Lethal injection secrecy being challenged in South Carolina

How much a state secrecy law really hides from the public will be up to the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments Tuesday as part of a broader challenge on executions in South Carolina, reported States Newsroom.

The question arose as part of an ongoing federal lawsuit filed last year by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit as a whole argues the 2023 expansion of the law, which keeps secret almost all information about who carries out executions and how, violates people’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Legislators passed the law to help prison officials buy the drugs needed to carry out executions through lethal injection.

The boundaries of that law is what justices heard arguments on Tuesday. Under the law, violators can be sent to prison for up to three years.

Attorneys for the state and ACLU agreed on one thing: Any information already out in the open can be repeated without fearing arrest.

The secrecy law worked as intended. Four months after its passage, the Department of Corrections announced securing the drugs, and executions resumed in September 2024. Since then, seven men have been put to death. Four chose to die by lethal injection, and three selected the newly added firing squad.

No other death warrants are imminent, as inmates wait on appeals.

Public versus confidential

Under the interpretation attorneys for both sides proposed, only an employee who leaks restricted information about the execution process or the drugs could face punishment.

ACLU seeks halt to SC law that keeps execution information secret

The recipients of that information shouldn’t be liable, as long as they didn’t break any other laws to get it, attorneys said. That would include an employee’s spouse, a reporter writing an article, or an advocate trying to sway public opinion.

“Once the leak has been made, everyone else can keep talking about it,” said Grayson Lambert, an attorney for the governor’s office.

The law was clearly written with that interpretation in mind, said Lambert and Joseph Spate, who works in the attorney general’s office. Otherwise, enforcing the law would be impossible in some situations.

If, for instance, members of the execution team identify themselves in a viral social media post, the attorney general’s office couldn’t possibly go after every person who shared it, Spate said.

“The attorney general wouldn’t be able to prosecute potentially millions of violations of the statute,” he said. “The reason for that is because the General Assembly has not funded the attorney general’s office to prosecute millions of offenses against the shield statute.”

The ACLU read the law in a much stricter way.

The nonprofit didn’t want to put anything in the open that could lead to an employee’s arrest, and without clarification, the ACLU believed that could be anything, even information already made public through other means, said Allen Chaney, an attorney for the ACLU.

“South Carolina is executing people again, and the ACLU wants to talk about that without running the risk of being criminally prosecuted,” Chaney said. “All we’re seeking is clarity. We want to know what the act covers so that we and others don’t have to guess as to whether our speech might result in criminal liability.”

The interpretation of the law the attorneys agreed upon would give the ACLU the clarity it needed, Chaney said.

The nonprofit has nearly 3,000 pages of information about the execution process found through court documents, statements from prison officials and news reports that advocates compiled in the hopes of giving the public a fuller understanding of the execution process, Chaney said.

None of those documents would break the law, Lambert said.

“If the ACLU walked out of court this morning and handed a reporter on the courthouse steps that entire document production, the ACLU is not going to be prosecuted,” he said.

Even though the attorneys agreed, an opinion from the state Supreme Court would set precedent in case attorneys for a future attorney general interpret the law differently, Chaney said.

The state’s chief prosecutor will change in January, when Attorney General Alan Wilson’s replacement takes office. Wilson is running for governor this year.

“We need a definitive and clear opinion from this court,” Chaney said.

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SCOTUS unanimously limits government's ability to deny guns to marijuana users

In a rare unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court limited the federal government’s authority to take or deny guns to marijuana users, reported Juristnews. The court held that this restriction is a violation of the Second Amendment.

Ali Danial Hemani, a dual citizen of the US and Pakistan, was indicted in 2023 for violating the Gun Control Act. He had a 9mm handgun and 60 grams of marijuana when police with a warrant searched his home. He surrendered the gun and directed police to the marijuana, which he admitted to using “about every other day.”

The federal Gun Control Act, 18 USC § 922(g)(3), prohibits gun ownership or gun by anyone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) Hemani could have faced up to 15 years in prison and the permanent loss of his gun rights for a conviction.

The court’s ruling focused narrowly on the question of the danger posed by someone who uses illegal drugs. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote:

We appreciate that drugs and guns can sometimes make for a dangerous mix… We do not question that sometimes an individual’s unlawful use of marijuana (or any other con­trolled substance) may render him a danger to others. But…the government disclaims the need to show anything like that in this case. Instead, it asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically vio­lent and dangerous without any further showing.

Both the ACLU and the National Rifle Association celebrated the ruling, with ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang commenting that the ruling protects nearly half of Americans reporting use of marijuana at some point of time in their lives from arbitrary and discriminatory penalties.

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Newsom claims he is latest victim of DOJ political witch hunts

James Comey. Letitia James. Mark Kelly. Jay Powell.

According to Politico, the Justice Department has spent the last 18 months chasing President Donald Trump’s political adversaries in investigations that have more often than not crumbled under scrutiny. Now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is adamant that he’s the next in a long line of vendetta cases brought at Trump’s direction.

And because of the recent prosecutorial misadventures of the Trump administration — which have dashed the Justice Department’s credibility in courts around the country — it’s become an argument that’s impossible to ignore. Even if it’s too soon to tell whether that’s actually what’s happening with the investigation surrounding Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

“This is a huge problem,” said Randall Eliason, former chief of the Public Corruption Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. “In any political corruption prosecution, the defense almost always claims it is a ‘political witch hunt,’ that prosecutors are targeting him or her for some political reason.”

“The best defense to that has always been DOJ’s tradition of independence from politics and long track record of pursuing corruption cases based only on the facts and law, without regard to political considerations,” Eliason added. “The Trump administration has abandoned that independence without even trying to hide it.”

Newsom preempted federal prosecutors with a four-minute video decrying an encroaching investigation — apparently aimed at his wife’s charity and his former chief of staff — as a politically motivated witch hunt. It mirrored a tactic Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deployed earlier this year when he decried a nascent criminal probe as a baseless political attack.

A federal judge ultimately agreed and took the highly unusual step of blocking grand jury subpoenas in the probe, which was handled by Trump’s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro. Trump’s years of attacks on Powell’s fiscal policies, combined with flimsy allegations of misconduct, were clear evidence of a politically motivated probe, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg concluded.

Newsom was quick to note that Trump has similarly spent years attacking him, even calling for him to be arrested. The California Democrat wants the world to equate him with Powell rather than another Trump adversary, former national security adviser John Bolton — who similarly claimed he was the target of a Trump-driven political probe only to later agree to plead guilty to mishandling classified information.

“Department of Justice prosecutors follow the facts and the law, not politics,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “This DOJ has returned to its mission of fighting crime, regardless of the name or status of alleged perpetrators. No bad actor is above the law.”

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Mangione disturbed by 'extreme emotional disturbance' defense?

In an abrupt reversal, Luigi Mangione’s lawyers said that they had withdrawn their intent to argue that he was experiencing “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time he was accused of killing a UnitedHealthcare executive in Midtown Manhattan in 2024, reported The New York Times.

The withdrawal came one day after the New York State judge overseeing the case, Justice Gregory Carro, revealed at a pretrial hearing that Mr. Mangione’s legal team had filed a motion in September of last year notifying the court that it was considering the defense.

In a one-sentence letter, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers wrote, “The defense respectfully withdraws CPL § 250.10 notice at this time,” referring to psychiatric evidence.

Because of the withdrawal, Justice Carro put the documents and transcript that exposed the defense strategy back under seal.

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Ohio's GOP Governor comes out against the death penalty

 The campaign to end the death penalty in the United States got an important new ally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced his opposition to capital punishment and called on his state’s legislature to abolish it. For a Republican leader of a red state who was a longtime supporter of the death penalty, the change of heart may have outsize influence beyond Ohio’s borders, reported MS Now.

DeWine, who is term-limited, is showing that opposition to capital punishment is no longer just the preserve of liberals and progressive reformers. It has gone mainstream.

DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views.

Whether or not the Ohio legislature acts on DeWine’s call and abolishes the death penalty, the governor’s stance may help give political cover to governors in other states who are convinced that it is long past time to move past the practice of state-sanctioned executions.

As I have argued previously, Ohio is one of America’s most important death penalty states. The punishment is authorized by law, but it has been more than eight years since the state carried out an execution. And it has a long history of capital punishment, as well as a large death row population.    

That’s part of why DeWine’s announcement has a chance to resonate widely, though he has more to do. He needs to commute the death sentences of more than 100 people on Ohio’s death row. If and when he exercises that authority, his example may encourage his fellow chief executives in places like California, Kansas and Pennsylvania — each of whom also opposes the death penalty — to grant clemency to everyone awaiting execution in their state.

Commutations in all of those states would deliver a severe blow to capital punishment in this country.

DeWine’s decision to call for the abolition of the death penalty marks something of a sea change in his views. More than four decades ago, when he was a state senator, he led the effort to reinstate.

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CREATORS: Trump Administration Continues Onslaught On Diversity

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
June 16, 2026

The United States of America is facing a full-throttle assault on the underpinnings of democracy. Since Jan. 20, 2025, freedom and diversity have been under attack.

On the Trump administration's first day, they went after diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). A White House directive dated Jan. 20, 2025, announced, "The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name 'diversity, equity, and inclusion,' into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government."

The so-called "immoral" conduct of the Biden administration consisted of promoting opportunities for all people to have a seat at the table.

According to The Hill, "The attacks on DEI threaten a wide range of policies that seek to realize the promise of civil rights law: to advance equal opportunity for all Americans. These benefit not only women, people of color and gay and transgender individuals, but also military veterans, people from impoverished or rural areas, religious minorities and first-generation professionals. DEI policies combat harassment and retaliation. They open the workplace to pregnant and caregiving employees and to persons with disabilities."

The administration has terminated DEI programs at government offices, with government contractors and grantees of federal funding. The Department of Education went so far as to require school districts to sign "oaths" that they will comply with the federal government's effort to cancel diversity.

The U.S. Supreme Court got things rolling before President Donald Trump was elected for a second time. On June 29, 2023, the Court ruled that the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful under federal law. The Court found that Harvard and North Carolina's affirmative action programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This past March, Trump signed an Executive Order eliminating "diversity, equity and inclusion" practices by Federal contractors and their subcontractors, ensuring merit-based and efficient contracting and employment.

A lawsuit was filed in federal court by the attorneys general of 19 states and Washington, D.C., alleging that more than two dozen federal agencies are adding new terms to federal contracts that bar "any racially discriminatory DEI activities" without notice or explanation of exactly what is prohibited.

The suit claims that the executive order violates contractors' free speech rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell told Reuters, "This is yet another example of haphazard actions designed to confuse and intimidate rather than provide clear guidance to people and businesses — in this case federal contractors."

The administration has filed lawsuits and cut or threatened to limit billions of dollars in funding to coerce colleges and universities to capitulate on issues regarding diversity, equality and inclusion.

The Trump administration has threatened many elite institutions with "potential enforcement actions" for violations of Title VI, the federal statute prohibiting discrimination, relating to antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

The administration cut $400 million in funding to Columbia University, a focal point of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses across the country. According to U.S. News and World Report, federal officials in April 2025 froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University after warning the school that it was in violation of federal civil rights law.

Cornell University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University were among the schools that saw billions of dollars cut, frozen or suspended.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the apparent point man in the effort to crush diversity, equity and inclusion, said some of the nation's top universities are "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination." According to Inside Higher Ed, Hegseth canceled, through a War Department order, opportunities for service members to participate in fellowships at schools like Princeton, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown and Yale.

With the absence of diversity comes a loss of diverse perspectives, a reduction in creativity, decrease in innovation and a shocking reduction in critical thinking — creating in society, and maybe more specifically on college and university campuses, military bases and corporate boardrooms, silos of thought, values and beliefs.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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PA Supreme Court finds skill games are illegal gambling

State Attorney General Dave Sunday issued a statement calling the decision a “significant victory for consumers, taxpayers and the rule of law in Pennsylvania.”

Skill games are unlawful under Pennsylvania’s Gaming Act and Crimes Code, the state Supreme Court ruled, according to The Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The decision strikes down what the commonwealth’s highest court called a pair of “deeply flawed” lower court rulings that allowed the slot-machine-like gambling devices to spread across Pennsylvania in a legal gray area beyond the reach of gaming authorities and law enforcement.

“Thriving therein, the devices now may be found not only in taverns, restaurants, and social clubs, but also in mini-marts, gas stations, grocery stores, laundromats, pizza parlors, and various other establishments throughout Pennsylvania — even some dedicated solely to the purpose,” Justice David Wecht wrote in the 66-page decision for the 4-2 majority. 

Since the intermediate Commonwealth Court ruled in 2023 that skill games are not slot machines as defined by state law, the devices have been the subject of legislation seeking to outlaw them altogether, with lawmakers noting detrimental effects including increased crime and the exposure of children to gambling.

Pace-O-Matic, the Georgia-based company that produces the software in Pennsylvania Skill games, said it is disappointed in the decision and “strongly believes” the decision doesn’t reflect the facts that led to a string of favorable decisions for the company. 

“Sadly, this opinion will have far-reaching consequences, with more than 10,000 Pennsylvania small businesses and fraternal clubs becoming the real victims,” the company said in a statement. 

They face the prospect of giving up the games and losing an important source of revenue or enduring excessive regulation and “crippling taxation,” which would have the same result.

State Attorney General Dave Sunday issued a statement calling the decision a “significant victory for consumers, taxpayers and the rule of law in Pennsylvania.”

“The Supreme Court recognized what our office has argued from the beginning – these machines operate as gambling devices and cannot legally exist without the same oversight, regulation and accountability as other forms of legalized gaming in the Commonwealth. Pennsylvanians deserve protections that ensure games are fair, transparent and operated within the bounds of the law,” Sunday said.

The attorney general’s office, which estimates there are 70,000 skill machines in operation in the commonwealth, argued that embedding an element of so-called skill into the games does not exempt the devices from Pennsylvania gambling laws.

The decision handed down late Monday actually resolves two cases: One in which the Gaming Act’s definition of slot machine was at issue; and the second in which the seizure of three skill game machines, cash and receipts from a Harrisburg area business was overturned. 

State policymakers, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, have looked to the skill game industry as a potential source of tax revenue, proposing to legitimize and tax the proceeds of the machines at rates similar to those imposed on casinos. Details of those proposals proved a sticking point in recent budget negotiations.

Wecht noted that many placed “reasonable reliance” on the Commonwealth Court’s decisions. 

“We are further mindful of the potential disturbance that our correction of the prevailing case law may cause to business owners and other good-faith participants in the industry,” the lead opinion says.

For that reason, the court stayed the decision for four months, during which no law enforcement agency is to take action against owners and operators of the machines.

He also wrote that the court reached its decision as a result of interpreting existing statutes and that the General Assembly could take whatever action it deems appropriate.

Wecht took the unusual step of stating the court’s decision is not an endorsement or based on any policy position regarding the machines, adding that manifesting the public policy of the commonwealth is the legislature’s purview, not the judiciary’s.

“To put it more plainly, how one feels about access to ‘skill games’ or other types of slot machine — or about the broader legalization and normalization of gambling in our society, for that matter — is irrelevant. This is, rather, a matter of straightforward application of existing statutory law,” Wecht said.

He noted the General Assembly amended the Gaming Act’s definition of “slot machine” to include “skill slot machine” as a device in which the skill of the player rather than the element of chance is the main factor in the outcome. It also defined a hybrid in which the combination of skill and chance determine the outcome. 

Lawyers for Pace-O-Matic, the predominant distributor of skill game software, argued that the company’s games could be won every time by a skillful player. 

Wecht said the definition of skill slot machines makes “abundantly clear” the skill element of the machines is not legally sufficient. 

“That is to say, as it concerns their unregulated operation in unlicensed facilities throughout Pennsylvania, it is not this Court that declares “skill games” to be unlawful. Rather, it is the General Assembly that did so nearly a decade ago,” he said.

Justice Christine Donohue issued a separate opinion concurring in the result of the majority decision. Justice Kevin Brobson wrote a concurring and dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Sallie Mundy, in which he agreed that the machines are covered by the Crimes Code but not the Gaming Act. 

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