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.

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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.”

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Alabama Supreme Court seems to expand Terry v. Ohio

A recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling has vastly expanded police power in the state, holding that law enforcement can demand physical identification under the state's stop-and-identify law when someone provides "incomplete or unsatisfactory" answers to police questions about their name, address, and actions during a police stop, reported Reason. 

Although Alabama's law clearly requires some individuals to carry ID, like drivers and voters, the state supreme court's ruling seems to imply a general requirement for individuals to carry identification at all times—even when watering flowers. 

On May 22, 2022, Michael Jennings, a pastor who lives in Childersburg, Alabama, southeast of Birmingham, was approached by a police officer while watering flowers. Body cam footage shows an officer responding to a 911 call about a suspicious person and asking Jennings about the vehicle in the driveway and the house. "It's my neighbor's vehicle," Jennings answered. "Well, they're saying that this vehicle isn't supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to be here," continued the officer.

"I'm supposed to be here," Jennings replied. "I'm Pastor Jennings. I live across the street….I'm looking after their house while they're gone, watering their flowers.

Apparently unsatisfied with Jennings' forthcoming response, the officer then asks Jennings for "identification" while gesturing as if holding a card. "Oh no, man, I'm not going to give you no ID….I ain't did nothing wrong," Jennings responds. Agitated over the officers' continued requests to produce identification, Jennings begins walking away. A second officer places him in handcuffs as the men continue to argue and ultimately places him under arrest. 

A few minutes later, the neighbor who had placed the initial 911 call speaks with the officers. Answering whether Jennings has permission to water the flowers, the neighbor replies, "He may, because they are friends, and they went out of town today. So he may be watering their flowers." "That would be completely normal," she continues. "This is probably my fault."  

Under the Alabama law, an officer "may stop any person abroad in a public place whom he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony or other public offense and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his actions." (emphasis added.) But despite Jennings volunteering much of this information from the start and later clarifying his full name when asked, the officers arrested Jennings because he refused to produce physical identification—an item not expressly articulated in the state's law. 

Jennings was charged with obstructing a governmental function, a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to one year in jail and a $6,000 fine. 

Although the charges against him were later dismissed, Jennings filed a civil federal lawsuit and accused the officers of violating his Fourth Amendment rights by, in part, arresting him without probable cause. And while the district court initially dismissed his suit, finding the officers were immune from civil liability, the 11th Circuit of Appeals disagreed. By reading the text of the Alabama code plainly, the appellate judges found that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Jennings because they were only authorized to demand three things: his name, address, and an explanation of his actions. 

"While it is always advisable to cooperate with law enforcement," wrote the appellate court, "Jennings was under no legal obligation to provide his ID." The 11th Circuit reversed the district court's decision to dismiss.  

But rather than simply reopen the case as instructed, the district court turned to the Alabama Supreme Court to clarify whether officers are prohibited under state law from demanding physical identification if they receive an "incomplete or unsatisfactory oral response" under the state's stop-and-identify law. In answering that question, the Alabama Supreme Court effectively overruled the appellate court, deciding that "Alabama law is clear—once an officer has reasonable suspicion to believe that a suspect is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a felony or other public offence, [the law] empowers the officer to demand that the suspect disclose his or her name and address in a format that would allow the officer to affirmatively identify the suspect," and that "the suspect bears the burden to completely identify himself." 

Although normal for a district court to ask for the state supreme court's input on legal questions, it is decidedly "not normal to circumvent an appellate court's ruling the district court didn't like," Matthew Cavedon, the director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, told Reason in a recent interview. But now, under the state supreme court's binding decision, the officers who arrested Jennings may now attempt to avoid accountability by claiming the arrest was in line with the stop-and-identify law. "Courts don't like accountability for officers when rights are violated," Cavedon continued. 

What's more is that the decision effectively gives a "ton of discretion to police officers," said Cavedon, leaving it up to officers and prosecutors to decide when and where a physical ID will be demanded and opening up "equal protection problems and concerns about discrimination." 

After all, there is nothing in the Alabama law that requires pedestrians to carry ID, according to an amicus brief joined by the Cato Institute in this case. But now, it seems, Alabamians better have their physical identification handy, or else face the wrath of unaccountable law enforcement officers.

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Judge Luttig: Justice Thomas' shocking and reprehensible ahistorical characterization of progressivism

The speech that Justice Clarence Thomas gave last week at the University of Texas could prove to be the single most important speech of political and constitutional philosophy that never should have been given.

Judge J. Michael Luttig writes, “As a conservative my entire life, I certainly wish Justice Thomas had not written and given the insidious speech.”

Judge Luttig continues:

Though Thomas’ unmistakable targets were Progressives and progressivism, his speech is far more injurious to Republicans, conservatives, and conservatism than it is for progressivism because it is demonstrably and inarguably wrong as to Progressives, but it is a siren song to today’s Republicans and conservatives. Webster’s Dictionary defines “siren song” as “: an alluring utterance or appeal, especially one that is seductive or deceptive.”

Oblivious to the actual history, but supremely confident in his ahistorical understanding of that history, Justice Thomas intoned as if reading from the Gospel that “Progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever…. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.”

Justice Thomas’ invidious accusation that progressives in America for the past century and a half up to this very day have been pursuing the same anti-democratic and anti-constitutional regimes as Stalinism, Maoism, Mussolini’s fascism, Naziism, and the like, is frightening, risible, and reprehensible.

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Mangino talks about police sex ring on Law and Crime's Scandal

Watch my interview with Sierra Gillespie on Law and Crime's Scandal discussing a Texas Couple Sex Trafficked to Cops Out of Suburban Home.

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CREATORS: U.S. Supreme Court's Favorability Rating Hits Record Low

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 21, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court's favorable rating is at its lowest point since regular polling of the court began in the early 1970s. Last year, the court's favorable rating fell to 42 percent.

The modern highwater mark for the court was 1999, when, according to Gallup, the court was viewed favorably by 80% of Americans. Then the 2000 presidential election rolled around and the high court ruled along partisan lines to award the presidential election to George W. Bush over Al Gore.

The Supreme Court has never rebounded. The high court has come under scrutiny, while some of its members have become blatantly political. Justice Samuel Alito flew an upside-down flag over his home and an "Appeal to Heaven" flag over his vacation home — both with political implications. Justice Clarence Thomas' wife has become an outspoken right-wing political operative.

Adam Liptak and Jodi Kantor of The New York Times recently did an expose on the high court's secret decisions — rulings with no explanation or reasoning — an emergency docket rendering decisions in the shadow of the courtroom of the Supreme Court's building.

According to Liptak and Kantor, in 2016, several justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, were eager to block a major initiative of former President Barack Obama. By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the Supreme Court halted the Clean Power Plan, Obama's signature environmental policy. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning — thus was born the "Shadow Docket."

Could the shadow docket be the product of conflicting personalities at the highest level of government? Liptak and Kantor point out that Obama, as a United States Senator, was one of just 22 senators to vote against Chief Justice Roberts's confirmation. Obama said at the time, the nominee had "far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak."

As Liptak and Kantor pointed out, traditionally the Supreme Court had "handled major cases at a stately pace that encouraged care and deliberation, relying on written briefs, oral arguments and in-person discussions. The justices composed detailed opinions that explained their thinking to the public and rendered judgment only after other courts had weighed in."

In the 1960s, when the court was held in high esteem, decisions were made precisely that way. Chief Justice Earl Warren oversaw a deliberative body whose decisions are synonymous with individual rights, often taken for granted today.

The "liberal" Warren Court gave us Brown v. Board of Education and, within the five-year period between 1961 and 1966, gave America Miranda v. Arizona, Gideon v. Wainwright and Mapp v. Ohio.

In Mapp v. Ohio, the high court ruled that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal searches and seizures cannot be used in court. This decision did more to improve police work and protect the public from overzealous police officers than any decision in modern history.

Gideon v. Wainwright ensured that all defendants charged with serious felonies have the right to counsel, even if they could not afford to hire their own. This decision created the era of public defense and ensured that anyone accused of a crime would not be forced to defend themselves against the resources of the state.

Miranda v. Arizona established "Miranda Rights." A decision so ingrained in the consciousness of viewers of American crime dramas that just about everyone can recite the warning, "You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney if you can't afford one, one will be appointed for you."

These decisions, though controversial, were not delivered in secret. They were briefed by learned lawyers, argued before the court and the decisions were thoughtful and deliberate. There were powerful dissents — and each of those decisions, some 60 years later, is still the law of the land.

That is how a court builds trust with the public.

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

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Florida carries out fifth execution of 2026--the 24th in last 16 months

 The 8th Execution of 2026

 Chadwick Scott Willacy, a Florida man who set his neighbor on fire after she returned from work to find him burglarizing her home was executed on April 21, 2026, reported The Associated Press.

Willacy, 58, received a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke for the 1990 killing of Marlys Sather. It was Florida’s fifth execution this year.

The curtain to the death chamber went up promptly at the scheduled 6 p.m. execution time, and the lethal injection began 2 minutes later after Willacy made a brief statement.

He apologized to his family and friends and urged his ”brothers on the row” to stay strong. He maintained his innocence, saying he would never kill his friend.

“To the victim’s family, I hope this brings you peace. If it does, that’s good, ” Willacy said. “But this is not right.”

Shortly after the lethal injection got underway, a warden shook Willacy and shouted his name, but there was no response. His skin began to turn gray, and a medic eventually entered the chamber to examine Willacy, declaring him dead.

Court records indicate Sather, 56, had returned to her Palm Bay home on a lunch break from work on Sept. 5, 1990, and discovered Willacy burglarizing her home. He struck her in the head with a blunt object, fracturing her skull, and then bound her hands and ankles with wire and tape, according to investigators.

Willacy attempted to strangle Sather with a phone cord, and when that didn’t work, he doused her in gasoline and set her on fire, the records show. An autopsy determined that Sather had died from smoke inhalation, indicating she was still alive when she was set on fire.

Willacy also stole Sather’s car and other items from her home, and used the woman’s ATM card to steal cash, authorities said. When Sather failed to return from her break, her employer caller her family. Her son-in-law went to check on her and found her body.

Willacy was sentenced to death a year later upon a 9-3 jury recommendation after being convicted of first-degree murder, burglary, robbery and arson.

Then in 1994 the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing because the trial judge failed to allow defense attorneys a chance to rehabilitate a potential juror who indicated she could not recommend the death penalty. Willacy again drew the death penalty in 1995, following the 11-1 recommendation of a new jury.

Florida’s fifth execution of 2026 followed a record 19 executions in the state last year. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.

On Tuesday, Willacy woke up at 5 a.m. and remained compliant as the execution hour approached, Department of Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said earlier. The inmate received visits during the day from his mother, two sisters and a cousin, but did not meet with a spiritual adviser.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Willacy’s final appeal without comment. Last week the Florida Supreme Court also denied his appeals. He had made claims based on the state’s refusal to grant public records requests about executions and lethal injection.

None of Sather’s relatives spoke at a news briefing after the execution, but the family released a statement thanking DeSantis and others.

“We have waited 36.5 years for justice for our mom. Our mother, Marlys Mae Sather should be remembered as a beautiful and loving daughter, wife, mother of 3, grandmother of 5, great grandmother of 5, aunt, cousin and friend,” it said in part. It noted the victim had lost her husband to cancer in July 1990, “just weeks before she was murdered.”

“She was a new widow trying to take one day at a time,” it said. “We miss her so much every day.”

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a long line of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.

Another execution is planned in Florida on April 30. James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, is scheduled to received a lethal injection for his conviction in the fatal beating and choking of his 13-year-old niece.

All Florida executions are carried out by injecting a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

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Presidential pardons impact funds for victims

Since his return to office last year, President Donald Trump has pardoned dozens of white-collar criminals. He’s also forgiven their fines, penalties, and restitution, to the tune of billions. Some of that revenue was supposed to go to a fund to help victims of violent crime — and the organizations that serve them are feeling the pinch, reported The Trace.

The Crime Victims Fund, established in 1984 by the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, is sustained by criminal fines and penalties from convictions in federal cases, typically white-collar prosecutions.

All of that money is required by law to be deposited into the fund. The money is distributed to state and local programs including domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child abuse treatment programs. Gun violence survivors and the families of victims who died rely routinely on VOCA funding to reimburse medical expenses, funeral costs, and lost wages.

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ICE scrapes bottom of the barrel in employment targets

Their backgrounds stand out. And not in a good way.

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer, reported The Associated Press.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress to enact President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The president put a premium on swift action, and for ICE that meant rapid-fire recruitment and hiring, which in turn led to new employees with questionable qualifications. Their backgrounds and training have come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents in which ICE agents used excessive force.

“If vetting is not done well and it’s done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don’t know what they are doing,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

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Zoosman: Israeli death penalty most discriminatory law 'the world has witnessed since Hitler's Third Reich'

 Michael J. Zoosman writes at JuristNews:

Israel’s new death penalty law is one of the most discriminatory pieces of execution legislation that the world has witnessed since Hitler’s Third Reich. This incontrovertible truth is yet another reason why the Israeli Knesset’s recent passage of its heinous “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law on March 30 has effectively defiled this year’s observance of Yom Hashoah, the consummate Holocaust commemoration for Israel and Jews worldwide that is taking place as I write these very words. 

Let there be no doubt: the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and abroad are against the death penalty in all cases. As the co-founder of this group, I am keenly aware that this has been the case since our founding in 2020, from the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting in 2018 to the  Washington, D.C., Israeli Embassy murders in 2025, and countless other Jewish and non-Jewish men and women condemned to death across the world. We carry the torch of Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, and passionate death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), who, when asked about capital punishment, responded without equivocation that “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

L’chaim members adhere to Wiesel’s reflections on the death penalty in the wake of the Holocaust, firmly stating: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to be an agent of the Angel of Death.” Countless other Jewish and rabbinic abolitionists since the Holocaust have shared Wiesel’s position. Many of them recognized the direct Nazi legacies of various execution methods in the United States and elsewhere, from lethal injection and gassing to the firing squad.  

Nazi execution laws and protocols were arguably the most racist and vile of the modern era. They functioned not as a system of justice, but rather as a tool for racial persecution, social engineering, and the systematic elimination of the entire Jewish people and other perceived enemies. The laws targeted specific groups — primarily Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, and political opponents — based on the Nazi ideology of biological racism and the concept of “racial purity.”

Israel’s new death penalty law is far from the same as the above Nazi legislation. Yet, by calling for death specifically for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, while effectively excluding Israeli citizens and residents, it achieves something that few other societies have done since the time of the Nazis by entrenching an openly two-tiered system of capital “justice.” There can be no doubt that the Nazis’ targets of their dehumanization campaign were wholly innocent of any crimes. They selected their victims for who they were, not what they may or may not have done. This unequivocally contrasts with the would-be victims of Israel’s death penalty law, each of whom is ostensibly convicted of murderous terrorist actions. Still, a similar campaign of dehumanization of those ultimately condemned to death links both systems. The underlying narrative identifying perpetrators of any terrorist act as “monsters” is precisely the kind of thinking that allows an otherwise reasonable person—or “civilized society,” per Wiesel—to deem state-sponsored killing digestible. It is an insidious process that essentially removes the “human” from human rights. 

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Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Suck up to the President goes after whistleblower

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asked the Justice Department to investigate two former government officials who played a central role in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry, reported CBS News..

A spokesperson for Gabbard's office confirmed that she drafted criminal referrals for a whistleblower and a former intelligence community watchdog, but did not detail what specific crimes are alleged. Whether to pursue a criminal investigation following a referral is up to prosecutors at the Justice Department.

The referrals came after Gabbard criticized how former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson handled the 2019 whistleblower complaint earlier this week, releasing a trove of documents linked to Atkinson.

The whistleblower — whose identity has not been formally disclosed — reported an "urgent concern" about President Trump's request for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. The complaint also expressed concerns about how records of a Trump-Zelenskyy phone call were handled, and about the role of Mr. Trump's then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in the U.S.'s relationship with Ukraine.

"I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election," the whistleblower wrote. "This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals."

Mr. Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives in late 2019, but was acquitted in a Senate vote mostly along party lines in early 2020. He has long denied any wrongdoing, referring to his phone call with Zelenskyy as "perfect."

Gabbard alleged in a post on X Monday that "deep state actors" in the intelligence community "concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people and impeach duly-elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019." She argued that the inspector general relied on "second-hand evidence" in looking into the whistleblower complaint.

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Man forgotten on death row has sentence overturned after 48 years

Texas’ highest criminal court has overturned the death sentence of a Harris County man who was on death row for nearly half a century, reported The Texas Tribune.

Clarence Curtis Jordan, 70, was first convicted in 1978 of murdering Joe L. Williams, a 40-year-old Houston grocer. Jordan, who is intellectually disabled, was then found in subsequent years to be incompetent and therefore could not be executed. But for almost four decades, he did not have an attorney to advocate for him and was seemingly forgotten on death row.

Jordan was finally appointed a new attorney in 2024 as news emerged that there were numerous delayed criminal appeals in Harris County, some of which were lost for more than a decade. The revelation came amid an effort by the county to reduce the backlog in its criminal courts.

Following new legal advocacy, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Jordan’s death sentence in a Thursday ruling. The panel also sent the case back to Harris County for a new punishment proceeding.

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CREATORS: Police Officer Involved Killings Show Modest Decline

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 14, 2026

The Washington Post kept track of all police officer-involved shootings that resulted in death. The Post began collecting the data in 2015 because no one else was keeping track. According to a 2014 Wall Street Journal article, made part of the U.S. Senate official record, criminal justice experts lamented that there was no reliable national data on how many people are shot and killed by police officers each year.

Although national research groups were keeping data and statistics on topics ranging from how many people were victims of unprovoked shark attacks to the number of hogs and pigs living on farms in the United States, no one was keeping track of officer-involved shootings.

Then, of course, as The Post began massive newsroom layoffs, the police shootings data collection ended. Researchers can still utilize the data from 2015 to 2024. The data reveals that police in this country shoot and kill about 1,000 people a year. However, the data is limited to police involved shooting deaths, not all deaths at the hands of police.

Although officer-involved shootings are relatively rare in comparison with the millions of interactions between the police and the public, several high-profile fatal encounters with police —beginning with the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., Beanna Tayler's 2020 killing in Louisville, Ky. and Goerge Floyds death by police in Minneapolis, Minn., in 2022, — piqued the interest of researchers and protesters alike.

Campaign Zero, a non-profit research institute, released an analysis of deaths caused by police in 2025, revealing the first decline in police killings in six years. Campaign Zero tracks all deaths by police, not just shooting deaths. Therefore, there is an inconsistency in the numbers. For instance, in 2024, Campaign Zero listed 1,365 killings and The Post listed 1,175. Campaign Zero recorded 1,329 killings in 2023 and The Post listed 1,169.

According to Campaign Zero, there were only six days in 2025 when law enforcement did not kill someone. On average, police killed 3.6 people per day — one person every 6.67 hours.

The data from Campaign Zero has some room for optimism. In 2025, police killed 1,314 people in the United States — a 5% decrease from 2024.

The stability in the annual number of homicides by police can be attributed to a statistical tool known as the probability theory. According to The Post's database, the probability theory holds that the quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture or extreme restrictions on gun ownership.

The data also reveals an alarming trend. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other people approached or stopped by law enforcement, according to a study released by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Does that mean it is hopeless and no matter what we do, 1,000 people a year or more are going to die after an encounter with police? Not necessarily.

There are examples of changes in training or "use of force protocols" that have saved lives. In New York City in 1971, there were 314 officer-involved shootings, 93 of which were fatal. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told The Washington Post, "The following year the city passed a law prohibiting officers from shooting into vehicles."

Within two years, the city reduced police shootings to 121, with 41 fatal. By 2015, after a period when crime dropped precipitously, the number had fallen to 23 people shot by police with eight killed.

Officer-involved shootings can be reduced, and lives saved, with training and a change in the warrior culture of policing.

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

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PA faces daunting resentencing effort after Supreme Court ruling on LWOP

 Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave lawmakers 120 days to find a legislative solution after ruling mandatory life sentences for second degree murder charges are unconstitutional under the state’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The ruling is likely to kick off what could be the largest resentencing effort the commonwealth has ever undertaken, though the timeline will depend on decisions made by lawmakers.

In Pennsylvania, someone can be charged with second-degree murder even if prosecutors can’t prove they intended to cause another person’s death. In some cases, a person can be charged without actually killing someone. Prosecutors just need to prove someone died while the person charged committed a felony. That charge comes with a mandatory life sentence without parole, which the state’s high court ruled unconstitutional last month.

Last Thursday, lawmakers on the state House Judiciary Committee were set to vote on a bill that would have addressed the problem by making those serving such sentences eligible for parole after 25 years, and creating a 50-year maximum sentence for future second degree murder charges.

But as the panel’s meeting started, its chairman, Rep. Tim Briggs (D-Montgomery), announced he would be pulling the bill from consideration.

“These people have been serving long, unconstitutional sentences, and I will not put them in a worse position than what I believe the Supreme Court would order for them,” Briggs said about those currently serving life sentences without parole on second degree murder charges. “I am confident that as long as we all work together, we will come up with a bill we can all be proud of.”

Briggs said that he and other lawmakers on the committee were seeking input from people and organizations like public defenders, district attorneys and victims advocates.

But while some groups had issues with components of the proposal, the move rankled criminal justice advocates who have long sought to eliminate mandatory life sentences for those convicted of felony murder. 

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“Precrime" the claim that biometric technology can foretell crime

Sara Fathallah writes in the Inquest: In prisons and jails across the United States, authorities now use automated systems to transcribe phone calls and visitation videos and to flag words or phrases deemed risky. For decades, correctional facilities recorded and reviewed calls manually, but AI-driven systems now allow authorities to scan millions of minutes of conversations in real time.

In the 2010s, prisons began using a biometric technology called voiceprinting, which identifies individuals based on the unique characteristics of their voices. It allows correctional facilities to identify who is speaking on any given call and to search for other calls featuring the same voice. Texas-based Securus Technologies, one of the largest providers of prison phone services in the United States, supplies sophisticated voiceprinting services to hundreds of correctional agencies.

There is no scientific consensus on the validity of automatic speaker recognition, and experts recommend exercising extreme caution when using voice recognition as evidence in court. Even Securus’s 2016 patent acknowledges that “each given person’s vocal tract characteristics actually vary in a number of ways depending on time of day, how much the person has been talking that day and how loud, whether or not the person has a cold,” and other factors. But prisons continue to collect voiceprints and build growing databases; at least 200,000 voiceprints have been stored thus far. Sometimes, prisons pressure incarcerated people to give up their voice samples by threatening a complete loss of communications privileges to those who decline. In other instances, they enroll incarcerated people in voice recognition programs without their knowledge or consent. New York alone, for example, had already enrolled 92 percent of its incarcerated population by 2019.

In some jurisdictions, voiceprinting systems can be used to identify both incarcerated people and the individuals who speak to them. As representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation point out, such technologies can potentially be used to “profile anyone who has a voice that crosses into a prison, including all the parents, children, lovers, and friends of incarcerated people.” Advocates are afraid that authorities might flag individuals who are in touch with multiple incarcerated people, searching for patterns and ways to crack down on prison organizing.

Today, a growing array of wearable technologies—ankle monitors, bracelets that measure blood alcohol levels, smartphones themselves—are used to track people at nearly every stage of the criminal legal process.

A new generation of compulsory biometric devices, however, pushes far into dystopian territory, raising questions about how much biological information the carceral state feels entitled to collect. Some of these tools, already being tested in U.S. jails and prisons, take the form of rigid wristbands that monitor heart rate, skin temperature, cortisol levels, and so-called “activity” or stress indicators. According to the ACLU, they represent “not just a privacy invasion but an assault on inherent human dignity and autonomy.”

In some research initiates, the data gathered by biometric devices is already being analyzed and operationalized. In Indiana, a team of computer scientists and developers at Purdue University utilized such data in 2020 to train an AI algorithm to predict recidivism. According to the team’s press release, the project—funded by the Department of Justice and conducted in collaboration with county-level corrections and law enforcement agencies—harvested data such as stress and heart rates via wearable bracelets and smartphones. The stated goal was to determine which physiological indicators are linked to an individual’s “risk of returning to their criminal behavior.”

But as scholar Brian Jefferson notes in Digitize and Punish, algorithms used for carceral means are not “simply mathematical objects” but rather “artifacts of governance designed to achieve specific objectives.” By focusing on internal, physiological states rather than structural conditions—such as access to housing, employment, health care or social support—these models dismiss decades of work investigating recidivism and its social and economic causes. Those causes, as AI researchers Os Keyes and Chelsea Barabas have noted, are already well understood. What remains unsettled is why emerging technologies continue to search for answers inside the body, rather than in the systems that shape people’s lives.

Across these examples, a shared pattern emerges: the encoding of the body as evidence, often without the knowledge, consent, or recourse of those involved. This process strips people of their autonomy, dignity, and right against self-incrimination. Whether through DNA, eye movements, or physiological indicators of stress, these systems recast human bodies as sites of suspicion, deception, threat, or risk. Rather than eliminating human bias, they redistribute and reinforce it.

“Crime prediction algorithms,” Ruha Benjamin aptly explains, “should more accurately be called crime production algorithms.” Biometric tools are likely to expand further across the criminal legal system as police departments, courts, and prisons increasingly turn to A.I.-driven surveillance and predictive technologies. These tools are being deployed most aggressively in communities that are already heavily policed and disproportionately criminalized. Preparing for—and resisting—this expansion requires a broader understanding of biometrics beyond facial recognition alone, including the many ways bodily data can be collected and put to use. Fighting to ban facial recognition is not enough; it must be part of the larger fight to stop carceral biometrics and advance digital abolition.

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Five PA counties charged more than $21 million for immigration detention

Five county jails in Pennsylvania have or recently had agreements with federal immigration enforcement agencies to hold people in their jails, sometimes for months, in exchange for significant fees, Spotlight PA found, according to Spotlight PA.

Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Pike Counties collectively charged more than $21 million for detention in 2024 and 2025, invoices obtained by Spotlight PA show. A fifth county, Cambria, has a similar detention arrangement, according to federal records and a county official — but denied Spotlight PA’s September 2025 request seeking payment information because ICE did not start sending detainees to its jail until later in the month.

Local government officials in favor of the agreements told Spotlight PA that the revenue generated supports services such as the county jail or general fund expenses.

“You’re always going to have pushback one way or another, but we haven’t really experienced it to this point,” Cambria County Commissioner Scott Hunt told Spotlight PA in early March. “This is a relationship that has gone back many years.

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ICE overstates its law enforcement support in Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, constables work alongside magistrate district judges, and have the power to arrest someone with an outstanding warrant, or to serve eviction or other civil papers. They can provide courtroom security or be called to keep order at a polling place, reported WESA and the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

While none of those duties involve federal immigration enforcement, constables now make up more than one-quarter of the 287(g) signatories in Pennsylvania: Twenty of the 73 law enforcement agencies ICE claims to have enrolled in the state are constables. (The agency claims to have 1,500 partner agencies nationwide.)

Participants in 287(g) programs receive training and can gain access to federal grants and other assistance. But several constables from around the state contacted by WESA said that, they sought to engage with the program, only to be told their participation had been suspended.

Indeed, some critics of 287(g) programs say that constables should have no part in them at all, in part for the very reasons that led to confusion in Monroeville.

While constables have limited police powers and work closely with local courts, they are not part of any state or local police department. They act as independent contractors rather than court employees. They are elected locally, but have jurisdiction across the commonwealth.

And University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris says a federal order for detention isn’t the kind of thing a constable can enforce.

“At the very least, it’s unclear that a constable would have any authority to make a move, an arrest, a detention of a person under one of those documents that comes from ICE,” he said.

Ari Shapell, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said he believes constables lack the authority under both federal and state law to enter into the agreements.

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THIEL COLLEGE--Comment No. 4

Why is the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons so important to juvenile criminal justice jurisprudence?  Explain in detail the decision's impact beyond the death penalty.

Meet one of the leading candidates to become the next Attorney General

Here is an introduction by The Bulwark to Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a short-lister for the position of United State Attorney General:

Public confidence in elections is a foundational requirement for a constitutional republic. Now, more than ever, we must have confidence and trust in Utah’s elections. . . .

The election systems we built here in Utah work well because of a core tenant [sic] of the U.S. Constitution: federalism. When appropriately applied, the division of power between the federal and state governments means decisions that directly impact us are made by people closest to us in state and local government.

United States Senator Mike Lee coauthored the above for Deseret News on October 5, 2022.

Stephen Richer writes, I agree wholeheartedly with the senator’s argument: Utah has reasonable election laws and competent election officials, and the public can trust its election results. Mass interference in Utah’s vote is indeed “virtually impossible,” as Lee put it a bit lower in the piece. And if you don’t like the results of a particular election, you can always work harder to win the next one.

But Lee is now making somewhat different arguments than he did in 2022. He regularly posts that non-citizens will steal our elections if we don’t require voters to provide documented proof of citizenship—something Utah didn’t require for Lee’s 2010, 2016, or 2022 elections.1 He also now says that secure elections require photo identification—but the vast majority of Utah ballots are verified by signature matching, not photo ID. He tells us to be suspicious of mail ballots. But Utah is an all-mail state. And he is suspicious of states that don’t finish counting ballots within forty-eight hours of Election Day—a deadline that Utah failed to hit in 2024.

There’s nothing novel about a flip-flopping politician. Lee is already famous for making a habit of turnabout, including on Trump’s morals (“If anyone spoke to my wife, or my daughter, or my mother, or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person”), Trump’s lies (“We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK”), and Trump’s disregard for basic law (“I’d like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender for the U.S. Constitution”).

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Do military lawyers working as federal prosecutors violate Posse Comitatus Act?

 Following the mass exodus of federal prosecutors in Minnesota, the Justice Department has enlisted lawyers from the armed services to fill the gaps, according to Courthouse News Service.

Now, a federal judge is set to decide the legality of using military judge advocate general lawyers to prosecute civilians.

Paul E. Johnson, a Minnesota resident facing a count of assaulting a federal agent in January, claims Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Hakes-Rodriguez is unlawfully prosecuting him in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The act bars federal military troops from participating in civilian law enforcement except when expressly authorized by law — most commonly used to prosecute offenses committed by civilians on military intallations.

The Justice Department contends judge advocates may be detailed to “represent the United States in civil and criminal cases” — asserting Hakes-Rodriguez and others have fully satisfied the necessary requirement to practice in Minnesota federal courts.

“The only connection to the military is their membership, which is not part of their enforcement of civilian law," the government said in a reply brief.

Hakes-Rodriguez told Magistrate Judge Shannon Elkins on Friday his appointment falls under an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act allowing judge advocates assigned to civilian offices to perform duties as requested.

But former judge advocates say military regulations never allowed for the general assignment of military lawyers in civilian matters.

“It is so wrong, and it’s inappropriate, and it’s going to undermine the relationship between civil and military authority for a long time going forward,” said attorney John Marti, a former judge advocate and federal prosecutor in Minnesota.

“If it’s OK for the attorney general to designate military attorneys as special assistants to prosecute civilians in civilian courts for civilian offenses with no nexus to military authority, there is no limitation on the attorney general doing that with all U.S. attorney’s offices,” he added.

A group of 11 former U.S. military attorneys, including Marti, submitted an amicus brief in Johnson’s case, urging the government to revert back to the tradition of limiting military attorney participation in civilian matters.

The group said the government typically details military attorneys on occasion to prosecute offenses committed by civilians on military installations, and in other cases where the military has a “clear and defined interest.”

“The government recently expanded this practice far beyond its historical and statutory bounds,” the group said in the March 10 brief — citing the dozens of military attorneys assigned to U.S. attorney’s offices in Minnesota, Washington, D.C. and Tennessee.

“During these temporary duty assignments, JAGs are not prosecuting cases with a nexus to the U.S. Military,” the former military attorneys said in the brief. “Instead, they are prosecuting civilians for the kind of general, domestic federal offense that civilian DOJ prosecutors would normally handle.”

The group said the government’s use of military attorneys is harming civil-military relations by suggesting military-led law enforcement is the “catch-all” substitute for regular civilian constitutional due process.

Military attorneys also have no choice, according to the group, unlike typical federal prosecutors.

“When civilian prosecutors are instructed by their superiors to pursue legally flawed or ethically suspect cases, they can resign, as they have done in this district,” the group said. “But JAGs do not have this option — they must obey their military superior’s lawful orders upon possible penalty of criminal prosecution.”

Reports say as many as 25 military attorneys could work at the depleted Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in an attempt to keep it afloat after mass resignations during Operation Metro Surge due to ethical conflicts.

Before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the office had reportedly more than 40 prosecutors on staff.

With that number now cut in half — not including enlisted military attorneys — it’s unclear how a judicial ruling against the use of military attorneys would impact the office, but Marti said the option to pull lawyers from other government departments — like DHS and ICE — has always existed.

“The question you ask yourself is why do you need military attorneys when all these other agencies have attorneys as well — why not detail them?” Marti said. “I think in part because it’s easier to direct military attorneys to go do a mission.”

Since Operation Metro Surge began, federal prosecutors have faced a reputational downfall through a myriad of court orders threatening contempt over misrepresentations of fact and law, and flouting of judicial instruction. Now, military attorneys sent in to ease the burden face similar challenges.

Hakes-Rodriquez was removed as the prosecutor on Johnson’s case Monday — only to be replaced with fellow military attorney William Richards.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

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