The case of Sean "Diddy" Combs is in the hands of the jury, as it started its deliberations on Monday. WFMJ 21 News Legal Expert Matthew T. Mangino breaks down the closing arguments and what the jury will consider.
To watch the interview CLICK HERE
In President Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”--buried in Section 70302 of the legislation— is a provision that would severely restrict federal courts’ authority to hold government officials in contempt if they violate judicial orders, reports the Campaign Legal Center.
A court’s ability to hold bad actors in contempt is a vital
enforcement power that judges can use to compel compliance with their
rulings.
When somebody chooses to violate a court order, the judge
who issued the ruling has a few different options to force them to comply,
including holding them in contempt and issuing sanctions, fines, or even jail
time until the order is followed.
But the reconciliation bill would require anyone suing the
government to pay a bond before the court can use its contempt power to enforce
injunctions or restraining orders meant to halt illegal actions.
By restricting this authority, the House bill threatens the
power of the judicial branch. On its own, that represents an attack on the rule
of law and the separation
of powers that underlies our democracy. But in the context of our
current political moment, a more specific goal is unfortunately clear.
Courts have already ruled at
least 170 times against the Trump administration, including a preliminary
injunction sought by CLC that halted
Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to change the rules for federal elections.
In response to many of these rulings, the president has resisted compliance and
waged intimidation campaigns targeting the judges responsible.
In light of all this, the House bill seems squarely and unacceptably focused on shielding the Trump administration from accountability when it breaks the law.
To read more CLICK HERE
Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, has reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to relatives of the victims, reported The New York Times.
Mr. Kohberger had been set to go on trial on murder charges
in August, nearly three years after the killings, which occurred at a residence
near the university in Moscow, Idaho. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday.
In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors
said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under
the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr.
Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life
sentences and waive all rights to appeal.
The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims,
criticized the prosecution team for failing to consult with the families. Some
of them had worked to change Idaho law to allow the firing squad as a form of
capital punishment.
“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a
secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from
the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a
statement.
In their letter to the families, prosecutors wrote that the
plea deal was “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”
“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be
convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to
put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction
appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making
process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this
resolution is in the best interests of justice.”
Prosecutors did not respond to messages seeking comment, nor
did lawyers for Mr. Kohberger. The families of the other victims did not
comment immediately on the proposed agreement.
Mr. Kohberger, now 30, was a criminology Ph.D. student at
Washington State University, about a 20-minute drive from the crime scene. He
grew up in Pennsylvania and studied psychology in college. He was arrested in
December 2022 at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains area of Pennsylvania
about six weeks after the killings.
Mr. Kohberger’s defense team tried unsuccessfully for months
to undermine key pieces of evidence that investigators collected against him.
Prosecutors have said that his DNA was found on a knife sheath recovered at the
crime scene, and that records showed he had purchased a knife of a kind
matching the sheath in the months before the killings. Video footage showed a
car similar to his circling the neighborhood around the time of the deaths.
But investigators have yet to suggest a motive or offer any
details on how the victims were chosen.
Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers filed a flurry of motions in recent
months, including one trying to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty
— in part, they said, because Mr. Kohberger had been diagnosed with autism.
They unsuccessfully sought a delay in the trial, arguing that their team had
not had enough time to comb through the vast amount of evidence in the case.
But the judge ordered jury selection to commence on Aug. 4.
Just hours before news of the plea deal on Monday, one of
Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers was in court in Pennsylvania, where she successfully
argued that two witnesses who knew Mr. Kohberger as a teenager should be forced
to testify at trial even though they did not want to.
Mr. Kohberger has been in jail since his arrest. His lawyers
have given few hints about what defense they planned to offer, but have said
that he was “out driving” on the night of the murders.
In the years before the killings, Mr. Kohberger indicated
that he was interested in studying criminals. In a message to a friend in 2018,
he wrote that he would like a job “dealing with high-profile offenders.” A few
months before the murders, he posted on Reddit asking people who had spent time
in prison to describe their “thoughts, emotions and actions from the beginning
to end of the crime commission process.”
Investigators have said that the murders happened sometime
around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. The victims — Ms. Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen,
21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — had spent a typical Saturday
night out near the university campus and returned to the house in the early
hours of Sunday.
A roommate who survived the attack said she had heard what
sounded like crying coming from the room of one of the women. She later told
the police that she had opened her door and seen a man with bushy eyebrows in
black clothes and a mask. The man left the house and the roommate began
texting with another surviving roommate downstairs before taking
refuge in her room.
But neither she nor anyone else called the police until more
than seven hours later, when a friend came to the house and discovered the body
of one of the victims.
To read more CLICK HERE
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