Some states put limits on the number of times a case may be presented to a grand jury. Some require judicial approval before resubmission. But in the federal system, there are no legal limits, per se, to the number of times a prosecutor can present and represent a case to grand juries until he gets the ham sandwich indicted. The only prerequisite for resubmission is set forth in the Justice Department Manual.

Approval Required Prior to Resubmission of Same Matter to Grand Jury: Once a grand jury returns a no-bill or otherwise acts on the merits in declining to return an indictment, the same matter ( i.e., the same transaction or event and the same putative defendant) should not be presented to another grand jury or resubmitted to the same grand jury without first securing the approval of the responsible United States Attorney.

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Prefatory note: Yep. I think I’ve officially lost it.—CLS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, in Mud Lick so still

Sheriff Roy Templeton locked up every grill

Tyrone’s on vacation, thank God—he’s dim as a drill.

The station was quiet, Just two drunks in a cell Continue reading →

It’s bad enough that FIFA plans to charge up to $700 for the $21 tickets that United States officials said would be offered when they bid for he World Cup. Of course, they didn’t know then that they would have to invent a FIFA Peace Prize for the sad Donald Trump, who already glommed the gold trophy when it was brought to the Oval Office to be shown him. “I’m keeping it,” he muttered, because it was gold.

But another part of the gig was that the World Cup for soccer, a sport for people who find baseball too fast paced, would bring in a bunch of touristas, as would the Los Angeles summer Olympics. That would be atop the normal tourists that come to visit the United States in the usual course. They fill hotel rooms, dine at restaurants and buy tchotchkes. They provide jobs and revenue. Unlike tariffs, tourists are a huge boon for the economy. Continue reading →

Being neither for nor against Charlie Kirk, only because I never followed Kirk and knew nothing about him or his positions, I had nothing to contribute after his assassination beyond the fact that no one should be harmed, no less killed, for their political views. It’s beyond ironic, then, that 20-year combat veteran turned Tennessee public employee was fired hours after making a comment in reply to a friend’s Facebook post.

Was Charlie Kirk a white supremacist? It’s irrelevant. Would you have written this reply? It’s irrelevant. Do you think Monica Meeks’ reply was terrible? It’s irrelevant. Monica Meeks has a right to express her opinion, right or wrong, offensive or not. And yet, she was fired from her job with the State of Tennessee. Continue reading →

For many of us, the reaction to an image of a transgender female (a biological male, as the Fifth Circuit notes, lest anyone be confused) washing her hands at the sink in a woman’s rest room would be a shrug. Regardless of our feelings about the new rules for transgender people, this just isn’t worthy of much outrage. For Travis County District Attorney, José Garza, it’s worthy of an investigation toward a felony prosecution. The Fifth Circuit agrees.

In May 2023, Evans attended a debate in the Texas House of Representatives at the Texas Capitol about gender reassignment treatment for children. When she visited the women’s restroom, Evans encountered a transgender (biologically male) politician whom she later confronted. After returning to her seat in the Capitol gallery, one of Evans’s seatmates showed her that someone from their group had posted a photo of the politician washing their hands in the women’s restroom on Facebook. Evans tweeted the photo with a caption indicating she believed the politician should not have used the women’s restroom. Continue reading →

After oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter, there is essentially no doubt that the Supreme Court will rule in Trump’s favor, that the president has the authority to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission even though the statute creating the positions limits the president’s power to removal for cause. In other words, Humphrey’s Executor, the case upon which Congress relied since 1935 in crafting boards and agencies made up of putative non-partisan subject matter experts whose terms would extend from one regime to another, is history.

The question is no longer will it happen, but what reversal of Humphrey’s Executor will do to the functioning of a nation that has been built to be run, at least to some significant extent, by bureaucracy. Once Congress realized that it could dodge the hard work of legislating by creating a board, commission or agency with a vague mandate that was intended to be controlled by people with the knowledge and experience that Congress lacked, it spent almost a century doing so. For many, government by unaccountable bureaucracy wasn’t the democratic dream, with less expertise than agenda and little motive to limit the reach of its fiefdom, or accept the premise that its work was done. Continue reading →

Back in the early days of SJ, during the throes of #Reinvent Law and A2J, access to justice, two beliefs meshed into the fantastical belief that because lawyers were too expensive and inaccessible to much of the public, putting statutes and caselaw online would enable non-lawyers, regular people if you will, to gain sufficient legal information to knowledgeably conduct their affairs and engage with the law. This belief gave rise to such sites as the Cornell Legal Information Institute as well as a handful of free websites publishing court decisions.

While I was not against the concept of putting law online, I argued that this notion was not merely wrong, but dangerously nuts. The nice folks at Cornell LII were not pleased with me. More than a decade later, there is little doubt that it was just a sweet fantasy, and that people are not only ignorant of law, but proud and certain of their ignorance. I pointed this out with regard to people’s beliefs as to the legality and propriety of the United States murdering people on the high seas and ICE’s flagrant violation of constitutional rights in its zeal to get every “illegal” at all costs.  The reactions were, well, sadly unsurprising. Continue reading →

Oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter will be heard on Monday before the Supreme Court, addressing the question of whether the president has the authority to fire and appoint members of what Congress crafted to be “independent agencies” such as the National Labor Relations Board.

Wags will argue that since the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and these bureaucracies exist under the executive branch, of course he does. Sarah Isgur puts a bit more flesh on the bones, but essentially agrees, putting it in the context of the Supreme Court using Slaughter as an opportunity to retune the relationship between Congress and the presidency. Continue reading →

TITLE CARD: JUST THE NIGHTLY NEWS
important sounding music

VO: And now, just the nightly news. Good evening, this is Los Angeles. Your host is Kent Halsey.

Camera up on Kent Halsey in the main newsroom

HALSEY: Good evening, this is Los Angeles and this is your nightly news. In our top story a raccoon broke into a Virginia ABC liquor store and had its fair share of peanut butter whisky, vodka and moonshine. The animal then rampaged towards the men’s bathroom before passing out from intoxication, where store owners found it the following morning. Continue reading →

Whether they were called progressives, woke or social justice warriors, they reflected an illiberal extreme that could not mesh with what were once-liberal values, tolerance, respect for differing views and the defense of rights, even when it meant fighting for the rights of your adversaries. It wasn’t that liberals wouldn’t let them into the big tent, but that they refused to be in a big tent with heretics, people who failed to meet their ideological purity test.

Conservatives find themselves in the same situation with the “groypers.”

Legitimate differences and debates exist among authentic conservatives. Although conservatives certainly reject socialism, there is no canonical conservative position on, for example, how much regulation of markets is desirable. Some conservatives lean heavily in the direction of strict libertarianism; others allow more room for government interventions in the economy. Continue reading →