Matt Mangino

Alabama executes man for 1998 double murder

2026-09-19T14:19:59.042-04:00

The 27th Execution of 2026

Alabama executed Jeffrey Lee by lethal injection on September 17, 2026 for a 1998 double murder. His execution comes three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas, reported The Associated Press.

Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, authorities said. Twenty-seven people have been executed around the U.S. this year. Lee’s execution was the second in Alabama this year.

Lee was convicted of killing two people during a Dec. 12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Montgomery. Jimmy Ellis, the store’s owner, and Elaine Thompson, a store employee, were shot and killed. Another employee survived by playing dead.

Lee’s supporters and attorneys made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting that the jury that convicted him wanted him to receive a life sentence and filing a legal challenge to the change in execution methods.

The execution got underway just after 6 p.m.

“All is well. I just want to say to my family, I love them. To my brothers on life row, I love them,” Lee said in his final words.

As the injection began, Lee clenched his fists on the prison gurney. His spiritual adviser held Lee’s feet and appeared to pray. Lee closed his eyes and did not appear to open them again.

Ruling blocked Alabama from using nitrogen gas method

The execution was carried out 98 days after Lee won a last-minute reprieve when a judge ruled the state’s nitrogen gas method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lee had been scheduled to be executed on June 11 by nitrogen gas, but the execution was called off that night when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift the judge’s ruling. The decision was a loss for the state, which began using the gas method in 2024.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on June 12 filed paperwork to set a new execution date for Lee, this time using lethal injection. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday evening that “justice was finally served.”

“In June, after Mr. Lee attempted to avoid his deserved death sentence, I reaffirmed my commitment that justice would ultimately be served,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey also said in a statement. “Tonight, that promise was fulfilled for his victims, Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, as well as for their loved ones who have long-awaited his sentence to be carried out.”

Lee’s attorneys and supporters made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting the jury in his case had made a recommendation of life imprisonment, which the judge overrode.

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A jury voted 7-5 to give Lee a sentence of life imprisonment. However, a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.

In 2017, Alabama abolished judicial override and stopped allowing judges to change juries’ sentencing decision in capital cases. But the law was not retroactive. Supporters of Lee’s clemency bid held a rally Tuesday outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner, “HONOR THE JURY.” They gathered in a vigil Thursday night outside the Alabama Governor’s Mansion.

“His death sentence rested solely on judicial override — an old law that Alabama has repealed,” Lee’s attorneys said in a statement after the execution. “The State itself concluded this practice was wrong enough to abandon yet still put a man to death under it. That is a moral failure, not just a legal formality.”

Ivey, who declined to intervene, said in her statement that the case “underscores exactly why” the law passed in 2017 did not apply to existing death sentences

Two killed in 1998 pawnshop robbery

The surviving witness testified that Lee entered the store, asked to see wedding rings and said he would be back after getting money from his grandmother. Lee returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, Thompson and the other employee. The surviving witness fell to the floor, pretending to be dead, and called 911 once Lee left the store.

Ellis, a singer whose voice resembled Elvis Presley’s, had gained a national following for a time as an Elvis impersonator. He performed as the masked singer “Orion” and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.

Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder.

Supreme Court turns back stay request

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon denied Lee’s request to stay the execution to consider if the state was allowed to make the switch to lethal injection. Justices turned back the request without comment.

Lee filed a lawsuit in 2016 challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol. After Alabama authorized nitrogen as an execution method, Lee selected it as his preferred method. He agreed to dismiss the lethal injection lawsuit in 2018 because the state agreed that “if he is to be executed, defendants will carry out that execution by nitrogen hypoxia.”

Lee’s lawyers argued the state was bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.

For decades, lethal injection was the generally preferred U.S. execution method until problems procuring and administering the drugs led states including Alabama to consider alternatives.

Lethal injection remains Alabama’s primary execution method. But in 2024, the state began carrying out some executions using nitrogen gas, which involves replacing breathable air with gas through a respirator mask, causing death from lack of oxygen. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.

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Texas executes man for triple murder in 2005

2026-09-17T09:06:30.365-04:00

The 26th Execution of 2026

LeJames Norman, 40, was put to death by lethal injection on September 16, 2025 at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, reported The Associated Press. He was put to death for the 2005 fatal shooting of three people during an attempted robbery at his neighbor’s home in rural Texas, the state’s fifth execution this year.

Norman been sentenced to death in the fatal shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the home they shared in Edna, located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Houston.

Ker’Sean Ramey was also convicted in the shootings and sentenced to death. His execution is set for next week.

Court records indicated Norman and Ramey believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they never found any drugs. Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the U.S. from Mexico.

Norman pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide his punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request on Wednesday from Norman’s attorneys to stop his execution.

No last words before execution

Asked by the warden if he wanted to make a final statement, Norman shook his head.

He was laying on a thin mattress atop a steel table, his head on a white pillow. He nodded toward a window through which a sister, two of his children and a friend watched and made eye contact as one of them danced.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, he took a couple of deep breaths, appeared to yawn and made snoring sounds — six of them. All movement then stopped.

Thirty minutes later, after a physician examined him, he was pronounced dead at 6:44 p.m. and covered with a white sheet. Only his right hand and lower forearm, covered with an elastic bandage, were visible.

No relatives or friends of the three murder victims in his case witnessed Norman’s punishment.

Judge halts Georgia execution

Stacey Humphreys, 53, was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown in an Atlanta suburb. He too had been scheduled to die by an injection of the same drug at 7 p.m. EDT at the state prison near Jackson.

However, a judge halted Humphreys’ execution late Tuesday after his lawyers filed a petition seeking a resentencing under a new state law that allows victims of abuse to have their sentences reconsidered and reduced, if they can tie their crimes to abuse they suffered.

The state appealed that ruling, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to find that Humphreys is not entitled to have his sentence reconsidered under the new law. But the high court declined to hear that appeal before the scheduled execution time and left the lower court’s stay in place.

Georgia’s high court said it would consider the questions raised about the new law in the state’s appeal “in the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order.”

Killings at a model home and allegations of a biased juror

The two women who Humphreys killed were working as real estate agents for a new subdivision in the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs. He entered the sales office in a model home around midday on Nov. 3, 2003, and forced them to strip naked and give him their bank PINs before fatally shooting them, according to evidence presented at trial.

Humphreys withdrew more than $3,000 from the women’s bank accounts, according to court filings. He told police after his arrest that he had recently taken out some high-interest payday loans and needed money for a payment on his truck.

Witnesses told police they saw a man fitting Humphreys’ description at the sales office and a vehicle in the parking lot that matched his black Dodge Durango. Police zeroed in on Humphreys and tried to question him at his Dunwoody home days later. He fled and was arrested in Wisconsin after leading police on a high-speed chase.

In addition to the petition for a reduced sentence, Humphreys’ lawyers have argued that he should be resentenced because his death sentence was tainted by a biased juror who lied during jury selection and bullied other jurors into voting for a death sentence. Courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments for procedural reasons, though U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices, argued last year that the issue should be further explored rather than leaving it “caught in a web of procedural barriers.”

Additionally, Humphreys’ lawyers have argued that it was not fair that his clemency application was heard by only four members of the five-person State Board of Pardons and Paroles. A judge had ordered one member of the board to recuse herself, agreeing with Humphreys’ legal team that there was a conflict of interest because she previously worked as a victim advocate with the Cobb County district attorney’s office and had worked with the victims in his case. The parole board on Tuesday denied clemency for Humphreys.

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Trump attacks his appointees to the Supreme Court after vote by mail slap down

2026-09-16T09:10:06.317-04:00

President Trump assailed the Supreme Court’s decision to block his administration’s efforts to change mail voting and issued a blistering criticism of the three justices he appointed during his first term, reported The New York Times.

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote on social media, referring to Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch. “They are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal.”

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an executive order by Mr. Trump that would have drastically changed how Americans vote by mail ahead of the midterm elections. Mr. Trump has long railed against mail-in voting and suggested it is rife with cheating — even though he has voted by mail in recent elections.

In his post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump slammed the decision as “horrible, highly political.”

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do - And now they have an open field to do so!” he wrote.

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Mangino discusses thefts from area booster organizations on WFMJ-TV21

2026-09-14T08:51:55.798-04:00

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Former President Obama sounds the alarm on artificial intelligence

2026-09-13T20:50:09.766-04:00

Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years, reported The New York Times.

In his remarks, which have not been previously reported, Mr. Obama urged Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I. policy, should Democrats win back the House in the midterm elections, according to a partial transcript provided by Mr. Obama’s office.

He also suggested that candidates running for president in 2028 ought to make A.I. one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” for responding to safety and economic concerns around the technology.

The recommendations from the former president amount to some of his most detailed comments yet about A.I. as a political issue for his party. At a moment when President Trump continues to downplay concerns about the technology, some Democrats see an opportunity for the party to draw a clear contrast in the midterms and beyond on an issue of growing significance. In a Democratic Party with no clear leader, many look to Mr. Obama for guidance, and his comments carry considerable weight.

The remarks come amid escalating worries about the risks associated with A.I. development, as well as growing calls for lawmakers and politicians to do more to tackle the topic. Some A.I. industry leaders are now calling for a slowdown after a summer in which swarms of misaligned A.I. agents broke free from their containers and proceeded to scheme against their owners, cheat on tests and hack outside companies.

At a closed-door fund raising event in Manhattan organized by the campaign arm of the House Democrats, Mr. Obama and Mr. Jeffries spoke for nearly an hour in front of party donors and lawmakers, according to four people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering.

“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Jeffries, according to the transcript. Mr. Jeffries had asked him a question about how Democrats should address A.I. in a Congress that has taken little action on the issue, according to two of the people.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Mr. Obama said. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial. I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases. I do think that this can help us figure out pathways for a clean energy future.”

The former president often spoke in general terms, rather than drilling down on specific policies, according to the transcript. And he planted himself firmly in a middle ground in the heated debate over A.I., saying he considered himself neither an “accelerationist” nor a “doomer.”

One challenge facing Democrats as they chart a path forward on A.I. is speaking in one voice on the issue. The tug of war over how to regulate A.I. has been more divisive among Democrats than Republicans, who are generally more in alignment. Some Democratic politicians have called for more A.I. regulation, while others have received millions of dollars in support from groups tied to the industry’s biggest players.

A.I. is becoming a larger part of the country’s political calculus heading into the midterms. This year’s elections have been flooded with money from A.I. companies and allied groups. And anxiety about the technology, a rare issue that many Republican and Democratic voters can agree on, has peaked in recent days after a researcher at the A.I. company Anthropic loudly and publicly resigned, writing in a viral social media post that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Mr. Jeffries explicitly mentioned the resignation in his question to Mr. Obama, according to one of the people familiar with the event.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the A.I. company Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of A.I. development in a 3,800-word essay published on Saturday. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., quickly wrote in social media posts that they agreed with him.

The White House has long maintained an unabashedly accelerationist stance. Mr. Trump recently told reporters he didn’t have “any” concerns about A.I.’s risks — just about falling behind to competitors like China. He has said that those who oppose A.I. data centers must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”

“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on artificial intelligence,” Mr. Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to govern on behalf of the American people.”

“We will not repeat their error,” he continued.

On Capitol Hill, where little has been done to regulate A.I., some Democrats have been circulating a letter urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to stop members from going home on recess until they pass A.I. safeguards.

Many Republicans want action, too. Several have introduced bipartisan A.I. legislation, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has called for a special session on the topic. A growing number of Republicans are campaigning against data centers, in addition to many Democrats.

As House speaker in 2023, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, set up A.I. learning and brainstorming sessions, stressing a bipartisan approach. After Mr. Johnson became speaker later that year, he and Mr. Jeffries announced a bipartisan task force on A.I. that produced a report in late 2024. House Republican leadership declined to renew the task force in the next Congress. In response, Democrats formed their own A.I. commission, which is now putting the finishing touches on a policy framework. That framework is expected to be released this fall after some final checks by Mr. Jeffries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Obama has taken a special interest in A.I. in recent years, and he has offered himself as a sounding board to industry leaders, including Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei, according to two people familiar with his conversations.

Mr. Obama sees Mr. Amodei’s essay urging an A.I. slowdown — and the affirmations by other A.I. executives — as an encouraging development, and the two are engaged in discussions about A.I. safety, according to one of the people. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.

With many Democrats already jockeying for position ahead of the next presidential race, Mr. Obama, in his remarks at the fund-raiser, outlined what he would do on A.I. if he were one of them.

“I would talk about this, and I would say: ‘Here’s our plan for safety. Here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, according to the transcript.

He contrasted the technology with other innovations that could be dangerous in the wrong hands, saying that compared to “nuclear power, you don’t need a bunch of highly enriched uranium” to build powerful A.I.

“I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement,” Mr. Obama said, according to the transcript, adding, “if it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

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Will Alabama Governor grant commutations to those on death row as the result of judicial override?

2026-09-12T11:32:42.903-04:00

Gov. Kay Ivey made sure Alabama abandoned the process — called judicial override — by signing a law on her first day in office in 2017. But the law applied only to new cases. It did not have any effect on those people sentenced to die under the practice prior to 2017, reported AL.com.

Now, nearly ten years later, Ivey could use her last days in office to move the remaining 25 people on death row to the actual sentences their juries wanted and voted for: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I hope the governor is using her last few months to think about how she can leave a legacy of criminal justice reform in this state,” said A’Niya Robinson, the director of policy and organizing for the ACLU of Alabama.

Ivey’s stance is unclear.

There is no doubt she leaves a mark on the criminal justice system in this state. Alabama is building a new mega prison in Elmore County, set to be finished this fall and costing well over a billion dollars. It will be named after her.

But her record is more complicated.

Ivey set a record among Alabama governors in the modern era by approving the most executions, 26. And Alabama was an innovator of execution methods under Ivey’s watch, performing the nation’s first execution by nitrogen in January 2024.

Yet, she stopped judicial override upon taking office. She ordered a halt to lethal injection executions for several months in 2022, after the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t get it right. While she resumed the practice, some were astonished she had even paused it at all.

And she has also spared the most people from execution among all modern governors, too. She commuted the sentences of two men slated to die, something that does not happen often in Alabama, earning sharp criticism from fellow Republicans in the Attorney General’s office. In one case, Ivey said she had too many questions about guilt to move forward with an execution. In the other, the governor said she couldn’t “proceed in good conscience” to approve the execution of a man who wasn’t the actual shooter in the case, while the shooter was serving a life sentence.

Ivey isn’t running again, and will leave the governor’s mansion in January when the state’s new governor, either Democrat Doug Jones or Republican Tommy Tuberville, is sworn in.

‘They didn’t need a jury’

One of the people whom a jury wished to live, but a judge sentenced to die, was Robin “Rocky” Myers.

Myers was on death row from 1994 until 2025, when Ivey commuted his sentence, sending him to life in prison instead of an execution chamber because she said she wasn’t sure he was guilty. Myers has always maintained his innocence in the killing of his Decatur neighbor.

Years after Myers was sent to death row, a juror began speaking out, too.

Mae Puckett told AL.com in 2023 that she didn’t know a judge could change the sentence that she and the other jurors handed down. To Puckett, a life sentence was a compromise: She and several other jurors had agreed, in a jury room stalemate, to convict the 30-year-old father if he could be sentenced to life.

“Those of us who thought he was innocent had very strong feelings about it... (but) we knew those guys weren’t going to change their mind,” she said. “We decided to vote him guilty… the best thing we thought we could do was spare his life.”

To find someone guilty of capital murder, all 12 jurors have to agree. The decision has to be unanimous. Then, if prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, there is a second hearing following the trial to decide if the person should be sent to death row.

After hearing the testimony, jurors go back to deliberate for the second time. But a death vote doesn’t have to be unanimous in Alabama.

A death sentence can be handed down only if 10 or more jurors vote for death. If the jury can’t reach that vote, they can consider a sentence of life without parole.

But prior to 2017, Alabama had a loophole. The jury’s sentence was, technically, just a recommendation. A judge could, for a litany of different and vague reasons, disregard the jury’s sentencing decision. While a judge could alternatively overturn a death vote and send a person to prison for life, it was almost always applied the other way.

That’s what happened in the Myers case.

Puckett said she had no idea the judge could change the outcome.

“I cried,” Puckett recalled. “It was a mix of anger and sympathy and remorse. I felt like I had just fed him to the wolves when we tried so hard not to do that.”

According to information gathered by the Equal Justice Initiative, Alabama judges changed a jury’s sentencing verdict 107 times from 1976 to 2011. And 98 of those changes increased the penalty from life to death.

Jeffery Lee is set to die by lethal injection later this month, even though that’s not what his jury voted for either. He was convicted of killing two people and injuring a third during a pawn shop robbery in Orrville in 1998. His jury, in a 7-5 vote, opted to send him to live out his days in prison.

One of the people who served on that jury wants Ivey to commute Lee’s sentence and send him to prison for life.

“I didn’t know that a judge could do that,” the juror said during a phone call with AL.com. “The system just did what it wanted to do, and it didn’t matter what the jury had decided.”

The woman, who didn’t want her name used for fear of retaliation, called the issue a systemic one and said she wants her verdict honored. “If the judge was going to make the final decision, why have a trial? That was a waste of time for everybody.”

“If it was a judge’s decision, they didn’t need a jury.”

Only in Alabama

The practice of judicial override had only been legal in a few states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana. Indiana got rid of the practice in 2002. Delaware and Florida also abolished override and made it apply to older cases, and they never routinely executed people who were sentenced under the practice.

In 2017, Alabama was all alone. And in 2026, the state still is the only place carrying out executions that resulted from a judge’s single-handed decision, disregarding a jury verdict.

Starting in 2006, Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, introduced bills in the state legislature to outlaw the practice. They didn’t go anywhere.

“I had tried so many years because I felt that was extremely unfair,” Sanders told AL.com. “Because in effect, they were taking away the right to trial by jury.”

“There’s a unique unfairness about that.”

Eventually, Republican Sen. Dick Brewbaker took interest in the topic. Sanders said he was surprised, and glad, to have his support. Instead of co-sponsoring the bill with Brewbaker, Sanders dropped his name from the bill so it would have a better chance of passing under a Republican sponsor.

It worked.

The bill passed a vote of 78-19 and in April 2017, on her first day in the office, Ivey signed into law a ban on judicial override.

The law had a caveat: the ban on judicial override did not apply to those sentenced before 2017. Retroactivity wasn’t included in the bill, said Sanders, because it could have hurt the bill’s chances at passing.

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Suspected serial killer is Florida's 15th execution of the year

2026-09-11T09:40:47.534-04:00

The 25th Execution of 2026

A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death on September 10, 2026, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year, reported The Associated Press.

Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year span.

Conahan was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at 6 p.m. A spiritual adviser was at his feet and prayed throughout the process.

The team warden asked Conahan if he had any final statement, and Conahan replied, “No sir.” The deadly drug cocktail began to flow at 6:01 p.m. Conahan began to pant and then twitch briefly before going still. Several minutes later, the warden shook Conahan and shouted his name but there was no response.

A medic entered the death chamber at 6:11 p.m. to check for vitals, and Conahan was declared dead a minute later.

Conahan died in the nation’s busiest death chamber. Florida has carried out more than half the 25 total executions in the U.S. so far this year under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who leaves office in January.

Conahan was identified by authorities as a person of interest in the other deaths, but he was never charged. He argued the evidence against him in Montgomery’s death was circumstantial.

Multiple bodies found in popular hunting area

Conahan was arrested in July 1996 after local and state law enforcement officials spent more than two years investigating a series of homicides in which mutilated and decomposing bodies were discovered in a wooded area of Charlotte County, north of Fort Myers.

As the number of bodies increased, so did media coverage. The deaths eventually were dubbed the “Hog Trail Murders” because of the swampy, wooded locations where the bodies were found. The case has been featured many times over the past three decades on true-crime television shows, YouTube channels and podcasts.

Hunters found the first body in February 1994, and at least five more were discovered over the next three years. While most of the remains were severely decomposed, investigators believed Montgomery was found within 24 hours of his death. Investigators eventually determined the killer was targeting homeless men.

Investigators found similarities in cases

Detectives started looking into Conahan in 1996 after a man in prison for stealing Conahan’s car claimed Conahan had lured him to a remote area and offered to pay him to pose for nude photos. The man said he drove off in the car after seeing a knife.

Later, detectives learned about a case with similarities in Fort Myers, in which a victim claimed a man who offered cash for nude photos had tied him to a tree and attempted to strangle him. Conahan was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and several months later was also charged in Montgomery’s death.

Conahan waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted by a judge of murder and kidnapping in August 1999.

Conahan was never charged with any other homicides, but a sheriff’s office report about the investigation concluded that all of the victims discovered within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius were likely killed by the same person.

In 2007, a land survey crew discovered eight bodies in Fort Myers. The four victims identified by authorities were homeless, and officials said they all suffered similar injuries to the Charlotte County victims. Investigators at the time publicly identified Conahan as a person of interest, but he was never charged.

One relative of a Hog Trail victim says her family would celebrate Conahan’s death

According to corrections officials, 11 victim family members attended Thursday’s execution, but the officials wouldn’t say if they were relatives of Montgomery or of Conahan’s other suspected victims.

Joan Rodemann, the sister of a Hog Trail victim named William Melaragno, released a written statement saying that her family would celebrate Conahan’s death.

“Finally, the gates of HELL will open and you can join the other soulless spawns of the devil. Sadly, you won’t feel the pain or fear you horrifically brought onto your victims,” Rodemann said. “Our prayers are for the victims and their families.”

Florida leads the way in executions

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with 19 lethal injections, a state record since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so. Another Florida execution is planned shortly, that of Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, on Sept. 29. Beasley was convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer and stealing her car in 1995.

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

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What the Flock: Tough-on-Crime v. Big Brother

2026-09-09T09:23:39.628-04:00

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, directed police departments last week to stop spending state money on Flock Safety cameras, the license-plate readers that have drawn bipartisan backlash around the country, reported The New York Times.

Days later in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration ordered the systems removed from state roads. Mr. DeSantis has described the surveillance technology as “out of control.”

Both governors are tough-on-crime Republicans with deep backing from law enforcement agencies. Yet their moves underscore how the political winds are shifting against Flock and other plate-reading systems that have been embraced by police departments.

The cameras, which began rapidly appearing by the tens of thousands on American roads in recent years, track vehicles and feed surveillance databases. The networks of cameras can be used to assist officers by quickly locating vehicles connected with crimes. But concerns about a sweeping system of government surveillance and about abuses by individual officers have brought mounting opposition.

Flock cameras and others like them have become a campaign issue in several states, in some cases uniting Republicans and Democrats.

The result of the actions in Texas and Florida: Police departments are falling in line behind their governors and dismantling their license-plate readers. They have begun doing so even as they extol the cameras’ crime-fighting capabilities. In Jacksonville, Fla., the sheriff, a Republican, announced on Monday he was pausing his agency’s program of 150 cameras — one week after the office released a documentary-style video lauding their role in solving a kidnapping, among other crimes.

The moves in Texas and Florida are unfolding as Republican elected officials elsewhere are mulling their own restrictions.

In Indiana, Republicans have signaled they will draft legislation to set minimum law enforcement standards for the technology. In Kansas, some Republican lawmakers now say they want to tighten restrictions and oversight after earlier legislation had made it easier for the police to deploy license-plate readers.

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Missouri GOP primary candidate conspired to plant drugs on opponent

2026-09-08T11:23:11.105-04:00

A Republican legislative candidate in Joplin plotted to plant cocaine and Adderall on his primary opponent in an effort to derail her campaign, federal prosecutors allege, reported the Missouri Independent.

Thomas Ross, who won the Republican nomination for Missouri’s 161st House District by only 32 votes, was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

A criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleges Ross spent weeks discussing a plan to plant the drugs on Louise Secker, his opponent in the Aug. 4 Republican primary.

Ross’ former campaign manager reported the alleged plot to the Joplin Police Department on July 30, according to a probable cause statement by FBI Special Agent Brandon Bernhardt.

The former campaign manager provided Joplin police with a nylon glove containing a plastic bag of white powder that tested positive for cocaine and a pink and white pill identified as Adderall, Bernhardt wrote.

Screenshots of text messages reviewed by Bernhardt suggest Ross and the former campaign manager discussed the plot as early as May 31 and show them referring to it in coded language as the “substance of the matter” or the “substance of it all,” according to the probable cause statement.

The former campaign manager said Ross asked him to plant the drugs in Secker’s purse or vehicle while Ross was on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Bernhardt wrote.

Ross sent the campaign manager a text message on June 15 saying: “Hope you all are having success knocking doors and getting the substance of the matter sorted this week.”

Court documents quote a June 18 message from Ross that read: “Any luck with the substance of the matter? I wont be gone much longer.”

During a July 31 meeting at Ross’ house, the former campaign manager used a covert device provided by the FBI to record Ross. He told Ross he still had “the bag and addies” and asked Ross if he still wanted him to “try,” suggesting they could call in an anonymous tip about drugs in Secker’s car.

According to court documents, Ross replied, “If you can pull it off…pull it off.”

In a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice Thursday, Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said “the American people deserve confidence in an electoral process that has served our nation for generations.”

“Candidates are expected to conduct their campaigns with integrity, honesty and respect for their opponents,” he said, “allowing voters to make informed decisions without fear of misinformation or undue influence.”

Chris Ornerod, special agent in charge in the FBI Kansas City field office, described the allegations as “substantial and serious.”

“As this case moves through the judicial process,” Ornerod said, “it’s important that it proceeds fairly, impartially and in accordance with the rule of law.”

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Mangino discusses Lindsay Clancy mistrial on WFMJ-TV21

2026-09-06T19:15:41.432-04:00

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Armed man attacks Ohio Democrat candidate for governor at Canfield Fair

2026-09-06T18:18:55.272-04:00

According to the press office for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, an “armed individual” allegedly lunged at Acton, injuring multiple people in the process during a visit to the Canfield Fair on Sunday, September 6, reported WFMJ-TV21.

The following statement was shared by Acton’s office regarding the alleged incident:

“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people. Dr. Acton and Eric are grateful for the swift and decisive action of law enforcement and are praying for the recovery of those injured. This kind of violence has no place in Ohio. Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another,” said Addie Bullock, the Communications Director for the Acton Campaign.

The Mahoning County Democratic Party (MCDP) Chair, Chris Anderson, released a statement on behalf of the Party via social media in connection with the incident, reading:

“Moments ago during a visit from Dr. Amy Acton, an individual was arrested at the MCDP tent with multiple weapons, after knocking volunteers to the ground. Let me be clear - The Mahoning County Democratic Party abhors political violence in all forms. What happened at our tent today during today’s visit from Dr. Acton is reprehensible and should be condemned by leaders on all sides of the aisle. MCDP is grateful for the quick response by our local law enforcement officials as well as the OSHP providing Dr. Acton security. Because this is now an ongoing investigation, we will refer all questions to law enforcement.”

Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene tells 21 News that the suspect is expected to be charged with two counts of assault and one count of disorderly conduct. Sheriff Greene says that two older adults were knocked over during the incident.

The suspect was holding a phone or a type of camera during the incident. However, two firearms were discovered on their person.

Officials on the scene outlined what happened during the alleged attack, stating that the suspect, identified as Patrick Havas, entered the MCDP tent and started pushing people out of the way to get to the front of the crowd, knocking two people over in the process.

Members of Acton’s security team intervened and assisted the Canfield Fair Police. Havas has been taken to the Mahoning County Jail.

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True crime grabs the headlines: Lindsay Clancy jury goes off the rails

2026-09-04T08:29:49.700-04:00

True crime grabs the headlines as judge refuses to to declare a mistrial for "deadlocked" jury in Lindsay Clancy's murder trial. The judge order the jury to keep trying to reach a verdict after a dramatic sixth day of deliberations in a case that has gripped America, reported the BBC.

Tensions flared in court after the jury forewoman sent the judge a note saying one juror would not follow the judge's instructions on reasonable doubt.

There was audible shock in the room when the defense team asked for the juror to be removed, a request that was denied by the judge.

Clancy, 36, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children - Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan - at her Massachusetts family home on 24 January 2023.

The former labor and delivery nurse does not deny strangling her two sons and daughter in the basement of their house.

But her lawyer argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time, and could not distinguish right from wrong.

The jury of nine women and three men in Plymouth has deliberated for some 35 hours without a verdict, following nearly six weeks of trial proceedings.

The panel has twice previously sent the judge notes saying it could not come to a unanimous decision, but Thursday was the first hint of rancor in the deliberation room.

Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said in court that the jury forewoman had sent another note, this one complaining to Judge William Sullivan that a juror was refusing to listen to the law on reasonable doubt.

Reddington and prosecutor Jennifer Sprague had an animated discussion with the judge in court.

Reporters in the room could not hear the exchange, but the BBC saw exasperated facial expressions and gestures from Clancy's lawyer.

Florida carries out its 14th execution of 2026

2026-09-03T06:20:47.408-04:00

The 24th Execution of 2026

Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was condemned for the 1976 shooting death of 16-year-old Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice, reported The Associated Press.

Florida is responsible for 14 of the nation's 24 executions this year.

Lucas was strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the death chamber curtain arose on schedule at 6 p.m. Asked by a warden if he had any words, he responded, “No.”

The drugs began flowing soon afterward and Lucas began breathing heavily and then gasping before he stopped moving. Minutes later, the warden shook Lucas and shouted his name, but there was no response. A medic was called in and declared Lucas dead.

Lucas was the 14th prisoner executed in Florida this year, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed death warrants for two more lethal injections later this month. Florida has carried out more than half of the two dozen executions conducted in the U.S. this year.

Lucas declined to file any last-ditch appeals, telling a judge: “I’ve been on death row for 50 years, and I have no desire to carry this any further,” according to court transcripts. “The sooner it’s over, the better I’ll enjoy it. I am tired.”

Murder victim’s brother expresses relief

Lester Piper, Jill’s brother, said it was good to see the legal process finally at an end.

“I don’t know if closure is the right word to use, but I do believe there’s a big sense of relief,” Piper said after witnessing the execution.

Janice Rice, whose sister Terri survived the attack on Piper, said she was sorry her sister was no longer alive to witness the injection.

“Terri survived that horrific night 50 years ago and lived with the trauma and pain for 44 years,” Rice said afterward. “She wanted more than anything to be here today to witness justice for Jill, but God had other plans for her.”

Lucas was 24 in August 1976 when he was arrested for trespassing at Piper’s Bonita Springs home, south of Fort Myers, according to court records. Lucas had known the teen for four years and had worked for her family, officials said. Lucas and Piper had previously dated, the records showed.

About a week after the arrest, Lucas and Piper had two separate confrontations hours apart, investigators said. Witnesses testified Lucas threatened to kill Piper.

Piper asked Byrd and Rice to spend that night at her home for protection, officials said. Lucas eventually showed up with a rifle and shot Piper multiple times while she begged for her life and then shot and wounded her friends, investigators said. Lucas was arrested the next day.

Lucas was sentenced to death and resentenced several times

Convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder, Lucas was sentenced to death — and eventually resentenced to death four more times.

Lucas was initially sentenced to death in 1977 with a 12-0 jury recommendation, court records show. The Florida Supreme Court later ruled the trial judge was wrong to consider the heinousness of the attempted murders while deciding the sentence for the murder. That trial judge resentenced Lucas to death in 1980.

By the time a third sentencing was ordered, the original trial judge had died and a new judge was assigned. That judge sentenced Lucas to death in 1985, but the Florida Supreme Court later ruled a new jury should consider a sentence recommendation, though the conviction itself would still stand. The new jury recommended death by 11-1, and Lucas was sentenced to death for a fourth time in 1987. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that sentencing order wasn’t clear, and Lucas received a death sentence again in 1990.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led that year with 19 executions, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

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Mangino discusses deadlocked Lindsay Clancy jury on NewsNation

2026-09-02T16:12:33.155-04:00

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

The target at Penn State was cocaine kingpin Agostino S. Abbatiello

2026-09-02T15:27:09.828-04:00

September 2. 2026 marked the first court hearing for those who were allegedly part of a cocaine trafficking ring involving two Penn State fraternities, reported WHP-21.

Six of 14 defendants had hearings scheduled. Agostino S. Abbatiello was the only defendant in court wearing Department of Corrections-issued clothing the defendants in the Penn State Drug Ring preliminary hearings. He was escorted by police into the courthouse. He was wearing a red jumpsuit and had handcuffs on.

The reason: Abbatiello is the Penn State cocaine kingpin. All the others have cooperated with investigators, waived their preliminary hearing and three codefendant's testified against Abbatiello.

At Abbatiello's preliminary hearing, Thomas Robinson was the first person called to the stand.

Robinson said he initially sold small amounts of cocaine, splitting profits with Huraibi. He said he stored cocaine in his room in the fraternity house.

Robinson said he later was in a Snapchat group chat with Abbatiello and Huraibi. He said they used Snapchat because messages are deleted after 24 hours.

Robinson described one time where he met with Abbatiello to purchase 250 grams of cocaine in February 2024. Robinson said Abbatiello came out and sat in Robinson's car to exchange cash for a shoebox of cocaine.

Robinson said later purchases were in larger amounts, including 500 grams and 1 kilogram.

Robinson said he sold mostly to members of his own fraternity, Delta Upsilon.

Mohammed Huraibi is second to the stand

Huraibi said he was introduced to Abbatiello via Snapchat.

Huraibi said he and Robinson purchased cocaine from Abbatiello. He said their first purchase together was in August 2023.

Huraibi said he later "decided I wanted to walk away from everything going on."

Huraibi said Abbatiello didn't sell to just anyone; they'd have to be "introduced" to him.

Huraibi said he used cocaine and other drugs after he started selling it. He said the drug use affected his ability to recall what occurred.

Lars Zeepvat is third to the stand

Zeepvat said he, Abbatiello and another friend "pooled" their money together to purchase cocaine from a distributor in Philadelphia.

Zeepvat said Abbatiello later found a cocaine plug from Long Island, which is when he "shifted."

"I saw a difference in Augie," Zeepvat said. "He started selling for money and popularity."

Zeepvat said he would later sell bags of cocaine. He was told, "You can keep a bag for yourself if you sell 4-5."

Zeepvat said "things really started picking up" during senior year. He believed Abbatiello was making more money because he was gambling, buying more clothes and selling larger quantities of cocaine.

Zeepvat said 3-12 people would go to after-parties at Abbatiello's apartment, where cocaine was out on the table.

When Abbatiello learned about the investigation into the ring on July 4, 2026, he allegedly told Zeepvat, "don't cooperate" with the grand jury investigation.

When Zeepvat did receive a letter to testify in front of the grand jury, he said he called Abbatiello. He said Abbatiello told him, "please don't say anything."

"There are lots of cocaine sources at Penn State," Zeepvat said. "When I was pledging (Sigma Chi), it was the seniors."

Bail

Abbatiello was initially denied bail, but his attorney argued that he should have the opportunity to get out on bail. His attorney argued that he's not a flight risk or a danger to the community. He said Abbatiello would live at his parents' home without any drugs or weapons.

The prosecution said hat he was trafficking drugs and "poison" into the community. The prosecutor said the judge was right to deny bail, but if it is granted, it should be set at $5 million.

The judge ultimately granted bail as $250,000 secured. Abbatiello is not allowed contact with any witnesses or any alcohol.

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Trump Administration uses obscure customs statute to circumvent search warrant

2026-09-01T14:40:36.533-04:00

The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight, reported The Guardian.

In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.

In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering. A judge twice rejected the request, writing that the government had failed to establish probable cause of a crime and that he wanted Lemon and Fort to be informed of the request so they could have a chance to challenge it. About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request.

But officials hadn’t given up on getting the data.

Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law – 19 USC 1509 – dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret.

The DHS summons was issued under a statute that does give the agency broad power to demand records, but only in the limited circumstance of there being a need to investigate a customs issue, said Chris Duncan, a former lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. “These laws have absolutely nothing to do with a domestic situation at a church, a social media post, even an immigration matter,” he said.

These laws have nothing to do with a domestic situation at a church, a social media post, even an immigration matter

Chris Duncan, former lawyer at the DHS

“It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,” said John Roth, who served as the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017. “This is an improper use of the subpoena under any circumstances. This is not a customs case; it is not a customs violation. They are not investigating a customs violation.”

The episode in Minnesota was particularly alarming because it appeared to be an end run around a judge who was skeptical of the government’s need for the information.

“There is no judge in the loop. You don’t have that independent authority to scrutinize the demand and to say whether or not it’s legitimate,” said Caitlin Vogus, a senior adviser at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The DHS also sought and obtained six months of phone records for Fort from T-Mobile, which included records for more than 10,000 calls and text messages. Fort was not notified the government was seeking the records until mid-July, when government lawyers produced them to her lawyers. Fort’s lawyers wrote in a filing this week they were “stunned” to see the government had unilaterally been able to obtain a log of her communications after a judge had warned them about obtaining records about a journalist.

“That’s very concerning because the information demanded can help the government uncover a journalist’s confidential sources,” Vogus said.

In a statement, T-Mobile did not address why it turned over the information.

“We take our responsibility to protect customers’ privacy and personal information very seriously. Our team carefully reviews government demands for customer information and responds in accordance with the law. We don’t comment on specific law enforcement demands,” the company said.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security both declined to comment on the use of the summons.

In addition to Fort and Lemon, the DHS also sought information on the YouTube accounts for the left-leaning outlet Democracy Now, conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and an independent journalist named Brendan Gutenschwager. Some of the videos they cited in the summons were livestreams of the protest, but not all of them. The video cited as part of the request for information on Democracy Now involved a news report on the protest and an interview with Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the protest. The video cited on the request for Kelly’s show included an interview with Jonathan Parnell, the pastor at the church.

It’s unclear why exactly the DHS wanted the YouTube account information, which includes things like a user’s IP address, and information about when a user was logging in.

“It’s still concerning that the government sought subscriber information for Lemon and Fort because there’s no reason it would need this information for the criminal charges that it’s brought against them,” Vogus said. “It’s not a crime to post a YouTube video, and it’s not at all clear why the government is demanding this information about Lemon and Fort’s YouTube accounts.”

The episode was the most recent example of an alarming pattern in recent months in which the DHS avoided judicial scrutiny and deployed a summons related to customs enforcement to pressure companies into turning over information on Americans. The US constitution’s fourth amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and law enforcement generally must show a judge or a grand jury they have probable cause to believe the materials they want to search will produce evidence of a crime.

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ICE arrests surge -- 50,000 people in July alone

2026-08-26T09:05:28.605-04:00

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures. reported The Associated Press.

The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass deportations agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked a public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.

The July arrest tally of 49,571 marks a 15% jump from 43,021 arrests a month earlier and a 70% increase from 29,241 in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in Minnesota, according to government data that was provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA and analyzed by The Associated Press.

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Richard Nixon set the table for the presidential excesses of today

2026-08-25T11:09:36.561-04:00

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

-Former President Richard M. Nixon

He made that stunning statement to television personality David Frost in a May 1977 interview that reached an audience of 45 million, reported Just Security. Nixon’s quote is often cited to illustrate the epitome of his arrogance and blindness to the rule of law — his confidence that his power rose to such heights that he possessed a presidential prerogative to redefine the law. For nearly fifty years, that statement stood at the apex of presidential contempt for the law. But a new contender has emerged. Within weeks of taking office for his second term in 2025, President Donald Trump posted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any law.” Trump apparently believes that his definition of saving the country includes whatever he believes needs to be done, with the law no obstacle. The months since he made the statement are consistent with that theory.

While Trump’s statement rivals Nixon’s in placing the president above the law, a nearly forgotten postscript to Nixon’s statement reveals that Nixon made a far more nuanced argument for presidential power. Less than a month after the Frost interview, Nixon published a full-page essay in the Washington Star to correct “widespread misinterpretations of the comments I made on the inherent powers of the presidency.” Nixon’s essay was an effort to repudiate the widespread perception that he asserted a pretense to monarchical power—akin to a claim that the “king can do no wrong.” He explained that his comment to Frost reflected his belief that in emergency circumstances, a president must sometimes violate the letter of the law to preserve its spirit. According to Nixon, this view echoed positions held by former Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

Nixon’s lost apologia deserves renewed attention—especially with Nixon’s recent return to the headlines. This summer, Vice President J.D. Vance expressed his admiration for Nixon while seeking to rewrite the saga of Watergate. In Vance’s eyes, Nixon was brought down by the “deep state,” and Watergate today would be “like a 12-hour news story.” But minimizing Nixon’s enormous abuses of power does not make them vanish. If anything, Vance’s effort to rehabilitate Nixon makes it all the more important to grapple with Nixon’s own explanation of his actions—and to demonstrate the flaws in a line of thinking — and an attempt at justification — that places the president above the law.

A president’s assertions of unchecked powers in a perceived emergency inherently invites abuse. But Nixon does not stand alone in claiming such powers. The view that a president has free rein in an emergency to override the law reflects a longstanding current in American views of presidential power. Taking Nixon seriously can help clarify what to expect from a president in an emergency—where unexpected circumstances pose challenges that Congress either did not anticipate or fails to address.

Our current norm-shattering presidency acknowledges no such boundaries. Nixon’s excesses may have foreshadowed Trump’s—the flagrant deception, the impoundments of appropriated funds, the denigration of Congress, the muscular use of the military, the political dirty tricks, the electoral interference, and myriad abuses of power all have Nixonian antecedents. But the brazenness and scale of Trump’s actions make Nixon’s transgressions pale by comparison. Trump has made extravagant claims of presidential power — in the political arena, in court, and in secret — often fueled by massive deceptions and power grabs, that Nixon’s seem tame. The emergence of such unchecked authority makes defining when a president has exceeded his constitutional powers a more pressing question than ever. So do the threats over the horizon, including the prospect of the president claiming emergency powers to meddle with U.S. elections.

What we learn from Nixon’s forgotten essay is this: presidential initiative may be essential, but democracy can tolerate only so much unilateral presidential action before government too closely resembles a monarchy or autocracy. Trump’s razing of legal barriers has underscored that the post-Watergate reforms adopted 50 years ago to rein in presidential power are fragile and, in some cases, ineffective. A president determined to impose his will on the nation, who has a weak or compliant Congress, and who treats laws as dispensable faces few constraints, at least in the short term, and in many realms, perhaps indefinitely. Just as the nation enacted a suite of reforms after Watergate to strengthen the rule of law, new reforms after Trump will be vital to prevent runaway executive power. No rebuilding project is more important to democracy than defining the limits to presidential power and installing practical means of enforcing them.

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Judges, 128 of the them, file ethics complaint against counsel for Homeland Security

2026-08-24T09:49:32.398-04:00

The general counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now facing an ethics complaint over his social media posts about the “worst of the worst” judges, reported the ABA Journal.

In a complaint filed with the Florida Bar on Tuesday, 128 retired federal and state judges, the Democracy Defenders Fund and the Lawyers Defending American Democracy allege that general counsel James Percival’s posts “not only constitute serious professional misconduct, but they threaten the rule of law and increase the risk of violence against judges.”

Specifically, they allege that Percival violated Florida Rule of Professional Conduct 4-8.2(a), which bars lawyers from impugning the qualifications and integrity of judges or other officers.

“The posts were attacks on the characters of four sitting judges, based on mischaracterizations of the underlying cases and without concern for the repercussions of those statements,” according to the complaint. “Nothing exempts federal officials who are licensed by the state of Florida from the Rules of Professional Conduct. Nor do the rules provide for an excuse from investigating federal officials like Mr. Percival.”

On July 23, Percival published a list called the “Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition” on his official X social media page, formerly known as Twitter. According to the complaint, this is the same label that the DHS uses for a series highlighting immigrants it has deported.

Judge Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois, Judge Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland and Judge Hernán Vera of the Central District of California were included in the list. Percival “continued to attack other judges” in separate posts later, the complaint also said.

A spokesperson for the DHS on Wednesday told Bloomberg Law, which has additional coverage, that Percival’s posts were “nothing more than a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences.”

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Man who served 70 years in prison dies at age 101

2026-08-23T10:09:27.986-04:00

Frank Smith, who served 70 years in prison — one of the longest known terms of incarceration in American history — for fatally shooting a Connecticut yacht club’s night watchman during a robbery in 1949, died on June 25 in Rocky Hill, Conn. He was 101, reported The New York Times.

His death, at a nursing home to which he had been paroled, was confirmed by the Connecticut Department of Correction and was previously reported by The Boston Globe and Greenwich Time.

In 1950, Mr. Smith was convicted of the first-degree murder of the watchman, 68-year-old Grover Hart, and sentenced to death. Mr. Smith, who insisted on his innocence, eventually received eight reprieves from the electric chair in Wethersfield, Conn.

His case attracted the attention of Aaron Cohen, a realtor in West Hartford and a member of the American League to Abolish the Death Penalty. Mr. Cohen visited Mr. Smith and orchestrated a telegram- and letter-writing campaign to stop the execution.

“I did not believe all Smith told me at first, and it took me time to believe him,” Mr. Cohen told The Hartford Courant in 1951, adding: “I am convinced that an innocent man is going to his death. He has already died too many times in his cell.”

In 1954, on the eve of Mr. Smith’s last scheduled execution, a Courant reporter wrote that he “spends most of his time trying to figure out how he was convicted. He discusses his case with anyone who’ll listen.”

The article described how, before a planned execution a year earlier, a chaplain had visited Mr. Smith in his cell. “All he wanted to talk about was his trial,” the chaplain recalled.

On June 7, 1954, two hours before he was to be strapped into the chair, the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted his death sentence.

“Thanks be to God!” Mr. Smith said in the hearing room, where his parents, three sisters and two brothers were watching.

Seven decades later, he remained haunted by the electric chair — “still an object of primal, almost talismanic fear,” Annalisa Quinn wrote in a 2023 profile in The Boston Globe Magazine. “‘It cooks you,’ he would repeat, folding into himself. ‘It cooks you.’”

On June 7, 1954, two hours before Mr. Smith was to be executed, Connecticut’s Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted his death sentence.Credit...Jared Charney for The Boston Globe

In 2012, Connecticut outlawed the death penalty.

Except for a brief escape attempt in 1967 and nearly 10 months on parole (which he violated) in 1975, Mr. Smith remained in prison until 2020. The state then paroled him to 60 West, a private facility that helps the state care for formerly incarcerated people who are difficult to place in traditional nursing homes. There, he lived in a secure unit.

A spokesman for the correction department said Mr. Smith’s six years at 60 West meant that he had served 76 years of his life sentence.

It is not known if that is officially America’s longest imprisonment. “Seventy years is a long time,” Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, wrote in an email, “but I think there are probably some more out there just because the U.S. locks up so many people and also locks them up for such long periods of time.”

Francis Clifford Smith was born on Sept. 1, 1924, in Stamford, Conn., and at some point moved to the Noroton neighborhood of nearby Darien. His mother was Doris (Curtis) Smith, and his father, also named Francis, was a roofer, according to The Globe, which reported that Frank was sent to a reform school when he was 10 or 11.

He then served time as a teenager in a reformatory for young men and, after escaping and assaulting a guard with a deadly weapon, was sent to a state prison for four years. He later worked as a messenger for a numbers racketeer.

On the night of July 23, 1949, two men broke into and burglarized the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich. By some accounts, Mr. Hart surprised them, and one or both of the robbers shot him.

Before he died, Mr. Hart told police that one of the men wore a bandanna; Mr. Smith was known to police for wearing one. After a manhunt, he was arrested in the woods in Wilton, Conn. George Lowden, his accused accomplice, was also arrested.

Mr. Lowden struck a plea deal for second-degree murder, and he implicated Mr. Smith. During the trial, Mr. Smith denied his involvement in the crime, and his father testified that he found his son asleep in his car on the night of the shooting.

The jury’s verdict against Mr. Smith was clouded by several factors, including Mr. Lowden’s refusal to testify at the trial. Then, two years after the trial, a witness recanted testimony that had suggested Mr. Smith’s culpability.

In 1953, David Blumetti, an armed robber from Stamford who was imprisoned in Alabama, confessed to the murder and said that he and Mr. Lowden had been partners in the crime.

Mr. Blumetti said that he knew Mr. Smith from a previous prison stint. He said that the two men met earlier on the day of the robbery and murder, drove around in Mr. Smith’s gray Cadillac and discussed places they could rob. By Mr. Blumetti’s account, Mr. Smith decided against the robbery, and Mr. Blumetti said that he borrowed Mr. Smith’s car, picked up Mr. Lowden and, with Mr. Lowden, fired at Mr. Hart.

“They’ll be executing the wrong man,” Mr. Blumetti told The Connecticut Post in the days before the state pardons board met to commute Mr. Smith’s death sentence.

At that hearing, Leo F. Carroll, the state police major who had interrogated Mr. Smith after his arrest, told the panel that he believed Mr. Blumetti’s confession and that Mr. Smith was innocent.

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Homeland Security conducts secret domestic spying operations violating the First Amendment

2026-08-21T09:06:00.752-04:00

It’s time to familiarize yourselves with the names “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Keyhole.” If those nefarious phrases evoke to you the U.S. government’s domestic spying on leftist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s for good reason. The terms are coinages of today’s Department of Homeland Security, and they’re associated with a massive covert surveillance effort that DHS unleashed earlier this year to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump’s violent paramilitary invasion triggered months of intense civil conflict, reported The New Republic.

We just learned about the broad outlines of this domestic surveillance from newly released court papers related to the ongoing prosecution of a handful of protesters. As The New York Times reported, the papers show that DHS began surveilling left-leaning groups—including a union, a climate change group, and others—after ICE killed Alex Pretti in January. This has entailed seeking financial records and infiltrating protest meetings that are protected by the First Amendment.

But you can get a far more vivid picture of these undercover surveillance operations—and how brazenly they were conducted against American citizens—if you read deep into the court papers. The documents—which are attached as exhibits to a motion filed by lawyers for one of the protesters facing prosecution and are available on Pacer—include investigative reports that were transmitted by the undercover agents themselves about meetings they infiltrated.

It’s jarring, revealing stuff. The reports show that covert agents surreptitiously attended well over a dozen protest meetings organized by groups like the Sunrise Movement and various small socialist organizations. In some cases the agents secretly recorded the gatherings.

What’s more, in at least one case, an undercover agent may have tried to influence the conduct of meeting organizers. One report from an agent describes a meeting in late January of the Sunrise Movement at a Minneapolis public library. While spying on the proceedings, the agent seems to have learned that the organization’s intention was nonviolent: As the agent notes in his own investigative report, “it was made clear” at the meeting that the organization is “focused on peaceful protests.”

Yet after this discovery, the agent then approached a meeting organizer and made a surprising proposition. The agent told the organizer “he works in construction” and is willing to build things to assist “with more direct action protests,” the report reads, adding that the agent stressed “that going to jail did not bother him.”

That sounds like the agent may have signaled a willingness to engage in something illegal, to bait the group into moving in that direction, argues Kevin Riach, the lawyer for one of the protesters who is being prosecuted, Isaac Sant.

“This is an effort to entice someone who’s shown no inclination to commit a crime into committing one,” Riach told me. “What this tells us is that there wasn’t actual criminal activity to be investigated. They had to invent it. That’s not how this is supposed to work—not in this country, anyway.”

In other cases, undercover agents infiltrated these meetings only to find that the protesters turned out to be awfully innocuous. One agent covertly attended a meeting in February and found that it “was more of a panel discussion,” where there was “no discussion, or call for, violence toward law enforcement.”

Similarly, another agent’s report described infiltrating a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of organizers who said they sympathized with the Minneapolis anti-ICE resistance. (The papers show that DHS’s surveillance reached into other states beyond Minnesota.) This agent reported initiating a conversation with a married churchgoing couple, and the woman told the agent she’d traveled to Uganda to assist “in the construction of a hospital.”

In short, we’re not exactly talking about the Weather Underground bombers here.

Indeed, as Substacker Brian Kaylor notes, a number of these undercover operations were even conducted in churches where protesters had organized. Several of the pastors were kept entirely in the dark about law enforcement’s infiltration of their houses of worship.

The absurdity of all this is overwhelming. In some cases, the Keystone Kops vibe is strong: One agent attended a May meeting in Minneapolis, only to report that his “concealed body-worn audio recorder erroneously fell to the floor of the gymnasium.” The agent left without the device and had to return later to retrieve it.

Interestingly, the investigative reports also offer a glimpse of culture clashes between protesters and the agents who spied on them. One agent attended a Minneapolis meeting in February and reported, perhaps with distaste, on a female protester “with they/them pronouns” and “bright green short hair” and a “nose ring.”

As writer John Ganz has noted, Trump’s secret police force is made up of the MAGA “demimonde” and the “Trumpenproletarian mob.” And indeed, Trump’s political project has long been all about turning loose “his” people—law enforcement, biker gangs, coal miners, Ultimate Fighting enthusiasts—against the leftist enemy that inhabits blue America. The centrality of violence to all this is not disguised in the least. ICE recruitment targets MAGA-adjacent UFC fanbases and people who show an interest in paramilitary tactical equipment or military recruitment. ICE messaging openly glorifies military-style operations in urban areas—that is, in blue America’s diverse, cosmopolitan strongholds. Trump talks about Minneapolis as akin to an enemy country populated with undesirables who must be purged by MAGA patriots.

Now we’re learning that this war on blue America also includes extensive undercover surveillance. Many of these agents appear to have been drawn largely from Homeland Security Investigations, the arm of ICE that’s supposed to be focused on serious, complex, transnational crimes. They’ve now been reduced to standing around in parking lots writing down protesters’ license plate numbers and using sleazy deception tactics to spy on fellow Americans whose only crime is sympathy with immigrants.

Violence is precisely what spawned this undercover spying operation, but the real culprit was the violence of the government, not of the protesters. As Lisa Needham writes at Public Notice, we shouldn’t lose sight of how quickly ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis devolved into lethal state violence against Americans. It was just after ICE’s arrival in the city that an agent gunned down Renee Good in her car, with Pretti’s killing by federal agents following around two weeks later.

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Florida responsible for 13 of the 23 executions nationwide in 2026

2026-08-20T09:20:01.113-04:00

The 23rd Execution of 2026

A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and wounding his mother-in-law was executed August 18, 2026, continuing the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty in Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ′ final term, reported The Associated Press.

William Frances Silvia, 61, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.

Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up at 6 p.m. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution, and a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Asked if he had any final words, Silvia said, “I’m sorry all this happened. It was an accident. I never meant to hurt her.”

A warden shook him and shouted his name several minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing but got no response. A medic declared him dead a short time later.

Silvia is the 13th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, which has two more executions scheduled in September. The state has carried out more than half of the nation’s 23 executions so far in 2026.

Silvia was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for the deadly 2006 attack on Patricia Silvia, along with her mother, Betty Woodard.

According to court records, William Frances Silvia purchased a shotgun that year and then went to Woodard’s Orlando-area home, where his wife had been living since their separation two months earlier. The family was in the middle of a cookout when Silvia arrived, and after an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile, authorities said Silvia retrieved the shotgun from his truck and shot the two women.

Pamela Wyatt, Patricia Silvia’s sister, said William Frances Silvia’s actions not only took her sister’s life but changed the lives of everyone who loved her.

“Nothing that happens today can give us those stolen years. No execution can return Patricia to her children and give her the grandchildren she dreamed of knowing,” Wyatt said after the execution. “But today can be an opportunity to remember that Patricia’s life was bigger than the terrible act that ended it.”

Silvia was first sentenced to death following his 2008 trial. He was briefly granted a new penalty phase, but the Florida Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 2018 because Silvia had previously waived his post-conviction appeals.

A Florida state agency, the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, provides legal representation to death row inmates. Silvia’s attorneys have argued that the agency couldn’t provide adequate legal assistance because it was already helping another death row inmate. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal.

Florida leads the way in executions

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with 19, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.

Two more executions are planned in Florida next month. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is scheduled to die on Sept. 1, followed by Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, on Sept. 10.

Lucas was convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends.

Conahan was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a man that he had paid to pose for nude photos, and authorities suspect him of similar homicides committed in the 1990s in southwest Florida.

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

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Mangino joins On the Case with Chris Stewart on Law and Crime Network

2026-08-19T18:23:30.513-04:00

Watch my interview with Chris Stewart on Law and Crime Network's On the Case.

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Virginia to review the convictions of 8 people executed between 1986 and 1998

2026-08-19T11:16:00.547-04:00

The possibility of executing the innocent has gone a long way to change the national conversation about the death penalty, reported Slate. We know that over the past half-century, more than 200 people have been exonerated after having been sentenced to die, and scholars estimate that 4 percent of those sentenced to death are innocent.

And a 2021 Pew poll found that 78 percent of its respondents believe “there is some risk that an innocent person will be put to death.” But death penalty supporters have long contended that abolitionists have sold the public a false bill of goods.

One of them, Judge Morris Hoffman, argues that “To a large and unfortunate extent, the debate about wrongful convictions in a capital context has become a proxy for arguments in favor and against the death penalty. Lost in the crossfire is any reliable data about the actual wrongful conviction rate.“ He contends that no one has yet come up with “a single case of a demonstrably innocent person executed in America in the modern era.”

Hoffman claimed the “label innocent” is “just a way of saying there were errors in the trial, that guilt seemed to them to be a ‘close call,’ and that some of those close calls must surely, as a statistical matter, have involved some factually innocent people.”

Even the abolitionist Death Penalty Information Center concedes that “there is no way to tell how many of the … people executed since 1976 may … have been innocent.”

All of this may soon change. Virginia, which abolished the death penalty in 2021, recently initiated a review of eight cases of people executed there between 1986 and 1998 whose convictions were obtained based on testimony and evidence presented by a now-discredited state forensic scientist, Mary Jane Burton.

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FBI: Violent crime continues downward slide

2026-08-17T09:20:17.733-04:00

The homicide rate in the United States dropped to the lowest it’s been in 75 years, according to an FBI report on 2025 crime statistics, which also showed overall violent crime dropped 9.3% last year, reported The Associated Press.

Experts note that national violent crime rates have been declining since 2022, and pinpointing an exact reason is difficult. They say multiple factors contribute to decreases in crime rates seen in the FBI report, which is based on data reported voluntarily by many but not all law enforcement agencies across the country.

“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” said Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank based in Washington.

“Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership,” Gelb said. “The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up.”

President Donald Trump announced the decreases in the annual crime numbers during a visit to a New York police academy.

Trump proclaimed his role in lowering violent crime rates, taking a swing at his predecessor and at so-called sanctuary cities, while touting what he said was his overwhelming support of law enforcement and his tough-on-crime moves such as deploying the National Guard in Washington and elsewhere.

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