Court rules New Jersey U.S. Attorney has no legal authority

The US District Court for the District of New Jersey issued a ruling that Alina Habba, who was appointed as the interim US attorney for the District of New Jersey, has had no legal authority since July 1, reported Jurist News.

According to the court’s decision, the US Senate has not approved Habba’s appointment to the post. Her temporary appointment, limited to 120 days, ended on that day. Chief Judge Matthew Brann wrote in his decision, “Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not.”

Brann added, “Trump Administration officials, believing that Ms. Habba’s term did not end until midnight on Friday, July 25, 2025, conceived a multi-step maneuver to keep her in the United States Attorney role.” The judge further detailed five steps that he said the President Donald Trump’s administration used to keep Habba in the post, ruling that those steps were prohibited by 5 U.S.C. § 3345 and 28 U.S.C. § 546.

On July 22, the court appointed Desiree Grace, Habba’s first assistant, as the US attorney. US Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed Grace hours later.

In response to Brann’s ruling, Bondi said the administration would appeal, saying Habba was “doing incredible work in New Jersey — and we will protect her position from activist judicial attacks.”

Chief Judge Brann stayed his order in the case pending the outcome of the expected appeal.

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The on going saga of former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip

 It was almost 10 a.m. and the eighth-floor courtroom in downtown Oklahoma City was nearly empty, save for a few onlookers and reporters. A Thursday morning hearing had been scheduled in the case of Richard Glossip, but he wasn’t there — neither were his attorneys nor the attorneys for the state. Minutes later, the gaggle of lawyers emerged from a door leading to the judge’s chambers, and Don Knight, Glossip’s longtime lead attorney, approached Glossip’s wife Lea in the front row of the gallery to deliver some news: Judge Heather Coyle had just recused herself from Glossip’s case. There was no explanation why, reported The Intercept.

The recusal came as a surprise — not only because trial judges rarely willingly step away from a case, but also because there was no recusal request on the official court docket. Coyle was previously a prosecutor in the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office under the former DA who sent Glossip to death row, and the recusal was likely rooted in concern about those ties. It was the latest twist in Glossip’s case since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction at the urging of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — only for Drummond to announce that he would retry Glossip for first-degree murder.

Glossip was twice convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese inside room 102 of the rundown motel his family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.

Glossip, who has always maintained his innocence, faced execution nine times as the Oklahoma courts repeatedly denied his appeals. He may well have been executed if Drummond hadn’t intervened. In early 2023, Drummond ordered an independent investigation into the case, which concluded that rampant prosecutorial misconduct had infected Glossip’s conviction. Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn the case, and, when that failed, joined Glossip in asking the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that Sneed — that the state has described as its “indispensable witness” — had lied on the witness stand.

Drummond’s concessions about the flaws in the state’s case and his unprecedented advocacy in support of overturning Glossip’s conviction made his announcement in June that he would seek to retry Glossip for murder all the more shocking. According to Glossip’s lawyers, the decision also betrayed a long-standing agreement with Drummond to resolve the case and set Glossip free.

The alleged agreement, first reported by The Intercept, was at the heart of an explosive court filing last month, which included a 2023 email exchange between Drummond and Knight laying out the deal. According to the email, Glossip would agree to plead guilty to a lesser charge and would be immediately released in exchange for a promise that Glossip would not sue the state for anything related to his “arrest and incarceration.”

“We are in agreement,” Drummond replied.

The state has since denied that any deal was ever reached, writing in a court filing that the first anyone in the AG’s office had heard about it was just before Glossip’s team filed their brief that included the email exchange. “Needless to say, the defendant is not entitled to enforcement of a non-existent plea agreement,” prosecutors wrote.

Thursday’s court hearing was meant to figure out how to proceed with the matter.

In anticipation of the hearing, Glossip’s attorneys on August 11 filed a lengthy affidavit from Knight that outlined his ongoing communications with Drummond and members of his staff regarding the deal. The filing shed new light on the negotiations, including that Drummond, who is currently running for governor, told Knight that the timing for carrying out the deal “was based on his own political calculus.”

In fact, it was Drummond who initially approached Knight in the spring of 2023 asking if they could strike a deal, Knight recalled. Drummond was preparing to admit that Glossip’s trial had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct and to ask the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn the conviction.

Drummond’s “big fear was that the court would grant it,” Knight told The Intercept, and that Glossip would walk free and would sue the state. “So Drummond did what a good lawyer does for his client and looked for an insurance policy. This agreement was that insurance policy.” Knight noted that if Glossip had been released as planned and then had gone on to sue the state, “the shoe would be on the other foot, and Drummond would be asking for this agreement to be enforced now, instead of me.”

In his affidavit, Knight lays out how after the Supreme Court ruled in Glossip’s favor in February, Drummond was quick to lay out a plan to follow through with the deal in a way that would avoid too much publicity — by releasing Glossip on the Friday before Easter. “I was informed that AG Drummond planned to effectuate the agreement on April 18, 2025,” Knight wrote. Knight recalled that he told Drummond’s solicitor general that he had shoulder replacement surgery scheduled in March, which would preclude him from traveling. Knight said he’d be willing to put off the surgery if Glossip’s release date was firm and was told that it was. “Having been assured that it was a firm plan, I rescheduled my surgery to May 13, 2025,” Knight wrote.

During a phone call in early April, however, Drummond told Knight that he would need additional time, but assured him the deal was still on. Just days before Knight’s surgery, the two talked again, and Drummond “reaffirmed he was still working on timing,” Knight wrote. Instead, a few weeks later, Drummond put out a press release announcing he would be retrying Glossip for first-degree murder.

Drummond’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In their most recent brief, Glossip’s legal team argues that prosecutors’ characterization of the deal merely reveals their own ignorance about what was happening behind the scenes.

“The thing that makes me kind of chuckle about the situation,” Knight told The Intercept, “is that I believe the people in Drummond’s office who are writing these petitions are learning about the truth of this matter from us … rather than from Gentner Drummond.”

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Gibsonia and Cranberry, PA restaurants raided and damaged by masked ICE agents

A local Mexican restaurant chain in Western Pennsylvania is trying to forge ahead a week after a worksite immigration raid left property damage at two of its storefronts and a workforce afraid to show up to their jobs, according to two employees and a witness who spoke with NBC News.

It all started Aug. 7 when immigration authorities showed up at two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar locations in the Pittsburgh area. As many as 16 workers were detained — nine worked at a location in Gibsonia, a suburb north of Pittsburgh, and seven others worked at another location in the nearby township of Cranberry.

In a social media post that same afternoon, which included a video taken by a worker, the business accused agents of storming into its restaurants and leaving “a trail of fear, confusion, and destruction” that included a burned kitchen, torn ceiling tiles, broken doors, a safe cut open by an agent and trashed food. The incident raises questions over the tactics used by authorities at this particular raid.

This week, gas plumbers fixed a stove that was damaged during the raid, according to two people working at the restaurant chain. Staffing was also thin at the locations targeted by immigration authorities as employees who witnessed the raid, including those who are U.S. citizens, remain “in shock,” they added. “No one wants to go back, everyone is scared.”

Both workers who spoke with NBC News requested to not be named to protect their family’s privacy because of an ongoing federal investigation in connection with last week’s events.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania declined to clarify what the investigation it is leading is about.

As the immigration arrests were happening last week, someone alerted an emergency response immigration hotline run by Casa San Jose, a local nonprofit that advocates for Latino and immigrant communities.

The organization quickly dispatched about 20 volunteers to both locations to act as legal observers, collect testimonies and provide support to the workers and families affected, according to Jaime Martinez, a community defense organizer at Casa San Jose.

At the Gibsonia location, “the raid actually caused a kitchen fire that agents were unable to extinguish at the beginning, which put people in danger,” Martinez told NBC News on Tuesday.

Employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers said the stove was on when agents entered the kitchen because workers were cooking food as they prepared to open the restaurant Thursday morning. The restaurant’s manager warned agents that the open burners were on, but witnesses alleged that agents didn’t do anything until a fire sparked, he said.

The detained employees, who had their arms and ankles shackled, were the ones who directed the agents to find the fire extinguisher and instructed them on how to use it after initially failing to operate it, according to employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers.

“By the time the fire department got there, the fire had already been put out with a dry chemical extinguisher, but only after this delay,” Martinez said.

A spokesperson with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News in an email Thursday that the “damage to the restaurant, including the small fire, was created by the illegal aliens themselves while they were trying to escape or hide from law enforcement officers.”

According to ICE, the agents showed up at the locations in Gibsonia and Cranberry to execute federal search warrants based on information it got alleging that the restaurants were employing undocumented workers, WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh, reported. The agency added that the 16 people detained lack legal status and are now in ICE custody, undergoing immigration proceedings.

“But in the process of coming in with that warrant, they also terrorized the community, pointed guns at people and destroyed a local business,” Martinez said.

In response to this, the ICE spokesperson told NBC News, “All agents and officers followed established legal procedures while executing the warrants.”

At the Cranberry location, Casa San Jose volunteers interviewed a worker who described seeing officers come into the restaurant, shouting “police” and pointing their long guns at the employees. One female employee who was in the kitchen said an agent “pointed the gun at her head” while telling her to stop cooking, according to Martinez.

While she was not detained after showing proper documentation, “this lady is now going to have to live with the trauma of having law enforcement point a gun at her head while she was at work,” Martinez said.

Martinez and one of the workers who spoke with NBC News said agents lined up all of the cuffed employees and made them kneel while pointing their weapons at them.

“Agents and officers operated within established law enforcement standards in order to ensure the safety of law enforcement officers, the public and the illegal aliens themselves,” the ICE spokesperson said in response to this allegation.

Last week was not the first time immigration authorities attempted to detain employees from Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar. The ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that a June incident was part of “an investigation that ultimately led to the execution of the warrants” this month.

Martinez said that on a night in June, he got a call on the hotline, reporting unmarked vehicles surrounding a nearby apartment complex. When the volunteer who was dispatched arrived at the area, she noticed the vehicles were parked with their engines still running, in front and behind the restaurant.

According to Martinez, it looked like federal agents inside the vehicles were waiting for workers to come out of the restaurant as it was closing. The vehicles left once TV crews arrived on the scene, he said.

“There were nine people in that restaurant on lockdown,” Martinez said, adding his group doesn’t know the immigration status of those workers since it doesn’t ask people about that as part of its policy. “But you don’t have to be undocumented to be afraid of getting detained.”

Since launching the hotline in March, Casa San Jose has received more than 650 calls reporting more than 100 immigration detentions in the area and has dispatched volunteers in at least 70 instances, according to Martinez.

In the wake of the raids at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant and Bar locations, the community came together and collectively donated more than $133,000. The workers who spoke with NBC News said the business plans to use the funds to cover bond expenses, one month worth of salary for each employee detained and repair damage done to the restaurant.

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Senate confirms Fox News host as U.S. Attorney for DC

Jeannine Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, including denying the outcome of the 2020 election

The U.S. Senate voted to confirm former Fox News host and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., reported NBC News.

The vote was along party lines, 50-45, with Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Tim Scott, R-S.C., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., not voting.

Pirro had been serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C. since May, after Trump appointed her to replace conservative activist Ed Martin as the top federal prosecutor in Washington.

In a Truth Social post announcing Pirro’s appointment, Trump lauded the former prosecutor as a “powerful crusader for victims of crime" and "incredibly well qualified for the position."

Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, previously using her platform as a host of two Fox News programs to push conspiracy theories about voting in the aftermath of Trump's 2020 election loss. She was cited in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems for her role spreading election disinformation. Fox News ultimately reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion in 2023.

Pirro previously served as an assistant district attorney for Westchester County, New York, ultimately becoming the first woman elected to serve as the Westchester County district attorney. During her tenure, Pirro started the first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor's office, an accomplishment Trump cited in his decision to appoint her as a U.S. attorney.

Following her judicial career, Pirro in 2005 launched an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in New York, aiming to challenge then-incumbent Hillary Clinton. Soon after, she launched a campaign for New York attorney general, but the effort was ultimately derailed by a federal probe over a plot by Pirro to record her then-husband, Albert Pirro, who she suspected was having an affair.

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Kohberger's zealous defense fizzles agrees to plea deal

Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, has reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to relatives of the victims, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Kohberger had been set to go on trial on murder charges in August, nearly three years after the killings, which occurred at a residence near the university in Moscow, Idaho. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday.

In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr. Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life sentences and waive all rights to appeal.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, criticized the prosecution team for failing to consult with the families. Some of them had worked to change Idaho law to allow the firing squad as a form of capital punishment.

“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement.

In their letter to the families, prosecutors wrote that the plea deal was “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”

“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice.”

Prosecutors did not respond to messages seeking comment, nor did lawyers for Mr. Kohberger. The families of the other victims did not comment immediately on the proposed agreement.

Mr. Kohberger, now 30, was a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, about a 20-minute drive from the crime scene. He grew up in Pennsylvania and studied psychology in college. He was arrested in December 2022 at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains area of Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings.

Mr. Kohberger’s defense team tried unsuccessfully for months to undermine key pieces of evidence that investigators collected against him. Prosecutors have said that his DNA was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene, and that records showed he had purchased a knife of a kind matching the sheath in the months before the killings. Video footage showed a car similar to his circling the neighborhood around the time of the deaths.

But investigators have yet to suggest a motive or offer any details on how the victims were chosen.

Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers filed a flurry of motions in recent months, including one trying to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty — in part, they said, because Mr. Kohberger had been diagnosed with autism. They unsuccessfully sought a delay in the trial, arguing that their team had not had enough time to comb through the vast amount of evidence in the case. But the judge ordered jury selection to commence on Aug. 4.

Just hours before news of the plea deal on Monday, one of Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers was in court in Pennsylvania, where she successfully argued that two witnesses who knew Mr. Kohberger as a teenager should be forced to testify at trial even though they did not want to.

Mr. Kohberger has been in jail since his arrest. His lawyers have given few hints about what defense they planned to offer, but have said that he was “out driving” on the night of the murders.

In the years before the killings, Mr. Kohberger indicated that he was interested in studying criminals. In a message to a friend in 2018, he wrote that he would like a job “dealing with high-profile offenders.” A few months before the murders, he posted on Reddit asking people who had spent time in prison to describe their “thoughts, emotions and actions from the beginning to end of the crime commission process.”

Investigators have said that the murders happened sometime around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. The victims — Ms. Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — had spent a typical Saturday night out near the university campus and returned to the house in the early hours of Sunday.

A roommate who survived the attack said she had heard what sounded like crying coming from the room of one of the women. She later told the police that she had opened her door and seen a man with bushy eyebrows in black clothes and a mask. The man left the house and the roommate began texting with another surviving roommate downstairs before taking refuge in her room.

But neither she nor anyone else called the police until more than seven hours later, when a friend came to the house and discovered the body of one of the victims.

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Trump nominates Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for full-time U.S. Attorney position

President Donald Trump is nominating former Fox News host and interim US Attorney Jeanine Pirro to a full term as the top federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, according to a White House news release, according to CNN.

Her nomination for a four-year term has been sent to the Senate, the release says.

She was named to the position on an interim basis last month after Trump’s first pick, Ed Martin, faced what appeared to be insurmountable pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, is a former judge and district attorney for Westchester County in New York. Until being tapped by Trump, she had not held a position in the justice system since 2005, when she left the district attorney’s office and began her career on television.

CNN’s KFile on Monday reviewed Pirro’s radio shows and found that she has repeatedly endorsed criminal investigations into Trump’s perceived political enemies, including federal prosecutors, local officials and judges involved in his various legal cases.

In addition to her attacks on federal law enforcement and the judiciary, Pirro has spent years promoting false and inflammatory claims. She downplayed the January 6 violence as a political “narrative,” calling for a Capitol Police officer and DOJ officials to be investigated.

Pirro also boosted unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen and was one of several hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News. The lawsuit was later settled by Fox News for more than $787 million.

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How a pregnancy loss can result in criminal prosecution

 Cary Aspinwall of The Marshall Project writes:

In late March, police in southern Georgia arrested a 24-year-old woman who had a miscarriage after a witness reported seeing her place the fetal remains in a dumpster.

The coroner in Tift County determined it was a 19-week fetus from a naturally occurring miscarriage, but some legal experts consider the arrest a bellwether for the criminal suspicion that surrounds pregnancy loss in many states in post-Roe America.

The Marshall Project previously examined how the way a person handles a pregnancy loss — and where it occurs — can mean the difference between a private medical issue and a criminal charge.

Nationally, federal data shows that about 20% of pregnancies end in a loss, but only a small number are investigated as crimes. In several states, a positive drug test after a pregnancy loss can result in criminal charges for the mother, and even prison time.

Prosecutions related to pregnancy appear to have increased since the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for the legal rights of pregnant people. In the first year after the Dobbs decision — from June 2022 to June 2023 — there were at least 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions, researchers for the group found.

Here are some states where miscarriages and stillbirths have been investigated by the criminal legal system in recent years:

Alabama

Arkansas

California

Georgia

Ohio

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Alabama

Alabama has a broad “chemical endangerment of a child” law allowing prosecutors to charge someone for drug use during any part of a pregnancy, whether the mother delivers a stillborn fetus or a healthy newborn.

Our 2022 investigation with AL.com found that more than 20 women had been prosecuted after a miscarriage or stillbirth in Alabama. Some of the harshest sentences resulted in cases where a fetus was stillborn and the woman went to trial.

The Pregnancy Justice report examining nationwide prosecutions related to conduct associated with pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth in the first year after the Dobbs ruling found that nearly half of the cases came from Alabama.

Arkansas

Arkansas is among several states that still make it a crime to “conceal” a birth or stillbirth. Such laws date back to the 17th century, and were intended to shame and accuse women of crimes if they were pregnant and unmarried.

In 2015, Annie Bynum walked into a hospital with a plastic bag containing the remains of her stillborn fetus and ended up going to jail — and eventually prison. She was accused under the concealment law.

A jury originally convicted and sentenced Bynum to six years in prison. Later, an appeals court ruled that the jury shouldn’t have been allowed to hear evidence that Bynum ingested medications to induce labor before the stillbirth or had previously had abortions — because the charge was that she had concealed the pregnancy, not tried to end it. While pregnant, Bynum had planned to quietly let a friend adopt the baby, and she eventually pleaded guilty to a legal violation for the attempted adoption.

California

In 2022, the state passed a law banning investigations and prosecutions of pregnancy loss.

But prior to that law, at least two California women had already served time in jail and prison for stillbirths that prosecutors had alleged were related to drug use.

Adora Perez had served nearly four years of an 11-year sentence before a judge ruled her plea agreement — to a charge of voluntary manslaughter of a fetus — was unlawful, and overturned her conviction in 2022.

That only happened after the case of then-26-year-old Chelsea Becker garnered international outrage. Becker was charged with “murder of a human fetus” in 2019, but the case was dismissed in 2021 and led to Perez’s case getting a second look. Anger about the prosecutions of both women led to the change in state law, to avoid punishing “people who suffer the loss of their pregnancy.”

Georgia

At least one woman who had a miscarriage has been arrested under a state law that makes it a crime to conceal a dead body, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

On March 20, police in Tifton, Georgia, issued a press release announcing that a dead fetus had been found in a dumpster at an apartment complex, after an ambulance was called for a woman who was found bleeding and unconscious. The next day, the Tifton Police Department announced it had arrested the woman who miscarried that fetus, accusing her of one count of concealing the death of another person and one count of abandonment of a dead body.

On April 4, Tift County District Attorney Patrick Warren announced that his office was dropping charges against the woman. His office determined that neither charge was applicable to her case under Georgia law, because a medical examiner determined the woman had a naturally occurring miscarriage.

Ohio

Ohio’s abuse of a corpse law allows a fairly broad interpretation, if applied to fetal remains: “No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities.”

In 2023 in Warren, Ohio, Brittany Watts was arrested and charged with abuse of a corpse after experiencing a miscarriage at home in her toilet. She had been to a hospital prior to her miscarriage but left when she felt she was getting inadequate treatment, according to news reports. When she went back to the hospital after her miscarriage, a nurse called police and reported that Watts had given birth at home and did not want the baby — an assertion Watts’ lawyer denied. A grand jury declined to move forward with the criminal case in 2024.

Earlier this year, Watts filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging medical professionals conspired with a police officer to fabricate criminal charges against her.

Oklahoma

Criminal charges related to drug use while pregnant — in cases of pregnancy loss or infants born healthy — have become increasingly common in recent years in Oklahoma.

Kathryn Green gave birth to a stillborn baby in Enid, Oklahoma, in 2017. She was struggling with meth addiction at the time and scared. She cleaned her stillborn son’s body, wrapped him in a blanket and put him in a box. Police later found the remains in the trash and arrested her. Prosecutors initially charged her with second-degree murder, alleging that the stillbirth happened because of “meth toxicity.” But medical tests later showed otherwise: Green’s stillborn son had an infection that had caused his death, records show.

In 2022, Green decided to enter an Alford plea — a guilty plea in which the defendant maintains innocence. At her sentencing hearing, a judge said he wasn’t convinced that prosecutors had proven Green willfully and knowingly harmed her baby by using methamphetamine while pregnant, but he was bothered by her “lack of maternal instinct.”

South Carolina

South Carolina was the first state to prosecute a woman for a stillbirth allegedly due to drug use. In 2001, Regina McKnight was sentenced to 12 years in prison for giving birth to a stillborn baby who tested positive for cocaine. McKnight served eight years before the state Supreme Court overturned her conviction, in part because her trial lawyer didn’t present witnesses to challenge prosecutors’ claim that her drug use definitively caused the stillbirth.

The state charged at least 200 women between 2006 and 2021 with unlawful neglect of a child or homicide by child abuse for alleged perinatal drug use.

In March 2023, a college student in Orangeburg, South Carolina, named Amari Marsh went from miscarrying a fetus in her bathroom to being investigated for a homicide. She told investigators she didn’t realize she was pregnant until she went to an ER with severe pain. She left the hospital and miscarried later in a toilet at home (which medical experts say is common). Her boyfriend at the time called 911. Police became suspicious that she may have sought to end the pregnancy or not called 911 fast enough, records show. She was jailed and accused of homicide by child abuse — before the fetus was autopsied.

An autopsy showed later that the fetus died of natural causes due to an infection that Marsh was unaware of, her lawyer said. In South Carolina, police can arrest someone on a criminal complaint without approval from local prosecutors (called solicitors). After a grand jury reviewed all of the evidence in the case, the charges against Marsh were dismissed.

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Letter: Incredibly, acting US Attorney served as prosecutor and defense attorney in the same case

Five former prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol are urging the disciplinary office governing lawyers in Washington, DC, to open an investigation into Ed Martin the President’s controversial pick to be US attorney for Washington, DC, reported CNN.

Martin, who has been serving in the post on an interim basis since Trump returned to the White House, is a divisive pick for the job. 

The letter details Martin’s representation of defendants who were prosecuted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for their involvement in the Capitol attack. In one case, the letter says, Martin was still repping the individual even after being tapped to serve as interim US attorney. He didn’t withdraw his representation of the man until after the case was dismissed by a federal judge in DC.

“By acting simultaneously as a prosecutor and defense attorney in the same case, Mr. Martin violated Rule 1.7(a), which directs that ‘A lawyer shall not advance two or more adverse positions in the same matter,’” the letter reads.

“Collectively, Mr. Martin’s actions threaten to undermine the integrity of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the legal profession in the District of Columbia,” the group told the disciplinary board. “The reputation of our community depends on a prompt and thorough investigation into Mr. Martin’s violations of his professional obligations.”

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Trump comes after the lawyers

Legal advocacy groups have sounded the alarms after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened new actions against lawyers and law firms that bring immigration lawsuits and other cases against the government that he deems unethical, reported Reuters.

In a memorandum to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi late on Friday, Trump said lawyers were helping to fuel "rampant fraud and meritless claims" in the immigration system, and directed the Justice Department to seek sanctions against attorneys for professional misconduct.

The order also took aim at law firms that sue the administration in what Trump, a Republican, called "baseless partisan" lawsuits. He asked Bondi to refer such firms to the White House to be stripped of security clearances, and for federal contracts they worked on to be terminated.

Ben Wizner, a senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new directive sought to "chill and intimidate" lawyers who challenge the president's agenda. Trump has separately mounted attacks on law firms over their internal diversity policies and their ties to his political adversaries.

"Courts have been the only institution so far that have stood up to Trump’s onslaught,” Wizner said. “Courts can’t play that role without lawyers bringing cases in front of them."

The ACLU is involved in litigation against the administration over immigrant deportations, including the expulsion of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The Trump administration has been hit with more than 100 lawsuits challenging White House actions on immigration, transgender rights and other issues since the start of the president's second term. Legal advocacy groups, along with at least 12 major law firms, have brought many of the cases.

A White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said “President Trump is delivering on his promise to ensure the judicial system is no longer weaponized against the American people."

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the memorandum, which directed Bondi to assess lawyers and firms that brought cases against the government over the past eight years.

Law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, which is working with the ACLU in an immigrant rights case against the administration, said in a statement that it was "inexcusable and despicable" for Trump to attack lawyers based on their clients or legal work opposing the federal government.

Representatives from other prominent law firms that are representing clients in cases against Trump's administration, including Hogan Lovells, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump issued executive orders this month against law firms Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, suspending their lawyers' security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.

The president also last month suspended security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling, in each case citing the firms' past work for his political or legal opponents.

The Keker firm on Saturday called on law firms to sign a joint court brief supporting a lawsuit by Perkins Coie challenging the executive order against it.

Paul Weiss on Thursday struck a deal with Trump to rescind the executive order against it, pledging to donate the equivalent of $40 million in free legal work to support some of the administration's causes such as support for veterans and combating antisemitism.

Lawyers are bound by professional ethics rules that require them to investigate allegations before filing lawsuits and not deceive the courts. Imposing disciplinary sanctions on lawyers who violate such rules falls on the court system, not federal prosecutors, though prosecutors can charge lawyers with criminal misconduct.

Some lawyers aligned with Trump faced professional discipline over claims that they violated legal ethics rules in challenging Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win over Trump.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who later was an attorney for Trump, was disbarred in New York and in the District of Columbia over baseless claims he made alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, a legal advocacy group suing the administration over deportations, called Trump's sanctions threat hypocritical in a statement to Reuters, saying Trump and his allies "have repeatedly thumbed their noses at the rule of law."

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CREATORS: A New Twist on the "Reviled" Advocate

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
March 18, 2025

American criminal jurisprudence has been turned on its head. For centuries lawyers have been attacked for advocacy on behalf of despicable criminals. Last week, the tables turned. President Donald Trump attacked prosecutors and government lawyers for advocacy on behalf of the people.

The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients was established more than 250 years ago with John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged with murder during the Boston Massacre. Adams' trial summation set the standard for law and order.

Adams, who would later serve two terms as president of the United States, said of justice, "On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace."

Today, more than ever, the clamor of the populace — through news media and social media — can almost instantly accuse, try and convict a person in the court of public opinion. Lawyers are often intentionally, or unintentionally, drug into the glare of the media and no longer perceived as only representing the accused, but of siding with the reprehensible conduct. A lawyer faced with the decision to take on a controversial client must legitimately ask herself, "Will I ever get any more law business in my community if I take this case?"

Attorneys are advocates for others. Many understand that representing the person or issue does not equate to accepting or endorsing what a particular client does. In practice, however, many people have difficulty accepting that a pedophile, terrorist, mass killer or racist hate group is entitled to legal representation.

At times, attorneys are demonized for representing defendants charged with heinous crimes — as if there was something immoral about providing a defense to someone charged with a crime. Such conduct undermines the fundamental protections of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, "to have the assistance of counsel."

There have also been times when lawyers have failed to meet the lofty standards of protecting the United States Constitution. Denise Lieberman, writing for "Liberties," the newsletter of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, pointed out that during the McCarthy era the American Bar Association "declared that any attorney representing a person associated with the Communist Party was unworthy of membership in the bar, and even demanded that lawyers take loyalty oaths."

However, few were prepared for what we saw last week. President Trump focused his wrath, not on defense attorneys who represent unpopular clients, or legal organizations that capitulate to the rhetoric of demagogues — no, Trump vilified prosecutors.

President Trump made a speech at the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, where, according to The New York Times, he lashed out at lawyers and former prosecutors by name. He also accused the department's previous leadership of trying to destroy him. He labeled those who opposed him as "scum," "corrupt" and "deranged."

"Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and good will built up over generations," Trump said, in speaking — of the Justice Department — to an audience at the Justice Department. "They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people."

Trump called himself the chief law enforcement officer in the country — of course, he is not. However, it was less than reassuring when the country's actual chief law enforcement officer — Attorney General Pam Bondi, said, according to Politico, "We will never stop fighting for (Trump) and for our country."

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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Federal prosecutors resign over dropping corruption charges against NYC mayor

A federal prosecutor assigned to the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Friday in a blistering letter that accused top leaders at the Justice Department of looking for a “fool” to dismiss the criminal charges, reported CNN.

The attorney, Hagan Scotten, is the seventh person to resign over the calamitous effort to dismiss charges against Adams. Scotten was a line prosecutor on the case and had been placed on administrative leave Thursday for refusing to sign off on its dismissal.

In a letter to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, Scotten slammed what he called a “dismissal-with-leverage.”

“Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” Scotten told Bove, who is President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten added. “But it was never going to be me.”

Scotten, a Harvard law graduate awarded two bronze stars as a troop commander in Iraq, is a seasoned prosecutor who has handled several corruption cases in New York including three associates of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He has also worked on other cases, against Bishop Lamor Whitehead, who is close to Adams and was convicted at trial on multiple counts of fraud. Scotten was also a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.

CNN has reached out to Scotten for comment.

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Support for Menendez brothers results in prosecutors' demotions

Two Los Angeles County prosecutors claimed in new legal filings that they were demoted and faced retaliation for supporting the resentencing of Erik and Lyle Menendez , reported NBC News.

Prosecutors Nancy Theberge and Brock Lunsford filed government claims alleging they were transferred out of the district attorney's office's resentencing unit because of their work supporting the brothers’ resentencing and for their perceived political association with George Gascón, the former Los Angeles County district attorney.

Theberge’s filing further claimed she was subjected to discriminatory treatment because of her age and gender. Her filing said office leaders treated her differently from younger, male colleagues, “undermining her authority and professional standing.”

Both Theberge and Lunsford had supported the resentencing, and from October they began to attend meetings about the motion for resentencing.

The Menendez brothers were convicted of their parents’ murders in 1989, and in 1996 they were sentenced to life in prison without parole. They remain in a California prison.

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PA prosecutors want statewide ban on machine gun conversion devises

The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association (PDAA) called on state lawmakers to help find solutions for several public safety concerns, which includes adopting a statewide ban on machine gun conversion devices, also known as “switches.” These devices enable shooters to unload an entire magazine of bullets in a couple of seconds, reported WJET-TV in Erie, Pennsylvania. 

The PDAA says machine gun conversion devices are inexpensive, easily obtained by criminals, and can be manufactured with 3D printers.

The letter cites the March 2024 after-school shooting at a SEPTA bus stop in Northeast Philadelphia, where three teenagers used a machine gun conversion device and eight high school students were severely injured. Philadelphia Police say one of the teenage shooters had a switch on a .40 caliber handgun, which allowed him to shoot 23 rounds in less than two seconds.

While the devices are illegal under federal law, most of the gun cases in Pennsylvania are prosecuted on the county or state level. This, the PDAA argues, is why the organization is asking lawmakers to give state prosecutors “the tools they need to get these devices off the streets and stop endangering our law enforcement officers, who simply do not have the same firepower as criminals carrying these machine gun-like weapons.”

To read the full letter, click here.

A modern day 'Saturday Night Massacre'--DOJ employees who investigated Trump fired

Acting Attorney General  James McHenry fired several Department of Justice (DOJ) employees Monday for having played a “significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” according to the memo obtained by CNN, as reported in Jurist.

The memo sent to the employees gave them formal notice of their immediate removal from their position at the DOJ, and from the federal service, stating that the trust needed to implement the president’s agenda faithfully was broken. McHenry justified the actions by citing Article II of the Constitution, acknowledging Trump’s executive power as president.

The lawyers who were terminated all formally worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022. Smith and his team conducted two separate criminal investigations of President Trump while in office. Smith, who resigned from his position earlier this month, attempted to take sole responsibility for these prosecutions in his Final Report as Special Counsel on January 7:

While I relied greatly on the counsel, judgment, and advice of our team, I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully. To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant. After nearly 30 years of public service, that is a choice I could not abide.

Smith also denied that any external or internal influences motivated these prosecutions. Former US Attorney Joyce Vance, an NBC News legal contributor, addressed the matter with the news source stating, “Firing prosecutors because of cases they were assigned to work on is just unacceptable. It’s anti-rule of law; it’s anti-democracy.” These prosecutions were dropped in November for Trump’s then impending inauguration. 

Although the number of individuals who have been affected by this decision is still not clear, it is estimated that there have been more than a dozen employees fired. As stated at the end of the termination memo, those fired may have a right to appeal the removal with the US Merit Systems Protection Board within 30 days of the effective date.

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AG nominee: 'The investigators will be investigated'

Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, faced questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday over her loyalty to the Republican president-elect, who has vowed to use the agency to pursue revenge on his perceived political enemies, reported The Associated Press.

The former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that politics would play no part in her decision-making as the country’s chief federal law enforcement officer, but also refused to rule out the potential for investigations into Trump’s adversaries.

If confirmed to lead the department that charged the once and future president in two separate criminal cases, Bondi would become one of the most closely scrutinized members of Trump’s cabinet.

She’s a close Trump ally and long-time defender

Bondi has been a fixture in Trump’s orbit for years, and a regular defender of the president-elect on news programs amid his legal woes.

“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones,” Bondi said in a 2023 Fox News appearance. “The investigators will be investigated.”

As Democrats repeatedly questioned Wednesday whether she would maintain a Justice Department that’s independent from the White House, Bondi insisted that “no one should be prosecuted for political purposes.” But she also refused to say what she would do if the president directed her to drop a case or answer whether she would investigate Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who charged Trump.

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Creators: The State Must Be Bound by Its Word

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators
December 3, 2024

The Illinois Supreme Court recently overturned Jussie Smollett's conviction for falsely portraying himself to police as the victim of a hate crime. The decision evokes comparison to Pennsylvania's high court ruling vacating actor and comedian Bill Cosby's 2018 sexual assault conviction.

While the crimes and history of criminal conduct are very different, there are similarities that should make practitioners of criminal law take heed. In both cases, ambitious prosecutors using the notoriety of the accused breached their obligation to follow the law and protect the due process rights of the accused.

Cosby was investigated by the Montgomery County District Attorney's office in 2005 for the alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand. The then-District Attorney Bruce Castor, a lawyer who later defended President-elect Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial, found "insufficient, credible and admissible evidence exists upon which any charge against Mr. Cosby could be sustained beyond a reasonable doubt."

In an unusual move, Castor filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby on behalf of Constand. If Cosby sat for a deposition in the civil case and told the truth, Castor agreed not to prosecute him.

Cosby testified in the civil case without invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. He admitted to taking women to his Montgomery County home, drugging them and sexually assaulting them. The civil suit was settled.

Castor's campaign opponent in 2015, Kevin Steele, made the Cosby prosecution a campaign issue. In the final weeks of their campaigns, according to The Guardian, Castor and Steele ran attack ads against each other over not charging Cosby with sexual assault during their respective tenures in the county DA office.

Steele rode Cosby's prosecution to victory. After taking office, Steele charged Cosby with sexual assault. Steele used Cosby's deposition testimony at trial and won a conviction.

Soon after Cosby was convicted, Smollett was indicted for 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to Chicago police. He was accused of hiring two brothers in 2019 to make it appear as though he was the victim of a hate crime.

A couple of weeks after the indictment, the district attorney's office reached an agreement with Smollett and his legal team to drop the charges. Prosecutors took into consideration Smollett's history of volunteer work in the city and his agreement to forfeit his $10,000 bond. He did 15 hours of community service and the charges were dismissed.

However, due to mounting public pressure, including a harsh rebuke from the mayor of Chicago, a Cook County judge appointed a special prosecutor in June 2019 to conduct an independent investigation of Smollett's case.

Smollett was later indicted on six charges of disorderly conduct. He was convicted on five of those charges in December 2021.

Cosby and Smollett both appealed their convictions.

In 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby was unfairly prosecuted because he agreed to testify without invoking his Fifth Amendment right based on a deal made with the DA.

For Smollett, the outcome was similar. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled, "Because the initial charges were dismissed as part of an agreement with defendant and defendant performed his part of the agreement, the second prosecution was barred."

Joseph Cammarata, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and partner at Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata and Siegel, told CNN, "A special prosecutor was appointed and sought to undo what the state had agreed to, and the (Illinois Supreme Court) said, 'no, we're not going to allow that because it's not just, it's not fair, and the state must be bound by its word.'"

Both the Illinois and Pennsylvania Supreme Courts agreed that a man or woman accused of a crime must be able to trust a bargain made with the county's top prosecutor. Anything less would undermine the criminal justice system.

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 X @MatthewTMangino.

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No correlation between violent crime and criminal justice reform

 Radley Balko writes in The Watch:

There is very little evidence that criminal justice reforms or progressive prosecutors are responsible for the spike in violent crime. Multiple studies have found no correlation between reform and crime rates at all, and as far as I know just one study claimed to find a correlation between progressive prosecutors and a slight uptick property crime — but no link to violent crime.

But the more obvious reason to doubt any link is that between 2020 and roughly 2022 violent crime also went up everywhere, including in jurisdictions with traditional, law-and-order prosecutors. It then went on a steep, nationwide decline in 2022. That, too, has been a nationwide trend, including in jurisdictions that passed and sustained reforms, as well as those that retained progressive prosecutors.

But the narrative appears to be immune to data. The most high-profile loss last week in Los Angeles, where voters ousted district attorney George Gascón, one of the more well-known names in the progressive prosecutor movement. Gascón faced a revolt the moment he took office, as the prosecutors’ union went to court to get an injunction barring him from implementing reforms — reforms clearly supported by voters at the time — by arguing that they violated the rights of prosecutors. (That’s a hell of a sentence to write.) And they won.

Gascón then faced over two dozen more lawsuits from holdover prosecutors. They accused him of retaliation for publicly criticizing him, and of interfering with their cases by imposing the policies he was elected to implement. I can’t speak to the merit of specific accusations, but as someone who has been watching this stuff for 20 years, I can say that a reform-minded line prosecutor who publicly criticized a traditional DA the way these prosecutors went after Gascón would be fired in a heartbeat. L.A. prosecutors seem to think their “right” to implement carceral policies supersedes the will of the people they serve. And unfortunately, the courts seemed to agree, as some of these prosecutors won six and seven-figure awards. Still, Gascón survived two recall attempts before finally losing last week.

California voters also passed a ballot initiative to increase penalties for some drug crimes, and to allow felony charges for repeat low level theft offenders — a response to the widely-distributed myth that a 2014 initiative had effectively “legalized” shoplifting in the state. The state’s voters even rejected a ban on forced labor of incarcerated people.

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Can special counsel Jack Smith actually be prosecuted?

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) asked Jack Smith’s office to preserve all records of the historic classified document and election interference probes, a routine first step in congressional inquiries, law enforcement investigations and litigation, reported, reported the Washington Post.

Smith’s team included veteran national security prosecutors who had spent years at the Justice Department. They secured grand jury indictments charging Doanld Trump with hoarding classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and illegally trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Since this week’s election, Smith has signaled that he plans to wind down the cases against Trump and focus on completing a final report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, rather than pushing ahead with the prosecutions until the inauguration and forcing a confrontation with the incoming administration.

Smith is assessing how he wants to proceed with the case now that Trump is expected to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, the special counsel and his team told a federal judge in a filing Friday. Justice Department policy would not allow for the prosecution of a sitting president. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan responded by granting Smith’s request to suspend all remaining deadlines in the case Friday.

Jordan and Loudermilk’s letter to Smith suggested that Smith’s office might respond to the election by purging records, warning, “The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions.” The lawmakers, both staunch Trump supporters, repeated an earlier request for Smith to turn over records about his communications with Garland, his hiring decisions and the court-approved search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.

In its filing to Chutkan on Friday, Smith’s team said it needed to assess how to proceed with the case, which accused Trump of trying to interfere with the 2020 election results, now that he is returning to the White House.

Chutkan quickly granted that request and ordered prosecutors to file a report by Dec. 2 explaining how they want to proceed.

The case is still far from a potential trial, and Chutkan is determining what allegations in the superseding indictment may still be prosecuted after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity.

Smith’s options include preparing a final report for public disclosure or dismissing both cases so that they can be revived after Trump’s second term ends, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.

If he terminates the criminal cases soon enough, Smith could deliver a final report detailing the findings of his two probes to Garland before Trump becomes the next president. A final report would allow Smith to “share with the public his evidence of Trump’s crimes,” McQuade said. “Members of Congress should be careful what they ask for.”

Smith could then resign as special counsel before Trump has a chance to make good on his promises to fire him.

Garland has previously said that he would make special counsel reports public if they reached his desk, though he has not indicated specifically what he would do if Smith gave him such a report now.

Were Smith to press forward into a Trump administration, the president or his attorney general could fire him and order the Justice Department to drop the prosecution.

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Anchorage, Alaska does not have enough lawyers to take criminal cases to trial

Defendants in at least 930 Anchorage misdemeanor cases have walked free for this reason since May 1, the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found. These include people accused of crimes ranging from violating a restraining order to driving drunk with children in the backseat.

A grand total of three defendants have gone to trial since May, according to the city.

The cascade of failed prosecutions is especially disturbing in a state with the nation’s highest rate of women killed by men. More than 250 of the cases dismissed since May included charges of domestic violence assault, such as men allegedly punching, kicking or threatening to kill their wives or girlfriends. They include charges dropped against a state official accused of elbowing his then-girlfriend in the nose.

Two factors are at work in the mass dismissals. First, Alaska’s overloaded court system has limped along for years by allowing extensive trial delays, defying a state requirement for speedy trials. Second, the Anchorage prosecutor’s office, as in many American cities and states, is struggling to hold onto lawyers.

When a judge this year tried to clear out a backlog of Anchorage misdemeanors by having them brought forward as a group to regularly check which ones were ready for trial, defense attorneys pounced. They began demanding speedy-trial rights for their clients. The city couldn’t keep up. Cases started dying.

City officials say they’re aware of the problem. They have raised prosecutor pay and are hiring attorneys to take more cases to trial, in hopes the prosecutor’s office will be “fully back in action” in three to four months, according to Municipal Attorney Eva Gardner.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, who took office July 1, said her transition team knew the lack of prosecutors was a problem, but she was surprised by the number of dropped cases.

“Right now, the prosecutors are frustrated, the police are frustrated. The public is frustrated. Victims are frustrated,” she said in an interview. “We see that. I see that, and this is something that we are working to fix.”

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Louisiana locks up 17-year-olds to fight violence--it's not working

In Louisiana policy makers believed the only way to stop violent teenagers was to prosecute all 17-year-olds in adult court, regardless of the offense, and lock them up in prison, reported Verite News and ProPublica. Law enforcement officials from around the state made similar arguments. Legislators quickly passed a bill that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17. 

But according to a review of arrests in the five months since the law took effect, most of the 17-year-olds booked in three of the state’s largest parishes have not been accused of violent crimes. Verite News and ProPublica identified 203 17-year-olds who were arrested in Orleans, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes between April and September. A total of 141, or 69%, were arrested for offenses that are not listed as violent crimes in Louisiana law, according to our analysis of jail rosters, court records and district attorney data. 

Just 13% of the defendants — a little over two dozen — have been accused of the sort of violent crimes that lawmakers cited when arguing for the legislation, such as rape, armed robbery and murder. Prosecutors were able to move such cases to adult court even before the law was changed. 

The larger group of lesser offenses includes damaging property, trespassing, theft under $1,000, disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, illegal carrying of weapons and burglary. They also include offenses that involve the use of force, such as simple battery, but those are not listed in state law as violent crimes either, and they can be prosecuted as misdemeanors depending on the circumstances. 

In one case in New Orleans, a boy took a car belonging to his mother’s boyfriend without permission so he could check out flooding during Hurricane Francine last month, according to a police report. When the teen returned the car, the front bumper was damaged. The boyfriend called police and the teen was arrested for unauthorized use of a vehicle. In another case, a boy was charged with battery after he got into a fight with his brother about missing a school bus.

In July, a 17-year-old girl was charged with resisting arrest and interfering with a law enforcement investigation. She had shoved a police officer as he was taking her older sister into custody for a minor charge resulting from a fight with another girl. None of those defendants have had an opportunity to enter a plea so far; convictions could result in jail or prison time of up to two years. 

In juvenile court, teenagers facing charges such as these could be sentenced to a detention facility, but the juvenile system is mandated to focus on rehabilitation and sentences are generally shorter than in adult court, juvenile justice advocates said. And in the juvenile system, only arrests for violent crimes and repeat offenses are public record. But because these 17-year-olds are in the adult system, they all have public arrest records that can prevent them from getting jobs or housing.

Rachel Gassert, the former policy director for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, said there was one word to describe what she felt when Verite News and ProPublica shared their findings: “Despair.”

Eight years ago, Gassert and other criminal justice advocates convinced lawmakers to raise the age for adult prosecution from 17 to 18 years old, pointing to research that shows that the human brain does not fully develop until early adulthood and that youth are more likely to reoffend when they are prosecuted as adults. The law enacted this spring was the culmination of a two-year effort to reverse that. 

“The whole push to repeal Raise the Age was entirely political and all about throwing children under the bus,” Gassert said. “And now we are seeing the tire treads on their backs.”

Gov. Jeff Landry’s office, Clayton and state Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, who sponsored the bill to roll back Raise the Age, did not respond to requests for comment. The Louisiana District Attorneys Association, which supported the bill, declined to comment.  

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