by Austin Sarat | Oct 1, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Criminal Justice, Opinion
Shortly before Christa Pike was supposed to be put to death Wednesday morning, a federal appeals court granted her a temporary stay of execution. On Wednesday evening, a divided Supreme Court lifted it.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her two liberal colleagues criticized the high court’s intervention, saying it would allow “the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”
For a few hours, it had seemed possible that Pike might attain a less gruesome outcome than the one she had been slated for since 1996, when she was convicted of brutally murdering a classmate. The Supreme Court’s action means there will be no happy ending to Pike’s story. Still, it’s worth studying her case and the problems with how it has been handled to understand flaws in our legal system and its uneven application of capital punishment.
All too often, it is easier to stand up for someone whose guilt is in doubt or whose conviction was tainted by prejudice than for someone like Pike.
Many death-row cases that experience a last-minute intervention involve doubts about the guilt of the defendant or their mental fitness. Neither of these issues applies to Pike.
When she was 18, Pike joined the Knoxville, Tennessee, branch of a federal job training program. She started dating a 17-year-old named Tadary Shipp. At some point, Pike began to suspect that another person in the program, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, was interested in Shipp. According to The Tennessean, in January 1995, “Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Campus with the promise of marijuana. With the help
by Julianne McShane | Sep 30, 2026 | Crime & Courts, immigration, News
The Department of Justice has filed a judicial misconduct claim with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals against several federal judges in Minnesota after they publicly critiqued the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
The complaint, filed Wednesday, focuses on comments made by Judges Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim and anonymous judges in the District Court of Minnesota who spoke to The New York Times for a story, published Sept. 17, about how their court was affected by the turmoil of the immigration surge in Minneapolis. The DOJ complaint asks the Eighth Circuit to force the judges’ recusal from all cases, civil and criminal, involving the Department of Homeland Security.
The unprecedented move would affect all but one active judge in the District of Minnesota, which has been overrun by immigration litigation in large part due to last winter’s surge in enforcement. It was unclear which active judge would not be affected.
In a post Wednesday morning on X announcing the claim, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter called the judges’ interviews “an unethical partisan press tour,” adding, “Judges who covet publicity undermine public confidence in the rule of law.”
The complaint calls Schiltz’s and Tunheim’s conduct “particularly egregious.” Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, told the Times the administration’s repeated disregard of court orders “created a grave threat to the rule of law.” Tunheim, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, told the Times the government “wasn’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.”
The complaint alleges that Schiltz’s comments were “overtly political” and “outrageous,” and that they “plainly support the inference that [he] consciously or subconsciously covets publicity.”
by Julianne McShane | Sep 19, 2026 | Crime & Courts, News
The holdout juror who blocked a not guilty verdict in the trial of Lindsay Clancy said that contrary to his fellow jurors’ assertions, he “didn’t have any doubts” about the Massachusetts mother’s criminal responsibility in the killing of her three children.
The juror, Michael P. Desronvil, told NewsNation that the other jurors cut him off as he tried to explain why he believed Clancy was criminally responsible for the January 2023 killings of her three young children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan.
“I didn’t have any doubts,” Desronvil said in a brief statement the news outlet said was issued through an unidentified spokesperson. “As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present. Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”
Desronvil’s characterization of the deliberations comes in contrast to the versions presented by several other jurors in interviews after the case ended in a mistrial this month. The other jurors who spoke to the media said that all but one of them believed Clancy, 36, should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. They said the holdout juror, who they did not identify by name, was “very arrogant” and even “admitted he had reasonable doubt” before refusing to consent to a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.
The jurors also sent a note to the judge during deliberations stating that one of the jurors “refuses to listen to the law”
by Jen Psaki | Jul 9, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Donald Trump, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, World
This is an adapted excerpt from the July 8 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
It’s already been a rough week for President Donald Trump, who has been facing humiliation after humiliation.
On Wednesday, a federal court officially ordered that $5 million of the president’s money be released to E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued him for defamation. In a blistering order, the judge wrote that Trump “has been stalling this case for years.”
It’s safe to say the president is not having a great week.
“A jury unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly,” he continued. “It is time for him to ‘do equity’ and pay the judgment.”
Also on Wednesday, another federal judge rejected Trump’s efforts to put his name back on the Kennedy Center — a loss we know has humiliated Trump because his administration has left a tarp over the place where his name used to be, as if that tarp means his name is actually still there.
On top of all of that, Trump faced even more humiliation when his so-called peace negotiations with Iran fell completely apart. (Who could have seen that one coming?) The U.S. has already launched multiple new rounds of airstrikes against Iran, including one on Wednesday evening.
Trump has now declared his ceasefire over, claiming he doesn’t even want a deal anymore. Oil prices spiked and gas prices are expected to rise again soon.
So it’s safe to say the president is not having a great week. But perhaps the most humiliating thing that happened to the president in recent days — the thing you know gets under his skin
by Allison Detzel | Jul 9, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Donald Trump, News, Politics, Supreme Court
Nicolle Wallace told President Donald Trump that it’s time to “move on” as the president doubles down on what she called his “desperate last-ditch” efforts to fight his mounting courtroom defeats.
On Wednesday, a Manhattan judge ordered the president to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million after a jury found that Trump sexually abused the writer three decades ago and later defamed her. That ruling came days after the Supreme Court rejected the president’s appeal in the case.
But as the “Deadline: White House” host noted, that wasn’t the only court loss the president suffered that day. In Washington, D.C., a federal appeals court once again denied a request from the Kennedy Center’s board to return Trump’s name to the building.
On the heels of those losses, Wallace said it’s time for the president to finally accept defeat.
“We need a new word for ‘over,’” she said. “Legally, these cases are so over, we need new ways to explain to our audience how over they are.”
Pointing to the Carroll case, the MS NOW host explained that the president had already appealed to the Supreme Court, which she said was the “end of the road in our system,” adding, “It’s over. He owes the money.”
As for the Kennedy Center, she offered this advice for Trump: “Pull the tarp down. Suffer your humiliation, and move on.”
Wallace said Trump’s inability to accept defeat has put an “extraordinary strain” on the country’s judges and legal system.
“[In] just about every story we cover, Trump, including through his Justice Department, abuses the system, does something either flagrantly illegal or unconstitutional, and it falls to judges to be the guardrail,” she
by Steve Benen | Jun 4, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Criminal Justice, Maddowblog, News, Politics
At an Oval Office event on Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump took some time to claim that restaurants in Washington, D.C., are “reopening,” thanks to his role in creating a “vibrant” capital. The president made similar claims at a White House Cabinet meeting last week, patting himself on the back, insisting that “everyone’s going out to dinner,” in large part because he positioned National Guard troops to keep local residents safe.
The rhetoric was part of a pattern that began last summer when the Republican deployed Guard troops to D.C. streets, followed immediately by claims of extraordinary success. “I’ve made Washington, D.C., just an incredible place in literally four days,” he boasted during a Fox News appearance in August. The comments came the day after the president wrote on his social media platform, “People are flocking to D.C. again,” pointing to a trend he apparently made up.
In the weeks and months that followed, polls showed broad public skepticism about Guard troops patrolling civilian streets, but Trump nevertheless repeatedly boasted that, thanks to his Guard deployments, lawbreaking was a thing of the past in the nation’s capital. Even during his State of the Union address, delivered in February, the president assured the public that “we have almost no crime anymore” in Washington.
Though I wish that were true, there’s evidence to the contrary. NPR reported:
President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. has reduced petty property crimes, but has had little to no effect on violent crime, despite the high cost to taxpayers, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center.
The study’s findings were published just weeks after
