MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama has scheduled a second execution with nitrogen gas, months after the state became the first to put a person to death with the previously untested method.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey set a Sept. 26 execution date for Alan Eugene Miller, who was convicted of killing three men during a 1999 workplace shooting. The execution will be carried out by nitrogen gas, the governor’s office said. Miller survived a 2022 lethal injection attempt.

The governor’s action comes a week after the Alabama Supreme Court authorized the execution.

In January, Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Smith. Smith shook and convulsed in seizure-like movements for several minutes on a gurney as he was put to death Jan. 25.

A nitrogen hypoxia execution causes death by forcing the inmate to breathe pure nitrogen, depriving him or her of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions. Alabama and some other states have looked for new ways to execute inmates because the drugs used in lethal injections, the most common execution method in the United States, are increasingly difficult to find.

Miller has an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the execution method as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, citing witness descriptions of Smith’s death.

“Rather than address these failures, the State of Alabama has attempted to maintain secrecy and avoid public scrutiny, in part by misrepresenting what happened in this botched execution,” the lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. It is anticipated that his attorneys will ask a federal judge to block the execution from going forward.

Attorney General Steve Marshall maintained that Smith’s execution was “textbook” and said the state will seek to carry out more death sentences using nitrogen gas.

State attorneys added that Miller has been on death row since 2000 and that it is time to carry out his sentence.

Miller, a delivery truck driver, was convicted of killing Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy in the workplace shootings.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration plans to propose a new rule Thursday aimed at speeding up the asylum claims process for some migrants — a potential prelude to broader actions from President Joe Biden later this year that would impose a bigger crackdown at the border.

It’s meant to affect migrants with criminal records or those who would otherwise be eventually deemed ineligible for asylum in the United States. The proposal, which the Department of Homeland Security plans to announce on Thursday, was confirmed by four people familiar with its contents who were granted anonymity to detail plans not yet public.

Under current law, a migrant who arrives at the border and undergoes an initial screening for “credible fear” — one criterion for asylum — is allowed to continue with the process even if they have a criminal background or would pose a security risk. A judge would later determine whether that migrant would be eligible for asylum.

The change would effectively let an officer at the initial screening stage make that determination, rather than waiting for a judge, according to the people. The people also said the proposal affects a relatively small universe of migrants and those who would not be qualified to receive asylum protections anyway.

But despite those caveats, immigration advocates have previously raised questions about any changes to the credible fear process, saying that migrants are often doing these interviews immediately after surviving life-threatening perilous trips to get to the U.S.

Because of this, initial interviews are designed to have a relatively lower bar so that migrants aren’t wrongfully deported, they say. And they’ve questioned how much legal help migrants who are in custody can actually get in order to prepare them for this key first step toward an asylum claim.

It will likely be months before Thursday’s proposal, which was first reported by Politico, would actually go into effect. Biden continues to mull larger executive action on the border, whose timing depends in large part on whether the number of illegal border crossings increases — they have been steadily decreasing since December.

The proposed rule also comes amid pressure from fellow Democrats and immigrant rights advocates to support immigrants already in the United States.

Janet Murguía, the president of UnidosUS, a civil rights advocacy organization, said she met with Biden last week at the White House with other Latino leaders to push for relief for immigrants who do not have legal status but have been in the United States for years.

“I believe that President Biden is open to this notion that he can do something. He asked for more specifics,” Murguía said. “We’re going to make the case in the White House. We’re going to make the case here in the Capitol, across the country, in every community.”

At a news conference Wednesday, Latino and progressive congressional Democrats expressed frustration at the idea that the White House would clamp down on the border without also assisting immigrants who crossed the border illegally as children.

“Mr. President, we know what’s in your heart. Let’s reject the extremist messaging vilifying immigrants. Let’s embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and provide relief for the long-term residents of the United States,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.

The lawmakers are calling for the Biden administration to provide relief from deportation to spouses and other family members of U.S. citizens, as well as extended temporary protected status, which allows people from countries ravaged by disaster and war to live and work legally in the United States.

At the same time, Democrats, especially those in political swing states, are encouraging the White House to take unilateral action to curtail border crossings.

In the Senate, Democrats are considering whether to put a series of border proposals to a vote in order to show that Republicans are opposed to swifter border enforcement. And in the House, 15 Democrats penned a letter to the White House this week encouraging executive actions.

“We need to make sure that we are adjudicating those who are coming across just as quickly as possible, specifically around sort of administrative judges being down at the southern border,” said Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat who led the letter. “And I do think there’s a limit to the number of people who we can accept into our nation on an asylum claim. At the end of the day, we cannot have a border where an unlimited amount of people can simply cross.”

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Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and family members of an Ohio man who died in police custody told mourners at his funeral on Wednesday that they and the community must fight to see that he gets justice.

Sharpton gave the eulogy for Frank Tyson, a 53-year-old East Canton resident, during the service at the Hear The Word Ministries church in Canton. Tyson died April 18 after he was handcuffed and left facedown on the floor of a social club while telling officers he couldn’t breathe.

“You can’t give us Frank back, but you can do justice for this family,” Sharpton said. “This is an assault on all us … stand up for the Franks of this word, because if they can get away with what they did to Frank, they’ll do it to you.”

Tyson’s longtime partner, Sabrina Jones, noted that Tyson had been in prison for many years and was released less than two weeks before he died. She and members of his family had worked over the years on efforts to exonerate Tyson, who had long maintained his innocence.

“We only had 13 days with him (after his release) before they took his life away,” Jones said during the service, struggling to keep her composure at times. “It’s hard, this is hard. I want justice for Frank.”

Bodycam video released by police shows Tyson resisted while being handcuffed and said repeatedly, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff,” as he was taken to the floor.

Tyson, who was Black, was taken into custody shortly after a vehicle crash that had severed a utility pole. Police body-camera footage showed that after a passing motorist directed officers to the bar, a woman opened the door and said: “Please get him out of here, now.”

Police restrained Tyson — including with a knee on his back — and he immediately told officers he could not breathe. A recent Associated Press investigation found those words — “I can’t breathe” — had been disregarded in other cases of deaths in police custody.

Officers told Tyson he was fine, to calm down and to stop fighting as he was handcuffed facedown with his legs crossed on the carpeted floor. Police were joking with bystanders and leafing through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis.

Five minutes after the body-camera footage recorded Tyson saying “I can’t breathe,” one officer asked another if Tyson had calmed down. The other replied, “He might be out.”

The two Canton officers involved, who are white, have been placed on paid administrative leave.

Tyson was released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years on a kidnapping and theft case and was almost immediately declared a post-release control supervision violator for failing to report to a parole officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation said in a statement last month that its probe will not determine if force was justified and that the prosecuting attorney or a grand jury will decide if charges related to the use of force are warranted.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers vowed they were going to rein in tax breaks for businesses this year.

Their efforts came to nothing.

Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday vetoed a two-year pause in a sales tax exemption the state gives for building and equipping computer data centers, after an intensive lobbying effort to preserve the tax break.

Kemp’s veto shows how hard it is to root out established tax breaks, said lawmakers and national experts.

“Any time you create a carve-out in your tax code, you then create a self-interested lobby around it,” said Greg LeRoy, the executive director of Good Jobs First, a liberal-leaning group long skeptical of economic development incentives.

The Republican governor wrote that he was vetoing House Bill 1192 because businesses had already made plans for data centers using the exemption and that the “abrupt” July 1 freeze would undermine “the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”

The dispute in Georgia mirrors fights in other states including Virginia, where the rising number of data centers is sparking a backlash, and in Arkansas, where lawmakers are moving to impose new restrictions on data centers that mine cryptocurrency.

In Georgia, some people are pushing the city of Atlanta to ban data centers near transit stations and the Beltline walking trail, as well as to stop offering local property tax abatements atop the state sales tax break. Although local jurisdictions benefit from property taxes on investments that can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, data centers typically support few jobs.

Freezing the data-center tax exemption was the only bill that advanced following a a monthslong review of all the tax breaks that Georgia offers to various industries Lawmakers earlier gutted and then discarded an effort to cap the $1.35 billion Georgia spends on income tax credits subsidizing movie and television production.

So many data centers are opening or expanding in the state that it is causing a notable drain on the power grid, leading Georgia Power Co. to say it quickly needs to build or contract for new electrical generation capacity. The International Energy Agency says electrical consumption from data centers worldwide could double by 2026, calling for a focus on efficiency.

Georgia Power says new users will more than pay for the additional generating capacity that public service commissioners approved last month, putting downward pressure on bills for other users. But others are wary of those claims because of a climb in electrical bills in recent years.

Environmental groups are among those seeking to curb the tax exemption because Georgia Power’s new plants would be fueled by natural gas, increasing fossil fuel emissions. Environmental groups also worry about how much water data centers use to cool their computers.

“Giving data centers a tax break without investigating their impact on our environment and billpayers is shortsighted,” Jennette Gayer, director of Environment Georgia, said in a statement.

The bill would have created a committee to study the impact of data centers on the electrical grid.

A 2022 review of the sales tax exemption by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government projects the state will forgo $307 million more from 2024 through 2030 than it will collect from sales taxes on data center construction and operations. For example, the state is projected to forgo $44 million in revenue this year but only get $13 million back from other sales taxes.

The failure also raises questions about Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ long-term goal of further cutting Georgia’s state income tax rate for all residents and businesses. He wants to shore up other tax revenue to offset those cuts.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, a Rome Republican who has spearheaded efforts to scrutinize tax breaks, said lawmakers could revisit the data center tax break next year. He said that he has in part focused on keeping new exemptions from becoming law.

“It’s disappointing that we moved that slow, but it will be a continuing process as we look at these,” Hufstetler said. “I think it’s extra difficult to get them out.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young Black lawyers and law students are taking on a new role ahead of the general election: Meeting with Black voters in battleground states to increase turnout and serve as watchdogs against voter disenfranchisement.

The Young Black Lawyers’ Organizing Coalition has recruited lawyers and law students and is sending them to Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas to meet with Black voters, aiming to better understand the barriers that the historically disadvantaged voting bloc faces when registering to vote and accessing the ballot.

The recruits are leading educational focus groups with an ambitious goal: restoring fatigued Black voters’ faith in American democracy.

“I think what makes us unique is that we’re new messengers,” said Abdul Dosunmu, a civil rights lawyer who founded YBLOC. “We have never thought about the Black lawyer as someone who is uniquely empowered to be messengers for civic empowerment.”

Dosunmu, who shared the coalition’s plans exclusively with The Associated Press, said recruits will combat apathy among Black voters by listening, rather than telling them why their participation is crucial. The focus groups will inform “a blueprint for how to make democracy work for our communities,” he said.

According to a Pew Research Center report, in 2023, just 21% of Black adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time. That’s up from a low of 9% during the Trump administration. For white adults, the numbers were reversed: 26% of white adults expressed such trust in 2020, dropping to 13% during the Biden administration.

The first stop on the four-state focus group tour was Michigan in February. This month, YBLOC plans to stop in Texas and then North Carolina. Venues for the focus groups have included barbershops, churches and union halls.

Alyssa Whitaker, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law, said she got involved because she is dissatisfied with the relationship Black communities have with their democracy.

“Attorneys, we know the law,” Whitaker said. “We’ve been studying this stuff and we’re deep in the weeds. So, having that type of knowledge and expertise, I do believe there is some level of a responsibility to get involved.”

In Detroit, Grand Rapids and Pontiac, Michigan, the recruits heard about a wide variety of challenges and grievances. Black voters said they don’t feel heard or validated and are exasperated over the lack of options on the ballot.

Despite their fatigue, the voters said they remain invested in the political process.

“It was great to see that, even if people were a bit more pessimistic in their views, people were very engaged and very knowledgeable about what they were voting for,” said another recruit, Awa Nyambi, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law.

It’s a shame that ever since Black people were guaranteed the right to vote, they’ve had to pick “the lesser of two evils” on their ballots, said Tameka Ramsey, interim executive director of the Michigan Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

“But that’s so old,” said Ramsey, whose group was inspired by the February event and has begun holding its own listening sessions.

These young lawyers are proving the importance of actually listening to varying opinions in the Black community, said Felicia Davis, founder of the HBCU Green Fund, a non-profit organization aimed at driving social justice and supporting sustainable infrastructure for historically Black colleges and universities.

YBLOC is “teaching and reawakening the elements of organizing 101,” she said.

The experience also is informing how the lawyers navigate their careers, said Tyra Beck, a second-year student at The New York University School of Law.

“It’s personal to me because I’m currently in a constitutional law class,” Beck said.

Kahaari Kenyatta, a first-year student also at The New York University School of Law, said the experience has reminded him why he got into law.

“You care about this democracy and civil engagement,” Kenyatta said. “I’m excited to work with YBLOC again, whatever that looks like.”

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The Associated Press’ coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York man who murdered a homeless person and wounded two others as they slept outdoors on park benches in a stabbing spree over several nights in July 2022 was sentenced to between 25 years and life in prison on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Trevon Murphy, 42, had pleaded guilty in January to one count of murder in the second degree and two counts of attempted murder for the attacks.

“New Yorkers who face the painful and difficult experience of being unhoused shouldn’t have to simultaneously fear for their safety,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the chief prosecutor for Manhattan, said in a statement.

On three separate occasions between July 5 and July 11, 2022, Murphy approached his victims as they slept in city parks at night and stabbed them in the lower abdomen.

In the first attack, in Manhattan’s Hudson River Park, Murphy’s victim, a 34-year-old man, died in a nearby hospital. The two other men, one of whom was attacked in a midtown park, the other in an Upper East Side playground, survived serious injuries.

A defense lawyer for Murphy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

BOSTON (AP) — A highly anticipated trial began in Massachusetts last week involving a woman accused of striking her Boston police officer boyfriend with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowbank.

John O’Keefe died in the Boston suburb of Canton on Jan. 29, 2022.

The case has garnered national attention because the defense alleges that state and local law enforcement officials framed Karen Read and allowed the real killer to go free.

A look at the facts and legal arguments:

For the past few days, Read’s defense team has focused heavily on connections between police and the family that owned the home in the Boston suburb of Canton where O’Keefe’s body was found. They are trying to argue that these relationships biased the investigation and blinded state and local law enforcement officials to the possibility that someone else killed the 46-year-old O’Keefe.

Defense attorneys first went after Katie McLaughlin, a firefighter who responded to the scene and who had been friends with family member Caitlin Albert. The house was owned at the time by Albert’s father, Boston Police Officer Brian Albert.

McLaughlin confirmed on Friday that she and Caitlin Albert went to high school together, were friends on social media and were photographed together at a local beach about a decade ago. But she insisted they were only acquaintances and that she didn’t know it was Albert’s home when she responded to the call. She also said she hadn’t talked to Albert for a few years.

Read’s defense attorney Alan Jackson repeatedly tried to show that the pair were closer than McLaughlin wanted to admit, pointing out other beach photos in which the two appeared together.

By Monday, he and other defense attorneys were doubling down on that connection.

Before the jury arrived, the attorneys told Judge Beverly Cannone that they had received many more photos over the weekend of McLaughlin and Caitlin Albert together, including at a baby shower. They also learned the two had been on the track team together in high school. Cannone said she would address the issue later.

Defense attorneys also questioned Canton Police Lt. Paul Gallagher, the first witness up Monday, asking him why he didn’t search the family home for any physical evidence. They noted that pieces of a broken cocktail glass had been found outside the house, and indicated that similar pieces might have been found inside the house with a search.

Did police not conduct a search “because that house belonged to a Boston police officer?” Jackson asked Gallagher.

Gallagher responded that a search would have required probable cause, which he said police didn’t have.

Jackson then asked Gallagher if the reason that Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz recused himself from the investigation “was because of the relationship between the Albert family and the Canton police department?”

Gallagher said no, that it was because a brother of Brian Albert works in the Canton police’s investigative unit.

On Tuesday, the defense focused on the relationship that Canton Police Lt. Michael Lank had with Brian Albert’s brother Christopher Albert, a high school classmate.

Lank said he had been drinking off duty one night in 2002 when Christopher Albert approached him for help, saying he had been in a scuffle earlier, and that “some threats had been made to him and his family.”

Defense attorneys suggested Lank helped Albert because of their long friendship but he denied it.

“It was me coming to the aid of a citizen who was terrified and scared for him and his family on that night who happened to be Chris Albert,” he told the court.

Read and O’Keefe had been to two bars the night of the officer’s death, and were then headed to a party in nearby Canton, police said. Read said she did not feel well and decided not to attend, they said. Once at the home, O’Keefe got out of Read’s vehicle, and while she made a three-point turn, she struck him and then drove away, according to prosecutors.

Read later became frantic when she couldn’t reach O’Keefe, returned to the party, and along with two friends found his body covered in snow, the prosecutors said.

So far, they are leaning into Read’s comments at the scene, including testimony from several first responders who recalled Read telling them loudly and repeatedly that she “hit him,” though she never said it was with her SUV. They also have put witnesses on the stand who have testified that the couple had a strained relationship.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As it targets Hamas’ underground tunnels in Gaza, Israel has relied on powerful 2,000-pound bombs provided by the United States. But now those deliveries are on hold.

The U.S. is pausing a shipment of 1,800 of the bombs, as well as 1,700 500-pound bombs, U.S. officials said. The decision comes as Israel is planning an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in an attempt to root out the final elements of Hamas.

With more than 1 million refugees sheltering in Rafah, U.S. officials are concerned the bombs could inflict massive casualties. Human rights groups have long said that Israel’s use of powerful bombs has caused the indiscriminate killings of civilians.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate panel Wednesday that smaller, more precise weapons are needed for a densely populated area like Rafah.

Still, he made clear the decision wasn’t final.

“We’re going to continue to do what’s necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself,” Austin said. “But that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.”

A look at the 2,000-pound bomb and why there’s so much concern about its use in Rafah.

While the U.S. has dropped 2,000-pound bombs off its aircraft since World War II, current versions date back to the Vietnam War. It’s an air-dropped munition, one that can carry a higher payload because it doesn’t have an engine. It’s one of the larger munitions in the U.S. inventory, said Ryan Brobst, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power.

The 2,000-pound bomb has multiple variants — some are designed to penetrate deep, underground targets while others detonate above ground and cause widespread damage. Depending on the variant, and whether the munition is dropped in an open or urban area, its blast radius can be as far as a quarter mile away or a much more confined area.

The bombs are “dumb” or unguided bombs but can be turned into more precise weapons with the addition of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, or JDAM kits which add a tail fin and navigation.

That added kit enables troops to guide the munition to a target, rather than simply dropping it from a fighter jet onto the ground. The kits make the weapons more precise, but in a densely populated urban environment, a JDAM kit is not going to make much of a difference — a precise hit will still have the reach to kill unintended bystanders.

U.S. fighter jets, bombers and drones can all fire the JDAMs, and the U.S. began providing the munitions to Ukraine in 2022, a slightly modified version that could be launched from Ukrainian aircraft. After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the U.S. provided 2,000-pound munitions to Israel to assist in its defense.

And unlike other types of munitions in the U.S. inventory, the military has an ample supply of them, so providing them doesn’t involve the same type of stockpile pressures the U.S. has with other more limited munitions like the 155mm artillery rounds.

The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the 2,000-pound bombs have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

Brobst said the 2,000-pound bombs are still needed to assist Israel in striking Hamas’ tunnel network in Rafah.

Wes Bryant, a weapons expert and retired American Air Force master sergeant who served on an independent task force for the State and Defense Departments on Israel’s use of weapons in Gaza, said that the pause would be a “huge hit” to the Israeli arsenal.

The 2,000- and 500-pound bombs are some of the main munitions used by Israel in its seven-month war campaign, Bryant said.

“They have been burning right through them,” said Bryant. He said the munitions are made by major American weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Northrop, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and General Atomics.

A report compiled by the independent task force for the State and Defense Departments last month said U.S. sources informed one of its members that 300,000 munitions had been dropped on or fired in Gaza during the first six months of the war.

It cited “credible” media investigations that in the first month of the Israeli campaign alone, there were at least 500 craters in Gaza consistent with the use of 2,000-pound bombs.

The potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah, where more than 1 million people have sheltered because they have nowhere else to go, has drawn significant administration concern.

At the hearing, Austin questioned whether the 2,000-pound bomb was the right tool for the Rafah operation.

“It’s about having the right kinds of weapons for the task at hand. And a small diameter bomb, which is a precision weapon, that’s very useful in a dense, built-up environment,” said Austin, “but maybe not so much a 2,000-pound bomb that could create a lot of collateral damage.” He said the U.S. wants to see Israel do “more precise” operations.

Israel reacted strongly to the U.S. decision. Its U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the pause “a very disappointing decision, even frustrating,” in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 TV news. He suggested that the move stemmed from political pressure on Biden from Congress, campus protests and the upcoming election.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a murder charge in the death of a man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.

Daniel Rodimer, 45, appeared in court for a brief arraignment. His attorneys, Richard Schonfeld and David Chesnoff, told a state court judge they intend to file documents challenging Rodimer’s indictment in the Halloween party death of Christopher Tapp of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Outside court, Chesnoff told reporters that Rodimer “vigorously denies any responsibility for the allegations.”

Rodimer lives in Texas. He lost Republican bids for Congress in Nevada in 2020 and in Texas in 2021. He surrendered to Las Vegas police for his arrest March 6 and remains free on a $200,000 bail.

A grand jury was told that Tapp was fatally injured when he hit his head on a table after Rodimer attacked him during a dispute about drug use in the presence of Rodimer’s stepdaughter at the party at the Resorts World Las Vegas resort. Tapp died several days later.

Tapp, 47, was the recipient in 2022 of an $11.7 million settlement in a lawsuit stemming from his a wrongful conviction in Idaho in a 1996 killing. He had spent more than 20 years in prison.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A northern Idaho prosecutor won’t bring hate crime charges against an 18-year-old accused of shouting a racist slur at members of the Utah women’s basketball team during the NCAA Tournament.

The deputy attorney for the city of Coeur d’Alene made the announcement on Monday, writing in a charging decision document that though the use of the slur was “detestable” and “incredibly offensive,” there wasn’t evidence suggesting that the man was threatening physical harm to the women or to their property. That means the conduct is protected by the First Amendment and can’t be charged under Idaho’s malicious harassment law, Ryan Hunter wrote.

The members of the University of Utah basketball team were staying at a Coeur d’Alene hotel in March as they competed at the NCAA Tournament in nearby Spokane, Washington. Team members were walking from a hotel to a restaurant when they said a truck drove up and the driver yelled a racist slur at the group. After the team left the restaurant, the same driver returned and was “reinforced by others,” revving their engines and yelling again at the players, said Tony Stewart, an official with the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, during a news conference shortly after the event.

The encounters were so disturbing that they left the group concerned about their safety, Utah coach Lynne Roberts said a few days later.

Far-right extremists have maintained a presence in the region for years. In 2018, at least nine hate groups operated in the region of Spokane and northern Idaho, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We had several instances of some kind of racial hate crimes toward our program and (it was) incredibly upsetting for all of us,” Roberts said. “In our world, in athletics and in university settings, it’s shocking. There’s so much diversity on a college campus and so you’re just not exposed to that very often.”

University of Utah officials declined to comment about the prosecutor’s decision on Wednesday.

In the document detailing the decision, Hunter said police interviewed nearly two dozen witnesses and pored over hours of surveillance video. Several credible witnesses described a racist slur being hurled at the group as they walked to dinner, but their descriptions of the vehicle and the person who shouted the slur varied, and police weren’t able to hear any audio of the yelling on the surveillance tapes.

There also wasn’t any evidence to connect the encounter before the team arrived at the restaurant with what happened as they left, Hunter, wrote. Still, police were able to identify the occupants of a silver passenger vehicle involved in the second encounter, and one of them — an 18-year-old high school student — reportedly confessed to shouting a slur and an obscene statement at the group, Hunter said.

Prosecutors considered whether to bring three possible charges against the man — malicious harassment, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace — but decided they didn’t have enough evidence to support any of the three charges.

That’s because Idaho’s hate crime law only makes racial harassment a crime if it is done with the intent to either threaten or cause physical harm to a person or to their property. The man who shouted the slur told police he did it because he thought it would be funny, Hunter wrote.

“Setting aside the rank absurdity of that claim and the abjectly disgusting thought process required to believe it would be humorous to say something that abhorrent,” it undermines the premise that the man had the specific intent to intimidate and harass, Hunter wrote.

The hateful speech also didn’t meet the requirements of Idaho’s disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace laws, which are mainly about when and where noise or unruly behavior occurs. The slurs were shouted on a busy thoroughfare during the early evening hours, and so the noise level wasn’t unusual for that time and place.

Hunter wrote that his office shares in the outrage sparked by the man’s “abhorrently racist and misogynistic statement, and we join in unequivocally condemning that statement and the use of a racial slur in this case, or in any circumstance. However that cannot, under current law, form the basis for criminal prosecution in this case.”