#Supreme Court Misconduct

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Co-sponsor The Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024!

59 so far! Help us get to 100 signers!

A group of House Democrats, led by Reps. Melanie Stansbury, Ilhan Omar and Jamie Raskin, have introduced legislation that would strengthen oversight of the Supreme Court. I’m writing in support of it.

The Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024 would authorize the creation of an office of the inspector general to investigate allegations of misconduct in the judicial branch. The inspector general would also investigate alleged violations of the Supreme Court code of ethics, issued in November; conduct and supervise audits; and recommend changes in laws or regulations governing the judiciary. The inspector general would be required to inform the attorney general when they believe there has been a violation of federal criminal law.

Congress must pass this bill. Confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low, and there’s good reason for that. Several of its justices are deeply compromised and everyone can see it.

Please co-sponsor The Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024 right away, so the provisions in it can begin to restore Americans’ faith in our highest court. Thanks.

▶ Created on April 19 by Jess Craven

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[alwaysbewoke]

the fix is in!!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Facing a probe into alleged misconduct, Justice Russell Brown has decided to retire early from the Supreme Court of Canada, effective immediately. With his decision to leave Canada's top court, a review into a judicial complaint levelled against him has halted, though work is already starting to find his replacement. "Unfortunately, as a result of a complaint made against me in connection with an event in late January in Arizona, I have not participated in the Court’s work for over four months… The process has also imposed a significant strain on my family and me," Brown said in a statement issued Monday. In usurping the Canadian Judicial Council's ability to proceed with its hearings regarding the allegations against him, Brown said that while he was confident that ultimately the matter would have been dismissed, "the continuing delay is in nobody’s interests." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[luulapants]

Real talk, expanding the Supreme Court is a bandaid solution, which may be necessary but may also lead to serious future consequences for our judicial branch at large. Here are some steps that would actually work to repair the harm done to SCOTUS:

At least one of the liberal judges must begin writing dissents not based on the content of specific cases but based on the illegitimacy of the court. The dissent must state that this court is corrupt, financially and politically, and that none of its judgments should stand as valid case law. This opens the door for #5.

Impeach Justice Thomas for financial crimes. There is abundant evidence of these.

Impeach Justice Roberts for financial crimes. There is abundant evidence of these.

Open investigations into ALL Supreme Court judges (not just the conservative ones - the liberal judges signed that abominable "we are in charge of our own ethics" decision, too) to seek evidence of financial or political misconduct. Proceed accordingly.

Open a Greylord-style Special Commission to determine the chronological extent of the current systemic corruption of SCOTUS. We do not need direct evidence of quid pro quo bribery in specific cases to justify overturning them. The presence of financial misconduct related to even one case means the absence of a bribe in another could have contributed to its findings. Overturn every single case tried under systemic corruption.

This would create a massive, tangled knot of case law, precedent, and judgments, all of which would need to be walked back, possibly decades. It would be a nightmare. It would be necessary. The Cook County courts tackled the same beast during Greylord. There is historical precedent, and the alternative is to continue building our legal system on corrupt case law.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #29

July 26-August 2 2024

President Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. The conservative majority on the court ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while he was President. In response President Biden is calling for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that Presidents aren't above the law and don't have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, President Biden called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court. The code would force Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political actions, and force them to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest. President Biden also endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices.

The Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief. The debt relief plan will bring the total number of a borrowers who've gotten relief from the Biden-Harris Administration to 30 million. The plan is due to be finalized this fall, and the Department of Education wanted to alert people early to allow them to be ready to quickly take advantage of it when it was in place and get relief as soon as possible.

President Biden announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters. Under the American Rescue Plan, passed by President Biden and the Democrats with no Republican votes, the government was empowered to bail out Union retirement funds which in recent years have faced devastating cut of up to 75% in some cases, leaving retired union workers in desperate situations. The Teamster union is just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan held since 2018, Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Alsu Kurmasheva convicted of criticizing the Russian Military, were all released from captivity and returned to the US at around midnight August 2nd. They were greeted on the tarmac by the President and Vice-President and their waiting families. The deal also secured the release of German medical worker Rico Krieger sentenced to death in Belarus, Russian-British opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 11 Russians convicted of opposing the war against Ukraine or being involved in Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization. Early drafts of the hostage deal were meant to include Navalny before his death in Russian custody early this year.

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance. The new rule declares that Title IX protects Queer students from discrimination in public schools and any college that takes federal funds. The new rule also expands protections for victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant or parenting students. However Republican resistance means the rule can't take effect nation wide. Lawsuits from Republican controlled states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, means the new protections won't come into effect those states till the case is ruled on likely in a Supreme Court ruling. The Biden administration crafted these Title IX rules to reflect the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock case.

The Biden administration awarded $2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination. Historically black farmers have been denied important loans from the USDA, or given smaller amounts than white farmers. This massive investment will grant 23,000 minority farmers between $10,000 and $500,000 each and a further 20,000 people who wanted to start farms by were improperly denied the loans they needed between $3,500-$6,000 to get started. Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

The Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care. Studies show that children able to stay with parents or other family have much better outcomes then those separated. Many states have already removed poverty from their guidelines when it comes to removing children from the home, and the HHS guidelines push the remaining states to do the same.

Vice-President Harris announced the Biden Administration's agreement to a plan by North Carolina to forgive the state's medical debt. The plan by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state. North Carolina has the 3rd highest rate of medical debt in the nation. Vice-President Harris applauded the plan, pointing out that the Biden Administration has forgiven $650 million dollars worth of medical debt so far with plans to forgive up to $7 billion by 2026. The Vice-President unveiled plans to exclude medical debt from credit scores and issued a call for states and local governments to forgive debt, like North Carolina is, last month.

The Department of Transportation put forward a new rule to bank junk fees for family air travel. The new rule forces airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost. Currently parents are forced to pay extra to assure they are seated next to their children, no matter what age, if they don't they run the risk of being separated on a long flight. Airlines would be required to seat children age 13 and under with their parent or accompanying adult at no extra charge.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is giving $3.5 billion to combat homelessness. This represents the single largest one year investment in fighting homelessness in HUD's history. The money will be distributed by grants to local organizations and programs. HUD has a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, youth homeless, and people experiencing the unique challenges of homelessness in rural areas.

The Treasury Department announced that Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025. The program was tested as a pilot in a number of states in 2024, saving 140,000 tax payers $5.6 million in filing charges and getting tax returns of $90 million. The program, paid for by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will be available to all 50 states, but Republicans strong object. Pennsylvania and New Mexico join Oregon and New Jersey in being new states to join.

Bonus: President Biden with the families of the released hostages calling their loved ones on the plane out of Russia

[contemplatingoutlander]

How to save the Supreme Court from Alito’s ethical malfeasance

The justice’s unconscionable violations of ethics demand the court be reformed.

Jennifer Rubin clearly explains why Alito went too far in allowing a symbol of the insurrection to fly over his home, and why the Roberts Court needs to stop slow-walking the presidential immunity decision if the Court is to regain any credibility. This is a gift🎁link so anyone can read the full article, even if they don't subscribe to The Washington Post.

Among the Supreme Court’s abominations — shredding precedent to obliterate reproductive freedom, financial impropriety, partisanship — none compares to the upside-down flag, identified with violent insurrectionists, that flew over the home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Ethics experts and lawyers (including former judges) of all stripes expressed their outrage. “His statement — which says his wife displayed a symbol associated with a failed coup to subvert democracy because she was offended by an anti-Trump sign one of her neighbors displayed — is so incoherent it is insulting to our collective intelligence,” constitutional law professor Leah Litman emails me. “And a Justice who resides in a house that displays symbols glorifying a coup should not participate in cases that will determine whether people who participated in said coup will face any accountability.” [...] Alito (alongside Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife encouraged coup plotters) has heard multiple insurrection-related cases, including the pending immunity case that could absolve Trump of criminal liability. In letting his home stand in solidarity with constitutional arsonists, Alito made a mockery of his oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge” his duties under the Constitution. Any other judge (especially one implicated in financial misconduct) would be compelled to resign and/or face the threat of impeachment. So what about Alito? Immediate Triage Unlike its speedy disposition of the 14th Amendment case (24 days after argument) and of many lesser matters, the court put the immunity case in deep freeze, making it near-impossible to try the ex-president before the next election....The Alito debacle only deepens the impression that the court has its thumb on the scale — or the brake — for Trump. [...] As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe warns in an email to me, if Roberts “wants the Court to retain any credibility at all,” he must compel the court to “bite the bullet and issue its decision, ....” Then, Tribe explains, “Judge [Tanya S.] Chutkan either can hold whatever hearing the Court thinks necessary to decide exactly which charges against the former president may remain” or can begin the trial itself, which “should have been over by now.” Alito’s ethical self-immolation leaves Roberts no alternative if he wants to dispel the perception that two ethically compromised, partisan justices have thoroughly corrupted the court. (He also should implore Alito to recuse, but who believes that’ll happen?) [emphasis added]

[mariacallous]

Driven by hardline prosecutors and tough-on-crime governors, the number of executions jumped 64 percent in 2022 and increased again in 2023 to a total of 24, the highest in five years.

Perhaps the most crucial player in the death penalty’s resurrection, though, is the U.S. Supreme Court, whose historic role of maintaining guardrails has given way to removing roadblocks. Under the conservative supermajority put in place by President Donald Trump, the justices are far more likely to propel an execution forward than intercede to stop it, including in cases where guilt is in doubt or where the means of carrying it out could result in a grotesque spectacle of pain and suffering.

...

In 1976, the Supreme Court famously declared that “death is different,” and demanded an extra level of scrutiny because a mistake is irreversible. Historically, in particularly troubling instances involving state misconduct or abysmal defense lawyering, the Court sometimes intervened at the eleventh hour — from 2013 to 2023, it stayed an execution just 11 times and vacated stays of execution 18 times, according to Bloomberg Law.

Since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement with Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, the Court has stopped an execution only twice and reversed a lower court to permit an execution nine times. In 2023, 26 condemned prisoners asked the Court to hear their cases; 25 were rejected. The message is clear: Prosecutors eager to seek and swiftly impose death sentences can reliably do so without judicial interference.

...

In Bucklew v. Precythe, a majority of the court opined that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death — something that, of course, isn’t guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital crimes.” In the court’s reasoning, the excruciating pain the defendant might suffer during execution paled in comparison with the terror and mayhem he inflicted during his crimes.

In that same opinion, the Court indicated an impatience with pausing executions while it considered whether to hear the underlying claims from appellate attorneys. Justice Neil Gorsuch warned his colleagues to be skeptical when reading eleventh hour death row appeals: “Last minute stays should be the extreme exception, not the norm.”

It has been. Consider the 13 federal prisoners who were sent to the death chamber in the final months of Trump’s presidency. In a series of terse orders, issued without briefing, argument or public airing of the legal issues, the court blessed the rushed, furious pace. Using this opaque process, which legal scholars call the “shadow docket,” the justices erased lower-court injunctions against executions in seven cases and turned away last-minute requests for stays in the other six. During the 16 years in which Barack Obama and George W. Bush occupied the White House, the Court had invoked the shadow docket to rule for the government a total of four times and “never in a death penalty case,” according to Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. In Trump’s single term in office, the number jumped to 28, including non-capital cases.

More recently, the Court has rejected cases that advocates say are riddled with error or rest on shaky evidence.

...

Death penalty cases are notoriously rife with racism, questions of innocence, mental health of the accused and whether they received competent legal counsel. Sometimes the facts are too dire for courts to ignore, and even some pro-death penalty politicians are unwilling to take actions in flagrant violation of established norms. The total number of executions over the past decade is still a fraction of its peak in the 1990s.

And yet, the death penalty machine continues to crank on. These days, the battles over who lives and who dies are increasingly local — waged courtroom by courtroom because the Supreme Court has largely abdicated its decades long role as the final arbiter.

“It is becoming more and more clear that the Court is reluctant to interfere in state court cases even to enforce its own precedent,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “They are saying, ‘This is not our problem to deal with.’”

An ‘Execute-Them-At-Any-Cost Mentality’: The Supreme Court’s New, Bloodthirsty Era

[robertreich]

How to Fix a Broken Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is off the rails — and it’s only going to get worse unless we fight to reform it.

Trust levels and job approval ratings for the Court have hit historic lows due in large part to a growing number of ethics scandals.

Here are THREE key reforms Congress should enact to restore legitimacy to our nation’s highest court:

1) Establish a code of ethics

Every other federal judge has to sign on to a code of ethics — except for Supreme Court justices.

This makes no sense. Judges on the highest Court should be held to the highest ethical standards.

Congress should impose a code of ethics on Supreme Court justices. At the very least, any ethical code should ban justices from receiving personal gifts from political donors and anyone with business before the Court, clarify when justices with conflicts of interest should remove themselves from cases, prohibit justices from trading individual stocks, and establish a formal process for investigating misconduct.

2) Enact term limits

Article III of the Constitution says judges may “hold their office during good behavior,” but it does not explicitly give Supreme Court Justices lifetime tenure on the highest court — even though that’s become the norm.  

Term limits would prevent unelected justices from accumulating too much power over the course of their tenure — and would help defuse what has become an increasingly divisive confirmation process.

Congress should limit Supreme Court terms to 18-years, after which justices move to lower courts.

3) Expand the Court

The Constitution does not limit the Supreme Court to nine justices. In fact, Congress has changed the size of the Court seven times. It should do so again in order to remedy the extreme imbalance of today’s Supreme Court.    

Now some may decry this as “radical court packing.” That’s pure rubbish. The real court-packing occurred when Senate Republicans refused to even consider a Democratic nominee to the Supreme Court on the fake pretext that it was too close to the 2016 election, but then confirmed a Republican nominee just days before the 2020 election.

Rather than allow Republicans to continue exploiting the system, expanding the Supreme Court would actually UN-pack the court. This isn’t radical. It’s essential.

Now, I won’t sugar-coat this. Making these reforms happen won’t be easy. We’re up against big monied interests who will fight to keep their control of our nation’s most important Court.

But these key reforms have significant support from the American people, who have lost trust in the court.

The Supreme Court derives its strength not from the use of force or political power, but from the trust of the people. With neither the sword nor the purse, trust is all it has.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Reich's Substack:

Friends, For years, conservatives have railed against what they call the “administrative state” and denounced regulations. But let’s be clear. When they speak of the “administrative state,” they’re talking about agencies tasked with protecting the public from corporations that seek profits at the expense of the health, safety, and pocketbooks of average Americans. Regulations are the means by which agencies translate broad legal mandates into practical guardrails. Substitute the word “protection” for “regulation” and you get a more accurate picture of who has benefited — consumers, workers, and average people needing clean air and clean water. Substitute “corporate legal movement” for the “conservative legal movement” and you see who’s really mobilizing, and for what purpose.

**

[...] Last week, the Supreme Court made it much harder for the FTC, the Labor Department, and dozens of other agencies — ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and National Highway and Safety Administration — to protect Americans from corporate misconduct.

On Thursday, the six Republican-appointed justices eliminated the ability of these agencies to enforce their rules through in-house tribunals, rather than go through the far more costly and laborious process of suing corporations in federal courts before juries. On Friday, the justices overturned a 40-year-old precedent requiring courts to defer to the expertise of these agencies in interpreting the law, thereby opening the agencies to countless corporate lawsuits alleging that Congress did not authorize the agencies to go after specific corporate wrongdoing. In recent years, the court’s majority has also made it easier for corporations to sue agencies and get public protections overturned. The so-called “major questions doctrine” holds that judges should nullify regulations that have a significant impact on corporate profits if Congress was not sufficiently clear in authorizing them.

[...] In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, then a modest business group in Washington, D.C., asked Lewis Powell, then an attorney in Richmond, Virginia, to recommend actions corporations should take in response to the rising tide of public protections (that is, regulations). Powell’s memo — distributed widely to Chamber members — said corporations were “under broad attack” from consumer, labor, and environmental groups. In reality, these groups were doing nothing more than enforcing the implicit social contract that had emerged at the end of World War II, ensuring that corporations be responsive to all their stakeholders — not just shareholders but also their workers, consumers, and the environment.

[...] The so-called “conservative legal movement” of young lawyers who came of age working for Ronald Reagan — including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — were in reality part of this corporate legal movement. And they still are. Trump’s three appointments to the Supreme Court emerged from the same corporate legal movement. The next victory of the corporate legal movement will occur if and when the Supreme Court accepts a broad interpretation of the so-called “non-delegation doctrine.” Under this theory of the Constitution, the courts should not uphold any regulation in which Congress has delegated its lawmaking authority to agencies charged with protecting the public. If accepted by the court, this would mark the end of all regulations — that is, all public protections not expressly contained in statutes — and the final triumph of Lewis Powell’s vision.

Robert Reich wrote an interesting Substack piece on the history of the right-wing war on regulatory power that began with the infamous Powell Memo by Lewis Powell, and culminated with the recent Loper Bright Enterprises, Jarkesy, and Trump rulings.

[palmtreepalmtree]

This is honestly still so shocking to me. As a California lawyer, I feel like it's difficult to understate the impact of John Eastman's fall.

Before Trump, John Eastman was a fixture of the California legal community. He was the Dean of Chapman University's law school for years. He was regularly interviewed in local media to get the conservative legal viewpoint, and even though I almost always disagreed with his positions, his reasoning was usually cogent and thoughtful. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for fuck's sake (this is not a thing that stupid, sloppy, or thoughtless people can achieve or do--you can have bad and seriously wrong opinions, sure, but you can't be thoughtless).

I swear though, it sometimes feels like the entire conservative base has been captured by some kind of mania. He continues to insist that his prosecution is politically motivated. Even as his own witnesses collapsed on the lies he continues to peddle:

Testifying in Eastman’s defense was Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who has stated the election was stolen. But at the trial, Gableman admitted that his own 14-month inquiry into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.

Another Eastman witness, John Yoo, a longtime friend and a Berkeley Law professor, testified that Joe Biden had won the White House “fair and square” and that Pence had “unassailable grounds” in refusing to reject electoral votes.

I mean, I guess at this point he just has to go all in on the lie. He allegedly says that his legal fees are going to cost him between $3 to $3.5 million and he's raised something like $500k for his legal defense.

But this doesn't sound like someone who is lying. It sounds like someone in a fucking cult:

[Eastman] said the bar trial was “extraordinary and unprecedented” but gave him a chance to present wider evidence of election fraud than had been previously aired. “It was eye-opening for a lot of people about the amount of illegality that we exposed during that trial,” Eastman said.

My dude, the Judge issued a 128 page ruling that found you guilty of 10 out of 11 counts of misconduct. Exactly what did you expose except your own ass?

Eastman portrays himself as a battling patriot who has been subjected to “false narratives and calumnies.” He said he is the victim of “lawfare,” an attempt to silence unpopular views with legal machinery.

“We are in a rather significant fight, and for whatever reason, I am the lead point of the spear in that fight, and I am taking it on, as I think my duty as a citizen requires,” he said. “We’ll do what it takes.”

My god, someone needs to fucking deprogram this guy.

Anyhow, this continues to be insane to me.

[f1ghtsoftly]

All The Women’s News You Missed This Week:

9/30/24-10/7/24

want this sent to your email? Subscribe here

Transgender and Gender Critical News: 

Major cases before the Supreme Court deal with transgender rights, guns, nuclear waste and vapes

Death threats assail Brazil’s trailblazing trans candidates as they campaign

Reproductive Rights: 

US Supreme Court rebuffs Biden administration on emergency abortions in Texas

Women in War, Israel/Occupied Palestine: 

A picture of her grief gripped the world. A year on, Gaza woman haunted by memories

Far from Gaza, a Thai mother grieves for her missing son

Policewoman killed and 10 injured in shooting in Israel 

Girl who lost eye in Israeli raid that killed father carries ‘pain mountains can't bear’

UK-Israeli hostage has been forgotten, says mum

Women in the news: 

Harris talks abortion and more on ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast as Democratic ticket steps up interviews

Supermodel Naomi Campbell admits failures at charity, denies misconduct, media reports say

San Francisco’s first Black female mayor is in a pricey battle for a second term

Mexico’s new president promises to resume fight against climate change

For migrant women who land in Colorado looking for jobs, a common answer emerges: No

In their 80s, these South Korean women learned reading and rap

Pope Francis urges unity as advocates for women’s ordination press cause at Vatican gathering

Male Violence: 

Judge denies Wisconsin attorney general’s request to review Milwaukee archdiocese records

Gang rapists sentenced to life in Tanzania prison 

Abbington has 'no regrets' about Strictly complaints 

India government says criminalising marital rape 'excessively harsh'

Arts and Culture: 

Movie Review: ‘The Substance’ is brilliantly disgusting and deranged 

Movie Review: Helen Mirren tells a story of evil and hope during WWII in ‘White Bird’

Movie Review: A transcendent Saoirse Ronan illuminates true-life addiction drama ‘The Outrun’

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Monday afternoon.

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Senate

Investigate corrupt Supreme Court justices and pass a code of ethics now!

254 so far! Help us get to 500 signers!

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. They hand down decisions that can affect the entire country for generations. They should be held to the highest level of scrutiny and the highest ethical standard. It is a disgrace that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accept gifts and vacations from billionaire benefactors, often without disclosing them to the American people. The Senate has the power to rein in this corruption in this co-equal branch of government. They should use it. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin should hold full hearings on Clarence Thomas’ and Samuel Alito’s misconduct as soon as possible. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should bring a bill to implement a Supreme Court code of ethics to the Senate floor as soon as possible. Thanks.

▶ Created on October 25, 2023 by Jess Craven

📱 Text SIGN PYQUHH to 50409

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[vague-humanoid]

The role of the death penalty as a toll of the racist system of criminal punishment has been long documented. In the case of Alameda County, California, the inside story of how prosecutors influenced jury selections to increase the likelihood of death penalty convictions demonstrates how the racism of capital punishment remains with us in the 21st century. For decades, prosecutors worked to limit jury participation from Black and Jewish individuals in order to produce juries that were more likely to support capital punishment. Michael Collins, Senior Director of Government Affairs at Color Of Change, joins Rattling the Bars for a revealing discussion on prosecutor misconduct, and what it tells us about the state of the criminal injustice system.

Transcript

Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

The death penalty in the United States of America. At one point in time, the Supreme Court had put it on hold because of the manner in which it was being given out. At that time, the way it was being given out is upon a person being found guilty of a capital offense, the judge made the ultimate determination whether they got the death penalty or not.

Throughout the course of litigation and the evolution of the legislative process, the death penalty started taking on the shape of a jury determining whether or not a person gets the death penalty or not after they were sentenced.

What we have now, in this day and age — And when I first heard it, it startled me to even believe that this was taking place — But in California, they have, in certain parts, the death penalty being given out, but more importantly, the death penalty given out by the prosecutor and the courts through their systematic exclusion of people’s juries of their peers.

The prosecutors, along with the courts, have systematically set up a template where they look at anybody that they think is going to be fair and impartial and have them removed from the jury. Subsequently, a lot of men and women are on death row in California.

Here to talk about the abuse of this system and the discovery of the process and exposing it is Michael Collins from Color of Change.

Welcome, Mike.

Michael Collins:  To be here. Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:  Hey, first, tell us a little bit about yourself, then a little bit about your organization before we unpack the issue.

Michael Collins:  I’m originally from Scotland, as you can probably tell. In the US since 2010, so like 15 years or so. Was in Baltimore for 10, 12 years off and on, and then I’m now in Atlanta.

Color of Change, where I work, is one of the largest racial justice organizations in the country. I oversee a team that works on state and local policy issues. We do a lot of work on prosecutor accountability and criminal justice reform, which is how we became involved in this death penalty scandal.

Mansa Musa:  All right.

And right there, because when I was at the conference in Maryland, [inaudible] Maryland, one of the panelists was one of your colleagues, and the topic they was talking about was prosecutorial misconduct. And in her presentation she talked about, and you can correct me as I go along, in I think it’s Alameda County in California?

Michael Collins:  Yep. That’s where Oakland is. Yeah.

Mansa Musa:  Right. In Oakland, they had, since 2001, the prosecutors always had set up a system where they systematically excluded minorities, poor people, anyone that they thought would be objective in evaluating the case, they had them excluded, therefore jury nullification, and stacking the jury that resulted in numerous people getting the death penalty.

Talk about this case and how it came about.

Michael Collins:  Yeah, it really was shocking when we first heard about it. You know, we had been doing work on prosecutor accountability in Oakland in Alameda County, and there was a prosecutor elected, a Black woman, called Pamela Price, who was elected on a platform of trying to reform the justice system and use prosecutorial discretion to right the wrongs of racial injustice and do more progressive policies within the office.

And she discovered, or one of her staff discovered, that over a period of three or four decades, prosecutors in the office had been systematically excluding Black and Jewish people from death penalty juries.

Now, in other words, how this happened was, when you go into a trial, there’s a process of jury selection, and prosecutors and defense lawyers can strike certain people from juries. Maybe people have seen some of this on TV.

Constitutionally, you are not allowed to strike people for race reasons, for religious reasons. But there was a sense from these prosecutors, who were very tough on crime prosecutors, who wanted to… They saw the death penalty as a trophy, almost, to be achieved, and they wanted to win at all costs.

And so they believed that Black people and Jewish people would be less sympathetic to the death penalty, and more likely, perhaps, to find an individual not guilty. More squeamish, if you like, about finding someone guilty who would then get the death penalty.

And so what Pamela Price, this district attorney, discovered was a series of notes and papers that documented the ways in which individual prosecutors were excluding people from juries in this way and really giving people an unfair trial.

And California has, for a number of years now, had a moratorium on the death penalty. They’ve essentially hit the pause button on the death penalty. But for a number of years it was really a state that carried out the death penalty [cross talk].

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, you’re right.

Michael Collins:  And also, one of the more startling things about this is Pamela Price, she came in, she discovered these notes. I think her reaction was, this is crazy. How does this happen? And it actually turns out that somebody raised the alarm bell about this as far back as 2004.

A prosecutor in the Oakland office who came out and he was like, listen, I was leading the trainings on this. I was somebody who was part of making these policies. And the admission went before judges, it went before courts of appeals, and they threw it out, they didn’t believe this guy. And they hounded this guy, the death penalty prosecutor, who essentially had a change of heart, and they hounded him out of town. And he now lives in Montana and practices law.

And I think he probably feels a sense of vindication about this, but it’s very troubling for us, the cover-up that’s gone on, and the number of people that are implicated. So far, we know of at least 35 cases of individuals.

The DA is investigating this. It’s probably going to be more than 35 cases. Right? It probably extends beyond the death penalty, to be honest. It probably extends to other, I would say, serious crime cases where, as I say, prosecutors wanted to win at all costs and use any tactic to get a guilty verdict, including, essentially, tampering with the jury.

And we are in a position now where I think what we want is some level of accountability. We want these individuals who have been sentenced to be exonerated. They were given an unfair trial, that’s abundantly clear. The judges and the prosecutors who were involved in this scandal, who stole lives, and who essentially put people on a path to the death penalty, what is the accountability for them? And so that’s something that Color of Change is really pushing.

Mansa Musa:  All right, so talk about the… Because now you’re saying over three decades… First, how long has the moratorium been on?

Michael Collins:  Since the current governor took office. So I think it’s four or five years.

Mansa Musa:  Okay, so four or five years. So prior to that, they was executing people.

Michael Collins:  Yes.

Mansa Musa:  All right, so how many people, if y’all have this information, how many people have been executed in that period [crosstalk] period?

Michael Collins:  We don’t have the numbers on that. I think what we are looking at just now is 35 cases where they’ve identified people who are now serving life sentences as a result of the moratorium. Because when the governor said, we’re not doing the death penalty anymore and hit the pause button on the death penalty…

And again, I’ll stress that it is a pause button, right?

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, right, right.

Michael Collins:  A new governor, a new person could take office. It’s not like it’s been eliminated. But when we hit the pause button on the death penalty, there were a number of people who had their death penalty convictions converted into life sentences.

And that was how part of this process was uncovered, because Pamela Price, this district attorney, her office was working on what kind of sentence that people, they were working with a judge to try and figure out some sort of solution to these cases where people were having their cases converted to another sentence, like perhaps a life sentence, life without parole, something like that. And in the process of working with a federal judge, that’s when they discovered these notes and files and [crosstalk].

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you this here.

Michael Collins:  Yeah.

Mansa Musa:  Okay, so I know in the state of Maryland where I served my time at, and I’m in the District of Columbia now, the sentencing mechanism, as I opened up, was a case came out, Furman Act v. United States. That’s the case that… Furman v. United States. That’s the case that they used to change the way the death penalty was being given out back in the ’70s. Because during that time, Andre Davis had just got arrested, so there was a campaign out in California to abolish the death penalty.

But what wound up happening is they had a series of case litigation saying they violated the Eighth Amendment. So what ultimately happened was that the Supreme Court ruled that the way the death penalty was being given out, which was the judge was the sole person that gave it out, they changed it to now they allowed for after the person was found guilty, then the jury would determine whether or not they got the death penalty, that was based on the person that’s being looked at for the death penalty, or have the opportunity to allocute why it shouldn’t be given.

But how was the system set up in California? Is the person found guilty and then given the death penalty? Or is the person found guilty and then they have a sentencing phase? How is the system in California?

Michael Collins:  Yeah, I think a person’s found guilty and then there’s a sentencing phase. And there were a lot of articles about this and about the different lawyers in California. I think there’s obviously a movement to end the death penalty, and it’s gathered a lot of momentum in the last five or 10 years.

But I think if you go back to the ’80s and the ’90s especially, this era, whether you were in Maryland or whether you were in California, whether in Kentucky, just across the country, this very tough on crime era and harsh sentences, I think that the death penalty for prosecutors, or what we’ve been told and what we’ve read, the death penalty cases were almost like a prize for the prosecutors [crosstalk] do the cases.

[They were] the most complex cases, it had the most prestige attached to it, and they were really valued on their ability to win these cases. And so they would send their best prosecutors to do these cases. They would ask for the death penalty frequently.

And that’s why we have a situation where, at the very least, we know in a place like Oakland, which is not a huge place, we have 35 cases right now that they’re looking at. One of the cases has already been overturned, the conviction has been quashed for an individual. We expect that to happen in a lot of these cases as they examine the evidence, how much the jury selection was a key factor in the conviction.

But yeah, I mean, it certainly was the case that the death penalty was used very frequently in California.

Mansa Musa:  Okay. So the reason why I asked that question, I’m trying, for the purpose of educating our audience, to see at what juncture was the exclusion taking place? Or was it across the board, because [crosstalk] —

Michael Collins:  So my understanding is the exclusion took place as they were selecting the jury. You start off with a pool, maybe some of your audience have been selected for jury duty, when you go in and you’re sitting in a room and there will be maybe 100 people, and then eventually they whittle it down to 12 people and some alternates. And in that process, as a prosecutor and as a defense lawyer, you’re striking people from the jury and saying, no, I don’t want this person.

The reasons for doing that are supposed to be ethical and constitutional, like, what do you think of the… You’ll be asked, what do you think of the police? What do you think of law enforcement? Do you trust the judicial process? They’re trying to figure out, are you going to be able to properly serve on this jury? Are you tainted in some way?

But the notes were really about a feeling that Black people were not sympathetic to the death penalty, [they would] not convict. Or Jewish people, because of their beliefs, because of their religion, were also not sympathetic to the death penalty. And so the prosecutors were trained and instructed to make sure, if they found out a person was Jewish, if they had a Jewish last name or something like that, or if a person was Black, ask some questions, figure it out, but essentially get them off the jury.

And there was even a case, I mentioned before, we’re talking a lot about prosecutors, judges were involved in this as well. There was a case where a judge pulled the prosecutor after jury selection into his chambers and said, you have a Jewish person on the jury. What are you doing? Get that person off the jury.

Mansa Musa:  Oh my goodness.

Michael Collins:  And so the depths of the scandal are beyond prosecutors. It’s a real institutional crisis.

And that’s why we want the governor to get involved, Governor Newsom to get involved and provide resources to investigate this. We want the attorney general to get involved and investigate this. Because this is a very clear and obvious scandal.

And it’s not enough to, in our opinion, re-sentence these individuals, exonerate them. Other people did some very, very shady things and very unethical things and illegal things, and ruined people’s lives. And as far as they were concerned, these people were going to be killed. And so we want to make sure that there’s accountability for that. They treated this like it was a sport, like it was a competition, and people’s lives have been ruined as a result. And we want to make sure that people are held accountable for what they did.

Mansa Musa:  Okay, so talk about this prosecutor, the one that came in with this reform. Was this something she campaigned on and then carried it out? What’s her background? What’s your information on her?

Michael Collins:  Yeah, it’s a good question.

So Color of Change has worked a lot on trying to reshape the way that prosecutors operate. Historically, prosecutors, they are the most powerful player in the system. They will decide how much bail you get, how long you’re going to be on probation. Everybody likes to imagine trials like judge, jury, and [crosstalk]. Most cases are a guilty plea that are executed by the prosecutor themselves. So they have tremendous power.

And very often, as we’ve seen with this scandal, prosecutors are just old school tough on crime: I’m going to get the heaviest sentence and put this guy away for as long as possible. That was their vision of justice.

And Color of Change, along with a number of other organizations, wanted to elect prosecutors that were more justice oriented, that were more reform minded, that were people who had a different view of the justice system and wanted to use some of that tremendous power within the prosecutor’s office to do good, to do justice, to reform them.

And so roundabouts of 2016, 2017, you saw a lot of prosecutors get elected that were more interested in things like police accountability: Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, Kim Fox in Chicago. There was also Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.

Mansa Musa:  Philadelphia. Right.

Michael Collins:  And they came in and they did things like exonerations. They would investigate previous cases where the office itself had convicted somebody and they would find wrongdoing, and then they would overturn that verdict and the person would go free. They did things like non-prosecution of low-level offenses or diversion, stuff like that.

Anyway, Pamela Price came in as the Oakland DA, a historically Black jurisdiction. She herself had a Civil Rights background, was not a prosecutor, and took office really trying to reshape the office after decades of having a tough on crime prosecutor, mostly white-led office that was locking up Black people and throwing away the key. And she came in with a lot more of a nuanced approach.

She didn’t campaign necessarily on this scandal, but I think it’s true to say that a lot of other prosecutors, the traditional tough on crime prosecutors, would’ve discovered these files and been like, just put that back. Forget it.

Because you’re opening a hornet’s nest here, because if you think about… There’s victims involved, there’s family members, there’s cases. Some of these cases are 20, 30 years old. It’s not easy what the office is going to have to go through to reinvestigate these things.

But I think there’s this crop of prosecutors that have a different vision of justice and what justice is, and they do want to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, whether it is somebody who commits a homicide or a prosecutor who commits misconduct or a police killing, they apply that one standard of justice.

And so she was very open and found these files and then approached a federal judge and said to the judge, look, here’s all this evidence that there was this systemic racism, antisemitism that resulted in people getting the death penalty. And the federal judge was the one who said, okay, you need to review all these cases. You need to move forward with a full [inaudible]. So that’s what’s happening right now.

So that’s Pamela Price’s story. Incidentally, she’s actually being recalled in California.

Mansa Musa:  Oh yeah, yeah. Larry Krasner. He was like… In Philadelphia, it was the same thing we have with him.

Michael Collins:  Yeah, it’s the same thing. There was a big backlash [inaudible] —

Mansa Musa:  Kim Fields. Yeah, yeah. Same thing we have with them.

Michael Collins:  …Prosecutors in this sort of… You know.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, yeah.

Michael Collins:  And it’s hard because if she is recalled in November, I don’t really know what’s going to happen to these cases.

Mansa Musa:  Oh, I know. You know what’s going to happen. They’re going to go to the defendants, and they’re going to sweep it up under the rug.

Michael Collins:  Yeah. Well, that —

Mansa Musa:  But talk about the community, because that’s what led me right into this, because of what you say about her and the prospect that she might be recalled. Talk about y’all organization’s work in educating and mobilizing the community, because ultimately, if the community is engaged in the process because it’s their family members that’s being… Oakland is the birth for the Black Panther Party. Oakland has a rich history of civil disobedience, police brutality. The list goes on and on. Where are y’all at in terms of organizing or mobilizing or having some kind of coalition around this —

Michael Collins:  Yeah, we have a coalition on prosecutor accountability where we try and… Prosecutors are part of a very broken system, right? We don’t want to be cheerleaders for these prosecutors. We talk more about accountability, so prosecutor accountability.

So we have a coalition that we’re members of with Ella Baker Center and ACLU and a number of other local groups, where we meet regularly with the DA, but we try and push her to embrace more progressive policies. We try and push her to move more quickly on some death penalty cases. But at the same time, if she’s doing the right thing like she’s doing on these death penalty cases, we’re certainly going to defend her and go out there and support what she’s doing.

Mansa Musa:  Right, right, right, right. Because… Yeah. Right.

Michael Collins:  So we do community events. I’m actually in New Orleans just now where we’re holding an event with around about 100 folks from across the country from different groups to talk about, including people from Oakland, to talk about, how can you push your prosecutor and what should you do about it?

But as you know, it’s a very tough time for criminal justice reform, right?

Mansa Musa:  That’s right. That’s right.

Michael Collins:  [Crosstalk] public backlash, we’re coming out of the killing of George Floyd, there was actually a lot of mobilization of people on the streets calling for reform. And very quickly that’s disappeared and we’ve been attacked relentlessly. Anybody who engages in reform, police accountability, the establishment wants rid of them, the conservatives.

And to be honest, especially in a place like California, what we see is a lot of centrist Democrats running scared —

Mansa Musa:  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Michael Collins:  …Using the same talking points as Donald Trump on crime. And that’s just very unfortunate. So it is an uphill struggle because there’s so much misinformation out there about crime and about prosecutors and about progressive policies.

But we’re trying, we’re trying to educate people. And when you see something like this happen, we try and tell people, look, other prosecutors would look the other way. And that certainly is what happened. As I mentioned before, this scandal goes back decades [inaudible].

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, that’s crazy.

Michael Collins:  And this woman is in office and she has had [inaudible].

Mansa Musa:  But the thing about the thing that, to highlight your point about reform and how we had the upper hand in terms of George Floyd, but George Jackson said that, and he was the best [described] person, he would describe it as reform. All the call for police accountability and divest, all those, the fascists and capitalists, they took them conversations and they twist it, and they twist it to the form like Cop City where we saying like, well, we’re doing this, the bill, to create the reform that you’re talking about, so we want better educating, better training. But you’re trained to be paramilitary.

And the same thing with what’s going on right now in terms of any type of social justice movement around prosecuting misconduct and what they call progressive prosecutors. I interned with a organization that that’s what they did. They got prosecutors, they educated them, got them involved and become progressive prosecutors. But all the progressive prosecutors are just doing what they was mandated to do, to find the truth for justice, search for the truth and justice, all them are being recalled, targeted, and organizations like yourself.

Talk about where y’all at now in terms of y’all next strategy around this issue.

Michael Collins:  So we are having conversations with the attorney general’s office because the attorney general plays this role where they themselves can identify that misconduct has happened, the unconstitutional jury instructions, and they can make a ruling. And they have more resources and more [inaudible] than the local DA.

So we met two weeks ago, I think, with the attorney general’s office to try and push them to get more involved. We’re pushing the governor to dedicate more resources and get more involved in this, somebody who himself opposes the death penalty. And we’re trying to keep the drum beat going in terms of attention. Good organizations like you guys, really appreciate you reaching out to us on this because it is so important that more people know about this.

I’m always surprised that it isn’t a bigger story. When I found out about this, I was like, oh, this is going to be front page.

Mansa Musa:  Right, right, right. It should be! Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Collins:  But I guess there’s so much going on just now, I don’t know, you never can tell what’s going to [inaudible].

Mansa Musa:  But in terms of, how can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you, and tell them how, if they want to support y’all efforts, what they can do to [inaudible].

Michael Collins:  Yeah, so Color of Change has a website called Winning Justice [winningjustice.org], which is our prosecutor accountability work. And if you go on there, you’ll see a number of actions that people can take around this death penalty scandal, even with their own local prosecutors, trying to get involved, set up coalitions, actions that can be taken where you can push your own prosecutor, whether they’re progressive or not, to do more justice and engage in [crosstalk].

So yeah, Winning Justice is our website. And if you search for it, you’ll find it and you’ll see a ton of actions and our positions on a bunch of different issues and what we try and do with prosecutors to get them to engage more in reform.

Mansa Musa:  Well, thank you, Mike.

There you have it. The Real News Rattling the Bars. It might be strange, it really might be a stretch of your imagination to believe that elected officials would actually say that if you are Black and you are Jewish, that you don’t have a right to serve on the jury because you might be sympathetic to the defendant, be it the death penalty, be it the defendant’s economic and social conditions.

But because they think that you might be sympathetic to that, that is saying like, well, you might just be objective to see that it’s a set of circumstances that contributed to the outcome of the charge. But no, as opposed to do that and search for the truth, what I do as a prosecutor, I put a playbook together and say, these people, under all circumstances, cannot serve on the jury, and do it for over three decades, not knowing how many people has been executed as a result of this malicious behavior.

Yet ain’t nobody being charged, ain’t nobody being indicted, ain’t nobody being fired. They’re being awarded a medal of honor for this dishonorable act.

We ask that you look into this matter and make a determination. Do you want your tax dollars to support this type of behavior? We ask that you look into this matter and check out what Color of Change has to offer in terms of their advocacy and see if it’s something that you might want to get involved with.

Thanks, Mike. Thank you for coming on.

Michael Collins:  I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

[tzifron]

The force also used “lethal-force overwatch” — snipers armed with rifles — during the high-profile enforcement, according to officers with a specialized RCMP response team meant to resolve high-risk situations.

The revelations came as RCMP witnesses began testifying at a hearing on the Nov. 19, 2021, police response to Indigenous land defenders who had occupied two small structures along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route. The hearing follows Justice Michael Tammen’s verdict, Friday, that there is sufficient evidence to convict three people charged during the raid with criminal contempt of court.

Immediately following the decision, Tammen moved to consider an application to dismiss the charges based on police conduct during the arrests. The defendants say they experienced “widespread Charter violations stemming from police misconduct” and “disproportionate and excessive use of force,” according to a statement issued by members of the Gidimt’en Clan.

Among those arrested inside a “tiny house” located next to the pipeline route was Sleydo’, who also goes by Molly Wickham. A prominent figure in the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s years-long opposition to the project, Sleydo’ was arrested along with Shaylynn Sampson, who is Gitxsan, and several others, including two journalists. One of the journalists, Amber Bracken, is now suing the RCMP over her arrest and detention.

[beardedmrbean]

An expelled Yale University student who was acquitted of sex assault charges in 2018 is now suing 15 women's advocacy groups and an attorney for defamation after being called a “rapist” in a court brief that they filed in a 2022 proceeding.

Saifullah Khan, a 31-year-old Afghanistan native, said the organizations, which include the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the National Women's Law Center, repeated his accuser's allegations as fact, such as writing, “When Jane Doe was in college, the Plaintiff raped her” and referring to Khan as “her rapist."

While that language was amended, Khan says his reputation was harmed and that he has suffered “economic and non-economic damages." His lawsuit, which seeks financial damages, said the original draft brief “remains published, indefinitely" on the Connecticut Judicial Branch website and was also published online by the women's advocacy groups and for donors.

“We would like for them to understand that there is harm to someone when you just label them,” said Alex Taubes, Khan's attorney. “No one could complain about it if he had been found guilty. But he wants to see that when you actually are found not guilty, is there any vindication? Is there any way to stand up for yourself at that point?”

Although Khan was acquitted of four sexual assault charges by a jury in May 2018, he was expelled from Yale in November 2018 following a university investigation and sexual assault disciplinary proceeding. He sued both Yale and his accuser, and that case is pending in federal court.

As part of that case, the Connecticut State Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on the question of whether the accuser should be immune from a civil suit for comments made during the university proceeding. Various women's rights groups argued that such immunity is crucial to prevent rape victims from being discouraged to come forward.

The court, however, ruled 7-0 last year that because Khan had fewer rights to defend himself in the university proceeding than he would in criminal court, his accuser could not benefit fully from immunity granted to witnesses in criminal proceedings. As in many U.S. universities, Yale’s procedures do not subject accusers to cross-examination and do not require witnesses to testify under oath.

Messages seeking comment were left with National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the National Women’s Law Center, as well as Jennifer Becker, the former legal director at the women’s advocacy group Legal Momentum who submitted the original application to file the amicus brief with Connecticut's highest court. In a response to an ethics complaint Khan filed against her, Becker wrote that when she drafted the brief “I wholly believed that my statements were fully supported by the record.”

Becker said she did “appreciate that the language drafted was overzealous and unnecessarily forceful.” But she noted in her statement how the brief was refiled, “shorn of all facts not supported by the record,” as ordered by the justices, and the court never admonished her for the language she used in the original one or made any finding that it was inappropriate.

“Additionally, any overzealousness on my part was ameliorated by the Court's order and there is no resulting harm to Mr. Kahn,” she wrote, noting the language he had complained about has been stripped.

Legal experts have said the Connecticut State Supreme Court's ruling last year could be a major precedent cited in other lawsuits by students accused of sexual misconduct in challenges to the fairness of their schools’ disciplinary proceedings.

[tomorrowusa]

A Trump-appointed federal judge just resigned in disgrace. Sadly, it's not one of his three SCOTUS appointments.

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Alaska abruptly and with no explanation resigned from his position last Wednesday.  Court documents made public Monday reveal that former U.S. District Judge Joshua Kindred’s resignation came after he was asked to voluntarily resign in response to a judicial investigation that found he had “an inappropriately sexualized relationship” with one of his law clerks during her clerkship and while she was an assistant district attorney and engaged in misconduct that was “pervasive and abusive.”

Basically, Joshua Kindred was acting like Trump. Of course he tried to lie his way out of his troubles.

Kindred also repeatedly lied about his misconduct during the investigation and “created a hostile work environment for his law clerks by engaging in unwanted, offensive, and abusive conduct, and treating the law clerks in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner,” according to the 30-page court order — which was filed in May but was made public on July 8. The report reveals behind-the-scenes details of an out of control work environment created by Kindred, who was accused of repeatedly speaking with “no filter” about his sex life and receiving nude photos from a federal prosecutor whose office had frequent business before him. “We conclude that Judge Kindred’s misconduct was pervasive and abusive, constituted sexual harassment, and fostered a hostile work environment that took a personal and professional toll on multiple clerks,” the report read. At the center of the scathing report is an unnamed law clerk. The report details the allegations behind two inappropriate “sexual encounters” between the female clerk and the former judge, as well as the contents of 278 pages of text messages between the two over an 11-month period. 

A reminder that there are serious allegations of misconduct involving Republican members of the US Supreme Court which need to be investigated.