Politics or training, why the increase in questionable prosecutions?

Excerpts from Shaun Ossei-Owusu’s, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, article at Bloomberg Law:

In the past year, several high-profile federal investigations and prosecutions under Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department have dissolved as soon as they came under basic scrutiny. Those failures reportedly contributed to her removal.

As a law professor who teaches criminal law and legal ethics, I often hear a version of the same question from students and non-lawyer friends: “How could anyone prosecute that case?”

Commentators often note political motivations, but those explanations are incomplete. The confusion underlying that question points to a deeper feature of lawyering which extends beyond any particular administration and is easy to miss when the focus stays on politics.

At its core, legal training teaches lawyers to take a set of facts and construct a legally plausible argument, even when the underlying claim may be weak. Beginning in law school, students are given hypotheticals—sometimes far-fetched—and asked to frame legal claims in ways that make a weak position seem plausible. Over time, this becomes a professional habit.

The ability to stretch an argument serves an important function in the adversarial system. It ensures that competing positions are tested and that even unpopular views can be heard. But as I note in my recent book on lawyers and inequality, that elasticity has a less comfortable implication: It can stretch the boundaries of what prosecutors pursue, even when the case itself is thin.

Of course, individual resistance matters, as in the cases where prosecutors in both Trump terms were reassigned, stepped down, or were fired rather than having to push forward a case they didn’t believe served justice. Still, it doesn’t eliminate the underlying dynamic. As long as a case can be framed in legal terms and meets the minimal burden required by the grand jury, often someone within the system can be found to carry it forward.

And this is to say nothing of the less visible parts of the system. Every day, prosecutors across the country bring charges that raise similar questions about the strength of the case and basic fairness. The system allows government lawyers to turn contested facts into legal claims in ways that can produce real inequality.

This is especially true in the more common criminal prosecutions where defendants are not high-profile targets. They are not like Comey, James, Powell, or Cook—all of whom are well-connected, white-collar professionals with advanced degrees and the resources to defend themselves in court. In everyday cases, judges and jurors often aren’t viewing these low-profile defendants with the same skepticism brought to overtly political cases, making weak cases more likely to succeed. The media and the public aren’t closely scrutinizing these cases, but they reflect the same dynamic.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

DOJ sues DC Bar Association over ethics enforcement alleging 'blatantly partisan arm of leftist cause'

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities, reported The New York Times.

The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department.

In accompanying statements, Mr. Blanche accused the D.C. Bar of acting as a “blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes.” Mr. Woodward said that the bar would “no longer be permitted to probe sensitive executive branch deliberations,” adding that lawyers in the federal government must “be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues.”

That position — that lawyers at the Justice Department or other federal agencies are above scrutiny by legal ethics officials — is likely to be challenged by a host of legal profession entities.

The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Mr. Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory in 2020.

While the lawsuit is focused on Mr. Clark, Justice Department leaders in the suit also argued in defense of Mr. Martin. Two months ago, the D.C. Bar filed disciplinary charges against Mr. Martin over what it cast as his misconduct in seeking to punish Georgetown University’s law school.

Mr. Martin has spearheaded efforts by President Trump to use the Justice Department to pursue the president’s perceived enemies — what the administration claims are corrective measures intended to end “weaponization” of law enforcement by Democrats.

Increasingly, the Trump administration has clashed with state and local bars, as interest groups and some lawyers argue that unethical conduct by government lawyers acting on behalf of the Trump administration should be investigated and potentially punished.

The Justice Department is pushing forward a proposal to try to stall or delay state and city bars from conducting ethics investigations of its lawyers, and the new lawsuit argues that the D.C. Bar is among the entities that has shown partisan bias.

To back up that claim, the lawsuit points to how the D.C. Bar handled the case of Kevin E. Clinesmith, a former F.B.I. lawyer who pleaded guilty to making a false statement when he altered an email to try to justify court-ordered surveillance of a former 2016 Trump campaign adviser. After his plea, Mr. Clinesmith had his bar license suspended for a year.

The suit called Mr. Clinesmith’s punishment a “slap on the wrist” for suborning unlawful surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and compared it to the effort to disbar Mr. Clark for “attempting to tell a lie” about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit also invokes the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting partial immunity to presidents, suggesting that if a president has immunity, lawyers working for him in the government are also protected from ethical discipline.

“The president’s constitutionally required immunity would provide little protection if executive branch attorneys could be targeted for internal executive branch deliberations,” the lawsuit argued.

To read more CLICK HERE

'Murdaugh murders' will have a redo in South Carolina

South Carolina’s top court undid the murder convictions against Alex Murdaugh, the lawyer a jury had found guilty of murdering his wife and one of his sons in a trial that captivated the country, reported The New York Times.

In a unanimous opinion, the State Supreme Court said that “shocking jury interference” by a court clerk who oversaw jurors during the 2023 trial meant that Mr. Murdaugh’s convictions and life sentence must be overturned.

Mr. Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison because he is also serving decades-long prison sentences after pleading guilty to stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and his former clients. While he has admitted to embezzlement, he has long maintained — including during testimony at his trial — that he did not kill his wife, Maggie, 52, and their younger son, Paul, 22.

The South Carolina attorney general's office, which prosecuted the case, will retry Mr. Murdaugh for the killings.

The surprise reversal of Mr. Murdaugh’s murder convictions followed nearly five years of whirlwind drama that began in one of South Carolina’s least populous counties and grew to capture global attention. In the end, the trial — one of the highest profile in the state — was upended by a small-town clerk who could not resist injecting herself into the spectacle.

Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers hailed the decision, Alex has said from Day 1 that he did not kill his wife and son,” the lawyers, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, said in a statement. “We look forward to a new trial conducted consistent with the Constitution.”

The Murdaugh murders, as they came to be known, took place in June 2021 on the Murdaugh family’s hunting estate, in a rural part of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

To read more CLICK HERE

CREATORS: One of the Worst Court Decisions in History

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
May 12, 2026

The U.S. government detained and deported 25-year-old Brian Jose Morales Garcia to Mexico in April. That doesn't sound like breaking news in 2026, except Garcia was born in Denver.

Garcia told The Texas Tribune that he explained to police and immigration agents that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had a copy of his birth certificate and his Social Security card at his home in Austin, Texas. It didn't matter; he was shipped to Mexico.

Garcia's name may not long be remembered, but the government's disregard for individual rights and contempt for human rights will not soon be forgotten.

Some would like to pretend, or maybe don't know, that this conduct is not unprecedented. There was a time in this country when the government incarcerated thousands and thousands of American citizens who were not accused of a crime with the imprimatur of the highest court in the land.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, former President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the U.S. military to remove over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, the majority of whom were American citizens, from their homes and force them into American prison camps throughout the United States.

After Pearl Harbor, Japanese American Fred Korematsu tried to join the military and was turned away because of his ancestry. He was later fired from his job for the same reason.

Korematsu was arrested for failing to evacuate to a prison camp. He was convicted and Korematsu and his family were interned in Topaz, Utah, where the government had set up one of 10 prison camps.

Korematsu appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found "That there were members of the group who retained loyalties to Japan has been confirmed by investigations made subsequent to the exclusion. Approximately five thousand American citizens of Japanese ancestry refused to swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and to renounce allegiance to the Japanese Emperor and several thousand evacuees requested repatriation to Japan."

As a result, in December 1944, the high court ruled 6 to 3 against Korematsu, declaring that the incarceration was not caused by racism — it was justified as a "military necessity."

Justice Robert Jackson, who would later prosecute war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany, complained about the lack of any evidence to justify the incarceration, writing: "the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination ... The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

It turns out that Justice Jackson was right. It wasn't just that the government didn't have evidence; the evidence that was presented was knowingly false and misleading. The real evidence was hidden from Korematsu, his lawyers and the Supreme Court.

According to the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, as the Department of Justice began searching for evidence to support the Army's claims that Japanese Americans were a threat, they "found precisely the opposite — that J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, the FCC, the Office of Naval Intelligence and other authoritative intelligence agencies categorically denied that Japanese Americans had committed any wrongdoing. These official reports were never presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, having been intentionally suppressed."

Ultimately, after nearly 50 years, Korematsu's conviction was overturned based on the misconduct of the government's attorneys. In a statement as important today as it was in 1942, Korematsu told the court after his conviction was overturned, "According to the Supreme Court decision regarding my case, being an American citizen was not enough. They say you have to look like one ... I thought that this decision was wrong and I still feel that way. As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing."

The Korematsu decision was the law of the land for 64 years. The decision was generally considered one of the worst decisions in American history. The decision was formally overturned in 2018.

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

 

NYPD no longer reviewing all stop and frisk encounters as required by court order

More than a decade ago, a federal court found that the New York City Police Department had been unconstitutionally stopping and frisking Black and Hispanic residents. The ruling laid out required fixes, including something quite basic: The NYPD would review officers’ stops to make sure they were legal.

But for most of the past three years the nation’s largest police department failed to do that for a key part of an aggressive and politically connected unit as it stopped New Yorkers, reported ProPublica.

The lack of court-required review was recently discovered and disclosed by the NYPD’s federal monitor, which oversees the department’s compliance with the 2013 stop-and-frisk decision.

In all, more than 2,000 stops weren’t properly reviewed, according to data from the monitor.

The failure involved the Community Response Team, or CRT. A ProPublica investigation last year found that the unit had often sidestepped oversight as it went after so-called quality-of-life issues, such as unlicensed motorbikes and ATVs. The team’s tactics, including high-speed car chases, and its opaque operations disturbed some NYPD officials, but the unit expanded significantly amid the support of then-Mayor Eric Adams.

The lack of reviews is part of a pattern of the NYPD failing to deliver on its obligations under the long-standing court order. Officers across the department, for instance, have often not documented stops.

The importance of reviews is particularly critical for aggressive teams like the CRT, which has a record of unconstitutional stops. It has also drawn hundreds of civilian complaints since it was created three years ago. More than half of the officers assigned to the team have been found by the Civilian Complaint Review Board to have engaged in misconduct at least once in their career, according to a ProPublica analysis of board data last year. That compares with just a small fraction of NYPD officers overall.

Prior to its latest discovery, the federal monitor had raised alarms about the unit’s behavior. A report last year said that only 59% of stops, searches and frisks by CRT officers were lawful, a far worse rate than the NYPD’s patrol units. Nearly all of the stops involved Black or Hispanic residents.

To read more CLICK HERE

Snyder: A new vision of how criminal JUSTICE might work

 Rachel Louise Snyder writes in The New York Times:

The avenues that lead women to jail tend to differ from those for men. Criminologists have long understood this. What happens with women is often a layering of trauma and abuse. They might have economic instability or mental health challenges that allow them to be exploited by violent partners. They might exchange sex for food or housing, and then get arrested for any number of infractions: prostitution, trespassing, drugs. The criminal-justice researcher Stephanie Kennedy calls these “crimes of survival.”

These avenues have contributed to shocking rates of incarceration for women: Between 1978 and 2015, the number of women in state prisons has grown by 834 percent. The overwhelming majority are primary caregivers. When a woman goes to prison, the downstream effects can be staggering: children might enter foster care, itself often a traumatic system. Aging parents might be put into subpar facilities, or have to find alternative care and housing. All too often, the cost of such upheaval results in a cycle of crime, incarceration, addiction, poverty and broken families.

Courts have long struggled with how to respond. The question is: Can we create a system of justice that looks wholly different from what most of us imagine when it comes to crime and punishment, while still demanding accountability from perpetrators? What if court were a place that afforded someone the opportunity for a complete reset, with entryways to jobs, housing, education? What if instead of punishing people who’ve been broken many times over, we helped to heal them?

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Bail reform being dismantled across the country

According to the  Marshal Project, in 2021 the Illinois' legislature passed a bill abolishing cash bail and replacing it with a system in which prosecutors can seek detention based on public-safety or flight-risk findings. At the time, the rationale for the change was largely built on questioning the logic of wealth-based detention. Commenters argued that a rich person should not have a special right to leave jail compared to a poorer person accused of the same crime.

Earlier this month, after the killing of a Chicago police officer whose alleged shooter had been released on electronic monitoring while awaiting trial in another case, Republican lawmakers renewed calls to change the law, arguing in part that the state needed to come into line with President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting “cashless bail.” But the plans that have been floated have not sought to restore money bail, but rather proposed new means of revoking pretrial release, or creating a presumption of detention for people with violent convictions.

Similar legislative efforts to increase pretrial detention outright have also gained momentum across the country. In New Hampshire, a rollback of the state’s earlier bail reforms lowered the standard prosecutors must meet to deny bail, and state officials have pointed to rising jail populations as proof the new approach is working. Later this month, voters in Alabama will decide whether to expand the list of charges for which judges can deny bail. Similarly, in November, voters in Indiana will vote on a constitutional amendment that would dramatically expand judges’ ability to hold people pretrial if they determine that no conditions of release could reasonably protect public safety.

To rea more CLICK HERE

Once vaunted DOJ needs incentives to find new talent

 

The Justice Department is taking a new tack to overcome hurdles in attracting qualified legal talent and to prevent current lawyers from leaving: offering signing and retention bonuses throughout the Civil Division, reported Bloomberg Law.

New vacancy postings show signing bonuses of $25,000 are newly available to staff offices investigating youth transgender treatments and litigating the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

The financial enticements are an apparent first for a department that in previous years would be inundated with resumes from lawyers willing to take significant salary reductions compared to private sector legal practice. Padding lawyers’ biweekly paychecks signals a division growing more desperate to stave off further departures of valuable legal minds, including those who’ve expressed discomfort with defending the president’s policies from a slew of lawsuits.

Further, the head of the Civil Division—which plays a crucial role advancing and protecting the president’s policies in court—informed all his attorneys Monday that they’ll begin receiving a “retention incentive allowance” ranging from around $60 to $220 every pay period through Thanksgiving, according to an internal email reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

Trial attorney vacancies posted on DOJ’s website Tuesday for the Civil Division’s recently created enforcement and affirmative litigation branch describe in bold print “a signing bonus of up to $25,000" that may be awarded to “well-qualified candidates.” The job advertisements, which would support a DOJ team that’s been repeatedly losing in court over efforts to subpoena pediatric hospitals for sensitive data on minors prescribed drugs for gender dysphoria, instruct applicants that time is of the essence.

To read more CLICK HERE

Autocracy Watch: Undermining the Integrity of the midterm elections

Perhaps nothing better reflects the breakdown of the guardrails that thwarted President Trump’s rashest impulses in 2020 than his creation last fall of a special White House post reinvestigating his loss to Biden, reported ProPublica. 

In December 2020, just days after AG William Barr rebuffed Trump’s Antrim County claims, lawyers in the White House counsel’s office helped prevent the president from heeding activists’ call to essentially declare martial law to seize voting machines. This multihour shouting and cussing match has been called the craziest meeting of the first Trump administration.

But the lawyer whom Trump hired in 2025 as his director of election security and integrity, Kurt Olsen, had worked to overturn Trump’s loss in court in 2020 and was later sanctioned by judges, including for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections.

Olsen’s work in the second Trump administration has breached the firewall between the White House and DOJ officials, established after Watergate to prevent law enforcement officers from making decisions based on political pressure, said Gary Restaino, a former U.S. attorney in Arizona.

“This is not a constitutional or even a statutory requirement,” Restaino said, “but it’s a democracy requirement to make sure that citizens throughout America understand that decisions about life and liberty are being made in an objective and consistent manner.”

In a previously unreported series of events, around the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Olsen wanted the FBI to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, and gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown and his team emphasized to Olsen that any investigation his team did would be independent and fair. 

When Brown and his team examined the report, they found that Georgia’s election board had already looked into its allegations, dismissing many altogether, and concluding that others came down to human error, not criminal wrongdoing. The report had been assembled by a longtime ally of Olsen’s and participant in the Election Integrity Network who had a history of discredited claims, ProPublica has reported.

Based on their own investigation, Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to their superiors at DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted.

Soon after, Brown was offered a choice: retire or be moved to a new office, people with knowledge of the exchange told ProPublica. 

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

Brown’s ouster after refusing to carry out the seizure of 2020 election materials has been reported, but Olsen’s involvement and the details of their interactions leading to Brown’s retirement have not been previously disclosed. 

With Brown gone, the case moved ahead under his replacement. 

To read more CLICK HERE

CREATORS: If at First You Don't Succeed, Indict Again

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
May 5, 2026

The acting Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, has announced the indictment of former Director of the FBI, James Comey. In any other administration, this would be huge news.

America reacted to the indictment with a yawn. This is the second time, and the second attorney general to appear at a press conference and announce the indictment of Comey. The first indictment didn't go so well for the Trump administration.

Days before Comey's first indictment, he was singled out by name in a social media post wherein President Donald Trump appeared to appeal directly to the Department of Justice to bring charges against Comey and complained that investigations into his political enemies had not resulted in criminal charges.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the first indictment based on allegations that Comey lied to Congress five years prior during remote testimony about Russian interference in the 2016 election. A federal judge dismissed the case, finding that the acting U.S. Attorney who sought the indictment was unlawfully holding her position and lacked authority to do so.

If possible, the second indictment is more suspect than the first. Comey was investigated last year over an Instagram post of a photograph of seashells in the sand on some sunny beach. The shells were aligned in the figures of "86 47." With the image, Comey wrote: "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

According to NBC News, "the term '86' is used in the restaurant industry, and it can informally mean 'to get rid of.' The number '47' was thought to be related to Trump, the 47th president.

The indictment claims that a "reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances" would interpret the seashell image as "a serious expression of intent to do harm to the President of the United States."

This past Sunday, the acting Attorney General appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he gave "assurances" that not everyone who posts the "86 47" message will be charged with threatening the president.

"That phrase is used constantly," according to Blanche, " ... every one of those statements do not result in indictments." Apparently, only avowed enemies of President Trump will face indictment for posting "86 47" online.

Let's start our examination of this indictment with the Fox News comments of George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley. If you don't know Turley, let's just say you won't find his name on a Trump enemy list, making his comments all the more surprising.

Turley told Fox, "If Comey is charged for the shell picture, it would face a monumental challenge under the First Amendment," Turley said. "In my view, the image itself is clearly protected speech. Absent some other unknown facts or elements, it would be unlikely to survive a constitutional challenge."

This time, Comey is charged with making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. Those charges require the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the former FBI director "knowingly and willfully" issued a threat to "take the life of" the president.

The Conservative podcaster Glenn Beck said recently, "If the seashell thing is the best the D.O.J. has on Comey, we're in trouble."

Alexis Loeb, a former DOJ deputy chief, told The Hill that the term "86" is open to different interpretations. "In the typical case — again, because the government's burden is to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt — you typically wouldn't see threats that are readily open to non-violent interpretations."

The pattern of multiple indictments against Comey is certainly an issue that Comey's defense team will raise. There is clearly an opportunity to argue vindictive prosecution or the weaponization of the Justice Department to settle a score with one of the president's enemies.

However, it may never get to that — Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who specializes in First Amendment law, told CNN, "This is not going anywhere. This is clearly not a punishable threat."

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

Mangino discusses murder and dismemberment case on WFMJ-TV21

 To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Report: Public perception of crime often diverges from reality

Americans’ views on crime often don’t match reality — and a new report suggests those perceptions are shaped as much by personal experiences and economic conditions as by crime itself, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star..

The analysis, released by the nonprofit think tank Council on Criminal Justice, draws on decades of Gallup survey data to examine how people perceive crime and what drives those beliefs. The report’s authors found that, since the 1960s, public perceptions of crime have frequently diverged from actual crime trends.

Even during periods when crime declined, most Americans continued to believe it was rising. From 2005 to 2024, about 69% of survey respondents on average said crime was higher than the year before, despite overall crime rates falling in most of those years, according to the report.

Fear of crime has remained relatively stable over time. In 2024, 35% of Americans said they were afraid to walk alone at night — the same share as in 1968.

The researchers found that public concern tends to track major shifts in homicide rates more closely than broader crime trends. But overall, people’s views about crime and their fear of it have not matched shifts in crime rates for most years, according to the report.

Instead, the analysis points to other factors that shape how Americans think about public safety.

Household victimization — whether someone in the home has been a victim of a crime — was one of the strongest predictors of both fear and the belief that crime is increasing. 

Property crimes, such as theft, and people’s own experiences with crime were more closely tied to concerns about the issue than actual violent crime rates.

Economic sentiment also played a role. People who said it was a good time to find a job or expected to spend the same or more on holiday shopping were less likely to say crime was rising and less likely to report fear of walking alone at night, according to the report.

Political views showed a more limited effect. While people with more conservative ideologies were somewhat more likely to perceive crime as increasing, political party affiliation itself was not a significant factor after accounting for economic conditions and other variables.

Higher presidential and congressional approval ratings were associated with a greater likelihood that respondents said crime was staying the same or declining, according to the report.

Local conditions, meanwhile, were more closely linked to personal fears than to perceptions of crime overall. The researchers found that neighborhood factors, such as poverty and youth population, were associated with whether people said they were afraid, but did not generally influence whether they believed crime was rising locally or nationally.

To read more CLICK HERE

Trump Administration regularly defies court decisions

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort, reported The Associated Press.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Donald Trump’s second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by The Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the second Trump administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about one out of every eight lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Republican administration’s power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations, and the U.S.’s role in the international order.

President Donald Trump walks from Marine One to board Air Force One at Ocala International Airport, in Ocala Fla., Friday, May 1, 2026, after speaking at an event in The Villages, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Judges find widespread noncompliance

The violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been outright combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

To read more CLICK HERE

The Truth or Derek Podcast

 

Great to join The Truth or Derek Podcast.

Mangino joins Angenette Levy on Law and Crime's Crime Fix

 To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Comey indicted again, the clown show continues

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has become the second Justice Department leader in seven months to secure an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime target of President Donald Trump’s ire. And Trump is happy with Blanche's performance in the job, according to a person familiar with the discussions, reported NBC News.

Comey appeared briefly in court Wednesday on the latest charges. This time, the indictment accuses him of making a threat against the president when he posted a photo of seashells arranged to read “8647" on Instagram in May.

Comey's Instagram post. He later took it down.@comey via Instagram

The first indictment, under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia over an allegation that Comey lied to Congress five years ago during remote testimony via Zoom. A judge dismissed that case, finding that the acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan — a Florida insurance attorney with no prior prosecutorial experience — was unlawfully holding her position and had no authority to seek the indictment in the first place. Comey maintains his innocence in both cases.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Mangino discusses settlement of Ursuline High School civil rights suits

 To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Florida and Texas carry out executions on the same day

 The 9th and 10th Executions of 2026

Florida executed James Hitchcock, 70, by lethal injection on April 30, 2026, for the 1976 rape and strangulation murder of his 13-year-old step-niece Cynthia "Cindy" Driggers. It was Florida's sixth execution of 2026, reported Florida Today.

An hour later, Texas executed James Broadnax. He received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. It was the third execution in Texas this year. Texas and Florida are responsible for nine out of the ten executions this year, reported The Associated Press.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution request for Hitchcock earlier in the day.

In the early morning hours of July 31, 1976, Hitchcock raped Driggers, who was just three days shy of her 14th birthday, at his brother's home in Winter Garden and strangled her to death. In a confession to police, which he later recanted, Hitchcock said he killed the teen to keep her from telling her mother what he'd done.

Hitchcock's final words were, “Just to say goodbye to Joshua my friend. Thanks for all you’ve done." the Associated Press reported.

Hitchcock's death sentence was carried out at 6 p.m. in the execution chamber at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m.

He had a last meal that included chicken, salad, ice cream, pie and soda, Florida Department of Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said during an afternoon news conference.

Following the execution, Cindy Driggers' family members spoke to the media, remembering Cindy and the toll of retrials and decades of waiting for justice. Several thanked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing Hitchcock's death warrant and finally receiving justice after 50 long years and expressed the need for executions to be expedited.

"I grew up watching my mother and her brothers and family endure the weight of this loss," Tanya Clement said while holding up a framed photo of her aunt Cindy. "The appeals, the retrials, three additional trials. These weren't just events in a case, they were part of my childhood. I witnessed the emotional toll firsthand, even at a young age, it became a defining part of who I am."

"Our family has been through so much, but we stand here together strong, united and unwavering for my aunt Cindy," she continued. "She is often spoken about, remembered deeply and I see pieces of her in my own children."

"Her presence lives on through all of us. Today we remember her, we honor her and today we are finally witnessing justice for her life – hard-found, long-awaited and she is never forgotten."

"First I want to focus on Cindy," her younger sister Lynn Cobb. "She was a beautiful, kind and sweet sister. Most saw her as shy and timid. She was so much more than that."

"We had dreams of airline stewardesses together where we were going to travel the world and experience it all together. God blessed us with 13 short years, our lives were better for it. Cindy added life, fun and dreams."

"Thank you, Gov. DeSantis, to you and your staff, that have listened and pushed for justice to be given for Cindy," she said.

"We now close this door on this chapter of our lives."

"I can breathe today, I am loving life," Chip Meadows, Cindy's cousin, said. "Free at last, free at last, our monster is dead. Free at last."

"There's not many people who would have made it through 50 years being drug through agony, frustration, anger," Cindy's cousin Ginie Meadows said. "You just can't find the words."

"The spirit of James Ernest Hitchcock need not be looking for the kingdom of God, because the gates into heaven are narrow. He will never, ever get through them. It is my hope, in fact, that his spirit has now arrived into the bowels of hell."

She also thanked DeSantis, saying, "With your signature on his death warrant, the 50-year saga of Hitchcock has now become history."

"I am believing in you, sir, to continue to make strides in honing in on the process of cleaning out death row," she said, adding that future governors "must be willing to follow the precedents as set forth by Gov. DeSantis concerning the signing and execution of death warrants for those that have earned them. If you are on death row, you've earned it."

"For those of you that just simply do not understand why this process is justified, I am certain that you do not know the agony and emotional turmoil and torture of having someone you love brutally murdered."

In Texas, James Broadnax, who claimed he wasn’t the shooter in a fatal robbery that killed two people nearly 18 years ago and who said prosecutors misused rap lyrics he wrote to secure his death sentence was also executed on April 30, 2026.

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Broadnax’s attorneys to stop his execution.

He was condemned for the 2008 shooting deaths of two men outside a suburban Dallas music studio. Prosecutors say Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, fatally shot and robbed Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the parking lot of Butler’s recording studio in Garland. Cummings was sentenced to life without parole.

Broadnax was defiant in a final statement in which he also sought forgiveness from the victims’ relatives. Seven relatives, including parents of each of the victims, were present.

“I prayed to God for your forgiveness,” he said, when asked by the warden if he had a final statement. “Despite what you think about me, I hope to God that prayer was answered. But no matter what you think about me, Texas got it wrong. I’m innocent, the facts of my case should speak for itself. Period,” he said.

The execution also was punctuated by screams of “I love you” from his wife, who also was among witnesses to the punishment. She was emotional at times during the procedure, leaning up to the death chamber window with arms spread, and had to be helped out of the prison.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began, Broadnax urged his supporters to keep fighting. “Don’t give up,” he said, and was stopped in another mid-sentence by a gasp. He shook his head briefly and all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 21 minutes later, at 6:47 p.m. CDT.

Prosecutors said Broadnax, 37, confessed to the shooting, telling reporters during jailhouse interviews that “I pulled the trigger” and that he had no remorse.

His lawyers had focused his final appeals on two issues: Cummings had recently confessed to being the shooter; and Broadnax’s constitutional rights were violated because prosecutors eliminated potential jurors during his trial on the basis of race.

“I’m really gonna tell it like it’s supposed to be told, that it was me, that I was the killer. I shot Matthew Bullard, Steve Swan,” Cummings said recently from prison in a video created as part of the efforts to stop Broadnax’s execution.

His attorneys also alleged prosecutors dismissed all seven potential Black jurors on the basis of their race, “utilizing a spreadsheet during jury selection that bolded only the names of every Black juror,” according to court documents. One Black juror was later reinstated to the jury. Broadnax was Black.

In a 1986 ruling known as Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that excluding jurors because of their race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Broadnax’s attorneys had argued in an earlier appeal that prosecutors had violated his constitutional rights by using some of the rap lyrics he wrote to portray him as a violent and dangerous person in order to secure a death sentence. A number of A-list rappers, including Travis Scott,T.I. and Killer Mike, had filed briefs at the Supreme Court in support of Broadnax’s appeal.

Theresa Butler, Matthew Butler’s mother, had asked that the execution proceed.

“This so called confession from cummings is just a stall tactic by Broadnax’s desperate defense team. Its all a lie,” Butler wrote in a post on social media.

Broadnax was the third person put to death this year in Texas and the 10th in the country. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state.

To read more CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE

 

Mangino discusses Purdue Pharma settlement on WFMJ-TV21

Watch my interview with Lindsay McCoy on WFMJ-TV21 about settlement of claims against drug maker Purdue Parma.

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

The new 'magic shooting' is reminiscent of the 'magic bullet'

According to Garret Graff of Doomsday Scenario, a close reading of the Justice Department’s charges  against 31-year-old Cole Allen, the alleged attempted assassin, hint that he didn’t fire any weapon at all.

Reminiscent of the “magic bullet” of 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- this may one day be referred to as the "magic shooting."  Here is the wording of the indictment.

“At approximately 8:40 p.m., ALLEN approached a security checkpoint on the
Terrace Level of the hotel leading to the location of the dinner. ALLEN approached and ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun. As he did so, U.S. Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. U.S. Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time. Officer V.G. drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at ALLEN, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot. ALLEN was subsequently arrested.”

To read more CLICK HERE

CREATORS: Qualified Immunity Gets Yet Another Boost From SCOTUS

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 27, 2026

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that permitted a civil rights suit to move forward against a Vermont police officer who allegedly used excessive force against a woman during a 2015 demonstration at the governor's inauguration.

Detective Jacob Zorn was sued by Shela Linton. The Vermont Capitol was closed for the inauguration. Protesters showed up anyway and were told by police that they had to leave or they would be arrested for trespassing. The protesters were unfazed and the police moved in.

Zorn asked Linton to stand up. According to the U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Zorn took Linton's arm, put it behind her back, placed pressure on her wrist and lifted her to her feet. Linton sued Zorn for using excessive force under the federal civil rights statute — Title 42 of the U.S. Code 1983 — alleging a state actor violated her constitutional rights.

Section 1983 grew out of the Civil Rights Acts of 1871. The Act was passed after the Civil War to prevent public officials and the Ku Klux Klan from violating the constitutional rights of former slaves.

Section 1983 provided relief — in the form of money damages — to claimants whose constitutional rights had been violated by a police officer or public official acting under state authority. The Act provides that a wrongdoer "shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law."

About 100 years after the Civil Rights Act, the Supreme Court established qualified immunity, a potential defense to wrongdoers. About a decade later, the high Court further refined qualified immunity. The Court ruled a state actor would be immune from liability if, at the time of the harm, the conduct "was not clearly established" as a civil rights violation. The Court continued, "An official could not reasonably be expected to anticipate subsequent legal developments, nor could he fairly be said to 'know' that the law forbade conduct not previously identified as unlawful."

The 2nd Circuit Court reasoned that its 2004 decision in a case involving the arrest of anti-abortion protesters at a women's health center in Connecticut "clearly establish(ed)" that the tactics that Zorn had used in arresting Linton, "such as a rear-wristlock on a protestor who is passively resisting arrest constitutes excessive force and is therefore violative of that arrestee's Fourth Amendment rights." Therefore, the court of appeals concluded that law enforcement officials like Zorn would have been on notice that they could be held personally liable for such conduct.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. The high court held, according to SCOTUSblog, that government officials are entitled to qualified immunity "unless they could have 'read' the relevant" cases governing their behavior before acting "and 'know(n)' that it proscribed their specific conduct." The Court found that the 2004 case on which the court of appeals relied "did not clearly establish that Zorn's specific conduct violated the Fourth Amendment."

The Supreme Court has yet again made it more difficult to establish qualified immunity, providing further protection to police officers who harm individuals by violating their constitutional rights. The standard of "clearly established" unlawful conduct is clearly getting more and more beyond the reach of most claimants.

In 2018, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that a decision favoring the police tells officers that "they can shoot first and think later and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished."

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

PA House Committee moves two bills to abolish death penalty

A Pennsylvania House committee passed a pair of bills that would abolish capital punishment in the commonwealth, potentially ending decades of limbo in which death sentences have been handed down but not carried out, reported PennLive.com.

Both bills passed the House Judiciary Committee on party-line votes, with the Democratic majority in favor and Republicans opposed.

But the measures also illustrate the somewhat unusual ideological alliance that has long existed when it comes to eliminating the death penalty. One bill is authored by one of the House’s most progressive Democrats, Chris Rabb.

The other is authored by one of its most conservative Republicans, Russ Diamond. The bill has several GOP co-sponsors, although none of the conservatives who support abolition sit on the judiciary committee.

“There are no take-backs,” with the death penalty, Rabb said Monday. “It’s irreversible, it’s expensive, and our government does not have the moral authority to put people to death. I’m glad there are people across the ideological spectrum who understand this.”

“I approached this issue from a conservative point of view,” Diamond said. That includes believing in the sanctity of life from conception to death and the promise of Christian redemption, he said.

“I also believe that our criminal justice system is the self-defense mechanism for a civilized society, but there’s no element of self-defense in executing someone already in captivity,” Diamond said. “Permanent incarceration satisfies our collective need for self-defense.”

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that forced most states to rewrite their death penalty statutes. Pennsylvania re-established the death penalty in 1978, but since that time has executed only three people, the most recent in 1999.

Prosecutors can still seek the death penalty, and since 1985, 482 death warrants or death notices have been issued in Pennsylvania, according to data from the state Department of Corrections.

In the majority of cases, death sentences are stayed or overturned by an appeals court. In the handful of situations where appeals have been exhausted, the governor has issued a reprieve to prevent execution.

To read more CLICK HERE

U.S. Supreme Court takes on Fourth Amendment today

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Chatrie v. United States, a case that represents a fundamental clash between the Fourth Amendment and emerging technological investigative techniques, reports Lawfare. The Court will assess the constitutionality of geofence warrants, which allow law enforcement to obtain location data stored by a service provider such as Google or Apple within the bounds, or “fence,” of a specific time and area in order to identify a potential suspect. The case may present two principal questions: First, whether the geofence warrant issued to Google constituted a Fourth Amendment “search,” and second, if so, whether it was a permissible form of a search.

Chatrie’s brief advances several arguments for why the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. First, he argues that accessing Location History was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment because users have a property interest in the data and a reasonable expectation of privacy in it. Second, he contends that the geofence warrant operated as an unconstitutional general warrant and writ of assistance based on its breadth. Third, he claims that even if the warrant was not a general warrant, the Step One component of the search was unconstitutional. And fourth, he argues that Steps Two and Three of the geofence warrant were unconstitutional.

To read more CLICK HERE

Soldier uses inside information to bet on Maduro capture

Federal authorities have arrested an American soldier who allegedly used confidential information to place a series of wagers on the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro through the prediction market platform Polymarket, reported Politico

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old soldier in the U.S. Army who was involved in the planning of Maduro’s capture, allegedly placed more than a dozen wagers on Polymarket tied to the operation, the Justice Department said Thursday. He was charged with unlawfully using confidential government information for personal gain, among other charges.

Van Dyke’s bets totaled $33,034 and, ultimately, paid out more than $400,000, according to prosecutors.

The case underscores the swelling concern in Washington about the threat of insider trading on prediction market platforms like Polymarket and its chief rival, Kalshi. Once niche financial exchanges, the prediction markets have broken out of obscurity over the last year with a broad menu of wagers on everything from U.S. elections, sports and even the weather.

But their rise — alongside a number of presciently well-timed wagers around geopolitical events such as Maduro’s capture and the war in Iran — has ignited broad concern among policymakers about the companies and their regulation. The Maduro trades on Polymarket earlier this year, which generated a flurry of headlines, were among the first to draw Congress’s attention. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said he expected to see cases brought on the issue of insider trading in the prediction markets.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Federal government brings back firing squad as method of execution

The Trump administration will allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty, reported The New York Times.

In an accompanying report, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that decisions by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pull back on capital punishment “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself.”

The Justice Department, he said, had reauthorized the use of pentobarbital to execute federal inmates and would also permit additional methods of execution, like the use of firing squads.

The 48-page report added that the Bureau of Prisons should follow the example of states that had expanded their execution protocols amid fights over the legality and availability of lethal injection drugs.

“The additional manners of execution that B.O.P. should consider adopting include the firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas — each of which the Supreme Court has found to be consistent with the Eighth Amendment,” the report said, referring to the part of the Bill of Rights that bars “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, called the moves “a stain on our nation’s history.”

Mr. Durbin accused the Justice Department of “turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of the federal death penalty — a cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

President Trump had signaled the moves on his first day in office, signing an executive order to reinstitute capital punishment in the federal prison system. During the first Trump presidency, 13 people were executed on federal death row.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a moratorium on executions of federal inmates and halted the use of a lethal drug protocol using pentobarbital. In his final days in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers on federal death row.

The Trump administration faces one significant hurdle. Under the law, the federal government may only conduct executions in states that allow capital punishment and carry them out according to state protocols.

For years, federal executions have taken place in Indiana, which only allows for capital punishment by lethal injection.

The Justice Department, acknowledging that limitation in its report, recommends the federal government find a new location to conduct executions, in a state that allows other methods. Mississippi, the report states, allows executions by electrocution, or firing squad if lethal injection or other methods are not available.

The report called for the Bureau of Prisons to submit a report “detailing the options to relocate or expand federal death row, or to construct a second federal execution facility in a state that permits additional manners of execution.”

The firing squad has rarely been used in the United States, but has recently been authorized by several states as an alternative method if the states cannot procure lethal injection drugs. Before last year, the only firing squad executions in the country in modern times had been carried out by Utah, in 1977, 1996 and 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group.

But in 2025, South Carolina, which had authorized the firing squad in 2021, executed three prisoners using the method.

In its Friday announcement, the administration said it was working on a regulation intended to cut years off the federal appeals process for state death penalty cases, though ultimately the courts have final say.

The department also said it planned to issue a regulation that would impose new limits on the ability of inmates sentenced to death to seek clemency or pardons from the federal government.

The report also suggested expanding the types of crimes, and the types of criminals, eligible for the federal death penalty in order to “correct gaps and deficiencies” in the current law. Congress would have to pass any such change into law.

The administration should consider proposing legislation, the report said, that would make eligible for the death penalty “murders of law enforcement officers; murders by aliens illegally in the United States; and murders constituted or committed in the commission of hate crimes, stalking, material support, or domestic violence.”

Much of the report centered on creating a new legal and regulatory framework to preserve the availability of the drug most often used to conduct executions.

Robin M. Maher, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the report seemed more focused on grievances with the Biden administration than a straightforward analysis of lethal injection protocol.

“It struck me as rather disingenuous in terms of reflecting the reality of the problems” with the use of pentobarbital in executions, Ms. Maher said.

Pentobarbital was first used in an execution in 2010, in Oklahoma, and soon became a common method by which to execute prisoners.

As with other drugs used in lethal injections, it faced legal challenges from prisoners and their lawyers, who said that it caused prisoners to suffer, but courts have allowed its use, and several states use it as their primary method. Still, some states have had trouble obtaining the drug because of pressure from medical and advocacy groups on drugmakers.

In January 2025, the Justice Department under Mr. Garland issued a memo saying that “there remains significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection causes unnecessary pain and suffering.” The department wrote that federal authorities should not use the drug for executions until its effect was more clear.

To read more CLICK HERE