Matt Ford writing for The New Republic:
"The Constitution—and the Framers who drafted it—did a decent
job at devising a structure for government that would allow the different
branches to check one another to preserve liberty. No constitutional text is
well written enough to save the rule of law when the American people elect a
president who doesn’t believe in the Constitution, especially when he is joined
by a Congress that refuses to hold him accountable for violating it."
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a petition from a family whose home was wrongly raided by a SWAT team, despite that law enforcement were found to have violated the victims' Fourth Amendment rights, reported Reason Magazine.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson
would have granted the petition, falling two votes short of the Court's threshold.
In March 2019, Lt. Mike Lewis led police
to Karen Jimerson and James Parks' home in Lancaster*, Texas, ultimately
ordering SWAT to "break and rake" the house, shattering all the front
windows, the shards from which reportedly rained down on their sleeping
children. They also set off a flash grenade and broke down the door, guns
drawn. But the target structure, a suspected methamphetamine stash house, was
located two doors down. Police would not realize until after holding the
Jimerson-Parks family—including a half-naked Karen, who had just gotten out of
the bath—at gunpoint.
The two houses were differentiable. Most notably,
they had different house numbers. But the Jimerson-Parks family home departed
from the target in other significant ways: It had a wheelchair ramp and a
porch, for example, while the alleged stash house had a fence and no porch,
information Lewis was provided prior to the execution of the warrant.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas declined to give Lewis qualified immunity, which shields state and local government actors from civil suits if the alleged misconduct was not "clearly established" as unconstitutional in a prior court precedent. "The record in this case contains ample evidence," wrote Judge Sam A. Lindsay, "for a reasonable jury to conclude that [Lewis] acted objectively unreasonable prior to the execution of the search warrant."
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit
reversed that ruling by a vote of 2–1, concluding that because Lewis had done
more than "nothing" to prepare for the raid, he did not violate
clearly established law. Under qualified immunity analysis, proving a
constitutional violation isn't enough—Jimerson and Parks also had to prove that
the relevant case law on the subject sufficiently put Lewis on notice that his
conduct was illegal.
In dissent, Judge James L. Dennis said that it did.
"Lewis did not even check the number of the house before instructing the
SWAT team to execute the warrant on the Jimersons' home," he wrote,
adding that "it is undisputed that Lewis violated the Jimersons' Fourth
Amendment rights in executing a SWAT-style entry into their home without a
warrant."
The Supreme Court previously ruled in Maryland v. Garrison (1987)
that the Fourth Amendment requires officers to make "a reasonable effort
to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched." The U.S.
Courts of Appeals for the 8th, 9th, and 11th Circuits have held that the ruling
clearly established that law enforcement violate the law when they search a
house without properly verifying that its conspicuous features match those of
the target. The 5th Circuit, however, said that decision was too generalized to
put police on notice. The Institute for Justice, the public interest law
firm representing Jimerson and Parks, had urged the
Supreme Court to take up the case to clarify that split.
The high court is poised to hear
a different case concerning a wrong-house raid, although the issue the
justices consider will be different. In October 2017, the FBI detonated a
flash grenade inside and ripped the door from the hinges of the house where
Curtrina Martin lived with her then-fiancé, Toi Cliatt, and her young son,
Gabe. Agents stormed into Martin and Cliatt's bedroom, holding him at gunpoint
until they realized their error. The leader of that raid, Lawrence Guerra, was
also granted immunity, which the Court will not reevaluate. Instead, the
justices will decide if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred
when it declined to let Martin sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act—the law
that was revised in the 1970s to include a law enforcement proviso for situations
almost identical to Martin's.
Still up for debate, however, is whether or not a
reasonable law enforcement officer knows he must check the features and address
of his target house before raiding it, should he want to stay within the bounds
of the Constitution.
To read more CLICK HERE
The United Kingdom's greed in the late 17th Century
contributed to what we in America have come to know as the Bill of Rights. At
the time, the British Empire ruled the world. Britain controlled governments in
Africa, Asia and the Americas.
In fact, the British Empire controlled 26 colonies in
the Americas. That's right, Britain's domination in the Americas went beyond
the 13 colonies in North America that would later become the United States.
Britain also controlled settlements in, among other places, Bermuda, Honduras,
Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica.
In Britain, the prevailing economic philosophy of the
17th and 18th centuries was to look to colonies to enrich the "mother
country." To that end, Britain did not want their colonies trading with
other countries. To prevent such trades, the British imposed high
"tariffs" on imported goods.
In return, American colonists began smuggling goods
from other countries into the colonies. In response, Britain began cracking
down on them. The British started utilizing writs of assistance. The writs gave
enormous power and discretion to customs officials.
The writs were general search warrants that never
expired or required a basis for suspicion. They let officials enter the homes
of colonists, at any time for any reason.
The writs, as well as subsequent criminal trials in
admiralty court, without juries, led to rebellion, which in no small part
turned into the revolution that catalyzed independence for the United States of
America.
When it came time to draft a constitution for the new
country, the founding fathers had not shaken off the sting of writs of
assistance. In fact, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was
written precisely to prevent the new government from running roughshod over its
citizens.
In the words of colonial lawyer and activist James
Otis, "a man's house is his castle," and the Framers sought to
protect those homes and their occupants from unlawful searches and arrests.
The Fourth Amendment reads:
"The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This amendment is among the most sacred safeguards of
individual liberty embedded in the Constitution.
First, the Framers wanted to make clear that people in
this new nation would have a "right" to be secure in their homes and
that their personal papers, either on them or in their homes, would remain
private.
Secondly, the Framers created a plan for maintaining
the security of persons and places. They resolved that a home could not be
entered without securing a warrant. The warrant required by the Fourth
Amendment would be much more than the writs of assistance. Each warrant first
required that it be based on a level of suspicion — not a hunch, but rather
probable cause, a term used in every arrest warrant and search warrant to this
day.
The official seeking the warrant had to attest to its
authenticity and have a neutral magistrate — a judge — sign off.
This is how a burgeoning nation prevented tyranny. The
colonists tasted despotism and did not like it. The Fourth Amendment, in just
54 words, packed a lot of power. Interpreting the breadth and scope of those
words continues in courtrooms around the country every day - as it should.
The work of protecting the rights and privileges of
the U.S. Constitution never ends. America must be vigilant in protecting the
fundament rights that we sometimes take for granted. Imagine an America where
the police, military or government agency could come into your home any time,
day or night, to see what you are doing or who and what you support.
What if the government could scan your phone or
examine your computer in the name of efficiency, or any other reason or ... no
reason at all?
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.
To visit Creators CLICK HERE
A terminally ill man who spent over 30 years on death row in Louisiana for the killing of his stepson died days after a March date was scheduled for his execution by nitrogen gas, according to The Associated Press.
Christopher Sepulvado, 81, died Saturday at the Louisiana
State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, “from natural causes as a result of
complications arising from his pre-existing medical conditions,” according to
the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.
Sepulvado was charged with the 1992 killing of his
6-year-old stepson after the boy came home from school with soiled underwear.
Sepulvado was accused of hitting him on the head with a screwdriver and
immersing him in scalding water. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to
death in 1993.
His attorney, federal public defender Shawn Nolan, said in a
statement Sunday that doctors recently determined Sepulvado was terminally ill
and recommended hospice care. Nolan described his client’s “significant”
physical and cognitive decline in recent years.
“Christopher Sepulvado’s death overnight in the prison
infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana,”
Nolan said. “The idea that the state was planning to strap this tiny, frail,
dying old man to a chair and force him to breathe toxic gas into his failing
lungs is simply barbaric.”
According to Nolan, Sepulvado had been sent to New Orleans
for surgery earlier in the week but was returned to the prison Friday night.
Louisiana officials decided to resume carrying out death
sentences earlier this month after a 15 year pause driven by a lack of
political interest and the inability to secure legal injection drugs.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to proceed with a new nitrogen gas execution
protocol after the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature last year expanded
death row execution methods to include electrocution and nitrogen gas.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement
that “justice should have been delivered long ago” and Louisiana “failed to
deliver it in his lifetime.”
Sepulvado’s execution was scheduled for March 17. Another
man, Jessie Hoffman, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and slated
for execution on March 18. Hoffman initially challenged Louisiana’s lethal
injection protocol in 2012 on the grounds that the method was cruel and unusual
punishment. A federal judge on Friday reopened
that lawsuit after it was dismissed in 2022 because the state had no
executions planned.
The country’s first
execution using nitrogen gas was carried out last year in Alabama,
which has now executed four people using
the method.
To read more CLICK HERE
In this winter of political
uneasiness, it is important to look back on Articles I, II and III of the
United States Constitution.
High school civics class taught us that the first three
articles of the Constitution established the structure of America’s government.
Congress, the legislative branch, makes the laws of the United States;
the Supreme
Court — the judicial — interprets the laws; and the president — the
executive — enforces the laws.
Each of the branches are coequal and provide a system of
checks and balances. The Framers created this system to ensure that no branch
becomes dominant. Each branch of government is vested with the ability to
respond to the actions of the others.
The president can veto legislation created by Congress, as well as
nominate heads of federal agencies and Supreme Court appointees. Congress confirms
or rejects the president’s nominees. It can also remove the president from office in exceptional
circumstances.
The justices of the Supreme Court, nominated by the
president and confirmed by the Senate, can overturn unconstitutional laws.
For nearly 238 years this structure of checks and balances
have held the “Great American Experiment” together, but the experiment has
faced challenges in the past. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, as president of
the United States, was part of the first potential constitutional crisis when
the Supreme Court in February 1803 decided the case of Marbury v.
Madison, which established the principle of judicial review. Years
later, in 1834, President Andrew Jackson, unhappy with a Supreme Court decision
that favored Cherokee Indians in the region that would eventually become
northern Georgia, is believed to have said of Chief Justice John Marshall:
“[He] has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
The Civil War saw the nation split in two. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented
third and fourth term as president. In the 1950s, southern
states defied the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregation in public schools. In more
recent times, the country endured three presidential impeachments in 16 years.
Is America in a constitutional crisis today? Adam Liptak of
The New York Times recently defined a constitutional crisis as “the product of
presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings.” Trump has signed more than 60 executive orders so far, the most
in a president’s first 100 days in more than 40 years. As of this
writing, Trump has been in office a little more than 30 days.
The orders, which Trump critics say greatly exceed his
constitutional authority, range from tariffs on Mexico and Canada, to pauses on foreign aid
and crackdowns on illegal immigration. Not to mention, bans on transgender
people serving in the military or participating in athletics, revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, firing government employees who are subject to civil service protections and firing inspectors general — the government’s own
watchdogs.
Saikrishna Prakash, a former clerk to conservative Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas who now teaches law at the University of
Virginia told NPR, “The courts, you know, can issue orders and
judgments, and, per the Constitution, I think the president is obligated to
follow those orders and judgments. But, of course, there’s a practical
question, which is how do you get someone to comply with the law?”
More than 10 federal courts have temporarily halted or
rejected actions resulting from the new Trump administration’s actions. Last
week, U.S. District Judge John McConnell found that the Trump administration has not fully
followed his order to unfreeze federal spending and release
billions of dollars.
However, statements by top Trump adviser Elon Musk and
Vice President JD Vance appear to openly challenge judicial authority. The statements
have raised concerns that the administration may ignore court rulings it
opposes, reported the Brennan Center.
“It’s an open question whether the administration will be as
contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,” Kate
Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York
Times.
In the first case to reach the Supreme Court in the wake of
the onslaught of executive orders and actions taken within the first weeks of
the new administration, lawyers for Trump have asked the justices to let him fire a government lawyer
after a federal district judge ordered that the lawyer must be
reinstated.
The Trump administration’s emergency application asked
the high court to vacate a federal trial judge’s order temporarily
reinstating Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special
Counsel. Dellinger leads an independent agency charged with safeguarding
government whistleblowers and enforcing certain ethics laws. The position is
unrelated to special counsels, such as Jack Smith, appointed
by the Justice Department.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative bent. If the court constrains the
president’s authority to fire government employees, Trump’s potential defiance
of the court’s ruling could lead to a full-blown constitutional crisis unlike
anything the country has ever experienced.
But if the Supreme Court capitulates to the president, the
crisis may be even more grave. With the GOP kowtowing to Trump and in the
majority in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court not imposing any
restraints, this country may well be slipping into the clutches of an
authoritarian.
(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)
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this
article are those of just the author.
The Supreme Court, in its first decision on President Trump’s use of executive power in his second term, ruled that he cannot, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads the watchdog agency that protects whistle-blowers, reported The New York Times.
But the court’s brief, unsigned order indicated that it may soon
return to the issue, noting that a trial judge’s temporary restraining order
shielding the lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, is set to expire next week.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said that
they would have rejected the Trump administration’s request for Supreme Court
intervention outright. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A.
Alito Jr., filed a dissent.
The majority, Justice Gorsuch wrote, presumably acted as it
did because temporary restraining orders like the one in place in the case
generally cannot be appealed — that is, he said, it “may not yet have ripened
into an appealable order.”
“Respectfully,” he added, “I believe that it has and that
each additional day where the order stands only serves to confirm the point.”
The court’s order came amid a blitz of executive actions,
including ones seeking to remove thousands of federal employees, many of them
in roles long thought protected from summary dismissal.
Mr. Dellinger has served as head of the Office of Special
Counsel, which was created by Congress in 1978 to protect government
whistle-blowers. It is unrelated to the
special counsels appointed by the Justice Department.
The law says the special counsel must be confirmed by the
Senate, serves for a five-year term and “may be removed by the president only
for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
Mr. Dellinger, who was confirmed last year, was fired by an
administration official in a terse email on Feb. 7. It did not say why.
He sued, and Judge
Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington entered
a temporary restraining order allowing Mr. Dellinger to keep his job
for two weeks while she considered whether to enter a preliminary injunction.
The order expires on Feb. 26.
Temporary restraining orders, as the name suggests, are
provisional, in place for brief periods and generally meant to preserve the
status quo while judges get their bearings. Preliminary injunctions are more
lasting judicial commands generally issued after substantial briefing and a
hearing.
Justice Gorsuch wrote that there were powerful reasons to
“look behind the label” and treat the temporary restraining order in Mr.
Dellinger’s case as a preliminary injunction, which can be appealed.
One reason, he wrote, was that the judge had done something
extraordinary. “The court effectively commanded the president and other
executive branch officials to recognize and work with someone whom the
president sought to remove from office,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.
To read more CLICK HERE
“I have spent my career — as a District Attorney, as Attorney General, and now as Governor — standing up for the rule of law in Maine and America. To me, that is fundamentally what is at stake here: the rule of law in our country.
“No President — Republican or Democrat — can withhold
Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine
taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is
a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to
uphold.
“Maine may one of the first states to undergo an
investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the
President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one
particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who
and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be
because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or
think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a
King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it – and it is the
rule of law that prevents him from being so.
“I imagine that the outcome of this politically directed
investigation is all but predetermined. My Administration will begin work with
the Attorney General to defend the interests of Maine people in the court of
law. But do not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the
athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his
will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he
cannot.”
According to NPR, during remarks at a recent governors' event, Trump asked
Maine Gov. Janet Mills if the state was going to comply with the order. Mills
replied that she would comply with "state and federal law."
"Well, we are the federal law," Trump said.
"You better do it, because you're not going to get any federal funding at
all if you don't."
Mills then replied, "See you in court."
"Good, I'll see you in court," Trump said. "I
look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after
governor, because I don't think you'll be in elected politics."
To read more CLICK HERE
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on stating that only the “President and the Attorney General shall provide authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch,” reported Jurist. The order covers all federal employees and agencies, including independent agencies operating under the executive branch of the US government. Historically, independent agencies exist outside the executive branch and are largely free of presidential control.
The Trump administration stated the purpose of the order was
to “ensur[e] that all federal agencies are accountable to the American people,
as required by the Constitution.” According to the administration, Article II
of the US Constitution vests this power in the president. They pointed to Article
II, Clause 1, which states, “executive power shall be vested in a President
of the United States of America,” to support this interpretation.
However, Article II does not expressly state that the
president or any other person in the executive branch has the power to
interpret laws. The article states that the president is required to “take care
that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Jurisdiction to interpret laws and determine
constitutionality belongs to the judicial branch under Article
III. The framers of the Constitution designed the separation
of duties to prevent any single branch of government from becoming too
powerful.
Under the order, all agencies will be required to
submit to “performance standards and management objectives” established by the
Office of Management and Budget and “report periodically to the President.”
Only the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee are
exempted.
Challenges to the order are expected.
To read more CLICK HERE
Watch my interview with Elizabeth Millner on the Law and Crime Network.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE
Watch my interview with Lindsay McCoy on WFMJ-TV21 discussing the tumultuous start to President Trump's second term.
To watch interview CLICK HERE
In the first case to reach the Supreme Court arising from the blitz of actions taken in the early weeks of the new administration, lawyers for President Trump asked the justices to let him fire a government lawyer who leads a watchdog agency, reported The New York Times.
The administration’s emergency application asked the
court to vacate a federal trial judge’s order temporarily reinstating Hampton
Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Mr. Dellinger leads an
independent agency charged with safeguarding government whistle-blowers and
enforcing certain ethics laws. The position is unrelated to special
counsels appointed by the Justice Department.
“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive
power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an
agency head against his will,” the administration’s filing said.
To read more CLICK HERE
Watch my interview with Sierra Gillespie on the Law and Crime Network.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE
Watch my appearance on "Crime Fix" with Angenette Levy on the Law and Crime Network.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE
A federal prosecutor assigned to the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Friday in a blistering letter that accused top leaders at the Justice Department of looking for a “fool” to dismiss the criminal charges, reported CNN.
The attorney, Hagan Scotten, is the seventh person to resign
over the calamitous effort to dismiss charges against Adams. Scotten was a line
prosecutor on the case and had been placed on administrative leave Thursday for
refusing to sign off on its dismissal.
In a letter to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove,
Scotten slammed what he called a “dismissal-with-leverage.”
“Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and
traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other
citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” Scotten told Bove, who is
President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.
“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to
give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is
enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten added.
“But it was never going to be me.”
Scotten, a Harvard law graduate awarded two bronze stars as
a troop commander in Iraq, is a seasoned prosecutor who has handled several
corruption cases in New York including three associates of former Mayor Rudy
Giuliani. He has also worked on other cases, against Bishop Lamor Whitehead,
who is close to Adams and was convicted at trial on multiple counts of fraud.
Scotten was also a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
CNN has reached out to Scotten for comment.
To read more CLICK HERE
The 5th Execution of 2025
Florida executed James
Dennis Ford on February 13, 2025 for the savage murders of two young parents in
front of their toddler daughter in 1997, reported the USA TODAY.
Ford, 64, was executed by lethal
injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead
at 6:19 p.m. ET, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in
2025 and the fourth
in the United States this year. His execution came less than an hour
before Texas is set to execute
Richard Lee Tabler at 7 p.m. ET for the double murder of two men in
2004.
Ford was on death row for more than two decades for the 1997 murders of Gregory and Kimberly Malnory, who were in their mid-20s
"This is the day for final justice for Kim and
Greg," Connie Ankney, Gregory's mother, told reporters after the
execution. "I hope he burns in hell."
Deidre Parkinson, Kimberly's stepmother also attended the
execution. "We have justice and relief now, even though it was a very
peaceful death for him," she said.
Here’s what you need to know about Ford’s
execution, including his last words.
Officials said Ford did not say any final words to the
people at the execution, but he did issue a final written statement. According
to WWSB,
his statement said: "Hugs Prayers Love!!! God Bless everyone!!!!"
Ford’s last meal included steak, macaroni and cheese, fried
okra, sweet potato, pumpkin pie, and sweet tea. Three family members visited
Ford on Thursday morning, according to
Ted Veerman, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
On April 6, 1997, court records say that Ford invited his
co-worker Gregory Malnory and Malnory's wife Kimberly on a fishing trip to the
South Florida Sod Farm in Punta Gorda, a southwestern Florida city just north
of Fort Myers. The Malnorys brought along their 23-month-old daughter Maranda.
Police believe Ford first attacked Gregory, shooting him in
the back of the head, bludgeoning him and slitting his throat. Kimberly, who
was injured during the initial attack, managed to save Maranda by strapping her
in the backseat of the couple's truck. But court records say Ford returned,
then raped and beat her before shooting her dead.
About 18 hours later, an employee of the sod farm found the
Malnorys' bodies. Maranda survived but the 23-month-old was dehydrated, full of
insect bites and covered in her mother's blood.
Ford told police that he went fishing with the family and
that they were alive when he left them to go hunting, records show.
Witnesses told investigators that they had seen Ford with
blood on his face, hands, and clothes and that he had large scratches on his
body. Prosecutors say Ford's DNA and gun connected him to the crime scene.
Maranda Joellin Malnory spoke to the local
news station, Gulf Coast News, about the impact the murder of her parents
left on her life.
“I told one of my grandmas the other day you grieve the
people you knew,” she told the outlet. “But I grieve what could have been.”
She told the news
station that she was 13 years old when she finally learned how her
parents died. For her, that was a hard thing to stomach and has been hard to
relive.
“Technically, my worst enemy is the person who did this,”
she said. “But I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Maranda dedicated a Facebook post to her parents' lives on
Thursday, ending it by saying: "I love you forever mommy and daddy!"
Greg’s co-workers at the South Florida Sod Farm remembered
the couple fondly.
“He was an all-American good ol’ boy. He loved to hunt and
fish,” Wiley McCall, Greg’s supervisor told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “He
was a model employee, always on time.”
Joseph Shackleford, Greg's childhood friend, said he knew
the Malnorys
well and described Kimberly as a selfless person. “She was the kind of
person that would give you the shirt off her back. Everybody loved her,” he
said.
During the trial against Ford in 1999, Connie Ankney
described her son Greg as a loving husband a loyal friend and a dedicated
father. “Greg will never get to walk his daughter down the aisle when she gets
married,” she said.
Kimberly Malnory's mother, Linda Griffin, was devastated by
her daughter's death.
“She was my life, my laughter and my tears,” she said during
Ford's 1999 trial, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Griffin died in a
car accident in 2016.
Dee Parkinson, Kimberly’s stepmother since the age of 6,
described her stepdaughter as having "a vivacious, bubbly, talkative
personality" and that the couple's friends and family would never get over
their deaths. "Words cannot express how much we miss them both."
Ford had no significant criminal record before the murders,
and friends and family said he never showed signs of violence. Ford
had a troubled childhood with an alcoholic father and a mother who
left when he was 14, court records say.
Rodney McCray, a close friend of the family, said that the
last few years of his life, Ford's father was "drinking just about around
the clock,” according to court records.
Still, Ford was close with his dad. He dropped out of school
because he preferred to spend time with his dad at his job as a cemetery
caretaker in Arcadia. Ford and his father shared a "very close" bond,
Ford's first wife said, remarking that they were "closer than any two
people she had ever known in her entire life.”
Ford was in his early 20s when his dad died at the age of
52.
“He was devastated that he had lost his best friend,” Ford's
defense attorneys wrote in court records. “There were times when Paige Ford
[his first wife] would find him missing at night, and she would find him at the
cemetery lying on his father’s grave.”
The loss compounded Ford's decline. He had begun drinking in
his late teens and eventually worked his way up to 24 beers in a day, records
say.
In the leadup to the execution, his lawyers argued that the death penalty should not have been applied to Ford because he has a mental developmental age 20 years younger than his actual age.
To read more CLICK HERE
The 4th Execution of 2025
A Texas man who killed his strip club manager and another
man, then later prompted a massive lockdown of the state prison system when he
used a cellphone smuggled onto death row to threaten a lawmaker, was executed on February 13. 2024.
Richard Lee Tabler, 46, was given a lethal injection at the
state penitentiary in Huntsville. The time of death was 6:38 p.m. CST, 15
minutes after a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital was
administered in his arms.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my
actions,” Tabler said, strapped to the death chamber gurney, looking at
relatives of his victims who watched through a window a few feet away.
“I had no right to take your loved ones from you, and I ask
and pray, hope and pray, that one day you find it in your hearts to forgive me
for those actions,” Tabler said. “No amount of my apologies will ever return
them to you.”
He expressed to love to his family and friends, lawyers and
supporters, and he thanked prison officials for their compassion and “the
opportunity to show you that I can change and become a better man and
rehabilitate.”
After apologizing several more times and saying this was the
beginning of a new life for him in heaven, he told the warden: “I am finished.”
As the drugs began, he mouthed once again, “I’m sorry,” then
began breathing quickly. After about a dozen breaths, all movement stopped.
Tabler — the second
person executed in Texas in a little over a week, with two more
scheduled by the end of April — was condemned for the Thanksgiving 2004
shooting deaths of Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni, 28, and Haitham Zayed, 25, in a
remote area near Killeen in Central Texas.
Rahmouni was the manager of a strip club where Tabler worked
until he was banned from the place. Zayed was a friend of Rahmouni, and police
said both men were killed in a late-night meeting to buy some stolen stereo
equipment that was actually a planned ambush.
Tabler also confessed to killing two teenage girls who
worked at the club, Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16. He was
indicted but never tried in their killings.
Dotson’s father, George, was among the witnesses. He
declined to comment on Tabler’s apologies, saying he needed time to process
what he had just seen but was glad to have seen it.
“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “It took me 20 years to get
here.”
“Today is for Tiffany,” said her godfather, Tom Newton. “And
this is justice.”
Tabler had repeatedly asked the courts that his appeals be
dropped and that he be put to death. He also has changed his mind on that point
several times, and his attorneys have questioned whether he is mentally
competent to make that decision. Tabler’s prison record includes at least two
instances of attempted suicide, and he was previously granted a stay of
execution in 2010.
“Petitioner has spent the last twenty years in the Courts,
and see’s no point in wasting this Courts time, nor anyone else’s,” Tabler
wrote to the state Court of Criminal Appeals on Dec. 9, 2024 after his current
execution date was set.
Tabler’s death row phone
calls in 2008 to state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston,
prompted an unprecedented lockdown of more than 150,000 inmates in the the
nation’s second-largest prison system. Some were confined to their cells for
weeks while officers swept more than 100 prisons to seize hundreds of items of
contraband, including cellphones.
Whitmire led a Senate committee with oversight of state
prisons, and said at the time that Tabler warned him that he knew the names of
his children and where they lived. Whitmire, through a spokesperson at the
mayor’s office, declined to comment on Tabler’s pending execution.
The ACLU appealed Tabler’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court
last year, claiming he was denied adequate legal representation during his
lower court appeals by attorneys who refused to participate in hearings at what
they said was his request.
The ACLU appeal argued that Tabler’s attorneys ignored a
psychological exam that determined he had a “deep and severe constellation of
mental illnesses ” that had been ignored since childhood. The court refused to
halt his execution.
The club Tabler worked at was called TeaZers. Investigators
said he had a conflict with his boss, Rahmouni, who allegedly said he could
have Tabler’s family “wiped out” for $10.
Tabler recruited a friend, Timothy Payne, a soldier at
nearby Fort Cavazos, and lured Rahmouni and Zayed to a meeting under the guise
of buying the stolen stereo equipment. Tabler shot them both in their car, then
pulled Rahmouni out and had Payne video him shooting Rahmouni again.
Tabler later confessed to the killings. During the sentencing
phase of his trial, prosecutors introduced Tabler’s written and videotaped
statements saying he also killed Dotson and Benefield days later because he was
worried they would tell people he killed the men.
Investigators said that before he was arrested, Tabler
called the Bell County Sheriff’s office to taunt deputies about the murders and
threatened to kill more employees and undercover law enforcement at the strip
club.
Also Thursday, in Florida, a man convicted of killing a
husband and wife during a fishing trip at a remote farm while their toddler
looked on was
put to death by lethal injection in that state’s first execution this
year.
To read more CLICK HERE
In 2021, following a bench trial, Phillip Shivers was convicted of violating 18 Pa.C.S.A. 6105, 18 Pa.C.S.A 6106 and 18 Pa.C.S.A 6108 under the Uniformed Firearms Act. On July 18, 2019, Philadelphia police were on regular patrol in a neighborhood known for "drug activity and gun violence.” Shivers was observed near the entrance of a nearby a 7-Eleven.
As police approached Shivers, he took off running. He was
soon detained by police where it was discovered that Shivers illegally
possessed a firearm.
Shivers sought to suppress the discovery of the firearm
based on the premise that the police violated Article I, Section 8 of the
Pennsylvania Constitution in not having reasonable suspicion to conduct an
investigator detention. The motion to suppress was denied, and he was convicted
following a bench trial. The language of Article I, Section 8 and the Fourth
Amendment are very similar.
On direct appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Shivers
challenged the trial court’s ruling dismissing his suppression motion.
There are three distinct levels of interaction between
police officers and citizens:
In this instance, the police did not have probable cause to
detain or arrest Shivers. Prosecutors contend what started as mere encounter
evolved into reasonable suspicion as Shivers fled from the police while in a
high crime area.
Shivers asserted the police provoked his flight by pursuing
him as he walked away, and that the Pennsylvania Constitution provides greater
protections to an individual subject to detention than does the U.S.
Constitution.
In Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000), the U.S.
Supreme Court held that an unprovoked flight in a high crime area is sufficient
to create reasonable suspicion to justify an investigatory detention pursuant
to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S 1 (1968).
Let’s look at Terry first. On Oct. 31, 1963, while
walking the beat through downtown Cleveland, police detective Martin McFadden,
with 39 years of police experience, noticed three men acting suspiciously and
pacing in front of a jewelry store on Euclid Avenue.
McFadden, based on his years of experience was concerned the
men were “casing a job, a stick up” and were carrying weapons. McFadden
identified himself as a police officer and asked their names and searched the
three for weapons.
The searches resulted in John Terry’s arrest for possessing
a firearm without a license. He was convicted and appealed all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court. Although the Supreme Court in Terry acknowledged
that a hunch was not enough, the court carved out a new standard of
proof—reasonable suspicion.
Some 30 years later, in Chicago, Sam Wardlow was holding a
bag on a city street known for heavy narcotics trafficking. After noticing
police officers in the area, Wardlow fled on foot. When officers caught up with
him, they conducted a protective Terry pat-down search for weapons,
their training and experience told them that weapons are usually in the
vicinity of narcotics transactions. The officers arrested Wardlow after
discovering that he was carrying a handgun.
At a suppression hearing, Wardlow claimed that in order to
stop an individual, short of actually arresting the person, police first had to
have reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory detention. The motion was
denied and he was convicted at trial.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for a 5-4
majority, held that police officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment when
they stopped Wardlow, because the officers were justified in suspecting that
the accused was involved in criminal activity and, therefore, justified in
investigating further. Rehnquist wrote "flight is the consummate act of
evasion."
In 1999, it appeared that Pennsylvania would adopt a
contrary position on flight as a factor in reasonable suspicion determinations.
In the Interest of D.M., 743 A.2d 422 (Pa. 1999), police received an
anonymous phone call about a man with a gun on a street corner in Philadelphia.
The call stated that he was a Black male and described his clothing. The
officer was only a block away when he heard the radio call. He drove to the
corner and saw D.M. who matched the description. D.M. ran from the officer and
police ultimately caught up with him.
The court held that his flight was irrelevant to the
reasonable suspicion analysis because D.M. did nothing to arouse the officer’s
suspicion before he fled. Finding the matching of the nondetailed clothing
description alone insufficient to provide reasonable suspicion for a seizure,
the court held that there was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and Article
I, Section 8.
In light of the Wardlow decision, the U.S. Supreme
Court vacated the decision in D.M. and ordered reconsideration of the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision. On remand, the court reversed its earlier
Fourth Amendment ruling and held that it incorrectly ruled that flight was
irrelevant to the reasonable suspicion analysis. “The totality of the
circumstances test, by its very definition, requires that the whole picture be
considered when determining whether the police possessed the requisite cause to
stop appellant,” and “flight was clearly relevant.”
In recent years, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has limited
long accepted indicia of reasonable suspicion due to evolving legislation with
regard to firearms and marijuana.
In Commonwealth v. Hicks, 208 A.3d 916 (Pa. 2019), this
court held that criminal activity justifying a stop could not be inferred from
carrying a concealed gun in public because many people have licenses to carry
firearms. The court held, the conduct at issue was solely possession of the
gun, “there remains no particularized basis upon which to suspect that Hick’s
mere possession of a concealed firearm was unlawful.”
In Commonwealth v. Barr, 266 A.3d 25 (Pa. 2021),
the commonwealth claimed that there was probable cause to search a vehicle
solely because police smelled marijuana after a lawful traffic stop, and the
stop was in a high crime area. The Medical Marijuana Act now permits many
people to have a license to possess marijuana. As the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court, held a stop based on the mere smell of marijuana was unconstitutional.
Shivers contends the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article
I, Section 8, can go further than the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
in protecting people during investigatory detentions. Fleeing is an
individual’s decision, and fleeing—in and of itself—is not a basis for
reasonable suspicion. Being in a high crime area is not the conduct of an
individual, but the conduct of others. Innocent people are in high crime
areas—they may live there or work there or have friends or family living there,
through no choice of their own. At times, innocent people flee from the police
in high crime areas due to a fear of dangerous and even deadly encounters with
the police.
The case is Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Shivers, 50
EAP 2024.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney of Lawrence County.
He is the author of "The Executioner’s Toll." You can follow him on
Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com.
To visit the Legal CLICK HERE
If ever one needed evidence of the necessity for limits on executive power, President Donald Trump has now provided it, writes David Cole in The New York Review of Books. The first three weeks of his second term are Exhibit A in the case for checks and balances, separation of powers, and constrained presidential authority. He has sought to effectively shutter an agency established by Congress, USAID. He tried to freeze all federal funding, in contravention both of statutes requiring that the funds be spent and of countless contractual obligations. In a brazen effort to remake the federal government in his image, he offered without any authorization to buy out federal employees if they voluntarily resigned. He has attempted to end birthright citizenship, a right expressly guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. He ordered the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia to fire dozens of lawyers who prosecuted the January 6 insurrectionists, and threatened to fire the FBI agents involved, even though they were only doing their jobs. His Attorney General has directed the Justice Department to criminally investigate businesses for DEI programs—even though Congress has not made offering such programs a crime under any circumstances. And he dismissed seventeen inspectors general, the watchdogs for abuse and fraud within the executive branch, without providing the notice and reasons required by statute. The list goes on.
The targets of these and other measures have not been
shy about pushing back, filing legal challenges in the courts. (The online
publication Just Security keeps an excellent tracker of this litigation.) Thus far, to
put it mildly, the president is not faring well. Courts have blocked him from
halting federal funding, closing USAID, removing birthright citizenship, giving
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive information
on millions of people held by the Treasury Department, and imposing a February
6 deadline for federal employees to take his illegal buyout. Two courts have
blocked his cruel and unfounded directive to transfer transgender women to
men’s prisons, even where prison authorities have determined that they should
be housed in women’s prisons for their safety. (To be clear, much damage
remains, as many of the executive orders are in place and probably not
illegal—just heartless, counterproductive, and stupid.) The judges who have
blocked his actions were appointed by Republicans and Democrats, even in one
case by Trump himself. The courts, in other words, are for the most part doing
their job—checking unprecedented abuses of presidential power.
The ultimate fate of many if not most of these
initiatives will likely be determined by the Supreme Court. That is worrying,
because for many years this Supreme Court—deeply distrustful of the
“administrative state” and of congressional efforts to rein in presidential
authority—has undertaken a campaign to grant the president centralized,
consolidated power. In the name of the “unitary executive,” a theory that the
president must have unilateral control over the executive branch, the Court has
repeatedly struck down limits on the president’s power to remove federal
officials. Last term it went still further, granting President Trump himself
unprecedented immunity even for criminal conduct, reasoning that subjecting a
president to the criminal accountability everyone else faces—even after he has
left office—could impermissibly interfere with his unilateral powers, such as
the pardon authority, and more generally unduly hinder his freedom and
willingness to carry out his duties.
It is hard to say how much that decision informs the
president’s current overreach. But in any case this time around Trump is more
than unhindered; he is unhinged. Many have wondered whether Trump will go
so far as to simply defy the Supreme Court if it rules against him. Over
the weekend, Vice President J.D. Vance poured gasoline on that speculation by
tweeting that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate
power.” A lot of work is being done in that sentence by the word
“legitimate,” but in our system it is the Court, not the executive, that
determines whether the executive’s actions are legitimate, as in legal. If
Trump did choose to disobey the Court’s justices on the grounds that they
“aren’t allowed” to regulate his executive actions, it would cross a line that
no president has ever crossed and likely ignite an entirely justified political
firestorm.
To read more CLICK HERE
The Innocence Project used to track all DNA exonerations
throughout the country. An exoneration clears a convicted person of
blameworthiness. Now they track all "Innocence Project successes,"
which includes all exonerations generated through DNA or other evidence.
There were 375 DNA exonerations between 1989 and 2020. For
those 375 men and women and their families, DNA saved them from the anguish and
pain of being locked up for a crime they did not commit. For the rest of us,
DNA revealed the many flaws in the criminal justice system.
The "other successes" are even more impressive
than the DNA exonerations. In "Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction,
and the Fight to Redeem American Justice," Barbara Bradley Hagerty
declared, "The double helix has sparked a revolution." DNA has
exposed the errors of our way.
The Innocence Project is right to celebrate those non-DNA
exonerations. "[O]verturning a wrongful conviction, even with DNA
evidence, is extremely difficult. ... [Without it] it's so much harder,"
Rebecca Brown of the Innocence Project told Bradley. She goes on to say,
"It comes down to, really, serendipity. ... We should not be having to
depend on luck."
DNA is not present in every case. However, there are still
mistaken identifications, police misconduct and bad forensics throughout the
system. The Innocence Project lists six "contributing causes" for
wrongful convictions: eyewitness misidentification; false confessions or
admissions; government misconduct; inadequate defense; informants; and
unvalidated or improper forensic science.
More specifically, in 63% of wrongful convictions there was
eyewitness identification; 52% had inaccurate or unscientific forensic
analysis; 19% had untrustworthy informants: and 28% had confessions.
Imagine that nearly 3 in 10 people exonerated pleaded guilty
to a crime they did not commit. How does that happen?
In 2010, 17-year-old India Spellman was arrested by
Philadelphia police for the robbery of a woman with a gun and as the shooter in
the robbery and murder of a second person. India and her co-defendant were
taken to the police department for interrogation. Although she was a juvenile,
her parents were kept from the interrogation room.
As the 17-year-old was alone with the police, a detective
hit her in the face and screamed at her. He left the interrogation room and
returned with a statement that Spellman signed after detectives refused to read
her the content of the statement. The statement was a confession to being
involved in both robberies.
Thirteen years later, a judge vacated Spellman's conviction.
The trial — which featured a misidentification, a coerced confession and
prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence — had been unconstitutional.
As science evolves, so does the reliability of forensic
evidence. The gold standard pre-DNA was the human fingerprint. You may be
surprised to learn that the uniqueness of a fingerprint is an assumption, not a
well-studied idea.
According to Discover magazine, the "lack of a
fundamental scientific basis for the supposed uniqueness of fingerprints — and
the inability for apparent experts to reliably match them or even agree on
what's required for a match — has seen some federal courts reject fingerprints
entirely as evidence."
Even DNA has come under scrutiny. As collection of DNA at
crime scenes has become more sophisticated, gathering minute biological samples
has emerged as potential for folly. Finding someone's DNA at a crime scene
doesn't necessarily mean they were ever at that location. Transfer DNA can
spread to objects and places by way of other human carriers.
In one case, according to Discover magazine, a man's DNA was
found on a murder victim who was killed in their home. The man whose DNA was
found at the crime scene was in the hospital during the murder. The DNA had been
transferred by a paramedic who brought the man to the hospital and who later
responded to the 911 call made regarding the homicide.
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 Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social.
To visit Creators CLICK HERE
Adam Liptak writes in The New York Times:
There is no universally accepted definition of a
constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its
characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws
and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be
cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.
It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the
law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,”
he said on Friday. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal
actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen
anything like this.”
He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump’s
lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending,
shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government
employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people
based on their political views.
That is a partial list, Professor Chemerinsky said, and it
grows by the day. “Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a
constitutional crisis,” he said.
The distinctive feature of the current situation, several
legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts
to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed
of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial
consideration.
It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a
challenge to one of Mr. Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. On Monday,
a federal judge said the White House had defied
his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking
the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is
disobeying a judicial mandate.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump would defy a ruling
against him by the justices.
“It’s an open question whether the administration will be as
contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,” said
Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “At least so far,
it hasn’t been.”
That could change. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance struck
a confrontational tone on social media. “Judges aren’t allowed to control
the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
Professor Shaw said a clash with the courts would only add
to a crisis that is already underway. “A number of the new administration’s
executive orders and other executive actions are in clear violation of laws
enacted by Congress,” she said.
“The administration’s early moves,” she added, “also seem
designed to demonstrate maximum contempt for core constitutional values — the
separation of powers, the freedom of speech, equal justice under law.”
Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, added that a
crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal
government.
“It’s a constitutional crisis when the president of the
United States doesn’t care what the Constitution says regardless whether
Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,” she said.
“Up until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were
unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the
Constitution was essentially meaningless.”
The courts, in any event, may not be inclined or equipped to
push back. So much is happening, and so fast, that even eventual final rulings
from the Supreme Court rejecting Mr. Trump’s arguments could come too late.
After the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau are disassembled, say, no court decision can recreate them.
In many cases, of course, the Supreme Court’s six-member
conservative majority may be receptive to Mr. Trump’s arguments. Its decision in July granting him substantial
immunity from prosecution embraced an expansive vision of the
presidency that can only have emboldened him.
Members of that majority are, for instance, likely
to embrace the president’s position that he is free to fire leaders of
independent agencies.
To read more CLICK HERE
Watch my interview on Court TV discussing the socialite murder trial of Penelope McGee.
A pitiless crackdown on illegal immigration. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions, writes David Smith of The Guardian.
The “electoral
autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been long revered by Donald
Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Now admiration is
turning into emulation. In the early weeks of Trump’s second term as US
president, analysts say, there are alarming signs that the Orbánisation of
America has begun.
With the tech billionaire Elon Musk at his side, Trump has
moved with astonishing velocity to fire critics, punish media, reward allies,
gut the federal government, exploit presidential immunity and test the limits
of his authority. Many of their actions have been unconstitutional and illegal.
With Congress impotent, only
the federal courts have slowed them down.
“They are copying the path taken by other would-be dictators
like Viktor Orbán,” said Chris
Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut. “You have a move towards
state-controlled media. You have a judiciary and law enforcement that seems
poised to prioritise the prosecution of political opponents. You have the
executive seizure of spending power so the leader and only the leader gets to
dictate who gets money.”
Orbán, who came to power in 2010, was once described as “Trump
before Trump” by the US president’s former adviser Steve Bannon. His
long-term dismantling of institutions and control of media in Hungary serves as
a cautionary tale about how seemingly incremental changes can pave the way for
authoritarianism.
Orbán has described his country as “a petri dish for
illiberalism”. His party used its two-thirds majority to rewrite the
constitution, capture institutions and change electoral law. He reconfigured
the judiciary and public universities to ensure long-term party loyalty.
The prime minister created a system of rewards and
punishments, giving control of money and media to allies. An estimated 85% of
media outlets are controlled by the Hungarian government, allowing Orbán to shape
public opinion and marginalise dissent. Orbán has been also masterful at
weaponising “family values” and anti-immigration rhetoric to mobilise his base.
Orbán’s fans in the US include Vice-President JD Vance, the
media personality Tucker Carlson and Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage
Foundation thinktank, who once said: “Modern Hungary is not just a model
for conservative statecraft but the model.” The Heritage Foundation
produced Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Orbán has addressed the Conservative Political Action
Conference and two months ago travelled
to the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for talks with both Trump and Musk. He
has claimed that “we have entered the policy writing system of President Donald
Trump’s team” and “have deep involvement there”.
But even Orbán might be taken aback – and somewhat envious –
of the alacrity that Trump has shown since returning to power, attacking the
foundations of democracy not with a chisel but a sledgehammer.
On day one he pardoned about 1,500 people who took part in
the 6 January 2021 insurrection, including those who violently attacked US
Capitol police in an effort to overturn his election defeat. Driven by
vengeance, he dismissed federal prosecutors involved in Trump-related
investigations and hinted
at a further targeting of thousands of FBI agents who worked on
January 6-related cases.
Bill
Kristol, director of the advocacy group Defending Democracy Together and a
former official in the Ronald Reagan White House, said: “Flipping the
narrative on January 6, becoming a pro-January 6 administration, then
weaponising the justice department and talking at least of mass firings at the
FBI – that’s further than the norm and very dangerous for obvious reasons.
“If he could do that, he could do anything. Why can’t he
order the justice department to investigate you and me and 50 other people? One
assumes the lawyers at justice or the FBI agents wouldn’t do it, but if a
couple of thousand have been cleared out and the rest are intimidated. I’m not
hysterical but I do think the threat is much more real now than people
anticipated it being a month ago.”
Borrowing from Orbán’s playbook, Trump has mobilised
the culture wars, issuing a series of executive orders and policy changes
that target diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and education curricula.
This week he
signed an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from
competing in women’s sports and directed the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to
lead a taskforce on eradicating what he called anti-Christian bias within the
federal government.
He is also seeking to marginalise the mainstream media and
supplant it with a rightwing ecosystem that includes armies of influencers and
podcasters. A “new media” seat has been added to the White House press briefing
room while Silicon Valley billionaires were prominent at his inauguration.
Musk’s X is a powerful mouthpiece, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has abandoned
factchecking and the Chinese-owned TikTok could become part-owned by
the US.
Trump has sued news organisations over stories or even
interview edits; some have settled the cases. The Pentagon said it
would “rotate” four major news outlets from their workspace and replace them
with more Trump-friendly media. Jim Acosta, a former White House correspondent
who often sparred with Trump, quit CNN while Lara Trump, the president’s
daughter-in-law, was
hired to host a new weekend show on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.
But the most dramatic change has been the way in which Trump
has brought disruption to the federal government on an unprecedented scale,
firing at least 17
inspectors general, dismantling longstanding programmes, sparking
widespread public outcry and challenging the very role of Congress to create
the nation’s laws and pay its bills.
Government workers are being pushed to resign, entire agencies are being
shuttered and federal funding to states and non-profits was temporarily frozen.
The most sensitive treasury department information of countless Americans was
opened to Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team in a breach
of privacy and protocol, raising concerns about potential misuse of federal
funds.
Musk’s
allies orchestrated a physical takeover of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAid), locking out employees and vowing to shut
it down, with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, stepping
in as acting administrator. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into
the wood chipper,” Musk posted on
X.
Musk’s team has also heavily influenced the office of
personnel management (OPM), offering federal workers a “buyout” and installing
loyalists into key positions. It is also pushing for a 50% budget cut and
implementing “zero-based budgeting” at the General Services Administration
(GSA), which controls federal properties and massive contracts.
Musk, a private citizen who has tens of billions of dollars
in government contracts, is slashing and burning his way through Washington
with little accountability and has significant potential conflicts of interest.
An array of lawsuits is demanding interventions to stop him unilaterally
gutting government. Protests are erupting outside government agencies and
jamming congressional phone lines.
But critics aiming to sound the alarm that a shadow government is conducting a
hostile takeover face intimidation or punishment. Edward Martin, the interim US
attorney for the District of Columbia, threatened
legal action against anyone who “impedes” Doge’s work or “threatens”
its people. Martin posted on X: “We are in contact with FBI and other
law-enforcement partners to proceed rapidly. We also have our prosecutors
preparing.”
Murphy, the Democratic senator, said: “What’s most
worrying to me right now is there’s a whole campaign under way to try to punish
and suppress Trump and Musk’s political enemies. It started with the pardoning
of the January 6 rioters; now everybody knows that they are at risk of having
the shit beat out of them if they oppose Donald Trump.
“It extended to the seizure of government funding. It’s
clear now that Musk and Trump are going to fund entities and states and
congressional districts that support them and will withhold funds from entities
and states and congressional districts that don’t support them.”
He added: “Now you have this lawyer who represented January
6 defendants, the new acting DC US attorney, trolling activists online,
threatening them with federal prosecution. It’s dizzying campaign of political
repression that looks more like Russia than the United States.”
Democrats such as Murphy are determined to fight back but,
being in the minority, have few tools at their disposal. Republicans have
mostly appeared content to cede their own power. The party’s fealty to Trump
was demonstrated again this week when senators in committee voted to move
forward with the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr as
director of national intelligence and health secretary respectively – two
mavericks whose selection would have been unthinkable just a year ago.
Charlie Sykes, a
conservative author and broadcaster, said: “There had been some lingering
optimism that at least some Republican senators would draw the line at some of
the more absurd Maga appointees but that hasn’t happened. That also demoralises
any potential opposition.”
He added: “What Elon Musk represents
is basically a hostile takeover of the government and the complete indifference
of the Republican Congress to the ways that it is being stripped of its core
constitutional functions is demoralising. It is this mood that nothing can be
done or will be done to stop them. You’re seeing that in the business
community, in the political community, and it’s a fundamental loss of faith in
the rule of law and in our system of checks and balances.”
One guardrail is holding for now. Courts have temporarily blocked
Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, cull the government workforce
and freeze federal funding. Even so, commentators warn that the blatant
disregard for congressional authority, erosion of civil service protections and
concentration of power in the executive branch pose a grave threat.
Larry
Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at
the University of Minnesota, said: “You’d have to have your eyes fully closed
not to be deeply concerned and outraged about the vacuum that Donald Trump is
operating in now. In a real sense, US democracy has died this month. It doesn’t
mean it’s dead for the long term but at this moment the idea of an accountable
representative system, as the framers of the constitution wrote it, is no
longer present.”
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