Election Law Blog: Is Elon Musk's $1 million dollar prize violating election law?

According to the Election Law Blog: 

Hugo Lowell: “Elon Musk says on stage at a town hall that America PAC will be awarding $1 million every day until the election to a registered Pennsylvania voter who has signed his petition. Musk awarded the first $1 million this evening to someone at the town hall, bringing the guy onto the stage and handing him a jumbo check, lotto-style. Musk is essentially incentivizing likely Trump voters in PA to register to vote: Petition is to support for 1A and 2A, so basically R voters. But they also have to be registered to vote, so if they weren’t already, they would do it now.”

Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)

See also the DOJ Election Crimes Manual at 44: “The bribe may be anything having monetary value, including cash, liquor, lottery chances, and welfare benefits such as food stamps. Garcia, 719 F.2d at 102. However, offering free rides to the polls or providing employees paid leave while they vote are not prohibited. United States v. Lewin, 467 F.2d 1132, 1136 (7th Cir.
1972). Such things are given to make it easier for people to vote, not to induce them to do so. This distinction is important. For an offer or a payment to violate Section 10307(c), it must have been intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.… Moreover, payments made for some purpose other than to induce
or reward voting activity, such as remuneration for campaign work, do not violate this statute. See United States v. Canales 744 F.2d 413, 423 (5th Cir. 1984) (upholding conviction because jury justified in inferring that payments were for voting, not campaign work). Similarly, Section 10307(c) does not apply to payments made to signature-gatherers for voter registrations such individuals may obtain. However, such payments become actionable under Section 10307(c) if they are shared with the person being registered.” (Emphases added.)

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Juvenile crime increases in NYC over last seven years

 The number of people under 18 accused of major crimes, including murders, robberies and assaults, has increased sharply in New York City in the past seven years, Police Department figures show — a steep trajectory that has alarmed law enforcement officials, reported The New York Times.

Last year, there were 4,858 major crimes where a minor was accused or arrested, up from 3,543 in 2017 — a 37 percent increase.

Those accused or arrested in felony assaults, in which a person is seriously injured or a deadly weapon like a gun or knife is used, have jumped by 28 percent since 2017. Robberies have risen by 52 percent. Killings in which a young person was accused rose to 36 in 2023 from 10 in 2017.

The number of young victims also rose dramatically, climbing 54 percent by 2023 compared with 2017.

“Most of what we see is youth-on-youth crime,” said Chief Michael LiPetri, head of crime strategies for the Police Department.

Crime committed by adults also rose in the same period, and the proportion of youth crime in 2023 remained a very small fraction of overall crime, about 3.8 percent, the same as it was in 2017. Still, police officials say that a rise in serious incidents involving minors can portend even more serious future violence.

The seven index crimes are murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of automobiles. Many of the crimes have continued to increase dramatically in 2024, particularly robberies and felony assaults. Through Oct. 1, there were arrests for 969 felony assaults and 2,019 robberies, a 17 percent increase from the same time last year.

The spikes, which have been particularly pronounced as the city emerges from the disjointed pandemic years and which mirror a national trend, have reanimated a decades-long argument over how to deal with young offenders.

Until recently, the criminal justice system in New York treated many young people accused of serious crimes as adults. But in 2017, when youth crime had fallen to lows not seen for decades, legislators in Albany changed the way the cases of 16- and 17-year-olds were handled, passing a law known as “Raise the Age.”

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Mangino discusses his book 'The Executioner's Toll, 2010' on William Ramsey Investigates

Listen to my interview on William Ramsey Investigates discussing my book The Executioner's Toll, 20210.

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Creators: Report: White House Controlled 'Investigation' During Kavanaugh Confirmation

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
October 14, 2024 

The old adage that the cover-up is often worse than the crime is no more evident, as we have recently learned, than with the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

In 2018, Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the seat left vacant by the sudden retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. A Republican appointee, Kennedy consistently voted for such left-leaning causes as narrowing the death penalty, same-sex marriage and abortion. Kennedy's departure opened the door to appoint a conservative to the court with an eye toward eliminating women's reproductive rights.

However, after two women, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, it appeared Kavanaugh's appointment might be derailed.

In what appeared to be a magnanimous move, Trump called for a supplemental background investigation by the FBI. The investigation was to be done by the book. Unfortunately, there was no book on supplemental background investigations. The White House set the parameters for the "investigation."

Trump promised that the FBI would have "free rein" to investigate claims by Ford and Ramirez. He went on to say the FBI was "talking to everybody" and he wanted the FBI "to interview whoever they deemed appropriate, at their discretion."

As shocking as it might seem to some, Trump was not telling the truth when he described the 2018 "investigation" of Kavanaugh. The Kavanaugh "investigation" was really not an investigation at all.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a Senate Judiciary Committee member, released a recent report into the time leading up to Kavanaugh's confirmation. He found that messages to the FBI tip line regarding Kavanaugh were forwarded directly to the White House and never investigated. The FBI was instructed by the White House to talk to 10 potential witnesses and was not given the leeway to pursue corroborating evidence.

"On instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate thousands of tips that came in through the FBI's tip line," according to the Whitehouse report. "Instead, all tips related to Kavanaugh were forwarded to the White House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information."

According to the Guardian, the FBI received more than 4,500 calls and electronic messages. Even when senators contacted the FBI directly with the names of people who claimed to have relevant information about Kavanaugh, the FBI did not contact them.

The FBI wrapped up their "investigation" within a week. They never even interviewed Ford or Kavanaugh.

Several senators went on to vote to confirm Kavanaugh based on the FBI investigation not finding any corroborating evidence to support Ford's and Ramirez's stories. The FBI didn't try to corroborate their stories, and if there was corroboration in any of the thousands of tips received by the FBI, no one saw it except maybe the White House.

This isn't a failure on the part of the FBI. The Trump White House, the report found, "exercised total control over the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips. The White House refused to authorize basic investigatory steps that might have uncovered information corroborating the allegations."

If Trump had no qualms about lying to U.S. senators about something as fundamentally important as the confirmation for a lifetime term on the United States Supreme Court, what is the likelihood he'll be honest with the rest of us?

Here the cover-up made it possible to turn back the clock on women and their reproductive rights. Kavanaugh joined the high court, and in less than four years, the court overturned Roe v. Wade.

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 X @MatthewTMangino.

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Alabama executes man who dropped appeals and asked to be executed

 The 20th Execution of 2024

Alabama executed a man on October 17, 2024 who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and dropped his appeals and asked to be put to death, reported The Associated Press.

Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty to the killings that prosecutors said began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge.

Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama execution chamber, Dearman spoke to the family members of the victims and to his own family in his final statement. “Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you,” he said to the victims’ families before adding, “I’ve taken so much.” He closed by telling his own family, “Y’all already know I love y’all.” Some of his words were inaudible.

The lethal injection was carried out after Dearman dropped his appeals this year and asked that his execution go forward. “I am guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that “it’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.”

Dearman’s execution was one of two planned Thursday in the U.S. Robert Roberson in Texas was scheduled to be the nation’s first person put to death for a murder conviction tied to the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter. The Texas Supreme Court halted his execution Thursday night.

Killed on Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Mobile, were Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Randall Reed, 22. Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. All of the victims were related by blood or marriage.

In a statement read by the Alabama prison commissioner, a man who lost his daughter, sister and brother in the killings, wrote there were no words to describe the impact the murders had on him and his family. He said Dearman got to say a final goodbye to his family, but they did not.

“I so long for a final goodbye to my daughter and I would have loved to meet my grandchild,” Bryant Henry Randall, the father of Chelsea Randall Reed wrote. He said his siblings did not get to see their children grow up.

“I was stripped in many ways of happiness and the bond of family by your senseless act,” he wrote of Dearman.

Robert Brown, the father of Robert Lee Brown, told reporters that his family will “suffer for the rest of their lives.”

“This don’t bring nothing back,” he said. “I can’t get my son back or any of them back.”

The execution started about 5:58 p.m., but it is unclear when the drugs began flowing. At one point, Dearman raised his head and looked around the chamber as if to inquire when they were starting. He soon after appeared to lose consciousness.

His left arm moved slightly after a guard performed a consciousness check — which involves shouting his name and pinching his arm — to make sure he is not awake when the final lethal drugs are given. Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said Dearman was not awake and the arm movement was not a sign of consciousness.

When the curtains to the viewing room closed at about 6:08 p.m., his father, who was in the same viewing room as media witnesses, sobbed and repeatedly called out his son’s name.

The day before the killing, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman’s girlfriend, brought her to their home after Dearman became abusive toward her, according to a judge’s sentencing order.

Dearman had shown up at the home multiple times that night asking to see his girlfriend and was told he could not stay there. Sometime after 3 a.m., he returned when all the victims were asleep, according to a judge’s sentencing order. He worked his way through the house, attacking the victims with an ax taken from the yard and then with a gun found in the home, prosecutors said. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.

As he was escorted to jail, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs, telling reporters that he was high on methamphetamine when he went into the home and that the “drugs were making me think things that weren’t really there happening.”

Dearman initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty after firing his attorneys. Because it was a capital murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine whether the state had proven the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended a death sentence.

Before he dropped his appeal, Dearman’s lawyers argued that his trial counsel failed to do enough to demonstrate Dearman’s mental illness and “lack of competency to plead guilty.”

The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Dearman in the appeal, wrote on its website that Dearman “suffered from lifelong and severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features” and was executed “despite evidence that he suffers from serious mental illness.”

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Texas set to execute man in the face of enormous opposition due to conviction by shaken-baby syndrome

As Texas prison officials ready the death chamber to execute Robert Roberson tonight, a thundering chorus of people who believe the state is about to kill an innocent man hope last-minute measures will buy him more time, reported The Texas Tribune.

Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter, who was diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome. But experts, lawmakers and the lead detective in the girl’s case say the science supporting Roberson’s death sentence no longer holds up — and the state’s “junk science” law should have already halted his execution.

In an stunning move, a Texas House committee voted unanimously Wednesday to subpoena Roberson ahead of his Thursday execution, a step that sought to give the man a final lifeline after a series of court rejections left him on track to become the first person in the country executed for allegedly shaking a baby to death.

That move “sets up a bit of a separation of powers issue that I think would result in him not being executed tomorrow night,” Benjamin Wolff, director of the Texas Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, said on Wednesday, adding that he had not seen this maneuver attempted before, so it was not clear what could happen. “It’s an unprecedented subpoena and an unprecedented case.”

But Roberson set to be executed around 6p.m. Thursday, it’s unclear if that gambit will work.

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee approved the subpoena hours after the state’s highest criminal court again declined to stop the execution, and after the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole denied Roberson’s request for clemency. Gov. Greg Abbott cannot defy the board’s recommendation, but he can issue a 30-day reprieve. Abbott has remained silent. Roberson’s lawyers have also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.

The committee’s subpoena — which was offered by state Reps. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, and Jeff Leach, R-Plano — calls for Roberson to "provide all relevant testimony and information concerning the committee's inquiry."

Gretchen Sween, Roberson's attorney, said that she had "no knowledge" of a subpoena being used before in an effort to pump the brakes on an execution.

"It shows how strongly the lawmakers who have learned about this case feel about the injustice," she said.

The parole board’s six members voted unanimously earlier Wednesday to deny Roberson's clemency application. The decision came amid a forceful bipartisan campaign to spare Roberson’s life, and as lawmakers raised concerns that the courts were not properly implementing a groundbreaking 2013 “junk science” law that was intended to provide justice to people convicted based on scientific evidence that has since changed or been debunked.

“It is not shocking that the criminal justice system failed Mr. Roberson so badly. What’s shocking is that, so far, the system has been unable to correct itself," Sween said in a statement after the board's vote. “We pray that Governor Abbott does everything in his power to prevent the tragic, irreversible mistake of executing an innocent man.”

Brian Wharton, the lead detective in Roberson’s case who sided with the prosecution at trial, has called for his exoneration, as has bestselling author John Grisham. A large majority of the Texas House has asked the courts to take a second look at his case. Doug Deason, a GOP megadonor and Abbott ally, also publicly said he believes in Roberson’s innocence, according to the Houston Chronicle.

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Chapter one in the autocratic playbook--'Criminalizing dissent'

An expert who studies authoritarianism and fascism said Donald Trump’s rhetoric about criminalizing dissent is familiar, and could carry serious implications for the country if he’s elected president, reported NBC News.

“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power, or exposes their corruption, or releases information that’s harmful to them in any way becomes illegal,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor at New York University who wrote the 2020 book “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.”

“He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orban does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she said, referring to the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia, respectively. “Just as there’s a divide now because of this brainwashing about who is a patriot and who is a criminal about Jan. 6, right? In the same way, telling the truth in any area — journalists, scientists, even people like me, anybody who is engaged in objective inquiry, prosecutors, of course — they become criminal elements and they need to be shut down.”

Some Harris voters say Trump is channeling dictators.

“He reminds me of Hitler and the rise to power,” said Dan Geiger, a retired Pittsburgh resident. “The more he lies the more it’s accepted by his faithful followers.”

Trump has suggested investigations involving his conduct are illegitimate under the law and vowed revenge against the prosecutors who oversee them. He has also claimed, with no evidence, that President Joe Biden directed those prosecutions, even the state indictments he has no authority over.

Upon early revelations of his New York indictment, Trump said the prosecutor “ILLEGALLY LEAKED” it. And the probe into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia? “They illegally spied on my campaign.”

Trump voters have mixed views on revenge

Trump rallied a raucous crowd Wednesday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, launching personal attacks on Harris and drawing jeers and boos from a sea of red MAGA-hatted supporters as he spoke of the “enemy from within” — government officials with whom he’s clashed. He mentioned as one example Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., which sparked a “lock him up!” shout from one supporter.

But some of Trump’s own voters told NBC News they disapprove of the revenge-based themes in his campaign while still planning to support him because of their concerns about the economy and immigration.

Walter Buckman, a Scranton native, said he’s supporting Trump because of his views on immigration and the economy. But the self-described Catholic is “absolutely not” on board with his rhetoric about exacting revenge and getting even.

“The way to get even with anybody is to change the economy. Getting even should not be in the playbook,” he said. “Is revenge a good thing? It’s not a good thing.”

Debbie Hendrix, a Pennsylvanian who attended the Trump rally donning a “MAGA” hat, said she’s excited to vote for Trump a third time. But even she is put off by his talk of retribution.

“I don’t agree with that. I think people like ‘Drain the swamp,’” she said, but in her view that doesn’t mean personally going after his critics. “I don’t think he should sink to their level.”

Sometimes, Trump launches the claim of illegality plausibly. In October 2023, he said advocates in Colorado are trying to “illegally remove my name from the ballot” over his role in Jan. 6, a case he fought and won at the U.S. Supreme Court. More recently, he has said people who get caught cheating in the election will be prosecuted, essentially restating existing law.

Fetterman: ‘A menu of dumb s---’

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who is campaigning in conservative rural areas for Harris, said Trump is no stranger to “bizarre ramblings,” but warned that it doesn’t demotivate his voters.

“That’s just a menu of dumb shit that he always says,” Fetterman said. “I don’t even pay attention to those kinds of things. Most people don’t really take it at face value or whatever.”

It’s important for everyone who’s troubled by it to turn out and vote for Harris, he said, criticizing the “uncommitted” movement, supporters of perennial Green Party nominee Jill Stein, and others who abhor Trump but could waste their vote.

“If you are not 100% voting for Harris, then you are either directly or indirectly helping Trump,” Fetterman said. “Go ahead and try that again. That’s what happened in 2016 when people threw their votes away on that dope Jill Stein.”

Trump has responded to criticisms of his authoritarian rhetoric by repeatedly claiming Democrats are the real fascists and accusing them of “weaponizing” the government against him. His campaign didn't return messages seeking comment for this article.

If he’s elected, could Trump actually succeed at centralizing power for himself, in a system built on checks and balances that was often successful at restraining him during his first term.

“That’s the big question,” Ben-Ghiat said, adding that it depends partly on his ability to impose party fealty, intimidate critics and install competent bureaucrats who are effective at using levers of power to advance his personal aims.

“It is about criminalizing dissent,” she said. “There is a method to his madness in that he has taken people on a journey of indoctrination.”

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