Erasing data on your phone at the border could land you in jail

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents want to know what's in your phone—and they won't take no for an answer, reported Reason Magazine. Courts have long held that border cops don't have to respect the Fourth Amendment when searching for contraband, and the CBP claims that this power includes the data stored on travelers' phones. Now, the feds are trying to argue that erasing that data is a form of illegal obstruction.

Samuel Tunick, a participant in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, was returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic in January 2025 when a CBP Tactical Terrorism Response Team pulled him into a windowless room and asked for his phone password. "Because you're refusing to talk, which is your right, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for," an agent told him.

But instead of giving his real password, Tunick apparently gave the agents a code that would erase all the data on his phone, known as a "duress password." He was using a Google Pixel loaded with GrapheneOS, an operating system known for its nearly airtight security. The feds charged him 11 months later under a rarely used law against "destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure." 

After months of paperwork and delays, the case had its first hearing last week, with Tunick's lawyers arguing that the government obtained the duress password "in violation of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights," and therefore everything that happened to the phone should be thrown out of court as "fruits of his unlawful interrogation." They also argued that the Fourth Amendment exemption for border searches shouldn't apply to the data on phones.

"Officers were not permitted to disregard all constitutional protections afforded to Mr. Tunick simply because he was at the border," the lawyers wrote in a filing before the hearing.

Several months before the Tunick case, several experts advised Reason that U.S. citizens can protect their data from border searches by wiping their devices before traveling. (It's not so simple for foreigners, since the CBP can turn them away for any reason, including having an empty phone.) An expert told The New York Times that the Tunick case would not necessarily criminalize that tactic, because travelers who erase before traveling would have "a strong argument that they did not act with the specific criminal intent to thwart an imminent search."

But the prosecution is unprecedented, and seems designed to scare people out of even trying to hide their electronic data from the CBP.

The case also highlights an important legal imbalance: The feds have the right to lie to you, but you don't have the right to lie to them. According to FBI emails obtained by Tunick's lawyers, the government was investigating Tunick for terrorism over his involvement in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. But at the airport, CBP agents told Tunick that they were searching his phone for "child porn."

The reference never came up again in the investigation or case, leading Tunick's lawyers to call it "a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr. Tunick's connections." It may also have been an attempt to bolster the case for searching his phone. In 2019, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers West Coast states) ruled that child sex abuse images are one of the few cases where digital data itself can count as "contraband" for the purposes of border searches.

Defend the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, aims to stop the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a planned campus for police and firefighters in Georgia, both on environmental grounds and because it encourages "police militarization," according to a movement website. Throughout 2022, some protesters physically attacked the construction site and other property with rocks and Molotov cocktails. In January 2023, police shot dead protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán under murky circumstances, alleging that Terán shot at officers during a raid.

The state of Georgia has thrown the book at protesters, hitting them with domestic terrorism and racketeering influenced corrupt organization (RICO) charges. While some defendants were charged with specific violent acts, some of them were charged as co-conspirators for nothing more than "occupy[ing] a tree house" or buying camping equipment. Prosecutors even charged three people with money laundering for running a protester bail fund.

Prosecutors dropped the money laundering charges in September 2024, and a judge threw out all of the RICO charges a year later.

Last year, President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directs the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to prioritize left-wing domestic terrorism. One of their targets has been Defend the Atlanta Forest. Last month, the Department of Justice brought up two protesters who allegedly committed arson on federal charges, and cited Trump's memorandum in their announcement of the charges. The FBI even internationalized the investigation, leaning on Swiss police to help unmask the owner of the email account for Defend the Atlanta Forest.

"While the government depicts the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement as an 'Anti-Government, Anti-Authority Violent Extremist Group' ('AGAAVE'), it has not put forth evidence that Mr. Tunick was involved in criminal activity in connection with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement," Tunick's lawyers wrote.

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Federal Judge John E. Jones: 'I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this'

Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms, reported ProPublica.

From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.

Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.

ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.

“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.

“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”

In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.

“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”

Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.

In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.

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Florida carries out two executions on the same day for the first time in 62 years

The 18th and 19th Executions of 2026

Florida has put to death two inmates in what's now the state's first double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, reported the USA  Today.

James Duckett, a 68-year-old former police officer convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987, was executed by lethal injection at 1:19 p.m. ET on July 28.

About five hours later, Florida executed Dominick Occhicone at 6:13 p.m. ET for the murder of his ex-fiancée's parents in 1986. At 80 years old, Occhicone became the second-oldest inmate ever executed in the United States and the oldest inmate ever executed in Florida, which is putting more elderly prisoners to death than any other state in the nation.

Tuesday also marks the first time since 1964 that Florida has executed two inmates on the same day, according to an execution database by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. The last time any state executed two inmates in one day was in 2017 in Arkansas, according to the nonprofit.

Florida's rare double execution comes amid an aggressive push by DeSantis to put more inmates to death than the state ever has before. Of the 66 inmates executed in the United States since January 2025, Florida has carried out 31 of them – 47% – including Duckett's and Occhicone's, according to an analysis by USA TODAY. Since the start of this year, Florida has carried out 63% of the executions in the United States.

 

DeSantis has said he wants to give closure to families who have waited for justice sometimes longer than four decades.

But the Republican's actions are drawing increasing criticism from death penalty opponents and observers who say the governor is being motivated by political ambition ahead of the 2028 presidential election and is "increasingly treating executions as routine instruments of political power," according to a recent statement from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The governor's office hasn't responded to a request for comment from USA TODAY about the allegations of political motives.

Here's what you need to know about Duckett's and Occhicone's crimes and more about what is going on in Florida.

On May 11, 1987, 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee walked to a local convenience store to buy a pencil at around 10 p.m. in Mascotte, Florida, a rural city just west of Orlando that had fewer than 2,000 residents at the time.

James "Jimmy" Duckett, a 29-year-old rookie cop, was on patrol for the Mascotte Police Department. The married father of two sons was making his regular rounds when he spotted Teresa talking with a 16-year-old boy outside the store, according to court records.

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Duckett has always maintained that he talked to Teresa and the teen, telling each to go home. But the boy and his uncle later said that Duckett put Teresa in his patrol car and drove off.

Teresa's mother arrived at the Circle K around 11 p.m., looking for her daughter. The store clerk told her that Teresa may have gone with Duckett, and the mother began searching the area. When she couldn't find Teresa, she contacted the police and later filed a missing persons report with the only officer on patrol at the time: Duckett.

Killer cop or the wrong man? How DNA halted James Duckett's execution in March

The next morning, less than a mile from the convenience store, a fisherman found Teresa's body in Knight Lake. A medical examiner later found that she had been raped and strangled, and was still alive when her attacker drowned her. Bodily fluid, presumably from the killer, was found on her underwear − DNA that was saved.

Duckett became a suspect when a sheriff's investigator, Sgt. Chuck Johnson, thought the officer was acting nervous at the scene of the body recovery, "was not curious about the death," and told a "rehearsed-sounding story" about his interaction with Teresa and the events of the night before.

Duckett was charged with murder five months later. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

Duckett was supposed to be executed in March but won a rare temporary reprieve from the Florida Supreme Court pending new DNA testing. The tests were inconclusive, Duckett's reprieve expired July 11 and DeSantis rescheduled his execution in a death warrant signed July 14.

It was the last of many decades of delays for Teresa's family.

 

After witnessing Duckett's execution on July 28, Teresa’s mother was able to get out one sentence before she began uncontrollably sobbing.

“I’ve been waiting 40 years to have him dead,” Dorothy Tula said in a quavering voice.

Her sister, Shirly Lancaster, rubbed Tula’s shoulders and continued to speak on behalf of her family, saying that “the state let him live too damn long.”

“She was only 11,” Lancaster said. “We’ve lived all this time without that baby. ... Maybe she’d have been the next doctor. Maybe she’d have been the next president, you never know. But we never got the chance to find that out because this bastard took her away from us.”

What was Dominick Anthony Occhicone Jr. convicted of?

In the early morning hours of June 10, 1986, an angry Dominick Anthony Occhicone Jr. went to the home of his ex-fiancée, Anita Gerrity, in the coastal community of Holiday, Florida, about 30 miles northwest of Tampa, according to court records.

As Occhicone knocked on windows and doors, he was confronted by Gerrity's 66-year-old father, Raymon Artzner. According to court records, Occhicone smiled at Artzner as he shot him dead, then ran into the house and fatally shot Gerrity's 62-year-old mother, Martha Artzner. Gerrity and her 10-year-old daughter were able to escape.

At trial, Occhicone's attorneys argued that he was so drunk and filled with jealousy and rage that night that he was temporarily insane. Later, after Occhicone was found guilty of both murders, his attorneys argued that a life sentence was more appropriate, telling jurors that "prison life is so hard on people, that they don't live until they're 92," according to an archived news report in the Tampa Tribune.

The jury voted 7-5 to sentence him to death and a judge agreed.

In 1997, 11 years after the murders, the son of the victims told the Tribune that he was frustrated with the delays in the execution.

"It's frustrating," Jim Artzner told the paper. "Justice has not been completed. ... It has gone on for so long. When is it going to end?"

That was 31 years ago.

On July 28 after witnessing Occhicone's execution, the Artzners' loved ones told reporters that it was "the end of a long and painful journey."

"The years since June 10, 1986, have been filed with sleepless nights, empty chairs at family gatherings, and those one-on-one conversations that were lost," they said in a statement. "We have missed birthdays, milestones, and simple everyday joys that were stolen from us. The pain and grief is always there, it never goes away."

They went on to say that Occhicone's execution doesn't erase their pain, "but it does close a door and end a chapter in our lives that has just lingered for far too long."

What is happening in Florida?

Since January 2025, Florida has become the busiest state in the nation for executions. So far this year, the Sunshine State has executed more inmates than all other states combined. Florida has put 12 inmates to death, including Duckett. Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona have executed seven inmates combined.

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Kohberger pleaded guilty now claims 'absolute claim of innocence'

The criminology student convicted last year of murdering four University of Idaho students in their home is seeking to abandon his guilty plea and obtain a trial, claiming he is innocent and was misled into confessing to the high-profile killings, reported The New York Times.

In an interview with The New York Times, Bryan Kohberger, who is currently serving four life sentences, said he had filed a petition challenging his conviction, citing concerns about how the plea deal came together.

“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Mr. Kohberger said in a statement provided to The Times on Sunday night. He reiterated in a phone call from prison in Idaho that he had an “absolute claim of innocence.”

Mr. Kohberger had not granted an interview or made public comments before speaking with The Times. He declined to discuss any evidence or other specific details related to his innocence claim, as well as the specific concerns he had about the plea process. It is rare for defendants to win post-conviction challenges.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, said in a statement that Mr. Kohberger was like a “mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.”

“The real tragedy is this: If even a fraction of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks bearing their names, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist,” the statement read.

The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office did not return a call seeking comment. Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador released a statement saying his heart went out to the victims’ families, noting they had “already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today’s deeply painful news.”

“My office stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out,” he said.

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DOJ drops subpoenas for NYT reporters after challenge by judge

The Justice Department is dropping the subpoenas it filed demanding grand jury testimony and phone records from New York Times journalists after sharp questioning Thursday from a federal judge who challenged almost every facet of the government's approach, reported NPR.

The government had insisted that it was acting solely in the interest of national security. It filed subpoenas on July 10, just two days after the Times published the first of two stories about concerns that led to the U.S. Secret Service interceding to prevent President Trump from flying home from Turkey on the new Air Force One jet.

But at the hearing, the presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, made clear he believed the Trump administration had violated protections given to journalists in black and white to uphold First Amendment principles. He also pointed to several instances of what he considered slipshod legal work and threatened to levy sanctions against federal attorneys for failing to follow the law and misleading the court in signed filings.

The case highlighted the Trump administration's ongoing assault on press rights and the free flow of information to the public. It also provided another glimpse of the White House's eagerness to assert an expansive definition of executive authority, as prosecutors argued the U.S. attorney general has the power to set aside legal protections for journalists when he deems necessary.

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Cut pretextual stops, reduce racial bias by police

A markedly different approach to preventing racial bias and use of force in policing is being implemented to great effect in jurisdictions across the country, reported Inquest. Rather than trying to “fix” policing, this approach demonstrates that the surest way to prevent police violence is to eliminate the occasions to inflict it. Pretext stop policies move beyond failed reforms and take a new approach: Instead of trying to change the way individual officers think, why don’t we restrict their ability to act on their biases?

Pretext traffic stops are one of the most common and consequential ways police officers exercise discretion and act on racial bias. These stops—in which officers pull drivers over for low-level traffic violations, such as expired registration tags, often as an excuse to fish for evidence of unrelated crimes—overwhelmingly target people of color and are regularly escalated by police. According to the New York Times, from 2017 to 2021, police killed more than 400 unarmed civilians in these types of stops—a rate of more than a death a week.

According to findings by Pamambir Dhillon in the Berkeley Public Policy Journal pretext stop restrictions in San Francisco immediately led to large, statistically significant reductions in stops and searches for Black and Latino drivers in the city—all without generating changes in drug, gun, or contraband discoveries. Latino drivers saw a 68 percent reduction in weekly pretext stops immediately after policy implementation, while Black drivers saw a nearly 50 percent decrease. These large reductions reversed the previous trend, which was steady increases in pretext stops across all racial groups and held constant even after accounting for changes in crime rates, police staffing levels, and driving activity in the city.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, at least sixteen cities across the country, including Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Seattle, have implemented comprehensive policies limiting a wide range of non‑safety‑related traffic stops, and Virginia was the first state to do so in 2021. As research continues to emerge, we see that targeting officer discretion can achieve what hundreds of millions of dollars spent on implicit bias training and body-worn cameras have been unable to. Moreover, empirical evidence demonstrates that you cannot meaningfully reform the scale of discriminatory policing—you can only reduce the scale of policing itself. Pretext stop policies are a key component to achieving this reduction, but not the only one: alternative response programs and civilian traffic enforcement are part of the same project, which seeks to replace police encounters rather than refine them.

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America is on track for the lowest annual homicide rate in over a century

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released a midyear crime trends report which illustrated that homicides in large American cities fell by 18 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, effectively putting the country on track for its lowest annual homicide rate in over a century, reported JURISTnews.

The CCJ analyzed 13 crime categories across 336 cities that have consistently reported monthly crime data for the past nine years. Nine of these offenses declined in the first half of 2026, with carjackings showing the largest decrease at 47 percent. Homicides have dropped 51 percent since their peak in early 2022, and carjackings have decreased 73 percent since their 2023 peak. The report also noted a 13 percent year-over-year reduction in residential burglaries and a 56 percent decline compared to their 2018 peak.

However, not all categories improved. Drug offenses increased by 12 percent compared to the first half of 2025, and domestic violence incidents rose by 8 percent. Shoplifting remains the only offense still elevated above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, up by 5 percent.

Roughly a third of the 36 sample cities recorded an increase in homicides compared to the first half of 2025, including Norfolk, Virginia, which saw a 64 percent rise, and San Francisco, which saw a 55 percent increase.

The CCJ said that there was no single explanation for the broadly declining trends, pointing to a range of possible influences including changes in criminal justice operations, technological advances, alongside broader shifts in society and culture. Commentators have pointed out that this decline could also be attributed to shifts in how people go about their daily lives, with many favouring digital transactions over cash payments, making it less likely for opportunistic thefts and street robberies to occur.

With the end of the pandemic, where millions of people had lost their livelihood, economic security has since stabilized and this inevitably reduced the financial desperation that often motivates survival-driven violence. Additionally, an influx of funding, with hundreds of billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery funds being channeled into stabilizing local city budgets have allowed for more targeted efforts in identifying youth populations facing the highest risk of violence.

The organization has tracked crime trends since the emergence of the pandemic, which brought a historic surge in homicides before the subsequent decline began in the second half of 2022.

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The struggle for adequate indigent defense continues

When America’s Founding Fathers were debating the Constitution, they realized that it didn’t do enough to protect individual rights, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth.

Thus, three years after its adoption, they added the document’s first 10 amendments, collectively known as the Bill of Rights. Amendment No. 6 concentrated on providing criminal defendants with a fair judicial process, including the right to be assisted by an attorney.

In 1963, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Sixth Amendment to dictate that this right to counsel applies to all felony defendants in state courts, not just those wealthy enough to hire an attorney. Thus, for more than six decades, any defendant too poor to afford an attorney has been guaranteed that one would be provided at the government’s expense.

As a comprehensive story from The Greenwood Commonwealth this past weekend explains, it is unclear how well Mississippi is living up to this constitutional obligation. An analysis of the documents filed by the state’s 23 circuit court districts, where felony criminal trials are held, exposed wide variations in how and when the courts provide indigent defendants with an attorney. Only about a third of the court districts have clear plans that closely follow the guidelines to provide defendants with an attorney soon after their arrest to discuss the charges, request a preliminary hearing and petition for release on bond while awaiting trial.

The variations in the public defender system exist not just from district to district but can also exist from county to county within a court district. For example, in the 4th District, which covers three counties in the Delta, Washington County operates with a full-time public defender’s office, Sunflower County contracts with two private practice attorneys to provide indigent counsel, and Leflore County appoints the public defenders from a list of private practice attorneys willing to do the work.

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Senators call for investigation into ICE hiring, vehicle pursuits and body cameras

Dozens of Democratic U.S. senators and the Independent senator from Maine pushed for more details Monday from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the agency’s vetting practices for new agents and how officers conduct vehicle pursuits, even as they demanded that body cameras be swiftly rolled out to all officers, reported The Associated Press.

The demands came in a letter spearheaded by Maine’s Independent Sen. Angus King, signed by 38 Democratic senators and sent to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. The demands follow two deadly shootings in which ICE officers shot and killed immigrants in Houston and Maine.

The Associated Press reported last week that the ICE officer in Maine who opened fire and killed a man from Colombia had a history of violent behavior toward family members that was detailed in family court records.

His first ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told AP he was physically violent with her, including once throwing boiling water at her while she was holding their child.

His second ex-wife, Lucinda Brouillette, sent a statement over the weekend alleging “a persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear, and control.”

“Throughout our marriage and in the years that followed, I have feared for a long time that his anger, aggression, and escalating behavior would eventually result in severe, life threatening violence, and I often believed I would be the one on the receiving end of it,” she wrote.

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Judge: Forcing states to enforce federal immigration laws violates the Tenth Amendment

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration challenging Minnesota’s state and local “sanctuary” laws, policies and ordinances, reported Courthouse News Service.

In the 56-page order, Chief U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud said forcing state and local officials to enforce federal immigration law violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes a balance of power between federal government and individual states.

Though the Trump administration argued state law was preempted by a federal statute allowing local officials to enforce immigration laws under formal agreements, Tostrud rejected that claim.

“This statute does not require a state or any of its political subdivisions to enter into this type of agreement; these agreements are voluntary,” Tostrud wrote, also ruling immigration detainers are requests, not mandates. “At the same time, the statute does not forbid a state or any of its political subdivisions from voluntarily cooperating with the United States.”

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Maine senator says citizens don't trust FBI of DHS

“The people of Maine are not going to buy an investigation that’s strictly run by the F.B.I. or D.H.S.,” Senator Angus King, an independent, reported The New York Time. “I’m sorry. They just don’t have the credibility.”

Senator King was referring a killing in Maine by ICE of  a man legally in the U.S. ICE has said victims in Maine and other states were brandishing a gun, “weaponizing” a car or attacking with a shovel. But these explanations, which federal immigration officials gave for shooting people, were swiftly undercut or contradicted by video evidence.

Now, local officials and some members of the public are meeting the Department of Homeland Security’s accounts of the fatal shootings this month in Houston and Biddeford, Maine, with intense skepticism. In Maine on Monday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian living in Biddeford. The department said little more than that he had tried to flee a traffic stop and that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” had fired at him.

Videos that capture the shooting have not surfaced. Maine officials have called for state law enforcement officials to help determine what occurred.

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Federal courthouses are crumbling around the country, Congress turns a blind eye

Judges across the country have been complaining that their courthouses are in a dire state of disrepair, and that the G.S.A. is not doing enough to respond, reported The New York Times. The extent of the problem was highlighted in interviews with chief judges of district courts as well as in a list of maintenance issues compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which coordinates operations across the judiciary.

For years, the chief judge overseeing the federal courts in Chicago had been trying to fix the water inside the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. A study had found that the water flowing to the building’s showers, sinks and drinking fountains most likely contained elevated levels of Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.

A judge in Oklahoma worked beside a trash bin to catch water falling from a leaking ceiling, before the problem became so severe that she was forced to move to temporary chambers for more than a year. A century-old courthouse in Asheville, N.C., is plagued by mold and a dilapidated heating system, requiring some court services to move off-site. Judges from other courthouses say the G.S.A. has been slow to address problems with critical HVAC systems, falling ceiling tiles and termites.

In the Middle District of Florida, the G.S.A. has been slow to respond to repeated leaks in Jacksonville and has taken more than two years to fully repair a fence that secures a parking lot for judges in Ocala, Chief Judge Marcia Morales Howard said in an interview. She criticized the agency for failing to take into account the impact of courthouse shutdowns on jurors, litigants and the rule of law. “G.S.A. gets paid their rent no matter what,” she said. “And we can’t move. So there’s just no urgency in getting the repairs done.”

The problems with the nation’s courthouses are one facet of a crisis over the federal government’s longstanding inability to maintain its own buildings. Edward C. Forst, the G.S.A.’s administrator, has blamed a requirement that the agency get congressional approval in advance of major projects. As for courthouses, he has argued that the $1.3 billion the judiciary pays each year in rent is a bargain compared with the cost of repairs. He has also cited a report from the Government Accountability Office that found the judiciary’s own guidelines for the design of its courthouses will lead to higher costs.

But for judges the problem is especially frustrating because they must rely on the G.S.A., part of the executive branch, to persuade Congress to address their needs.

G.S.A. control of courthouse repairs is inconsistent with the nation’s tradition of separation of powers, said Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., the director of the Administrative Office.

“We ought to be responsible for our own buildings. We ought not to be reliant upon an agency of the executive branch to manage our buildings,” Judge Conrad said in an interview. “Judicial independence, conceptually, is more important today than it has ever been.”

After years of frustration, Judge Conrad said the judiciary is now asking Congress to give it control of courthouses in 10 of the country’s 94 judicial districts — a pilot that could eventually lead to a more substantial handover. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, mentioned the possibility of legislation that would transfer control of some courthouses to the judiciary in a hearing on Tuesday.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Acting AG Blanche meets with Epstein victims, they were not impressed

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met  accusers of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following a request to do so by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose support is crucial to advancing his nomination to lead the Justice Department, reported CBS News.

Epstein accuser Annie Farmer said in a statement following her meeting with Blanche that she feels "even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States' Attorney General."

Farmer alleged that Blanche was "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors," which she described as "a marked contrast" from his testimony at Wednesday's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dani Bensky, whose name and personal information were mistakenly made public in documents related to the federal investigation into Epstein that were released by the Justice Department last year, testified before the committee earlier Thursday before taking part in the meeting with Blanche. 

Bensky said in a statement that Blanche treated the meeting "as a mere 'check-the-box' exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation."

Bensky said that Blanche "danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust." She said she believes Blanche "is not qualified to serve as attorney general."

"He did not adequately account for the release of materials that exposed survivors' identifying information and images, and he offered no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability beyond" Epstein and longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, she said.

The political firestorm over Epstein has been a persistent headache for the Trump administration, which released millions of investigative documents over the last year about the disgraced financier's crimes and connections to high-profile people. 

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Florida's machinery of death keeps on churning

 The 17th Execution of 2026

Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was one of three older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state, reported The Associated Press.

Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was convicted of killing Patricia Gifford on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting the 18-year-old woman at a New Year’s Eve party.

Sochor was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at the 6 p.m. execution time. Asked by the warden if he had any last words, Sochor said he did.

He apologized several times to the Gifford family, saying he was “deeply sorry” and also thanked his own loved ones for their support over the years. Then he commended his spirit to Jesus Christ shortly before the drugs began flowing at 6:03 p.m.

Sochor underwent about a minute of heavy breathing and then some seconds of sputtering. After two minutes in which Sochor appeared to go still, the warden looked into his eyes, shook his shoulders and yelled his name without getting a response. A medic was summoned at 6:14 p.m., soon after pronouncing Sochor dead.

Another 74-year-old inmate just a week younger than Sochor at the time of execution was put to death last month. And later this month, the state is preparing to execute an 80-year-old, the state’s first octogenarian facing a lethal injection.

The execution plans highlight the aging death row population in the U.S. and the busy death chamber in Florida, which has now carried out 10 of the 16 executions conducted in the nation this year — more than every other state combined.

Marilyn Gifford, Patricia’s sister, said after witnessing the execution that Sochor’s death brings some closure to the family, but it’s bittersweet since her body has never been found. She encouraged anyone with information that could lead to the remains to contact authorities.

“He had 45 years to return Patty’s remains to us, but he cruelly chose not to,” Gifford said, reading from a statement. “We never got a chance to lay her to rest in God’s arms. Without closure, every happy memory of Patty is immediately crushed by the tragedy of her murder.”

Gifford also pointed out that Sochor got to live more than twice as long on death row as her sister lived her entire life. “Tonight’s execution was appropriate because Dennis Sochor was a lifelong brutal and sadistic man,” she said.

It’s unclear why Florida scheduled the executions of the three prisoners consecutively.

Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, noted that in Florida the governor has practically sole discretion when it comes to scheduling executions. In many other death penalty states, the scheduling is up to the courts.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office did not respond to emailed requests for comment about the recent pace of the executions.

A New Year’s Day killing

According to court records, Gifford was celebrating the upcoming New Year with a friend at a Fort Lauderdale area bar when they met Sochor and his brother.

The four spent hours talking, but after the friend became ill and went to sleep in her car, Gifford left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast. But instead of going for food, Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded area and attacked Gifford, according to investigators.

Sochor was later arrested in Georgia in 1986 on unrelated charges and extradited to Florida. Sochor’s brother told police Sochor was responsible for Gifford’s disappearance, and Sochor himself confessed on tape to choking Gifford and disposing of her body. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 1987, and he was sentenced to death.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Sochor’s final appeal without comment.

Oldest inmates executed in Florida

On June 25, Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the killing of his wife Karen. Until Tuesday, Spencer was the oldest inmate executed in Florida.

According to Florida Department of Corrections records, the oldest inmates previously executed by the state were both 72: Samuel Lee Smithers on Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 killings of two women and R. Charlie Gifford on Feb. 21, 1951, for the 1950 shooting of a state representative, Charles Schuh Jr.

Meanwhile, Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, is scheduled to be executed July 28 for the killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.

If executed as planned, he would become the second oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. Moody was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a Black civil rights attorney during a wave of Southern mail bombs.

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CREATORS: How Does The 25th Amendment Protect Democracy?

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
July 15, 2026

A 2016 article in Psychology Today explored whether having a mental illness would make it difficult for a candidate to get elected president. The author, Guy Winch, Ph.D., cited a study by Jonathan Davidson of Duke University Medical Center that found that of the first 37 U.S. presidents, "half of those men had been afflicted by mental illness — and 27% met those criteria while in office, something that could have clearly affected their ability to perform their jobs."

The study found that 24% of presidents met the diagnostic criteria for depression, including James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge.

Davidson and his team also found evidence of anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder and alcohol dependence among sitting presidents.

Although the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution can prevent an incompetent president from remaining in office, the amendment was not created specifically for that purpose.

The 25th Amendment addresses what happens to the presidency and vice presidency if the president and/or vice president dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated or disabled.

About two years after the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, Congress recommended a succession amendment. On Feb. 23, 1967, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, who, by the way, may have suffered from bipolar disorder, signed the 25th Amendment into law.

Imagine in 1867 or 1967 if the president made a profane-laced statement in reference to Iran that "a whole civilization will die tonight," or a president who frequently naps at meetings took on the Pope as "WEAK on crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy." Is an 80-year-old, at times rambling, president with — as noted by The Hill — dark, unexplained bruising spanning the back of both hands — appropriate for the 25th Amendment consideration?

Succession has been a problem since the infancy of America. The original Constitution allowed for the vice president to become acting president if the president died.

That wasn't good enough for John Tyler who became "Vice President Acting President" in 1841 when former President William Henry Harrison became the first president to die in office. Tyler moved into the White House and assumed full presidential powers, including giving an Inaugural Address.

The first few sections of the 25th Amendment are straightforward. First, if the president dies or resigns — think Richard Nixon — the vice president takes over. Second, if the vice president dies or resigns — think Spiro Agnew — the president appoints a replacement approved by Congress.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is a little trickier.

Whenever the vice president and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been used, although officials considered invoking the section after the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan.

However, like impeachment or indictment, the president has Due Process rights. The president can challenge the declaration of incapacity. If he or she does, the vice president and other administration officials must reassert the claims or the president resumes his authority.

If the claim is reasserted, Congress must decide the issue. Within 21 days of assembling, Congress must vote with a two-thirds majority of both houses that the president is unable to fulfill his constitutional responsibilities as president.

If the two-thirds super-majority is not met in both houses of Congress, "the president shall resume the powers and duties of his office."

For now, there is little chance of invoking the 25th Amendment. The President is Republican, the House is Republican, the Senate is Republican and the Vice-President is a sycophant. There are other options — the midterms are just months away ... a dramatic power shift is not out of the question.

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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Clock is ticking on PA legislature's responsibility to address felony murder sentences

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled life in prison for felony murder unconstitutional in March. The court’s decision affected all convictions going forward but left it to the state Legislature to decide by July 24 how it would impact past convictions, leaving more than 1,100 others in limbo, reported the Prison Journalism Project.

A bill authored by Senate Republicans, which passed the chamber on June 25, would impose a minimum sentence of 35 years for second-degree murder except in cases where the defendant meets a strict set of guidelines proving they had no intention, knowledge or participation in the murder itself, in which case they could be sentenced to 10 to 40 years. The bill still allows for life sentences in certain cases.

A competing bill in the Democrat-led House caps sentences at 50 years and expands eligibility for parole after 25 years based on the defendant’s culpability in the crime and consideration of public and victim safety. That bill remains in committee.

If lawmakers cannot reach a consensus, the fate of those convicted of second-degree murder will go back to the court system for resentencing. The uncertainty for the women is exacerbated by limited access to information.

“I feel like there is a lack of information, even conflicting information,” said Tequilla Fields, 53, who has served 21 years in prison for second-degree murder charges stemming from a crime she committed when she was 18. “No one seems to know what’s really going on, not even the people outside. That makes it hard to know what to believe.”

Fields said the mandatory minimum of 35 years imposed by the Senate-led bill is too harsh. 

“Thirty-five years? It doesn’t seem fair, right or logical — it doesn’t make any sense,” Fields said. ”It’s too much time for someone who had no intention to kill anyone, or who didn’t kill someone at all. I do not trust the justice system at all. They don’t care about us. We’re not human beings to them.” 

Tameka Flowers, 51, who has been incarcerated for 31 years for second-degree murder, said a minimum sentence of 35 years serves the same function as a life-without-parole sentence.

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“It is a blessing to have the opportunity to leave prison, but a minimum sentence of 35 is still a death sentence for most,” Flowers said. “They’re trying to sentence people as if they had the intent to kill when they didn’t.” 

Despite her anxiety over her own release, Reyes said she understands the reasoning behind the Senate bill’s 35-year minimum. 

“At the end of the day, we have to understand that a life was taken while we were there, even if we didn’t do it,” Reyes said. ”It’s a life sentence for them.” 

Markman said she was also thinking about her victim and their family.

“It’s hard for me to know that I might get a second chance at life, regardless of how many years from now it may be, but they will not be,” Markman said.

If lawmakers do not pass a bill by the deadline, judges will have wide latitude to impose new sentences. Some women at SCI Muncy are concerned that this scenario will result in further sentencing disparities. 

“My main worry is if a bill isn’t passed and people are kicked back to their counties for resentencing,” Markman said. “Judges will be able to sentence people however they want to, and some counties are harsher than others.” 

Flowers said smaller, rural counties will most likely impose harsh sentences while more liberal cities like Philadelphia will impose more lenient sentences. 

“The judges and attorneys will have to really dig into people’s lives prior to prison, figuring out who we were then and why we made the decisions we made,“ Flowers said. “I feel like a lot of us might get resentenced to the same amount of time.” 

Despite their concerns about how the state Supreme Court ruling will be applied, women serving second-degree sentences at SCI Muncy are hopeful that they will soon have a meaningful opportunity to be released, viewing it as a chance to contribute to society. 

”This means everything to me, and I will not waste the chance I am given,” Markman said. “I am determined to make the most of it by making a positive difference and helping other people. If I can help one person who is going through a similar situation to what I was, it will all be worth it. I have to do something to give back.”

While the state Legislature determines its next steps, the community of women at Muncy are hopeful that politicians will agree that everyone is more than the worst decisions they’ve made. 

”We are not who we were two, three and four decades ago,” Flowers said. ”We were women who were abused, used, put down and beat down. And yet, we have survived and found ourselves. We’ve learned how to aid others. We just want the opportunity to show society that we will be an asset to any community we are a part of. We want to show that change is real.”

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As substance abuse declines, so goes the murder rate

Professor James Tuttle of the University of Montana writes in The Conversation, the murder rate in 2025 was the lowest in modern American history.

Preliminary data shows the murder rate fell nearly 20% from 2024, likely making it the lowest rate since reliable national data began to be collected in 1960.

Why was the murder rate so low?

I’m a professor of sociology and criminology who studies crime trends. In my book, “Crime Wave,” I explore how homicide rates have closely followed three trends over the past decade: alcohol consumption, drug abuse and firearm purchases. Now that the drug and alcohol crises are waning and gun purchases are falling, so too is the murder rate.

The 2015-2021 murder increase

The murder rate’s previous low came in 2014, capping a decline that had been more or less continuous since the early 1990s.

The murder rate usually rises and falls alongside other crimes, so through the 2010s, with property crime and overall youth offending dropping, criminologists expected the murder trend to follow suit.

Instead, the national murder rate increased sharply in 2015 and 2016, and then by an even larger margin in 2020.

Suddenly, it appeared that violent crime was spiraling out of control. By 2021, the homicide rate hit its highest level since the mid-1990s.

Popular, but incomplete, explanations

Some researchers and commentators attributed the homicide spikes to a so-called “Ferguson effect” in 2015 and, likewise, a “Minneapolis effect” in 2020. These theories are based on the idea that law enforcement officers were reluctant to be proactive or make arrests after nationwide protests against police brutality related to the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. The evidence for these claims is mixed.

There is little consistent indication that a decline in proactive policing contributed to a crime increase in 2015, although the homicide spike in 2020 was likely exacerbated by a police “pullback”.

Still, the majority of the homicide spike took place before June 2020, when protests over Floyd’s death spread nationwide. A study published in the journal Epidemiology found that the increase began as early as October 2019, suggesting de-policing in the summer of 2020 likely worsened the rise rather than caused it.

De-policing is, at best, an incomplete explanation.

Substance abuse, guns and the ‘homicide epidemic’

As I document in “Crime Wave,” the crisis in violence was related to another crisis: deaths of despair, which include drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol-related fatalities.

In the years leading up to the 2015 homicide spike, the prescription opioid crisis gave way to the illicit opioid crisis. As opioid use shifted toward heroin and fentanyl, it became deadlier. People were more likely to overdose, and the drug market moved from pharmacists into the hands of street dealers. It wasn’t just the pharmacological effect of drugs but the systemic nature of drug markets – disputes between dealers, buyers and users – that contributed to the spike in homicides.

At the same time, alcohol consumption began to accelerate. Alcohol is connected to homicide rates in part because it decreases inhibition, nullifying social and personal constraints. A high percentage of both homicide offenders and victims are under the influence of alcohol during a fatal assault.

Finally, amid growing distrust of the police and the government, firearm sales began to increase during 2015 and 2016, setting an all-time record in 2020. Given that assaults with a firearm are more likely to lead to the death of the victim than assaults using other weapons, confrontations became deadlier.

In my assessment, the homicide rate moved in near lockstep with trends in drug overdoses, alcohol consumption and firearm purchases, each of which increased by its largest margin in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic likely exacerbated the substance abuse crisis, and the gun-buying spree was especially pronounced at three points: in March 2020, when the U.S. declared a national emergency over COVID-19; in June 2020, following the Floyd protests; and in the months surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

With more people under the influence of alcohol, an expanding illicit drug market and more guns available, the murder rate dramatically increased.

The murder rate decline after 2021

After peaking in 2021, the murder rate began to fall. This occurred slowly at first in 2022, but the estimated declines in 2023, 2024 and 2025 have been substantial. The reversal in the homicide trend has followed a similar timeline as the substance abuse and firearm purchasing patterns, though some indicators of firearm possession, such as their use in suicides, remain elevated.

When the homicide rate was rising, it defied criminologists’ expectations, breaking away from the property crime decline of the 2010s. Now, the murder rate is falling back in line with other crime trends, many of which are also among the lowest ever recorded. As the substance abuse crises continue to wane, I expect murder rates to fall even further in the near future.

Additionally, with youth criminal involvement hitting historic lows, the next generation appears to be one of the least criminally prone in decades, which bodes well for continued reductions in the murder rate.

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