I would be the happiest attorney in Virginia if I was representing James Comey.
Imagine having the opportunity to represent a former FBI director who has been charged, as The New York Times put it, "[by] an inexperienced
prosecutor loyal to President Trump, in the job for less than a week, fil[ing]
criminal charges against one of her boss's most-reviled opponents. She did so
not only at Mr. Trump's direct command, but also against the urging of both her
own subordinates and her predecessor, who had just been fired for raising
concerns that there was insufficient evidence to indict."
What you've read is just the tip of the iceberg. This is
going to be like stealing candy from a baby. Here are the top ten reasons,
based on the findings of NBC News, why it's good to be Comey's
attorneys.
1. The former FBI director was indicted five days before the
statute of limitations was set to expire. That means if he wasn't charged by
Sept. 30, 2025, he could never be charged. Seasoned career prosecutors,
including Trump's own appointees, had five years to bring charges. They
refused.
2. President Donald Trump publicly said that U.S. Attorney
General Pam
Bondi should prosecute Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York
Attorney General Letitia James. All three political adversaries.
3. The president posted on Truth Social, his social media
platform, his frustration that his political foes have not been arrested:
"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility.
They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST
BE SERVED, NOW!!!"
4. Lindsey Halligan, the new acting U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, brought the charges against Comey despite
concerns from prosecutors within her department. Prior to the charges, a senior
Justice Department official told NBC News that career prosecutors in Halligan's
office sent her a memo documenting why they believed that probable cause did
not exist to secure an indictment against Comey.
5. The president's appointment of Halligan came after he
expressed frustration that her predecessor, acting U.S. Attorney Erik S.
Siebert, was refusing to bring charges against Comey. Trump fired
Siebert.
6. The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in
Alexandria, in the Eastern District of Virginia. The grand jury did not return
an indictment on an additional count of making a false statement, according to
court filings – some of the Justice Department's claims were rejected.
7. The government's case against Comey is based on the
testimony of Andrew McCabe, a Comey deputy. McCabe said that Comey authorized
him to leak information to the press, according to a 2018 Justice Department
inspector general's report. But the report also found that McCabe made multiple false or misleading statements.
8. The indictment includes two counts: making a false
statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges stem from
testimony Comey made during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He denied
that he authorized leaking information regarding the FBI's investigations into
then-President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He
told Congress, "I stand by the testimony."
9. The Inspector General's report found that Comey flatly
denied, under oath to investigators, authorizing McCabe's leak to The Wall
Street Journal. Investigators concluded that "the overwhelming weight of
evidence supported Comey's version of the conversation and not McCabe's."
10. During Trump's first term, the president directed
then-special counsel John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia
investigation. Durham's team did not charge Comey with a crime, nor did
Durham criticize Comey by name in his final report.
This stuff is better for the defense than DNA is for
prosecutors in a murder trial.
And it would be funny if it wasn't such a blatant challenge
to the rule of law, shaking the very fiber of our democracy.
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. He is a regular contributor to Law & Crime. 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.
To visit Law & Crime CLICK HERE
The U.S. Supreme Court's "Shadow Docket" conjures
up this mysterious image of justices surreptitiously moving through the Supreme
Court building in the dead of night, making monumental, yet anonymous
decisions.
University of Chicago law professor William Baude first
coined the phrase "Shadow Docket" in 2015. The name may be modern,
but the concept has been around as long as the Supreme Court itself. The term
refers to the U.S. Supreme Court's practice of issuing emergency orders and
summary decisions outside its regular case docket, typically without oral
argument.
Traditionally, the Shadow Docket was rarely used. Like
seeking injunctive relief in a trial court, a litigant had to prove that they
would suffer irreparable harm if the request was denied.
According to Jack Laskey, writing on EBCO, a litigant
wishing to get their case decided via the Shadow Docket applies to any one of
the nine justices, who can then forward the case to the rest of the Court for
review. If at least five of the justices agree to grant the litigant's request,
the case is placed on the Shadow Docket.
There have been 25 emergency applications sent to the court
by the Trump administration this year. In each of those cases, a lower court
had ruled that the president's actions were unconstitutional.
For example, recently in California, judges ruled that
immigration agents could not arrest someone without reasonable suspicion based
solely on a person's ethnicity or the language they spoke. President Donald
Trump sent an emergency request to the Supreme Court to overrule the decision
of the California judges and lift that ban.
In Noem v. Perdomo, the Court allowed immigration agents to
consider race, language and work status when deciding whom to stop in Los
Angeles.
Cooley Law School Professor Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick
wrote about how the Shadow Docket is impacting fundamental protections
previously provided by the Supreme Court. In 1968, the Court created the
"reasonable suspicion" standard in Terry v. Ohio. It was meant as a
compromise, allowing police to act on less than probable cause while protecting
civil liberties.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring with the majority in
Noem, wrote that while ethnicity alone cannot justify a stop, it "can be a
relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors." That
formulation opens the door for immigration agents to use race, language, and
class as part of the suspicion calculus.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing, "We should
not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks
Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand
idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent."
University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck examined
the implications of the Shadow Docket in his book, "The Shadow Docket: How
the Supreme Court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the
republic."
According to NPR's Nina Totenberg, Vladeck pointed to a
speech Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave in 2021, in which she assured the
audience that the current court "is not composed of partisan hacks"
and urged people to "read the opinions." But as Vladeck noted,
"What's remarkable about the Shadow Docket is that so often the court is
handing down rulings with massive impacts in which there's no opinion to
read."
"We may not agree with the specific principles the
justices are articulating" in major decisions, Vladeck wrote, but at least
we have some sense that these decisions are based on legal principles. In
contrast, he argued, "The shadow docket has none of that."
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
The 34th Execution of 2025
Victor Tony Jones, 64,convicted of killing a married couple during a robbery in South Florida in 1990 was put to death September 30, 2025 in a record 13th execution this year in the state, reported The Associated Press.
Jones was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Jones’ death extended Florida’s record for total executions in a single year, with the state planning to carry out two more executions next month.
The curtain to the viewing room opened right at the
scheduled 6:00 p.m. start of the procedure. Asked if he had any last statement,
Jone said, “no, sir.” Then the drugs began flowing. His chest began to heave
for a few minutes, then slowed and stopped completely.
The warden shook Jones and shouted his name several minutes
into the procedure, but there was no response. Jones’ face lost color as he
laid motionless, and a medic eventually entered the death chamber and declared
him dead minutes later. Officials said the execution was without complications.
“After seeing what I saw tonight, I wish my parents had that
opportunity to die so gracefully, close your eyes and just go,” said Irene
Fisher, daughter of the victims. “They were violently killed. My father fought
for 20 minutes with a stab wound in his heart, and my mother died instantly in
the bathroom on a cold floor.”
Jones was a new employee at a Miami business owned by
Matilda and Jacob Nestor in December 1990 when he stabbed the woman in the neck
and her husband in the chest, court records show. Investigators determined that
despite his wounds, Jacob Nestor managed to retreat to an office, unholster a
.22 caliber pistol and fire five times, striking Jones once in the forehead.
Police said they found Jones wounded at the scene with the
Nestors’ money and personal property in his pockets. Jones was hospitalized and
later convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 1993 and sentenced to
death. The jury also found him guilty of armed robbery.
Fisher attended the execution of her parents’ killer with
her own two adult daughters and three other family members. She said she had
mixed emotions, as she had never watched anyone die before. But she said she
was glad it was finally over and that justice had been served.
The Nestors owned a medical supply store in Miami’s Wynwood
neighborhood, years before it became an internationally known arts and
entertainment district. The building where the business had been located is now
a community center.
“My parents would have loved that because they were always
helping people in the community,” Fisher said.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in
1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in
2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed
by Texas with five.
Jones filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court earlier
this month, based on intellectual disability and alleged abuse he suffered as a
teen at a since shuttered state-run reform school. The court denied the claims,
finding the disability issue had already been litigated and that allegations of
abuse were never presented at trial.
Hours before the execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected
a final appeal without comment.
With Tuesday’s execution, a total of 34 men have
undergone court-ordered
execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least eight other
people are scheduled to be put to death during the rest of 2025.
Barring legal reprieves, two more executions loom next month
in Florida under death warrants signed by the Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Samuel
Lee Smithers, 72, is scheduled to be executed on Oct. 14. He was convicted
of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond in 1996.
Norman
Mearle Grim Jr., 65, is scheduled to be put to death Oct. 28. He was
convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, whose body was found by a
fisherman near the Pensacola Bay Bridge in 1998.
To read more CLICK HERE
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