A sure sign the death penalty doesn't work

A man convicted of murder in Bay County who was sitting on death row has committed suicide in prison, reported WJHG-TV.

In 2008, Matthew Caylor raped and killed a 13-year-old girl named Melinda Hinson. She was staying with her family at a local motel, where she met Caylor. The motel maid found her body under the bed two days later.

The Georgia man was convicted of First-Degree Murder, Sexual Battery Involving Great Physical Force, and Aggravated Child Abuse in October 2009, and sentenced to death by an 8-4 jury vote. The case was one of dozens across the state where new sentencing hearings were ordered after a 2016 Florida Supreme Court ruling that death sentences required unanimous votes.

He was given a new sentencing hearing, and the judge determined he would remain on death row.

State Attorney Larry Basford confirmed Matthew Caylor committed suicide on Tuesday night. He says he committed suicide the same day as convicted killer Kayle Bates’ execution.

“Matthew Caylor was a sexual predator that had violated his parole in Georgia and came down here for a last hurrah in Bay County. After a trial and numerous appeals, he knew he was facing the same inevitable fate as Kayle Bates. By committing suicide, he saved the taxpayers of Florida a lot of money,” said Basford.

Matthew Caylor tried appealing his case once more earlier this year but got rejected by the state supreme court.

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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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Mangino discusses fashion designer's death with Nancy Grace on Crime Stories

Watch my appearance on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace as the panel discusses the mysterious death of Irish fashion designer.

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Lawsuit: DC roadblocks unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment

Residents of Washington, D.C., are turning out in force to protest the Trump administration's takeover of the city's law enforcement, which has included police checkpoints on popular streets staffed by federal agents, reported Reason Magazine.

NBC News and other outlets reported that more than 100 protesters turned out on Wednesday night to heckle federal law enforcement at a checkpoint on 14th Street Northwest and warn drivers of the police ahead. 

And good for them.

Leaving aside the dubious overall legality of the White House's takeover—the D.C. attorney general filed a lawsuit over that issue Friday—the use of such generalized roadblocks is obnoxious, impinges on Americans' traditional freedom to travel, and is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. 

Scott Michelman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of the District of Columbia, tells Reason police checkpoints "are inherently problematic."

"They're evocative of a police state where law enforcement stops ordinary people going about their business for no reason at all," Michelman says.

And that's why, Michelman says, the Supreme Court sharply limited the use of police checkpoints. "They can't be used as a pretext for general crime control activities, and they can't be used just to harass the community, which is what I fear was happening this week on 14th Street," he says.

The Court ruled in the 2000 case City of Indianapolis v. Edmond that police roadblocks or checkpoints are only legal when they serve a specific road safety concern—such as stopping drunk drivers—not when they're used for general crime control.

"We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and everpresent possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some crime," the Court wrote.

A Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) spokesperson told The Washington Post that the roadblock was a "traffic safety compliance checkpoint," which the department has been setting up around the city weekly since 2023. The spokesperson said officers "stopped 28 vehicles, issued 38 infraction notices and arrested one man for driving without a permit and counterfeit tags," reports the Post.

The focus on car safety would at least arguably pass muster under Indianapolis v. Edmond, but that then raises the question of why federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, who are typically tasked with investigating complex international crimes, were spending their time enforcing local traffic laws and checking vehicle tags.

However, The New York Times reported that federal agents were running sobriety checkpoints, not vehicle safety checkpoints.

"It's hard to take any of these conflicting explanations very seriously," Michelman says. "Instead, it appears that in keeping with President Trump's general contempt for the people of D.C., he's just interested in a campaign of harassment."

It's this sort of ambiguity that could get D.C. in trouble, as it has in the past. MPD used to operate "Neighborhood Safety Zone" checkpoints in the Trinidad neighborhood until a federal appeals court ruled they were unconstitutional in 2009.

Despite the fairly clear rule from the Supreme Court, police departments across the country still try to get away with setting up general anti-crime checkpoints.

In 2022, the Mississippi Justice Center filed a lawsuit challenging Jackson, Mississippi's use of "ticket, arrest, and tow" checkpoints, causing the city to overhaul its policies. 

In 2019, Madison County, Mississippi, also settled a lawsuit over police roadblocks that happened to predominantly appear in black neighborhoods. As Reason reported in a 2017 investigation, black residents of Madison County had felt under siege from their sheriff's office for generations.

Several New England ACLU chapters also successfully sued to shut down a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoint in New Hampshire in 2023 that was nearly 100 miles from the Canadian border. The civil rights groups argued that the CBP was using the checkpoint to detain and search motorists, well beyond its authority and far from its jurisdiction.

Using vehicle safety regulations as a fig leaf to allow federal law enforcement to harass and investigate drivers shouldn't be tolerated by courts, and from the looks of it, it rightfully won't be tolerated by D.C. residents.

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The 'execution state' Florida's record 10th execution of the year

 The  29th Execution of 2025

Kayle Bates convicted of abducting a woman from a Florida Panhandle insurance office and killing her received a lethal injection on August 19, 2025. Not to be out done, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has presided over the state’s record 10th execution this year, reported The Associated Press.

Bates, 67, was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Gov. DeSantis. The execution extended Florida’s record for total executions in a single year, and two more are planned in the state within the next month.

Bates was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and attempted sexual battery in the June 14, 1982, killing of Janet Renee White in Bay County in the Florida Panhandle. The woman’s husband, Randy White, was one of the witnesses to Tuesday’s execution.

At the scheduled 6 p.m. execution time, the curtain to the death chamber promptly went up. Bates was already strapped to a gurney with his left arm extended and the IV line for the drugs already in place. When asked if he wished to make a last statement, Bates replied ‘no.’

The execution then began at 6:01 pm. Bates began breathing more rapidly about a minute after the drugs began flowing, and then he stopped after about another minute. At 6:05 p.m., the warden touched Bates’ face, shook his shoulders and shouted his name with no response. Several minutes later, he was declared dead.

At a briefing following the execution, Randy White thanked DeSantis for signing the death warrant and also thanked members of law enforcement and prosecutors for working on his wife’s case.

″I am truly humbled by the outpouring of love and support from so many who didn’t know either one of us. I thank you from my heart. It means more than you will ever know,” he said.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place with four each.

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With Tuesday’s execution, a total of 29 men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least nine other people were scheduled to be put to death in seven states during the remainder of 2025.

According to court documents, Bates abducted his victim from the insurance office where she worked, took her into some woods behind the building, attempted to rape her, fatally stabbed her and tore a diamond ring from one of her fingers.

Attorneys for Bates had filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as a federal lawsuit claiming DeSantis’ process for signing death warrants was discriminatory. The lawsuit was recently dismissed by a judge who found problems with its statistical analysis.

The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Bates’ pending claims, including arguments that evidence of organic brain damage had been inadequately considered during his second penalty phase. The court ruled Bates already had three decades to raise these claims. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Bates’ last appeal Tuesday.

Two more executions are planned in Florida in coming weeks.

Curtis Windom, 59, is scheduled to become the 11th person executed in Florida on Aug. 28. He was convicted of killing three people in the Orlando area in 1992.

David Pittman, 63, would be the 12th person executed in Florida if his death sentence is carried out as scheduled Sept. 17. He was found guilty of fatally stabbing his estranged wife’s sister and parents at their Polk County home before setting it on fire in 1990.

Florida executions are carried out using a three-drug lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

CREATORS: Has The Death Penalty Become Arbitrary and Capricious?

 Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
August 19, 2025

Those who write about the death penalty often do so from a certain bias. I wanted to take a crack at writing about the ultimate punishment without bias. McFarland & Company helped me make that effort a reality.

My book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" examined every execution in 2010. One of those executions was that of Cal Coburn Brown. His perspective on the death penalty was both disturbing and provocative.

Brown was executed by the state of Washington. He had brutally sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered a young woman. He left her body in the trunk of a car at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Brown then jumped on an airplane and went to meet a woman in Palm Springs, Calif. He was torturing her when she managed to escape and notify the police.

Brown spent more than 16 years on Washington's Death Row. As he lay strapped to a gurney awaiting lethal injection, he protested what he perceived to be the unfairness of his sentence. He complained that criminals who had killed many more people, such as "Green River killer" Gary Ridgway, were serving life sentences while he was about to receive the death penalty.

Ridgway is a serial killer, both diabolical and prolific. He was convicted of murdering 49 women in the northwest between 1982 and 1998. Ridgway's victims were women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. Ridgway strangled his victims and dumped their bodies in secluded areas, often returning to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia.

In his final words, Cal Brown said, "I only killed one victim ... I cannot really see that there is true justice. Hopefully, sometime in the future, that gets straightened out."

There does seem to be some inconsistency in the application of the death penalty. Let's start with the fact that 23 states don't have the death penalty, and another 10 that have not carried out an execution in the last 10 years.

For instance, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer escaped death at the hands of the government because Wisconsin had outlawed the death penalty in 1853.

David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, escaped the death penalty in New York. Berkowitz killed six people in New York City in the 1970s. He terrorized an entire city, and for that matter, an entire nation.

Berkowitz was not sentenced to death. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder; as a result, the death penalty was not an option under New York's sentencing scheme. It didn't matter — New York had not executed a killer since 1963.

Charles Manson, responsible for ten murders, including the gruesome murder of pregnant movie star Sharon Tate, was sentenced to death but never executed. Manson's sentence was commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the imposition of the death penalty arbitrary in 1972.

Those serial killers who didn't escape the executioner include John Wayne Gracy who murdered 33 women in Texas between 1972 and 1978; Ted Bundy who murdered as many as 30 women across the country, often sexual assaulting them and engaging in necrophilia with their dead bodies; the "Freeway Killer," William Bonin, responsible for 14 killings and the rare female serial killer Aileen Wuornos who was executed for six murders in 2002.

There seems to be no explanation for sparing the life of the diabolical modern-day mass killer — Byran Kohberger.

Kohberger was offered a plea bargain to life without parole, without being required to explain his motive for killing four young college students in Idaho. It is not as though Idaho doesn't have, or use, the death penalty. Just this year, the state adopted the firing squad as its primary form of execution.

To further complicate matters, the evidence against Kohberger was overwhelming. He had recently purchased a KA-BAR knife — the alleged murder weapon. His DNA was on the knife sheath. He was observed on video surveillance near the victims' apartment. Kohberger's cellphone put him in the vicinity of the murders. Even more surprising, no mitigating evidence was presented by his lawyers.

Kohberger dodging the death penalty supports, yet again, that the death penalty has become arbitrary and capricious.

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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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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