Presidential pardons impact funds for victims

Since his return to office last year, President Donald Trump has pardoned dozens of white-collar criminals. He’s also forgiven their fines, penalties, and restitution, to the tune of billions. Some of that revenue was supposed to go to a fund to help victims of violent crime — and the organizations that serve them are feeling the pinch, reported The Trace.

The Crime Victims Fund, established in 1984 by the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, is sustained by criminal fines and penalties from convictions in federal cases, typically white-collar prosecutions.

All of that money is required by law to be deposited into the fund. The money is distributed to state and local programs including domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child abuse treatment programs. Gun violence survivors and the families of victims who died rely routinely on VOCA funding to reimburse medical expenses, funeral costs, and lost wages.

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ICE scrapes bottom of the barrel in employment targets

Their backgrounds stand out. And not in a good way.

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer, reported The Associated Press.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress to enact President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The president put a premium on swift action, and for ICE that meant rapid-fire recruitment and hiring, which in turn led to new employees with questionable qualifications. Their backgrounds and training have come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents in which ICE agents used excessive force.

“If vetting is not done well and it’s done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don’t know what they are doing,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

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Zoosman: Israeli death penalty most discriminatory law 'the world has witnessed since Hitler's Third Reich'

 Michael J. Zoosman writes at JuristNews:

Israel’s new death penalty law is one of the most discriminatory pieces of execution legislation that the world has witnessed since Hitler’s Third Reich. This incontrovertible truth is yet another reason why the Israeli Knesset’s recent passage of its heinous “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law on March 30 has effectively defiled this year’s observance of Yom Hashoah, the consummate Holocaust commemoration for Israel and Jews worldwide that is taking place as I write these very words. 

Let there be no doubt: the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” in Israel and abroad are against the death penalty in all cases. As the co-founder of this group, I am keenly aware that this has been the case since our founding in 2020, from the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting in 2018 to the  Washington, D.C., Israeli Embassy murders in 2025, and countless other Jewish and non-Jewish men and women condemned to death across the world. We carry the torch of Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, and passionate death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), who, when asked about capital punishment, responded without equivocation that “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”

L’chaim members adhere to Wiesel’s reflections on the death penalty in the wake of the Holocaust, firmly stating: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to be an agent of the Angel of Death.” Countless other Jewish and rabbinic abolitionists since the Holocaust have shared Wiesel’s position. Many of them recognized the direct Nazi legacies of various execution methods in the United States and elsewhere, from lethal injection and gassing to the firing squad.  

Nazi execution laws and protocols were arguably the most racist and vile of the modern era. They functioned not as a system of justice, but rather as a tool for racial persecution, social engineering, and the systematic elimination of the entire Jewish people and other perceived enemies. The laws targeted specific groups — primarily Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, and political opponents — based on the Nazi ideology of biological racism and the concept of “racial purity.”

Israel’s new death penalty law is far from the same as the above Nazi legislation. Yet, by calling for death specifically for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, while effectively excluding Israeli citizens and residents, it achieves something that few other societies have done since the time of the Nazis by entrenching an openly two-tiered system of capital “justice.” There can be no doubt that the Nazis’ targets of their dehumanization campaign were wholly innocent of any crimes. They selected their victims for who they were, not what they may or may not have done. This unequivocally contrasts with the would-be victims of Israel’s death penalty law, each of whom is ostensibly convicted of murderous terrorist actions. Still, a similar campaign of dehumanization of those ultimately condemned to death links both systems. The underlying narrative identifying perpetrators of any terrorist act as “monsters” is precisely the kind of thinking that allows an otherwise reasonable person—or “civilized society,” per Wiesel—to deem state-sponsored killing digestible. It is an insidious process that essentially removes the “human” from human rights. 

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Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Suck up to the President goes after whistleblower

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asked the Justice Department to investigate two former government officials who played a central role in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry, reported CBS News..

A spokesperson for Gabbard's office confirmed that she drafted criminal referrals for a whistleblower and a former intelligence community watchdog, but did not detail what specific crimes are alleged. Whether to pursue a criminal investigation following a referral is up to prosecutors at the Justice Department.

The referrals came after Gabbard criticized how former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson handled the 2019 whistleblower complaint earlier this week, releasing a trove of documents linked to Atkinson.

The whistleblower — whose identity has not been formally disclosed — reported an "urgent concern" about President Trump's request for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. The complaint also expressed concerns about how records of a Trump-Zelenskyy phone call were handled, and about the role of Mr. Trump's then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in the U.S.'s relationship with Ukraine.

"I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election," the whistleblower wrote. "This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals."

Mr. Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives in late 2019, but was acquitted in a Senate vote mostly along party lines in early 2020. He has long denied any wrongdoing, referring to his phone call with Zelenskyy as "perfect."

Gabbard alleged in a post on X Monday that "deep state actors" in the intelligence community "concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people and impeach duly-elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019." She argued that the inspector general relied on "second-hand evidence" in looking into the whistleblower complaint.

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Man forgotten on death row has sentence overturned after 48 years

Texas’ highest criminal court has overturned the death sentence of a Harris County man who was on death row for nearly half a century, reported The Texas Tribune.

Clarence Curtis Jordan, 70, was first convicted in 1978 of murdering Joe L. Williams, a 40-year-old Houston grocer. Jordan, who is intellectually disabled, was then found in subsequent years to be incompetent and therefore could not be executed. But for almost four decades, he did not have an attorney to advocate for him and was seemingly forgotten on death row.

Jordan was finally appointed a new attorney in 2024 as news emerged that there were numerous delayed criminal appeals in Harris County, some of which were lost for more than a decade. The revelation came amid an effort by the county to reduce the backlog in its criminal courts.

Following new legal advocacy, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Jordan’s death sentence in a Thursday ruling. The panel also sent the case back to Harris County for a new punishment proceeding.

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CREATORS: Police Officer Involved Killings Show Modest Decline

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 14, 2026

The Washington Post kept track of all police officer-involved shootings that resulted in death. The Post began collecting the data in 2015 because no one else was keeping track. According to a 2014 Wall Street Journal article, made part of the U.S. Senate official record, criminal justice experts lamented that there was no reliable national data on how many people are shot and killed by police officers each year.

Although national research groups were keeping data and statistics on topics ranging from how many people were victims of unprovoked shark attacks to the number of hogs and pigs living on farms in the United States, no one was keeping track of officer-involved shootings.

Then, of course, as The Post began massive newsroom layoffs, the police shootings data collection ended. Researchers can still utilize the data from 2015 to 2024. The data reveals that police in this country shoot and kill about 1,000 people a year. However, the data is limited to police involved shooting deaths, not all deaths at the hands of police.

Although officer-involved shootings are relatively rare in comparison with the millions of interactions between the police and the public, several high-profile fatal encounters with police —beginning with the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., Beanna Tayler's 2020 killing in Louisville, Ky. and Goerge Floyds death by police in Minneapolis, Minn., in 2022, — piqued the interest of researchers and protesters alike.

Campaign Zero, a non-profit research institute, released an analysis of deaths caused by police in 2025, revealing the first decline in police killings in six years. Campaign Zero tracks all deaths by police, not just shooting deaths. Therefore, there is an inconsistency in the numbers. For instance, in 2024, Campaign Zero listed 1,365 killings and The Post listed 1,175. Campaign Zero recorded 1,329 killings in 2023 and The Post listed 1,169.

According to Campaign Zero, there were only six days in 2025 when law enforcement did not kill someone. On average, police killed 3.6 people per day — one person every 6.67 hours.

The data from Campaign Zero has some room for optimism. In 2025, police killed 1,314 people in the United States — a 5% decrease from 2024.

The stability in the annual number of homicides by police can be attributed to a statistical tool known as the probability theory. According to The Post's database, the probability theory holds that the quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture or extreme restrictions on gun ownership.

The data also reveals an alarming trend. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other people approached or stopped by law enforcement, according to a study released by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Does that mean it is hopeless and no matter what we do, 1,000 people a year or more are going to die after an encounter with police? Not necessarily.

There are examples of changes in training or "use of force protocols" that have saved lives. In New York City in 1971, there were 314 officer-involved shootings, 93 of which were fatal. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told The Washington Post, "The following year the city passed a law prohibiting officers from shooting into vehicles."

Within two years, the city reduced police shootings to 121, with 41 fatal. By 2015, after a period when crime dropped precipitously, the number had fallen to 23 people shot by police with eight killed.

Officer-involved shootings can be reduced, and lives saved, with training and a change in the warrior culture of policing.

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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PA faces daunting resentencing effort after Supreme Court ruling on LWOP

 Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave lawmakers 120 days to find a legislative solution after ruling mandatory life sentences for second degree murder charges are unconstitutional under the state’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The ruling is likely to kick off what could be the largest resentencing effort the commonwealth has ever undertaken, though the timeline will depend on decisions made by lawmakers.

In Pennsylvania, someone can be charged with second-degree murder even if prosecutors can’t prove they intended to cause another person’s death. In some cases, a person can be charged without actually killing someone. Prosecutors just need to prove someone died while the person charged committed a felony. That charge comes with a mandatory life sentence without parole, which the state’s high court ruled unconstitutional last month.

Last Thursday, lawmakers on the state House Judiciary Committee were set to vote on a bill that would have addressed the problem by making those serving such sentences eligible for parole after 25 years, and creating a 50-year maximum sentence for future second degree murder charges.

But as the panel’s meeting started, its chairman, Rep. Tim Briggs (D-Montgomery), announced he would be pulling the bill from consideration.

“These people have been serving long, unconstitutional sentences, and I will not put them in a worse position than what I believe the Supreme Court would order for them,” Briggs said about those currently serving life sentences without parole on second degree murder charges. “I am confident that as long as we all work together, we will come up with a bill we can all be proud of.”

Briggs said that he and other lawmakers on the committee were seeking input from people and organizations like public defenders, district attorneys and victims advocates.

But while some groups had issues with components of the proposal, the move rankled criminal justice advocates who have long sought to eliminate mandatory life sentences for those convicted of felony murder. 

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