The Tulsa County district attorney said Thursday that no charges would be filed in the fight at an Oklahoma high school last month involving a nonbinary student, Nex Benedict, who died by suicide the next day.

The district attorney, Stephen A. Kunzweiler, announced his decision in a three-page letter that provided the most complete official account yet of the Feb. 7 fight at Owasso High School, the student’s death and the findings of a weeks-long police investigation.

“From all the evidence collected, this fight was an example of mutual combat,” Mr. Kunzweiler wrote. “I have no reasonable belief that the State of Oklahoma could meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt if charges were brought for prosecution.”

The fight, which took place in a girls’ bathroom, gained national attention after Nex’s death sparked outrage from gay and transgender rights groups. They linked the death to the physical altercation and to what family members said was bullying at school.

Earlier this month, the state medical examiner released the results of its investigation and found that Nex had died from the “combined toxicity” of diphenhydramine, an antihistamine often used for allergies, and fluoxetine, a drug often used to treat depression. The autopsy found no evidence of any internal injuries from the fight, Mr. Kunzweiler wrote. The medical examiner’s office listed the manner of death as suicide.

“A key part of the Owasso Police Department’s investigation was the discovery of several brief notes written by Benedict that appeared to be related to the suicide,” the district attorney wrote.

He added that the notes “do not make any reference to the previous argument or difficulty at school,” but that family members said Nex “had been bullied at school for various reasons.”

The investigation included police interviews with seven students and six school employees, Mr. Kunzweiler wrote. He said the parents of another “two children” did not grant an interview or were “in the process of consulting with a lawyer.”

The two groups of students involved in the fight, including Nex, did not appear to know each other before they were placed in a “suspension class” together, Mr. Kunzweiler wrote. But he said they “worked against each other in the days leading up to the fight.” According to the public prosecutor, no reports were made to the school.

The bathroom fight lasted less than a minute and began after “comments were made about how Benedict was laughing,” Mr. Kunzweiler wrote, and Nex responded by pouring water on two girls while they were in the bathroom.

In an interview with a police officer later that day from a hospital bed, Nex described the altercation: “They grabbed my hair. I grabbed them. I threw one of them into a paper towel dispenser and they pulled my legs out from under me and put me on the ground,” Nex said in a video of the interview released by police. “My friends tried to jump in and help, but I’m not sure, I blacked out.”

An attorney representing Nex’s family, Jacob Biby, said the family would have no comment on the prosecutor’s decision.

Mr. Kunzweiler said in his letter that fights were unfortunately common and not all led to criminal charges. He called Nex’s death a tragedy.

“The reasons why someone commits suicide do not provide answers for those left behind,” he wrote.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Edgar Sandoval reporting contributed.

Former President Donald J. Trump the Supreme Court urged Tuesday to rule that he is absolutely immune from criminal charges stemming from his efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot maintain its vital independence,” the letter said, “if the President faces criminal charges for official acts as soon as he leaves office.”

The letter, Trump’s most significant submission to the justices before the case is heard on April 25, continued to push for an expansive understanding of presidential immunity, an understanding that the report said was required by the structure of the Constitution itself.

“The issue of a former president’s criminal immunity raises serious constitutional questions that go to the heart of the separation of powers,” the letter said.

Legal experts said Trump was unlikely to prevail, but added that how and when the court rejects his arguments will essentially determine if and when Trump’s trial, which had been scheduled to begin on March 4, will continue.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last month, it set a so-called accelerated timetable. But it did not move particularly quickly and culminated in oral arguments some seven weeks later, on April 25. That delay marked an important partial victory for Mr. Trump.

Even if the court were to then move with considerable speed and issue a categorical decision against Mr. Trump within a month, the trial would most likely not begin until the fall, well into the heart of the presidential campaign. If the court does not rule until the end of June or sends the case back to the lower courts for further investigation into the scope of any immunity, the trial cannot take place until after the elections.

If Mr. Trump wins the election, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, it said it would decide this question: “Whether, and if so, to what extent a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct incidental to official acts while in office to go.”

That sentence has been scrutinized. On the one hand, Mr. Trump’s argument that his acquittal at his second impeachment trial, on charges of incitement of insurrection, blocked any prosecution on similar charges appeared to be ignored. (Fifty-seven senators voted against him, ten short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.)

On the other hand, it seemed to leave open the possibility that the court would distinguish – or ask lower courts to do so – between official acts and private acts.

Mr. Trump was sharply critical of a ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which unanimously rejected his argument that he might not be prosecuted for actions he took while in office.

The appeals court panel, made up of one Republican and two Democratic appointees, said Trump has become an ordinary citizen in the eyes of the criminal law after leaving office.

“For the purposes of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive branch immunity that may have protected him while he was president no longer protects him from this prosecution.”

When the case was argued before the appeals court, a lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that former presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution, even for assassinations they ordered while in office.

In the new letter, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said the court should be wary of approving prosecutions of former presidents. “Criminal prosecutions pose a deadly threat to the independence of the presidency,” they wrote, adding that a contrary ruling could lead to the prosecution of President Biden.

“Is President Biden destroying our southern border and undermining our national security abroad for unlawful election purposes?” the boy asked.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump, elaborated on his arguments a short filed at an earlier stage of the proceedings, citing its attempts to undermine democracy.

If Trump’s “radical claim were accepted,” Smith wrote, “it would upend the understanding of presidential responsibility that has prevailed throughout history while undermining democracy and the rule of law—especially when, as here, a former president would be accused of committing crimes to remain in power despite losing an election, thereby attempting to undermine constitutional procedures for the transfer of power and disenfranchising millions of voters.”

Mr. Smith added that there is no reason to fear prosecutions that would prevent other presidents from taking decisive action.

“That dystopian vision runs counter to the checks and balances built into our institutions and the framework of the Constitution,” Mr. Smith wrote.

Brazil’s federal police have recommended that former President Jair Bolsonaro face criminal charges in connection with a scheme to forge his Covid-19 vaccination card, in part to travel to the United States during the pandemic.

If federal prosecutors decide to pursue charges, it would be the first time the former president has faced criminal charges.

This is a development story.

A Manhattan judge declined Thursday to dismiss bribery and other charges against New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez on the grounds that they violate constitutional protections afforded to members of Congress.

The ruling does not address other grounds that Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, cited in his request to dismiss the charges against him, which are still pending in court.

Mr. Menendez could appeal the ruling, which could delay his trial for months. The start is currently scheduled for May 6.

Lawyers for Mr. Menendez had asked the Federal District Court judge, Sidney H. Stein, to dismiss the indictment, arguing that overzealous prosecutors criminalized the normal activities of lawmakers and ignored the protections given to members of Congress under what is known as the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution.

Lawyers for Mr. Menendez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Just about every state in America has cracked down on fentanyl distribution, increasing arrests and prison sentences. But few places are as aggressive as Riverside County, California, in prosecuting people who supply deadly strains of fentanyl.

Since late 2021, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin has charged 34 suspected fentanyl suppliers with murder and is believed to be the first prosecutor in California to secure a guilty verdict from a jury in a fentanyl-related murder case.

“People are being devastated by this drug,” said Mr. Hestrin, who was a district attorney in Riverside County, a vast area east of Los Angeles, for nine years.

Riverside County has a reputation for aggressively prosecuting crimes (a “prosecutor’s paradise,” one local attorney calls it). And like Riverside, some other counties — such as San Diego and Placer, near Sacramento — that have also filed murder charges against fentanyl suppliers have significant numbers of conservative-leaning voters who prefer more punitive approaches to crime.

But even in liberal bastion San Francisco, the district attorney’s office has been preparing to investigate fentanyl deaths as possible homicides, which would mark a sea change in the city’s approach to drug-related crimes.

The prosecution of street dealers is seen by some critics as a misguided return to the aggressive approach of the 1990s, which failed to curb drug use and expanded the number of state prisons to house low-level distributors and people addicted to drugs.

“Using the same strategy we used in the 1990s and suggesting it will be appropriate and effective in 2024 is not the argument of any thinking person,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, founder of Prosecutors Alliance, which advocates a progressive approach to criminal justice. criminal justice in California.

Moreover, such prosecutions in California rest on unclear legal ground, experts say, because prosecutors have worked around the fact that California has no law specifically allowing fentanyl deaths to be charged as murder.

But even amid this legal uncertainty, such prosecutions are gaining momentum across California, reflecting the public’s fears about fentanyl, one of the leading causes of death in the United States.

Federal prosecutors can charge someone with distributing fentanyl causing death, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. But federal authorities don’t have the ability to pursue every street dealer, leaving state and local officials to come up with their own responses to what has become a nationwide public health crisis.

Many of the fentanyl cases prosecuted in California involved people who thought they were purchasing painkillers such as Oxycodone or Percocet, but ended up receiving pills containing fentanyl. Illegal drugs such as cocaine are also mixed with fentanyl, which is cheap to produce and highly addictive.

Prosecutors say if they can prove a suspected dealer knew the drugs contained fentanyl and could be deadly, they could charge the person with murder.

But unlike many other states, California does not have a law classifying fentanyl deaths as homicide. So in filing murder charges, prosecutors got creative and borrowed a legal theory used to prosecute drunk drivers.

It’s called the Watson Murder Rule, named after a California drunk driving case dating back more than forty years in which courts ruled that if a person knowingly ignores the dangers of drunk driving and kills someone, it can be a crime to murder.

In Riverside County, people who prosecutors say knew the drugs they sold or dispensed were deadly and supplied them anyway have been charged under the same theory of second-degree murder.

Prosecutors are looking at text messages and other communications to show that the person who supplied the fentanyl was aware of the risks. But this evidence can be difficult to find because the person does not always express that knowledge in writing.

Defense attorneys say this definition of murder is overbroad and unconstitutional because the California Legislature has not created a law classifying fentanyl deaths as murder.

“Is it murder if you sell someone a pack of cigarettes, because you know that cigarettes can kill?” said Michael Duncan, a Riverside County attorney representing a man sentenced in November to 15 years to life in prison for supplying fentanyl to a 26-year-old woman, Kelsey King.

A jury found Mr. Duncan’s client, Vicente David Romero, guilty of first-degree murder. Prosecutors said this was the first time a jury in California convicted someone of a fentanyl-related murder charge.

Prosecutors said Mr. Romero split a pill he knew contained fentanyl with Ms. King. Mr Duncan said his client had sought help for Ms King, which was not behavior consistent with murder.

Mr. Romero’s conviction is being appealed.

“The power to define the crime of murder belongs to the legislature,” Mr. Duncan said. “Not in court and not in Mr. Hestrin’s office.”

Of the 34 cases in which murder charges have been filed in connection with fentanyl deaths in Riverside County, Mr. Romero’s is the only one that has resulted in a murder conviction by a jury. In another case, a jury found the suspect guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Six other cases have resulted in plea agreements reducing the charge to voluntary manslaughter. There are still 24 cases pending.

In San Francisco, fentanyl is a volatile issue in a city that has historically taken a progressive approach to illegal drugs, emphasizing treatment and rehabilitation over prison.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who was appointed in 2022 after her progressive predecessor Chesa Boudin was recalled by voters frustrated by crime in San Francisco, is taking a tougher line against dealers.

In an interview, she said not every overdose death — there were about 800 last year — could be investigated as a potential homicide because of limited resources and lack of evidence.

But Ms. Jenkins said filing murder charges, even in a few cases, would send the message that “we will not let you get away with killing our most vulnerable.”

Ms. Jenkins said a task force of prosecutors and police officers is being trained in building a murder case and that she did not expect them to be ready to file charges until this summer.

In San Diego County, District Attorney Summer Stephan said she had filed homicide charges sparingly — against a total of four people since 2017 — compared to lesser charges in the roughly 500 fentanyl sales cases her office handled last year.

Even if the dealer is not charged, Ms. Stephan said, she wants to be able to provide the families of the deceased with as much information as possible.

“These families feel like their souls have been ripped from their chests,” she said. “They want to know what happened.”

Parents whose children died from fentanyl are a driving force behind new laws and intensified prosecutions, just as the parents of drunk driving victims decades ago pushed the nation to crack down on alcohol-related traffic deaths.

Mr. Hestrin, the Riverside County prosecutor, said his decision to pursue a murder charge was prompted by his conversations with a local parent, Matt Capelouto, whose 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra, died in December 2019 from fentanyl. In college, she took half a pill that she thought was Oxycodone. But it was a counterfeit pill containing a lethal dose of fentanyl.

Mr. Capelouto, who owns a printing company in the Riverside County city of Temecula, said he was initially told by investigators that his daughter’s death appeared to be an accidental overdose and that no foul play was suspected.

Mr. Capelouto requested a meeting with Mr. Hestrin.

“He asked me, ‘Why isn’t my daughter’s death murder?'” Mr. Hestrin recalled. “And my answer was, ‘I don’t have a good answer.’”

Mr. Capelouto is now president of an advocacy group, DrugInducedHomicide.org, that pushes states to crack down on street-level drug trafficking.

Mr. Hestrin’s investigators could not find enough evidence to show that the person who sold Ms. Capelouto the pills knew they contained fentanyl and that the pills were fatal — elements necessary to prove second-degree murder.

The dealer was eventually charged in federal court, where penalties for selling fentanyl are harsh. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to possession of fentanyl with intent to deliver and was sentenced to nine years in prison. As part of the plea deal, he admitted knowing the pills contained fentanyl or an “other federally controlled substance.”

“We cannot get ahead of this situation until we can hold drug dealers accountable,” Mr. Capelouto said.

Kirsten Noyes reporting contributed.

Three men have been charged with firearms trafficking and other crimes as part of the investigation into the shooting that marred a Super Bowl victory celebration in Kansas City, Missouri, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

One person was killed and more than 20 were injured in the Feb. 14 shooting after an argument turned violent and at least six people opened fire just as the gathering dispersed near Union Station, authorities said.

Days later, two teenagers were charged with resisting arrest and “weapon-related” crimes. In late February, two Missouri men, Lyndell Mays, 23, and Dominic Miller, 18, were charged with murder.

Three men from Kansas City, Missouri, now face multiple federal charges after investigators determined that at least two of the guns found at the shooting scene were illegally purchased or traded.

Fedo Antonia Manning, 21, was charged with conspiracy to traffic firearms, engaging in the sale of firearms without a license and lying on a federal form. Ronnel Dewayne Williams Jr., 21, and Chaelyn Hendrick Groves, 19, were jointly charged with making false statements in the acquisition of firearms. Mr. Williams and Mr. Groves were each separately charged with lying to a federal agent.

It was not clear whether any of the men had retained lawyers.

There is no evidence the men were among those who opened fire during the parade, prosecutors said. But investigators say they were involved in the purchase of straw from some of the recovered firearms, meaning they were purchasing a firearm for someone who was not legally eligible to purchase one.

“These cases underscore the importance of enforcing federal firearms laws,” said Teresa Moore, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. said in a statement. “Stopping straw buyers and preventing illegal firearms trafficking is our first line of defense against gun violence.”

According to prosecutors, Mr. Manning bought dozens of firearms, including some that ended up in the hands of people who were not allowed to own guns. Among those weapons was a handgun recovered during the shooting. The weapon’s magazine, which can hold up to 30 bullets, contained only 26 when investigators found it, indicating some bullets may have been fired.

In a separate complaint, prosecutors said that at a gun show in November, Mr. Williams bought a gun for Mr. Groves, who was too young to legally buy a firearm. That weapon was also found at the shooting site.

The Feb. 14 shooting sent thousands of parade goers running for cover, turning a joyful day for the region into one of tragedy.

Ballistics tests showed that a bullet from Mr. Miller’s gun killed 43-year-old Elizabeth Galvan, a DJ and radio host known as Lisa, who was at the party with her family. Nine children were among those who suffered gunshot wounds. Mr. Miller and Mr. Mays were also both shot during the gunfire.

In a surprise move, an Atlanta judge on Wednesday threw out six of the charges against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in the sprawling Georgia election interference case, including one related to a call by Mr. Trump for pressure to practice on the Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs. is available at the beginning of January 2021.

The judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court, left intact the remainder of the racketeering indictment, which initially included 41 counts.

The ruling did not address a defense effort to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney who is leading the case. A ruling on the issue, which made headlines for weeks after it emerged that Ms. Willis was in a romantic relationship with another accuser, is expected by the end of the week.

Wednesday’s nine-page ruling focused on charges alleging that Mr. Trump and other defendants asked government officials to break the law. For example, one indictment accused Trump of soliciting Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office by, in the judge’s words, “requesting or urging him to unlawfully decertify the election.”

“These six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes, but do not provide sufficient detail as to the nature of their mission,” Judge McAfee wrote in his ruling. “They do not provide the defendants with sufficient information to intelligently prepare their defense, as the defendants could have violated the Constitution and therefore the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways.”

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said the ruling does not weaken the lingering charge of state racketeering, which is central to the case. That charge is based on “overt acts” detailed in the indictment, and the judge explicitly stated that Wednesday’s order does not affect those acts.

He said the prosecutor could choose to take the loss on these smaller counts, or appeal the judge’s order, or resubmit versions of the challenged charges to a grand jury with more details.

The judge’s order reduced the number of charges against Mr. Trump, as well as co-defendants Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Ray Smith III and Robert Cheeley.