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Supreme Court hears Alabama appeal to execute intellectually disabled man
Attorney Interview |
2025/12/06 21:51
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The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could make it harder for convicted murderers to show their lives should be spared because they are intellectually disabled.
The justices are taking up an appeal from Alabama, which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts found is intellectually disabled and shielded from execution.
The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002.
Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.
The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.
The Supreme Court has held in cases in 2014 and 2017 that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.
Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled. The justices had previously sent his case back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta, where the judges affirmed that they had taken a “holistic” approach to Smith’s case, seemingly in line with the high court ruling.
But the justices said in June they would take a new look at the case.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Smith hasn’t met his burden of showing an IQ of 70 or below, and the state wrote in its brief that the discussion of a holistic approach is an unjustified expansion of the Supreme Court rulings.
“He has multiple scores in the 70s,” Marshall said in a phone interview. He said the question is about how to address a continuum of scores. “I don’t think picking and choosing those at the bottom are the way that the court will ultimately go,” Marshall said.
President Donald Trump’s administration and 20 states are supporting Alabama in the case. Smith “did not meet his burden of proving his IQ was likely 70 or below,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the Republican administration.
Smith’s lawyers argue the lower courts followed the law in conducting a “holistic assessment of all relevant evidence” in a case with borderline IQ scores.
Rights groups focused on disabilities wrote in a brief supporting Smith that “intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid.”
Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the beating death of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. Van Dam was found dead in his pickup truck. Prosecutors said he had been beaten to death with a hammer and robbed of $150, his boots and tools.
A federal judge in 2021 vacated Smith’s death sentence, though she acknowledged “this is a close case.”
Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of 70 or below, along with significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and the onset of those issues before the age of 18.
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Former Honduras President Hernández freed after Trump pardon
Legal World News |
2025/12/02 21:31
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Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in helping drug traffickers move hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, his wife announced Tuesday.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate website showed that Hernández was released from U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton in West Virginia on Monday and a spokesperson for the bureau on Tuesday confirmed his release.
His wife Ana García thanked Trump for pardoning Hernández via the social platform X early Tuesday.
“After almost four years of pain, of waiting and difficult challenges, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” García’s post said. She included a picture of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons listing for Hernández indicating his release.
On Sunday, Trump was asked about why he pardoned Hernandez by reporters traveling with him on Air Force One.
“I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras,” Trump said.
“The people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing,” he said.
“They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”
Hernández was arrested at the request of the United States in February 2022, weeks after handing over power to current President Xiomara Castro.
Two years later, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison in a New York federal courtroom for taking bribes from drug traffickers so they could safely move some 400 tons of cocaine north through Honduras to the United States.
Hernández maintained throughout that he was innocent and the victim of revenge by drug traffickers he had helped extradite to the United States.
During his sentencing in New York, federal Judge P. Kevin Castel said the punishment should serve as a warning to “well educated, well dressed” individuals who gain power and think their status insulates them from justice when they do wrong.
Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who teamed up with American authorities under three U.S. presidential administrations to reduce drug imports.
But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernández employed “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader while he deployed his nation’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade.
Hernández is not guaranteed a quick return to Honduras.
Immediately after Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, Honduras Attorney General Johel Zelaya said via X that his office was obligated to seek justice and put an end to impunity.
He did not specify what charges Hernández could face in Honduras. There were various corruption-related investigations of his administration across two terms in office that did not lead to charges against him. President Xiomara Castro, who had Hernández arrested and extradited him to the U.S., will remain in office until January.
The pardon promised by Trump days before Honduras’ presidential election injected a new element into the contest that some said helped the candidate from his National Party Nasry Asfura, one of the leaders as the vote count proceeded Tuesday.
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Court official dismisses Justice Department’s misconduct complaint
Law Firm News |
2025/11/28 21:30
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A court official has dismissed a Justice Department complaint that accused a federal judge of “hostile and egregious” misconduct during hearings for a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military.
The complaint accused U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., of inappropriately questioning a government lawyer about his religious beliefs and of trying to embarrass the attorney with a rhetorical exercise during a February hearing.
In a Sept 29 order that wasn’t made public until Monday, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the complaint. Srinivasan said a motion for Reyes’ recusal would have been the proper means for the Justice Department to contest her impartiality and seek her removal from the case.
The department didn’t explicitly ask for Reyes’ removal from the transgender troops’ litigation. And it didn’t file a petition for a review of the chief judge’s order, which didn’t reach any conclusions about the merits of the complaint’s allegations.
“If a party that believes a judge’s conduct in a case raises serious questions about her impartiality were to press its concerns in the ordinary way — by seeking her recusal in the case itself — the standards for resolving the matter are well established,” Srinivasan wrote.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on Tuesday. Reyes declined to comment on the chief judge’s order or the department’s complaint.
The complaint was filed by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s then-chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, who has since left the department. Mizelle claimed Reyes’ behavior “compromised the dignity of the proceedings and demonstrated potential bias.”
“When judges demonstrate apparent bias or treat counsel disrespectfully, public confidence in the judicial system is undermined,” he wrote.
Mizelle’s complaint cited an exchange in which Reyes asked a government attorney: “What do you think Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters? Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’?” The attorney responded by saying, “The United States is not going to speculate about what Jesus would have to say about anything.”
The complaint also refers to a rhetorical exercise about discrimination. Reyes spoke of changing the rules in her courtroom to bar graduates of the University of Virginia law school from appearing before her because they are all “liars and lack integrity.” She instructed the government attorney, a graduate of the school, to sit down before calling him back up to the podium.
Reyes was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Trump and Republican allies have mounted an escalating series of attacks against the federal judiciary since the start of his second term.
Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order claims without presenting evidence that the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. It required Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a revised policy.
Six transgender people who were active-duty service members and two other plaintiffs seeking to join the military sued to challenge Trump’s order. Reyes blocked the order’s enforcement in March, ruling that it likely violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. A federal judge in Washington state also blocked enforcement of the order.
Reyes agreed to suspend her order pending the government’s appeal, which hasn’t been resolved yet. But the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to ban transgender people from the military in the meantime. |
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FBI seeks interviews with Democrats who urged US troops to defy illegal orders
Law Firm Press Release |
2025/11/22 21:30
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Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a social media video urging U.S. troops to defy “illegal orders” say the FBI has contacted them to begin scheduling interviews, signaling a possible inquiry into the matter.
It would mark the second investigation tied to the video, coming a day after the Pentagon said it was reviewing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over potential violations of military law. The FBI and Pentagon actions come after President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition and said it is “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post.
Together, the inquiries mark an extraordinary escalation for federal law enforcement and military institutions that traditionally steer clear of partisan clashes. They also underscore the administration’s willingness to push legal limits against its critics, even when they are sitting members of Congress. Lawmakers in the video urge troops to reject any illegal orders from their superiors, something they are already duty-bound to do.
“President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass Members of Congress,” a group of four Democratic House members said in a statement Tuesday. “Yesterday, the FBI contacted the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms requesting interviews.”
Democrats call inquiry a ‘scare tactic’
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of the six Democratic lawmakers in the video, told reporters Tuesday that “last night the counterterrorism division at the FBI sent a note to the members of Congress, saying they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us.” Slotkin called it a “scare tactic by” Trump.
“Whether you agree with the video or don’t agree with the video, the question to me is: is this the appropriate response for a president of the United States to go after and seek to weaponize the federal government against those he disagrees with?” said Slotkin.
The group of four Democratic House members said in their statement that “no amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.”
All six of the Democratic lawmakers in the video have served in the military or intelligence community.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska criticized both inquiries on social media, saying that accusing the lawmakers “of treason and sedition for rightfully pointing out that servicemembers can refuse illegal orders is reckless and flat-out wrong.”
“The Department of Defense and FBI surely have more important priorities than this frivolous investigation,” wrote Murkowski.
FBI provides no insight into interview requests
The FBI went through the top security officials for the House and Senate to request interviews with each of the six lawmakers. The lawmakers said they had no further information and the FBI has not made clear on what basis they were seeking the interviews.
The FBI declined to comment Tuesday, but Director Kash Patel, in an interview with journalist Catherine Herridge, described it as an “ongoing matter” in explaining why he could not discuss details.
Asked for his reaction to the video, Patel said, “What goes through my head is the same thing that goes through my head in any case: is there a lawful predicate to open up an inquiry and investigation, or is there not? And that decision will be made by the career agents and analysts here at the FBI.”
The video at the heart of the inquiries
In the video, lawmakers said they needed troops to “stand up for our laws … our Constitution.” Kelly, who was a fighter pilot before becoming an astronaut and then retiring at the rank of captain, told troops that “you can refuse illegal orders.”
After the Pentagon announced the investigation into Kelly on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth referred it to the Navy on Tuesday and requested a briefing by Dec. 10.
The lawmakers didn’t mention specific circumstances in the video. But at an event Tuesday in Michigan, Slotkin pointed to the Trump administration ordering the military to blow up small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean accused of ferrying drugs and continued attempts at deploying National Guard troops into U.S. cities despite some legal setbacks.
“It wasn’t that there was any one incident, it was the sheer number of people coming to us and saying, ‘I’m worried. I am being sent to Washington or I’m being sent to LA or Chicago, North Carolina now, and I’m concerned I’m going to be asked to do something that I don’t know if I should do,’” said Slotkin. “So that’s where it came from.”
Troops, especially uniformed commanders, do have specific obligations to reject orders that are unlawful, if they make that determination.
Broad legal precedence also holds that just following orders — colloquially known as the “Nuremberg defense,” as it was used unsuccessfully by senior Nazi officials to justify their actions under Adolf Hitler — doesn’t absolve troops.
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