Mangino discusses death of teen connected to D4vid with Jesse Weber on Law & Crime's Sidebar

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Mangino discusses Pennsylvania conviction on Law & Crime Network

My interview with Chris Stewart of Law & Crime Network about the first degree murder conviction of Michael Dutkiewicz in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 

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NYT: The abdication

A must read: Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times writes: 

By almost any measure, Congress is failing. And flailing.

The government is shut down for the 23rd day; many federal workers aren’t getting paid, agencies and museums are closed, and top lawmakers are making no serious effort to resolve the impasse. Congressional staff members have begun referring to themselves as volunteers. The House has not voted since Sept. 19, and Speaker Mike Johnson won’t call members back. He has refused to seat a new Democratic member from Arizona one month after her election victory.

As the Trump administration shifts billions of dollars around to take care of its priorities during the shutdown with scant input from lawmakers, ignoring Congress’s clear constitutional supremacy over the power of the purse, Republicans in control have done nothing to push back. Nor have they exercised oversight of President Trump’s legally questionable military moves off the coast of Venezuela, his imposition of tariffs or anything else that has challenged the authority of their beleaguered institution.

“The Congress is adrift,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. “It’s like we have given up. And that’s not a good signal to the American public.”

No leverage

Trump and his aides have usurped congressional power with little G.O.P. resistance. In many instances, House and Senate leaders have willingly ceded their prerogatives and cheered on the president. The Constitution gives Congress responsibility for levying tariffs, and Trump’s may hurt rural America, but the Republicans who represent it have been mainly silent.

The same goes for the administration’s operations against alleged drug runners from South America. Despite bipartisan support for sanctions on Russia, Republicans reversed course and delayed action because of mixed signals from Trump. He seemed willing to restrain Moscow, then pulled back, then finally imposed sanctions unilaterally yesterday.

Trump himself suggested this week that Congress had little left to do after passing its sweeping domestic policy and tax measure. “We don’t need to pass any more bills,” he told Senate Republicans at the White House on Tuesday. “We got everything in that bill.”

Trump and his Republican allies have steamrolled Democrats this year. Now Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, is employing what little leverage Democrats have by denying Republicans the 60 votes they need to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the government. They want Republicans to extend health insurance subsidies and help millions avoid big premium increases.

But Republican leaders have made it clear that they view their role as subordinate to the president, saying they won’t open talks with their Democratic counterparts unless Trump allows them to do so. And he’ll sign off “as soon as Schumer reopens the government,” the speaker wrote on social media.

Balance of powers

There are evidently some limits to what Congress will swallow. Republicans this week pressed the White House to withdraw the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to head the Office of Special Counsel after Politico disclosed racist texts he had sent.

Senate Republicans also raised the alarm on behalf of cattle ranchers after Trump suggested that he might increase imports of Argentine beef to bolster markets there. The administration showed signs of heeding their calls.

But the funding impasse now has top Republicans talking about a yearlong extension of current federal spending, instead of a new budget. That would further undermine Congress’s authority, shifting the power to shape spending from the once formidable Appropriations Committees to the White House and its budget director, Russell Vought.

At a White House luncheon with G.O.P. members of Congress on Tuesday, Trump celebrated Vought as “Darth Vader,” for the fear provoked by the man behind the administration’s drive to strip spending power from Congress. “You’re doing a great job, I have to tell you,” Trump told Vought.

Then Senate Republicans applauded the man eager to render them irrelevant.

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Creators: Increase in Executions Doesn't Signal Support for Death Penalty

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
October 21, 2025

As of this writing, there have been 39 executions this year. That is a substantial increase over last year, and for that matter, over the last decade. The last time there were more than 30 executions in a single year was 2014.

Is this proof that support for the death penalty is growing? Hardly, executions are a lagging indicator of past support, while new death sentences and public opinion polls are a better barometer of current sentiment.

Why is an uptick in executions not an indicator of surging support for the death penalty? The 39 people executed this year were convicted long ago. The average stay on death row for those put to death so far in 2025 was 25.6 years.

More telling is the number of new death sentences each year. The number of death sentences imposed in the United States has declined significantly since a peak in 1996, when 316 death sentences were handed down. As of June 30, juries across the country imposed only 10 death penalty sentences. In recent years, the numbers have remained near record lows, with 26 new death sentences in 2024, 21 in 2023 and 18 in both 2022 and 2021.

What are Americans saying about the death penalty? According to an October 2024 Gallup poll, support for capital punishment was at a five-decade low in the United States. Overall, Gallup found 53% of Americans in favor of the death penalty, but that number masks considerable differences between older and younger Americans.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than half of young adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose the death penalty. Among those expressing political affiliation, support for the death penalty fell markedly in all groups and in all generations, with the exception of Republicans aged 60 and older, where support for the death penalty rose by two percent.

In spite of the declining support for the death penalty, on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump's first day in office, the White House issued a proclamation that included the following, "The Government's most solemn responsibility is to protect its citizens from abhorrent acts, and my Administration will not tolerate efforts to stymie and eviscerate the laws that authorize capital punishment against those who commit horrible acts of violence against American citizens." 

The White House's position demonstrates the divide in this country regarding state-sponsored death. This year's executions are concentrated in the South. All but three executions were carried out in the South. Florida, Texas, Alabama and South Carolina account for 27 of the 39 executions.

In addition, every state that carried out an execution so far this year voted for Trump in 2024.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, half of all U.S. states have abolished the death penalty or currently prohibit executions. In fact, 32 states have either abolished the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in more than a decade.

Clearly, outside the red states below the Mason-Dixon line the death penalty is slowly but surely falling out of favor.

Examining the death penalty in America's largest state provides some perspective on today's death penalty. Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1978, thirteen condemned inmates have been executed. During those 45 years, 166 death row inmates have died from natural causes, suicide, drug overdoses or undetermined causes.

The absurdity of the death penalty doesn't end there. In Pennsylvania, where there are just under 100 men on death row, only three men have been executed in more than 45 years. The dysfunction of Pennsylvania's death penalty has caused Governor Josh Shapiro to reevaluate his position. Shapiro, a former state attorney general, has come out against the death penalty: "At its core, for me, this is a fundamental statement of morality, of what's right and wrong in my humble opinion."

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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The Legal: Pa. Supreme Court: Warrantless Blood Draws Under Section 3755 Are Unconstitutional

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
October 16, 2025

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that warrantless blood draws based on “probable cause” of driving under the influence permitted by 75 Pa.C.S.A. 3755 are unconstitutional.

In the past, the Supreme Court ruled that 3755(a) required “hospital personnel, in cases where probable cause exists to believe that an emergency room patient has violated Pennsylvania’s DUI statute, to take blood samples for BAC testing.” There was no requirement in the statute, however, “that the BAC testing be conducted at the request of a police officer.” The only condition for a legal blood draw under Section 3755 was “the abstract requirement that probable cause exists to believe” there was a violation of the DUI statute.

The Supreme Court has acknowledged that Section 3755 was “inartfully drafted” because it “required a probable cause determination without specifying who is to make such determination, or how such an abstract requirement is to be met.”

Section 3755 is a component of Pennsylvania’s “implied consent” scheme, which, together with Section 75 Pa.C.S.A. 1547, is designed to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of driving under the influence (DUI) offenses by requiring motorists to submit to chemical testing in order to measure their blood alcohol concentration.

As stated expressly in Section 1547(a), the theory underlying the implied consent scheme is that, by electing to drive a vehicle in Pennsylvania, a person “shall be deemed to have given consent” to a search of his or her bodily fluids when a police officer develops “reasonable grounds to believe” that the person has committed a DUI offense.

Although Section 1547 allows a person who has been arrested for DUI to refuse a request and mandates that the testing not be conducted against the arrestee’s will, the statute discourages refusal by imposing consequences upon the exercise of that right, including driver’s license suspension, authorization to use the refusal as evidence of guilt in a future DUI prosecution, and imposition of enhanced criminal penalties upon the refusal to submit to breath testing, but not blood testing.

On June 17, 2025, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided Commonwealth v. Hunte, ___ A.3d ___, 2025 WL 1703981 (Pa. 2025).

Larry Wardell Hunte was the driver in a single-car accident that resulted in the death of his passenger. He was transported to the hospital, a state trooper who was with Hunte was unable to obtain his consent to a blood draw because he was unconscious.

The trooper requested that hospital personnel draw Hunte’s blood pursuant to Section 3755. The hospital proceeded to draw Hunte’s blood without his knowledge or consent, and without the trooper first obtaining a warrant for the blood draw.

The state police later obtained search warrants to get the blood sample and to have a laboratory test the sample to determine the defendant’s blood alcohol. Analysis of Hunte’s blood revealed the presence of alcohol and controlled substances.

Hunte was charged with homicide by vehicle while DUI and related offenses. He filed a motion to suppress the results of the blood draw on the basis that Section 3755 was unconstitutional. The trial court in Cumberland County granted Hunte’s suppression motion and found Section 3755 unconstitutional. As a result, the commonwealth filed a direct appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In analyzing Section 3755, the Supreme Court stated that “on its face, Section 3755 … purports to authorize the seizure of a person’s blood on the basis of probable cause to suspect DUI, without the need for a search warrant or the demonstration of any circumstance-specific exception to the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 8.”

Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, “The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed to by the affiant.”

The Supreme Court first examined whether blood draws in DUI cases fell under any exceptions to the warrant requirement. The Supreme Court determined that “statutory ‘implied consent’ cannot serve as an independent, categorical exception to the warrant requirement.”

The court also concluded that “warrantless blood searches are not authorized by any categorical understanding of exigent circumstances.” The court concluded that “neither the exigent circumstances doctrine nor consent—actual or ‘implied’—provides the categorical authority” to excuse the warrant requirement when conducting a blood draw.

Therefore, the high court ruled “Section 3755 is clearly, plainly, palpably, and indeed, facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment,” and also unconstitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

This decision does not limit the ability of medical personnel to draw blood for independent medical purposes. Blood drawn for medical purposes may be subject to a search warrant for purposes of measuring the blood alcohol content through subsequent testing.

About six weeks after Hunte was decided, the Pennsylvania Superior Court decided Commonwealth v. Persico, 2025 EDA 2024 (Pa.Super 2025). Joseph L. Persico was involved in a deadly automobile accident. After being transported to the hospital, medical staff ordered blood and urine tests. A vial of blood was sealed and locked in the lab without testing. A month later police obtained a search warrant and asked the hospital to test the blood for the first time.

The Superior Court found—in light of the Supreme Court striking down Section 3755—the commonwealth must establish the medical reason for drawing the blood at Persico’s suppression hearing.

No hospital personnel testified at the suppression hearing and the commonwealth presented no evidence that Persico’s blood draw occurred for independent medical purposes. As a result, the Superior Court found “the commonwealth entirely failed to meet its burden.”

In Commonwealth v. Jones-Williams, 279 A.3d at 508 (Pa. 2022), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that if there is no evidence that hospital personnel acted at the direction of police or as an agent of the police in conducting a blood draw, and instead, conducted the blood draw for “independent medical purposes” the blood could be obtained with a warrant.

However, in Commonwealth v. Shaw, 770 A.2d 295 (Pa. 2001) the high court made clear that a blood draw does not need to be conducted at the request of a police officer for Section 3755 to be applicable, but need only occur because of a perceived duty arising out of Section 3755 and, of course, the Supreme Court said in Hunte, “Section 3755 is facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

The Superior Court in Persico ruled “a subsequently obtained search warrant does nothing to cure the statute’s facial authorization of a warrantless search.” The blood draw was not for medical purposes and the trial court’s suppression of the blood test was affirmed by the Superior Court.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. He is the author of "The Executioner’s Toll." You can follow him on Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com. 

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Arizona executes man convicted of murdering four members of a family

 The 39th Execution of 2025

Richard Kenneth Djerf convicted of killing four members of a Phoenix family over 30 years ago in an act of revenge over stolen goods was put to death October 17, 2025 in Arizona’s second execution of the year, reported The Associated Press.

Djerf, 55, died by lethal injection for the killings of Albert Luna Sr. and Patricia Luna; their daughter Rochelle Luna, 18; and son Damien Luna, 5, at their home on Sept. 14, 1993. Djerf, who was in prison for over 29 years, chose not to seek clemency.

His execution was the fourth in the country this week and the 39th of the year.

“Those four innocent victims deserve justice, and their loved ones deserve closure,” said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose office sought the execution.

Prosecutors said Djerf blamed another family member, Albert Luna Jr., who did not witness the killings, for an earlier theft of electronics and a gun from his apartment. Djerf became obsessed with exacting revenge and went to the home months later claiming to be delivering flowers, prosecutors said.

Authorities say Djerf sexually assaulted Rochelle Luna and slashed her throat; beat Albert Luna Sr. with an aluminum baseball bat then stabbed and shot him; and tied Patricia and Damien Luna to kitchen chairs before fatally shooting them.

Djerf declined to make any last statement. He did not put up any resistance but took a few heavy breaths and emitted a brief snoring sound after the lethal drugs were administered, John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, said during a news conference Friday.

No representatives of the victims were present, Barcello said.

It took about 10 minutes for the execution team to insert the IV lines into his veins so the drugs could be administered. After the first of two pentobarbital shots were given, he made several sounds, including a grunt and puffing sound. About 15 minutes elapsed between the first pentobarbital shot and the declaration that he was dead.

Barcello said Djerf’s veins “were not optimal” and it required a few attempts to successfully place the IV.

“By all accounts the process went according to plan and without any incident,” Barcello said. A month ago, Djerf released a statement in which he acknowledged carrying out the killings and apologized for the pain he caused.

Arizona has been criticized in the past for taking too long to insert IVs during lethal injection executions. Experts say it should take seven to 10 minutes from the beginning of insertion until a proclamation of death.

The state has paused executions twice since 2014 amid concerns over its use of the death penalty.

There was a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by difficulties in obtaining the needed drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution was botched: Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, leading him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.

Executions resumed in 2022, and three prisoners were put to death that year. They were paused again in 2023 after Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the capital punishment protocol and Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes agreed not to pursue any executions.

The review ended in November 2024, when Hobbs fired a retired federal magistrate she had appointed to examine execution procedures, and the state corrections department announced changes in the lethal injection team.

Arizona last carried out a death sentence in mid-March, executing Aaron Brian Gunches for the 2002 killing of Ted Price.

With Djerf’s execution, there are now 107 prisoners on Arizona’s death row.

Five more executions are scheduled in the U.S. this year — two in Florida and one each in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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Mangino discusses SCOTUS and Voting Rights Act on WFMJ-TV21

Watch my interview on WFMJ-TV21 with Leslie Huff discussing the Voting Rights Act argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.

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