little Rock, Ark., in 1994,
Mr. Little responded: “Oh, man, I
loved her. I forget her name. Oh,yeah. I think it was Ruth.”
The flood of confessions came
after James Holland, a Texas
Ranger who specializes in cold
cases, sought out Mr. Little last
year.
“Nothing he’s ever said has
been proven to be wrong or false,”
Ranger Holland told “60 Minutes”
in a segment that aired on Sunday
night. “We’ve been able to prove
up almost everything he said.”
In the videotaped interviews re-leased by the F.B.I., Mr. Little
spoke about the killings as if they
were ordinary events, frequently
interrupting his stories with
smiles and laughter. His recollec-
tions were full of detail, often in-
cluding the names of streets and
the clothing of his victims. He has
expressed no remorse.
“ ‘God put me on Earth to do
what I did. He made me,’ ” Michael
Mongeluzzo, a detective from
Marion County, Fla., recalled Mr.
Little telling him.MARK ROGERS/ODESSA AMERICAN, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSF.B.I. F.B.I.
The F.B.I. has released sketches drawn by Samuel Little of unidentified women he says he killed.
Mr. Little, 79, has confessed to 93 murders over 45 years, and the bureau said it had so far verified
50 victims. Most were marginalized women, officials said, including prostitutes and drug users.F.B.I.F.B.I. Says Inmate, 79,
Is Deadliest Serial Killer
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
and KAREN ZRAICK