Calif. Gop Puts Turn-around Hopes In Ex-lawmaker

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MIAMI -— So, Jimmy Butler is still unhappy and still doesn’t want to play for the Miami Heat? Fine. Don’t make him. Have him stay home waiting for news of a trade rather than put a home crowd through more nonsense like Friday night. Please, spare us the charade of Butler on the court in body, but not competitive spirit, as his first-half stat line showed in his return from a seven-game suspension: Seventeen minutes, eight points, no rebounds, no assists, no fouls, no blocks, no steals, no turnovers, and no interest at all in being part of the game. It didn’t matter if he finished with 18 points, three rebounds and two assists in a blowout loss to Denver, 133-113.

The Hurricanes recruited Xavier Lucas when he was a standout cornerback at American Heritage, but Lucas ultimately chose Wisconsin. After a year with the Badgers, Lucas wanted to enter the transfer portal because his father was suffering from a “serious, life-threatening” illness, his lawyer, Darren Heitner, told Yahoo Sports. Miami, his hometown team, was the obvious destination.

MIAMI – Ahead of Friday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets at Kaseya Center, Erik Spoelstra offered an opening comment about the return of forward Jimmy Butler from his seven-game team unpaid suspension. That also included acknowledging that Butler would be returning to the team’s starting lineup. “Look, we work in a league of complexity,” Spoelstra began.

Louis Bianculli expected to be in and out of custody this week after he pleaded guilty to charges of sexual battery against a family member and video voyeurism against a woman who accused him of raping her in the 1990s. The victims in both cases were minors. But there’s a chance Bianculli, 78, won’t be a free man anytime soon: According to the Broward State Attorney’s Office, the former Fort Lauderdale pet shop owner is being evaluated for civil commitment under the Jimmy Ryce Act, a move the defense characterized as a way of depriving Bianculli of his freedom after he was promised he would not be going back to jail or prison. “This whole process of negotiating a plea has been dishonest,” said Herbert Cohen, one of Bianculli’s lawyers.

A Lake Worth Beach woman was sentenced Wednesday to 24 years in federal prison for her role in selling fentanyl to a mother whose infant ingested the drug and died in Boynton Beach in 2022. Samantha Yi, 31, and her then-boyfriend Darnell Mendez, 32, packaged, prepared and distributed fentanyl together and regularly sold the deadly, potent drug to the 10-month-old girl’s mother and father, according to federal court records. Yi had communicated with the baby’s mother the day before and on the same day that the infant ingested a deadly amount of the drug, according to a factual proffer in the case, the facts agreed on by the defense and prosecutors.