Mangino discusses murder of new born on Law and Crime's Scandal

Watch my interview with Sierra  Gillespie host of "Scandal" on Law and Crime Network.

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The 'Iran War' may be remembered as the end of restraint on a president's use of the military

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said President Trump’s unilateral launch of the Iran war may be remembered as the death of any pretense that law and executive branch lawyers can be counted on to meaningfully constrain a president who wants to use military force on his own, reported The New York Times.

“By using the military on such a large and dangerous scale with foreseeable U.S. casualties, this operation kills the idea of any effective legal constraint on the president’s use of force,” he said. “It’s been very close to dead for years, I think.”

In 2007, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued in a presidential candidate survey that presidents have no legitimate power to bomb another country without congressional authorization, unless the United States is about to be attacked. Senator Barack Obama said the same thing. But executive power can look different from the vantage point of the Oval Office.

Mr. Obama bombed Libya without authorization in 2011. And, running for president again in 2019, Mr. Biden argued that the Constitution empowered presidents to order limited military strikes on their own. In 2024, Mr. Biden ordered several large-scale strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen who were menacing Israel and shipping in the Red Sea.

Against that backdrop, Mr. Biden’s approach to Iran over time is instructive. In 2007, he had singled out an attack on the country as particularly dangerous and unpredictable, writing, “Let’s not kid ourselves: any military conflict with Iran is likely to become major.”

In 2019, he maintained that “any initiation of the use of force against Iran,” unless in response to an imminent attack, “could certainly result in a wide-scale conflict and constitute a ‘war’ in the constitutional sense that would require authorization by Congress.”

But as president in 2023, before he dropped out of the 2024 race, Mr. Biden sidestepped Iran in responding to a similarly worded survey.

Mr. Trump had already joined Israel last June in bombing Iranian nuclear sites, in what has become known as the 12-day war. Since then, he has unilaterally “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels, and launched a brief invasion of Venezuela to seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Now, without going to Congress, Mr. Trump has joined Israel in killing Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials at the start of a massively larger bombing campaign that he said he intended to last “four to five weeks.” He has urged Iranians to rise up for a regime change.

Ahead of the operation, Mr. Trump made scant effort to persuade lawmakers and the public that such a war had become necessary. He delivered no Oval Office address and barely mentioned Iran in his State of the Union speech, a sharp divergence from how past presidents sought to build a case for wars they wanted to launch.

Those past campaigns have drawn accusations of spin and deception, as when the George W. Bush administration’s warnings about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction proved false after the war began. But even propaganda is a backhanded nod to democracy — an implicit acknowledgment that buy-in from Congress and the public matters when it comes to taking the country to war.

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Florida carries out another execution

The 5th Execution of 2026

Billy Leon Kearse convicted of fatally shooting a police officer with his own service weapon during a traffic stop was executed on March 3, 2026 in Florida, becoming the third person put to death by the state this year after a record 19 executions in 2025, according to The Associated Press.

Kearse, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was condemned for the 1991 shooting death of Fort Pierce Police Officer Danny Parrish.

The execution started just after 6 p.m. When a warden asked Kearse if he had any final words, he said all he could do was ask for forgiveness from Parrish’s family.

“To his family, I sincerely apologize for what I’ve done,” Kearse said. “There is no way I can ever repay that.”

More than a dozen family members and police officers gathered to observe the execution.

Kearse twitched briefly after the lethal drugs began entering his system but stopped moving several minutes later. It was another quarter of an hour before a medic entered the room and pronounced Kearse dead.

After the execution, Parrish’s widow, Mirtha Busbin, said she has found peace.

“It’s been a long, long 35 years,” said Busbin. “We didn’t win anything though; we lost another life, but we did get justice.”

Busbin, who works as a victim advocate for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, said she didn’t expect Kearse to apologize, but she did appreciate it.

“I can forgive him, I can move on,” Busbin said. “It was the right thing to do.”

Court records show Parrish had pulled over Kearse for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in January of that year. After Kearse couldn’t produce a valid driver’s license, Parrish ordered Kearse out of his vehicle and attempted to handcuff him when a struggle ensued.

Kearse grabbed Parrish’s firearm during the struggle and fired 14 times, striking the officer nine times in the body and four times in his body armor, prosecutors said. A taxi driver heard the shots and called for help on the officer’s radio, but Parrish died after being rushed to a hospital. Police used license plate information called in by Parrish during the traffic stop to arrest Kearse at his home.

Kearse was initially convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm and sentenced to death in 1991. The Florida Supreme Court later found the trial court failed to give jurors certain information about aggravating circumstances and ordered a new sentencing. Kearse again drew the death penalty in 1997.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, far outpacing Alabama, South Carolina and Texas which each held five executions last year. The 19 Florida executions that year outstripped the previous high totals of eight in both 1984 and 2014.

Besides the three Florida executions to date this year, Texas and Oklahoma have each executed one person each so far in 2026.

Two more Florida executions are scheduled soon, starting with Michael Lee King on March 17 for the 2008 kidnap and killing of a mother of two. Former police officer James Duckett is set to be executed March 31 for the 1987 killing of an 11-year-old girl.

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

Hours before Tuesday’s execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Kearse’s final appeal without comment. And last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied appeals filed by Kearse.

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CREATORS: 'Partisan Political Theater' Disguised as a Congressional Investigation

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
March 3, 2026

Last week, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State, one-time democrat nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, testified under oath before the House Select Committee investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The depositions took place behind closed doors in Chappaqua, N.Y. Bill Clinton was deposed for 4 hours and 33 minutes and Hillary Clinton testified for 4 hours and 35 minutes. The Committee recently released video of the depositions.

The Epstein scandal has pulled in a number of prominent men from around the world. They include Britain's Prince Andrew; Elon Musk; Steven Bannon; Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Group; Steven Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants; Casey Wasserman, president of the 2028 Summer Olympics; Ehud Barak, former Israel prime minster; Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary; Howard Lutnick, current Secretary of Commerce; billionaire Sergey Brin; Mirosalav Lajcak, former Slovak foreign minister and of course President Donald Trump.

Yet none of these men have been deposed by the House Select Committee. The GOP-run committee chose to depose the former Democratic president and his spouse, the former 2016 Democratic nominee for president. Her opponent — Donald Trump.

Never mind that references to President Trump are everywhere in the Epstein files. The New York Times identified more than 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to Mr. Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and other related words and phrases in the latest batch of emails, government files, videos and other records released by the Department of Justice.

Never mind that no former president has ever been compelled to testify before Congress. Bill Clinton and his wife were hauled before Congress when there are so many more compelling targets of this investigation.

Hillary Clinton accused House Republicans of using her as a prop in "partisan political theater." Her written statement to the committee emphasized that she "had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices. I have nothing to add to that."

She accused the committee of compelling her testimony "fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, to distract attention from President Trump's actions and cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers."

Bill Clinton said in his written testimony that he "had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing."

"No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos. I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn't see. I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn't do. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong."

So, when will the Select Committee have President Trump testify?

When asked about the Epstein files on a recent flight back from Mar-a-Logo on Air Force One, Trump responded, "You know, I've been totally exonerated on Epstein. And it's really interesting because they've (Clintons) been pulled in. Think of it. They've been pulled in. Clinton and many other Democrats have been pulled in."

Trump feigns surprise that the Clintons have "been pulled in." This is the point: On nearly every topic, the President suspends reality. He is "shocked, shocked" that the GOP-controlled Congress has pulled the Clintons, Democrats, into the Epstein scandal.

According to The Hill, Democrats are saying that by compelling Clinton's testimony, the dynamic between Congress and the president has changed. Democrats are calling for the same standard for President Trump.

"Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the Jan. 6 Committee. He said, 'presidents don't have to testify,'" Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said, according to The Hill. "Now we have the Clinton rule, which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena, and that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Federal judges feel under siege by current political rhetoric

When the Supreme Court recently struck down President Trump's tariffs, he lashed out at two Justices he had nominated calling them fools and lapdogs. The president has frequently railed against judges when they rule against him. What often happens next is a barrage of violent threats from his followers against those judges. 

CBS News spoke with 26 federal judges – nine Democratic appointees, 17 Republican, both sitting and retired. The sitting judges told us they feel under siege. Most would not appear on camera, fearful for their safety. Judge John Coughenour – appointed by Ronald Reagan - is one of the few who would. He blocked President Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship. He wasn't prepared for what happened next.

Judge John Coughenour: My wife and I are at home. And the doorbell rings. And I go to the door. And there's, I think, five sheriff's deputies there with long rifles –

Bill Whitaker: And they show up with guns drawn?

Judge John Coughenour: Oh yeah. Yes, yes. Long guns, very intimidating guns. And they said to me, "Sir, could we see your wife?" And I said, "whatever for?" And they said, well, sir, we've had a report that you've murdered your wife."

It was a cruel hoax. The next day? A bomb threat. For John Coughenour, a federal district court judge in Washington state, it didn't end there.

Judge John Coughenour: There was a congressman that had a wanted poster. It just said Wanted in big letters at the top and then a picture of several of us. It said everything except "dead or alive".

His trouble started when President Trump signed an executive order to end the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for infants born on U.S. soil to non-citizens. Judge Coughenour ruled it, quote, "blatantly unconstitutional." The threats poured in.

Judge John Coughenour: Some of it was very very ugly, and very threatening.

Bill Whitaker: Death threats?

Judge John Coughenour: Oh yes, yes dozens of em. Dozens if not hundreds.

Judge Coughenour told us threats come with the turf. He has sentenced an al Qaeda bomber and Montana militia members and needed round the clock protection. But he said he'd never had as many death threats as with the birthright citizenship case.

Judge Coughenour: I've been at this for 44 years. I have never encountered the hostility toward the judiciary that has existed in this country in the, the last year. And I don't think it's' because we're making bad decisions. I think it's because there are people who think that they can make a lot of political hay out of criticizing the federal judiciary.

President Trump (in 2025): "And also we cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States."

When President Trump lost a battle in court to deport migrants, he called the judge a lunatic. When immigration crackdowns were ruled illegal, he called the judges monsters. It's incendiary comments like that that have provoked a torrent of death threats. 

Our reporting found hundreds of threats were left on judges voicemails. This one after a judge ruled the president had violated the First Amendment:

Recording of threat: I hope your whole family and everybody you love is raped in front of you and has their heads cut off.

And this one after a judge ruled the president couldn't cut certain government benefits.

Recording of threat: I wish somebody would f****** assassinate your ass.

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Florida was underdosing 'expired' drugs during prolific run of executions

In a small, piercingly bright room inside a state prison in northeast Florida, Frank Walls was strapped to a gurney and injected three times: first with a sedative meant to render him unconscious, then a paralytic to prevent any visible movement, and finally potassium acetate to induce cardiac arrest, reported Mother Jones.

Walls’ execution on December 18, 2025, capped Florida’s deadliest year in modern history. With 19 executions last year, Florida more than doubled its own record, and put more people to death than Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina combined. This execution spree came even as Florida’s lethal injection protocol has come under scrutiny, prompting fears that those executed are at risk of complications and needless suffering. 

In his final appeal, Walls asked Florida to review its three-step protocol, arguing that the way the state’s been carrying out executions would violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. His attorneys documented allegations that even though men in the death chamber couldn’t physically show the effects due to Florida’s three-drug protocol, some may have suffered and died with the feeling of drowning. And an analysis of court records, prison logs, redacted autopsy reports, and eyewitness testimonies by Mother Jones found documented issues in half the executions last year before Walls.

In at least nine executions from February to September 2025, there were signs of underdosings, the use of expired drugs, drug substitutions, or flaws in drug logs maintained by the Florida Department of Corrections. 

“Mr. Walls will die a needlessly cruel death if Florida insists on trying to kill him with Florida’s version of lethal injection,” wrote anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot, who met Walls at the Florida state prison five months before his execution, in an affidavit Walls’ defense team submitted to the District Court in Tallahassee. 

Autopsy results for Walls, who was sentenced to death for the 1987 killings of an Air Force airman and his girlfriend, have not yet been released. But Zivot feared the three-drug protocol could cause pulmonary edema, a condition that’s been found in previous autopsies of people executed by Florida, and which Zivot said causes “the terror that accompanies drowning and asphyxiation as they choke on their own blood.” 

The Florida Attorney General’s office didn’t dispute Walls’ assertion that he could experience the sensation of drowning and gasping for air after the second drug is injected. They called it “irrelevant.” 

The state has been similarly unmoved by problems in recent executions. 

In June 2025, logs included in a lawsuit showed that one man was executed with half of the required amount of paralytic, and another man didn’t receive a full dose of the drug meant to swiftly induce cardiac arrest. 

The Florida Department of Corrections’ own records indicated that the execution team used expired sedatives in four deaths, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the drugs and the risk of complications, including severe pain. They also recorded the use of a local anaesthetic that’s not part of the state’s execution protocol, and listed dates for use of the drugs that don’t match execution dates. 

Each of these issues would violate Florida’s own protocol. Rather than order an investigation, the state’s governor and past presidential candidate, Republican Ron DeSantis, has already scheduled four executions this year.

The death penalty has waxed and waned in public opinion over the years, with botched executions, racial disparities, and wrongful convictions under scrutiny in recent years. Florida alone has seen at least 30 exonerations from its death row. 

But reviving the federal death penalty is a key tenet of President Donald Trump’s tough-on-crime agenda—and DeSantis has positioned Florida at the vanguard of the Trump-led Republican Party. His own political future is unclear after his failed presidential run, but he’s echoing loud and clear the president’s enthusiasm for harsh and swift executions. Florida is leading the death penalty’s resurgence.

“The exact reasons as to why DeSantis has chosen to ramp things up now—I don’t think we know,” said Hannah Gorman, who teaches death penalty law at Florida International University’s College of Law.

But she said the pace of Florida’s executions have ramifications nationally and internationally. In 2025, executions in the United States nearly doubled, and 40 percent of them were in Florida alone. 

“Florida is an outlier in the U.S.,” said Gorman. “But this is also a massive message coming out of America.” 

DeSantis has issued death warrants for 32 people since he took office in 2019, and 250 people remain on Florida’s death row. 

DeSantis’ office didn’t respond to a list of questions by Mother Jones. But in November 2025, DeSantis said he was doing his “part to deliver justice” to victims’ families by executing those who have been on death row for decades. And the governor has unusually broad power to enact this penalty: he both sets execution dates and proceeds over the clemency hearings that could halt his own execution orders.

The last review of lethal injection protocol by Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon was in February 2025, after the year’s executions had already begun. Dixon wrote in a letter to Gov. DeSantis that his department’s lethal injection procedure was in line with decency standards and “dignity of man.”  

“The foremost objective of the lethal injection process is a humane and dignified death,” Dixon wrote. “The process will not involve unnecessary lingering or the unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain and suffering.”

The one-page letter didn’t explain what Dixon’s review entailed, and the Florida Department of Corrections didn’t respond to questions about the review. 

A month after this letter was sent to Tallahassee, in March 2025, Florida executed Edward James. Prison drug logs disclosed in court records show James was given a local anesthetic—lidocaine—that’s not mentioned in the 14-page protocol signed off by Dixon. 

It’s unclear why that drug was administered or who authorized it. 

To Ron McAndrew, a former Florida State Prison warden who led Florida’s executions from 1996 to 1998 and oversaw three electric chair executions, Florida ought to slow down and examine its protocol before executing anyone else. 

“To put a warden and a death team through 19 executions in one year was a horrible thing for the Governor to do.”

Now an anti-death penalty advocate, McAndrew’s concerns extend beyond procedure. He worries about the toll on staff. The ones doing the “dirty work.” 

McAndrew has overseen and witnessed executions gone wrong. He was in charge in 1997, when Pedro Medina’s head burst into flames on the electric chair. The former warden said he wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially prison staff. 

“To put a warden and a death team through 19 executions in one year was a horrible thing for the Governor to do,” McAndrew said. “These are the people that are going to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. These are the people that are going to suffer for the rest of their lives because the people they have killed are going to come visiting with them on a regular basis. They’re going to sit on the edge of their bed at night and talk to them.” 

In the past, botched executions or deviations from established execution procedures have prompted death penalty states to pause. Under Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida prison officials botched a lethal injection in 2006, and Bush temporarily halted executions. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin had to delay executions twice, after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 and again after the revelation that the state substituted a new drug to stop Charles Warner’s heart in 2015. Warner’s final words, the Associated Press reported, were: “My body is on fire.” A grand jury investigation found “negligence” and serious errors in the state’s executions. 

In 2022 in Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee paused all executions and sought an independent review of its execution protocol over concerns about independent testing of the lethal drugs. When the review ended in 2024, citing fewer opportunities for mistakes, Tennessee moved from a three-drug protocol to a single drug, as at least 1o other states and the federal system have now done.  

Florida has been using the same three-drug combination since 2017. Florida’s governor, however, has yet to announce any investigation into this method or its recent executions, let alone slow his pace in signing death warrants, despite repeated pleas and public accounts. 

In 2025 alone, media coverage described troubling scenes in at least three executions in Florida. In April, Michael Tanzi’s chest heaved for about three minutes, the Associated Press reported. Tanzi was given the unauthorized sedative, lidocaine, prison logs later showed. 

During the execution of Thomas Gudinas in June, media reported that his eyes rolled back and his chest spasmed. Drug logs filed in court records showed that Gudinas was injected with half the amount of paralytic required by Florida’s protocol. Then in November, NBC News reported that former Marine Bryan Jennings’ chest heaved and his arms twitched. Jennings’ autopsy report found that he experienced pulmonary edema—which mirrors the feeling of drowning, and the condition a medical expert feared would happen to Walls at his December execution. 

After Walls’ execution, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said there were no complications with his three-step lethal injection. There were close to 30 witnesses in attendance, including relatives of Walls’ victims. The Pensacola News Journal reported “about six minutes of labored breathing.” 

And Maria DeLiberato, Walls’ former attorney and the legal and policy director for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said she saw Walls gasping and his chest heaving: “Like he’s choking.” What she witnessed, she said, didn’t match the state’s media briefing from the Raiford prison. 

“I thought something was wrong,” DeLiberato said.

In January, Gov. DeSantis signed his first death warrant of this year for Ronald Heath, who was convicted for the 1989 armed robbery and murder of a traveling salesman near University of Florida. A jury sentenced him to death in a 10–2 vote.

Unanimous jury decisions were not required when Heath was convicted. They became law in Florida after a landmark 2016 Supreme Court judgment, but in 2023, Gov. DeSantis signed a bill into law requiring only 8 of 12 jurors to vote for death. 

Heath’s final appeal urged the US Supreme Court to look into Florida’s three-step lethal injection method, citing previous use of expired drugs, inconsistent dosing and inaccurate logs about what happened in the death chamber. The state argued that the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, “not inaccurate bookkeeping.”

The Supreme Court denied Heath’s request, and Heath’s execution was quick and without outward signs of complications, according to news coverage and a witness. Two weeks later, as Melvin Trotter’s execution date loomed for the murder of a grocery store owner in 1986, he asked for a stay of execution based on the risk of a mangled execution. Though the Supreme Court also rejected Trotter’s petition, this time, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed her concern about Florida’s “troubling” execution records. 

Sotomayor agreed with denying Trotter’s petition, but acknowledged that prisoners like him are caught in a catch-22: Because they don’t have enough evidence of cruel and unusual punishment, they have been denied the records they’d actually need to prove it. “The very reason” they are seeking these documents, she noted in a four-page statement, is to prove their claims. 

“By continuing to shroud its executions in secrecy, Florida undermines both the integrity of its own execution process and, potentially, this Court’s ability to ensure the State’s compliance with its constitutional obligations,” Sotomayor wrote. 

As Trotter was executed on February 24, he breathed heavily and his body twitched, PBS News reported. Details about the drugs used in Trotter’s execution won’t be revealed until the autopsy reports are made public. 

DeSantis has already ordered two more executions, Billy Kearse on March 3 and Michael King on March 17. And Sotomayor’s words are already reverberating on the busy death row. Within a day of Sotomayor’s statement, her critique of Florida’s secrecy had already been cited in a new appeal—and state officials had already dismissed the justice’s concerns as “speculation.”

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President Trump scheduled to testify before House Oversight Committee?

Bill Clinton became the first former president compelled to testify to members of Congress today. At a closed-door session in Chappaqua, New York, the House Oversight Committee heard from Clinton about his connections to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Clinton said he did nothing wrong, adding -- quote -- "I saw nothing that ever gave me pause."

Republican Chairman James Comer spoke late this afternoon.

How about President Trump?

The top Democrat on the congressional committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein has accused the US justice department of withholding files containing allegations of sexual abuse of a minor made against President Donald Trump.

Robert Garcia, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said he had personally viewed documents containing the allegation that had not been made public.

In response, the justice department said "NOTHING has been deleted", adding that documents were withheld only if they were "duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation".

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein case and has recently said he has been "totally exonerated".

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