DOJ Continues To Circle the Drain – Update for July 23, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TOUGH TIMES FOR PROSECUTORS

The Dept of Justice is now requiring all Criminal Division Assistant U.S. Attorneys to maintain at least 25 open cases, “tightening the Trump administration’s grip on operational decisions previously left to US attorneys,” according to Bloomberg Law.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office communicated the informal “25 open matters” threshold to all 93 U.S. attorneys in recent weeks, with an emphasis on driving up public safety and fraud statistics, four people familiar with the new policy told Bloomberg Law. A formal policy change is still under development, they said.

The new policy comes as DOJ brass try to dispel criticism over personnel departures by purporting to show that the Department is doing more with less.

DOJ has hemorrhaged thousands of veteran attorneys since Trump returned to office due to the President’s revenge campaigns, immigration crackdown, and increasingly overwhelming workloads, Daily Beast reported last week.

The government has lowered hiring standards and offered signing bonuses, despite historically being deluged with applications from lawyers who were happy to take a pay cut in exchange for the prestige of DOJ service.

“A one-size-fits-all policy is unworkable,” said Mark Yancey, a former senior official in the DOJ’s Executive Office for US Attorneys. “These things need to be worked at the district level by the US attorney.”

The quota runs the risk of prosecutors feeling pressured to bring cases with insufficient evidence just to hit their targets, Yancey told Bloomberg Law.

Last week, Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General.  In the runup to the hearing, a letter signed by 2,649 lawyers and legal professionals was delivered to the Senate urging rejection of Blanche as AG.

“No one in the history of the Justice Department has moved directly from representing a president in criminal proceedings to running the institution that prosecuted those cases,” said Traci Feit Love, Executive Director of Lawyers for Good Government. “Todd Blanche isn’t America’s Attorney General. He is Donald Trump’s personal fixer with a federal badge. The Senate has a constitutional obligation to say no.”

During his confirmation hearing, Blanche was braced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) over BOP’s decision to place Ghislaine Maxwell (convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstrein commit sex and trafficking offenses) in a camp, a move some have alleged was in exchange for her testifying that President Trump committed no sex offenses with Epstein. Blanche told Booker that Maxwell was “receiving threats,” which merited the transfer.

Booker argued that under BOP policies, an inmate who receives threats is moved to solitary confinement, not to a minimum-security prison camp.

Blanche countered: “That’s not always true,” but Booker rejected that claim. “What is true is that someone who is accused of child sex trafficking under the Bureau of Prisons’ own policies is not put in a facility like this that seems clearly like a reward,” he said.

What the exchange failed to note that a May 2026 change in BOP designation policy I reported on last month grants the Attorney General the right to make any designation decision he or she pleases regardless of BOP policy. The unheralded change in designation policy that has been in place for 135 years provides ex post facto authority for the  Maxwell placement in a camp, as well as a tool that can be abused in years to come to benefit the Administration’s friends and punish its foes.

Questions over Blanche’s role in the DOJ “anti-weaponization” fund and in handling the Epstein files have left at least two Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee undecided. If just one votes ‘no,’ that could block the acting attorney general’s nomination from moving forward. A vote is likely later this month.

US Law Week, DOJ Sets Case Quotas for Line Prosecutors in Push to Boost Stats (July 13, 2026)

Daily Beast, Trump Justice Department Scrambles as Lawyers Flee in Droves (July 14, 2026)

Letter to Senators Grassley and Durbin, Senate Judiciary Committee (July 10, 2026)

The Hill, Booker: ‘Absurdity’ for Blanche to be concerned about Maxwell safety (July 16, 2026)

Christian Science Monitor, Blanche’s nomination for attorney general uncertain after hearing (July 17, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

A Complaint? I’ll Give You Something To Complain About… – Update for July 22, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

RETALIATION? NOT US…

The Marshall Project and NPR published the second report in their investigation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons grievance procedures last week, this one focused on alleged BOP retaliation against prisoners filing grievances complaining of BOP staff violence and sexual abuse.

A previous report found that only 1.75% of grievances filed in 2023 were granted. A majority were rejected for procedural errors or “administratively closed” for other reasons. The findings were based on a massive federal database, published by the Data Liberation Project, containing nearly 1 million federal prison grievance cases dating back to 2000.

Last week’s report observed that the dataset “only includes instances where incarcerated people were able to file a complaint at all. An unknown number of cases, especially those involving physical and sexual violence, go unreported, as the same officers accused of abuse can silence those trying to seek help, according to court records, lawsuits, and interviews with attorneys, incarcerated people, advocates and former bureau officials.”

A report by the Government Accountability Office last May found that fear of retaliation was a major impediment to reporting sexual abuse in federal prisons. Can’t be, BOP spokeswoman Randilee Giamusso said in response: Bureau policy prohibits retaliation of any kind, and the BOP reviews and investigates all allegations of abuse. She told NPR that the administrative remedy system – despite its under 2 pct approval rate – is “a safeguard intended to foster resolution within the system, not a barrier to court access.” She noted that “remedies related to sexual abuse can be submitted in other ways, such as “third-party reporting and [Prison Rape Elimination Act]-specific channels,” NPR reported.

The report also quoted current and former BOP prisoners with a different view. “The grievance system is a joke,” said ex-inmate Jimmy Hodge. “If you’re grieving over abuse, they’re going to harass you, they’re going to assault you, but you’re never going to get relief.”

It’s the same dilemma presented to anyone who faces violence in federal prison, the Report found: Try to file an administrative grievance and risk opening yourself up to retaliation — or stay quiet, endure the abuse, and forgo your chance to someday bring your case to court.

The fact that inmates must exhaust the grievance process before they can attempt to sue, NPR reported, gives prison staff a “chokehold over access to the courts,” according to former federal defender Colin Prince, now a civil rights attorney. “The guards functionally have power over whether a prisoner can sue them for their own misconduct,” he said. “The entire system is layer upon layer of bureaucratic insulation against accountability. It simply prevents prisoners from getting access to the courts.”

NPR, A guard punched him on camera. It was still nearly impossible for him to sue (July 13, 2026)

Data Liberation Project, Federal Inmate Complaints (July 6, 2024)

GAO, Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (Report No 26-107343, May 5, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

7th Circuit Says Courts Should Look for Reason to Accept Late-Filed Notice of Appeal – Update for July 20, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Incarcerated pro se litigants generally figure that just about any filing deadline can be extended. And judicial devices like the prison mailbox rule – that provides that a document is filed with a federal court on the day it is deposited in institution legal mail – contribute to the false sense of security that deadlines are more suggestions than mandates.

Mostly this is true. Courts are generally very indulgent of pro se filings that are a few days late. But a few deadlines are not easily overlooked by the courts. One is the deadline set for filing 28 USC § 2255 motions, a deadline fixed by statute that courts cannot extend. Another is the deadline for filing a notice of appeal (NOA) under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure Rule 4.

Rule 4 sets varying deadlines for filing NOAs depending on whether the claim is civil or criminal and whether the litigation included a government party. There are other twists: anyone would think that a 2255 motion challenging a conviction is a criminal matter with a short-fuse 14-day deadline for filing an NOA. But it’s not: habeas corpus is a civil action, even when it challenges a criminal conviction, so a 2255 NOA would be subject to the 30-day filing deadline under F.R.App.P. 4(a).

But it’s not. Because a habeas corpus necessarily includes the government (or one if its officials or employees) as an adverse party, F.R.App.P. 4(a) extends the deadline for filing a § 2255 or § 2241 NOA to 60 days.

The lax, prisoner-friendly deadlines of F.R.App.P. 4(a) make it easy to forget that in appealing a compassionate release motion under 18 USC 3582(c)(1), a prisoner is appealing a holding in a criminal case. Thus, the NOA deadline is a miserly 14 days under F.R.App.P. 4(b).

John Carter forgot. After his compassionate release was denied, he filed his NOA 21 days later, a week past the deadline. The government moved to dismiss his appeal.

F.R.App.P. 4(b)(4) contains a safety valve for people like John. It permits a district court to grant an extension of not more than 30 days after the original NOA due date. But John never filed an extension request, so he seemed to be out of luck.

Not so, the 7th Circuit said last week. Instead, while the Circuit “encourage[s] litigants to file a motion to present their best arguments for an extension,” it ruled that “considering the plain text of Rule 4(b)(4) (and recognizing that most untimely notices of appeal in criminal cases are filed by unsophisticated pro se prisoners)… if a notice of appeal is filed in a criminal case within Rule 4(b)(4)’s 30-day extension window, we should not dismiss the appeal until the district judge has made a finding on whether an extension of time is justified, even when the appellant has not filed a motion.”

The 7th’s holding joins a consensus among six other circuits that filing within the 30-day window triggers the district court’s obligation to determine whether there is good cause or excusable neglect for late filing. Of course, unless the prisoner files a motion explaining why the NOA was late, it is pretty hard for the district judge to make a favorable finding.

The best idea is to file on time. The next best idea is to file a motion justifying why the NOA is late.

United States v. Carter, Case No. 26-1406, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 21212 (7th Cir. July 17, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

It’s Tough to Show Compassion – Update for July 16, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

COMPASSIONATE RELEASE IS NEITHER EASY NOR ESPECIALLY FAIR

One study and two decisions last week illustrate the depressed state of compassionate release motions filed under 18 USC § 3582(c)(1)(A).

It is almost an article of faith among federal prisoners that among the first motions filed with a district court is a motion for the court to appoint a lawyer to file and argue whatever the movant wants to file. The implicit assumption is that the federal courts have an unlimited number of lawyers on their practitioners’ rolls awaiting such appointments and an unlimited budget to pay them with.

Neither is the case.

In a study published last week in the Ohio State Law Journal, Georgetown University law professor Amanda Rogers reported the jumbled state of affairs across the 94 federal districts regarding the appointment of lawyers to assist inmates with compassionate release motions. While there is neither a constitutional nor a statutory right to counsel in a post-conviction motion, the short answer is that a few do, a few don’t, and most of the districts are all over the map.

Seventeen districts (18%) appointed the Federal Public Defender office to represent previously represented defendants or those now indigent who may qualify for First Step Act relief or for compassionate release. A few courts limited representation to those who were previously entitled to appointed counsel or who are now unable to hire an attorney, when their potential compassionate release claims are based on medical condition or age.

Thirty-four courts (36%) streamlined disclosure by ordering the United States Probation Office or clerk to disclose the presentence report, BOP SENTRY reports, and other relevant records to the FPD or other counsel “for the purpose of determining eligibility for compassionate release.”

Forty-eight district courts (slightly more than half) have failed to issue any orders to guide appointment of counsel for compassionate release motions, although most of these recognize their discretion to appoint. Professor Rogers wrote that many of the courts “failed to issue similar orders for compassionate release motions… Judges vary greatly across district courts regarding (1) whether their discretion to appoint comes from precedent or statute and (2) what test to apply in appointing counsel in post-conviction motions.”

Most of those courts applied an “interests-of-justice test,” appointing counsel only when they concluded it was within the “interests of justice” to do so. The term is not defined by 18 USC § 3006A (the statute relating to appointment of counsel in criminal cases, and its meaning is thus every bit as squishy as you might think.

A few district courts issued orders that stopped appointment of counsel in compassionate release cases altogether. A few others have not outright prohibited it but have issued orders dissuading judges from appointing counsel in such cases.

Anyone wanting appointed counsel for a compassionate release motion needs a strong factual basis for the motion, the right district court, and plenty of luck.

Luck different from what Montez Hall experienced. From a rough childhood, Montez became an accomplished gang member, doing prior jail time for drugs and weapons possession. In one shooting, Montez or others he was with killed the girlfriend of a rival gang member. Finally, he and some others murdered a soldier after a nightclub altercation.

The Feds swept up the gang, and Montez went down hard. He pled to several racketeering activities, including drug trafficking, robbery, murder, bribery, and extortion, and to  18 USC § 924(j) – use of a gun in a crime where murder resulted. At age 20, Montez got a 30-year federal sentence.

In 2024, Montez filed a motion for compassionate release, arguing that his health issues, prison conditions, sentencing disparities, his youth at the time of the crime, and his post-offense rehabilitation supported resentencing him to time served. The district court reduced his sentence by eight years because Montez had engaged in substantial rehabilitative efforts: he had become a suicide watch companion, studied for a degree in business administration, learned new skills, renounced his gang, and began practicing a religion. Also, the court emphasized that Montez’s youth played a role in the crimes: he was just “18 (almost 19) at the time” of the murders.

A few weeks ago, the 6th Circuit reversed the 8-year reduction, holding that district courts can’t consider “youth” or “sentencing disparities” because “facts that existed at sentencing cannot later be construed as ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ to reduce a final sentence.” And district courts can’t consider a “change in the law” because of the non-retroactivity doctrine. That left only rehabilitation, which failed because 28 USC § 994(t) holds that “[r]ehabilitation of the defendant alone shall not be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason.

Meanwhile, last week, the 8th Circuit denied compassionate release to Isaac Loggins, who robbed a series of banks 20 years or so ago and got consecutive 18 USC § 924(c) sentences for using a gun. His 504 months would have been just 240 months if he had been sentenced after the First Step Act passed, and he sought compassionate release due to the gross disparity in his sentence.

If you think the Supreme Court’s Rutherford v. United States decision last May was fatal to Isaac’s motion, you’d be right. And the 8th Circuit agreed, ruling that “[c]onsistent with the Supreme Court’s binding decision in Rutherford, we hold that the First Step Act’s nonretroactive statutory changes to § 924(c), like other nonretroactive legal changes, cannot, whether offered alone or in combination with other insufficient factual considerations, constitute “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for a sentence reduction under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A).”

Rogers, Amanda, Importance of Counsel in Compassionate Release Cases, 86 Ohio State Law Journal 443 (July 9, 2026)

United States v. Hall, Case No. 24-6094, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 18561 (6th Cir. June 25, 2026)

United States v. Loggins, Case No. 24-1488, 24-1569, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 20175 (8th Cir. July 10, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Hunting for ‘Miscarriages of Justice’ in Hunter – Update for July 14, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

SCOTUS WAIVER CASE IGNITES ARGUMENT OVER WHAT CONSTITUTES A ‘MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE’

A Supreme Court decision from last term, Hunter v United States, may seem to be a yawner to many federal prisoners. But some legal commentators are suggesting that the decision, while “murky,” may be “the most important criminal case of the term.”

The importance of Hunter, which held that appellate and collateral attack waivers in plea agreements may not be enforced by the government where to do so would lead to a miscarriage of justice, has already led to a number of Supreme Court GVRs. (A ‘GVR’ is a single SCOTUS order that grants certiorari (the ‘G’), vacates the lower court decision (the ‘V’) and remands the case (the ‘R’) for consideration in light of a new Supreme Court decision that addresses the same issue that the GVR case raises).

An appellate waiver, in which a defendant waives his or her rights to appeal or file a collateral attack except in very limited cases, is a feature of virtually all of the 94% or so of federal criminal cases resolved each year by plea bargain. Some are bare bones. Others are breathtakingly expansive, waiving rights to direct appeal, habeas corpus under 28 USC 2241 and 2255, compassionate release motions, and even retroactive Guidelines changes.

Last month’s GVR list of 17 cases – an unusually large number – suggests that a lot of appellate cases will be exploring the limits of what constitutes a “miscarriage of justice” sufficient to set aside a plea agreement appellate waiver.

Last week, Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman listed “a notable group of early test cases for the ‘miscarriage of justice’ limit on the enforceability of sentencing appeal waivers” provided to him by a law professor reader of his blog:

    • A claim that the sentencing judge imposed sex offender registration for a non-registrable offense;
    • A claim that a restitution order was not supported by sufficient evidence;
    • A claim that the sentencing judge failed to give the defendant much less credit for substantial assistance to law enforcement than the government recommended;
    • A claim that defense counsel was ineffective in stipulating that a prior state conviction was a serious violent felony (increasing the federal sentence exposure), even though the ineffectiveness did not affect plea negotiations;
    • A claim that the defendant’s guilty plea to an offense (such as possessing a firearm as a drug user) after SCOTUS decisions (such as Hemani) undercut the constitutionality of the crime;
    • A claim that the sentencing judge erred in applying a Guidelines career offender enhancement to the defendant, which increased his guideline range by 60% or more; and
    • A claim that the sentencing judge imposed a substance abuse testing special condition on a defendant’s supervised release which delegated the frequency of testing to the Probation Office.

The Supreme Court did little more than say that a “miscarriage of justice” was something so outside the bounds of conscience as to call the entire “judicial system into disrepute.” William Otis, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney (and ex officio member of the Sentencing Commission) – a serial antagonist of Prof. Berman on the Sentencing Law and Policy blog site – complained, “I was an appellate lawyer in a big USAO for about 20 years, and I can tell you how many sentences fit that description — pretty darn close to zero.”

Being familiar with Mr. Otis’s positions over the years, I am hardly surprised that he never saw a draconian sentencing issue that shocked his conscience.

Another commentator observed that Hunter seemed to confirm validity of appeal waivers while noting problems with the “contract analogy” – the judicial fiction developed over years of plea agreement jurisprudence that such deals – including the defendant’s waiver of appellate and collateral rights – are just contracts between parties to be judged by the well-developed common law of contracts (leavened by some nod to the fact that the defendant is surrendering constitutional rights while the government is merely forgoing the chance to heap more punishment on its target).

Whether the Hunter “miscarriage of justice” is just a restatement of an existing standard or the dawn of an era where the fundamental balance between a defendant on the one hand and the might of the government on the other is, for now, as “murky” as Prof. Berman and Jonathan Wroblewski suggest it is in their excellent analysis of Hunter.

No doubt, we will see a lot of case-specific litigation in the coming years over when Hunter will let a defendant walk away from an appellate waiver.

Hunter v. United States, 608 U.S. —, 146 S. Ct. 1702, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 2558, 2026 LX 319193, 31 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 811 (June 18, 2026)

Sentencing Law and Policy, Early efforts in the hunt to understand Hunter’s new limits on the enforceability of sentencing appeal waivers (July 8, 2026)

Supreme Court, Order List (June 29, 2026)

Berman and Wroblewski, The Supreme Court Draws a Murky Line; The Sentencing Commission Should Help Clarify It  (June 22, 2026)

 ~ Thomas L. Root

BOP Boldly Foreys Into the 21st Century – Update for July 13, 2026

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IPADS FOR EVERYONE!

Sixteen years after Apple introduced the iPad, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has signed a contract with Securus Technologies to provide all BOP inmates with “corrections-grade tablets.”

Yeah, we’ve been here before. The BOP promised a tablet computer rollout four years ago. But this time (and I know better than to say this), maybe the BOP has it right.

The Bureau has selected Securus, which last year won a contract to replace all of the inmate tablets in the California prison system, as the vendor. The company said in a press release that it already “equips over 1,800 corrections agencies with 80-plus high-grade technology solutions to enhance public safety and optimize facility operations. Their offerings include secure communication, advanced monitoring, and the only corrections-grade Wi-Fi-enabled tablets…”

The tablets are not iPads, of course, but instead custom-built devices with limited features (such as no Internet connectivity). Still, they will to give prisoners access to a range of tools and resources that support reentry and communications with family. The devices will provide secure messaging and video services, and educational and rehabilitative programming.

The platform will also modernize many administrative and operational processes, “such as commissary ordering, request forms, program registrations and other routine workflows,” according to the BOP.

The rollout of the new tablet services will occur in phases across BOP institutions, the BOP said, with no schedule announced. The agency provided a similar phased rollout for the introduction of email, the electronic law library, and individual mp3 music players. The use of a vendor already involved in prison tablet placement and management suggests the rollout is for real.

To be sure, the BOP will benefit from the tablets as much as inmates will, with educational programming that can expand to reach all the people who need it, programs not limited by staff shortages, and paperwork reduction. And that’s not a bad thing. Any new program is likelier to succeed when everyone stands to gain from it. Additionally, reductions in the BOP’s workload may lead to greater responsiveness to legitimate inmate needs.

Not everyone is happy. The Luddites on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses, and Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency announced in late May that they had opened a joint investigation into California’s prisoner digital table program, based on reporting by the conservative City Journal that purported to “expose” how some prisoners are exploiting state-issued tablets to sexually exploit women and minors from their jail cells. The City Journal based its revelations on “dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations.”

In a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Republican chairs of those committees demand documents and communications “to inform the Committee’s oversight of federal criminal rehabilitation funding and whether federal funds were used to fund the state’s prisoner digital tablet program.” Oh, and to embarrass a blue state and its high-profile governor…

The tablets lack Internet connectivity, making the likelihood that the allegations are true suspect.

Writing in Forbes last week, Walter Pavlo suggested that the biggest beneficiary of the tablet rollout may be First Step Act programming. He said:

Rather than relying exclusively on classroom instruction, educational content can now be delivered directly to each inmate regardless of whether the institution is operating normally or under restricted movement. Academic courses, literacy instruction, vocational education and evidence-based programming can continue even when inmates are confined to their housing units.

This is particularly significant because Congress has increasingly emphasized evidence-based programming through legislation such as the First Step Act. The law encourages inmates to complete productive activities and recidivism reduction programs, yet prisons have often struggled to provide enough classroom space and instructors to meet demand.

According to Securus, the introduction of tablets in state facilities has been shown to reduce inmate rule infractions by over 20% and make use of contraband cellphones less attractive.

Correctional News, Federal Bureau of Prisons Awards Tablet Contract as Part of Broader Modernization Push (July 10, 2026)

Forbes, Federal Bureau Of Prisons Rolling Out E-Tablets (July 9, 2026)

BOP, Federal Bureau of Prisons Awards Transformational Inmate Tablet Contract to Modernize Communication, Education and Rehabilitation Services (July 8, 2026)

Business Wire, Federal Bureau of Prisons Selects Securus Technologies to Deliver Communications and Digital Infrastructure Nationwide (July 10, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Trump Picks Two for Sentencing Commission – Update for July 10, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TRUMP NOMINATES TWO FOR SENTENCING COMMISSION

President Trump last week announced the nominations of US District Judge John Cronan (Southern District of New York) and Jason Manion to the US Sentencing Commission.

The Commission has been short two commissioners for 18 months, and the impending loss of two more at the end of this year would have prevented the USSC from taking any action.

Judge Cronan, appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, spent his career in the DOJ, ending up as Acting Attorney General for the Criminal Division. Jason Manion is General Counsel and Senior Advisor to the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. He previously served as Counselor to the Attorney General and was an Assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

Because of additional looming vacancies, four new commissioners would have to be confirmed by the US Senate to bring the Commission to full strength. However, even approving these two before the end of this year would allow the Commission to continue functioning. Whether the Senate sees this as sufficiently important to act – unlike in Trump’s first term, when the nomination of Judge Henry Hudson withered on the vine (a fate that appointment richly deserved) is unclear.

Truth Social, Nomination of Jason Manion to USSC (June 29, 2026)

Truth Social, Nomination of John Cronan to USSC (June 29, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Another Lucy Football for Clemency – Update for July 9, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

250 PARDONS RUMOR ENDS NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER

Remember the Wall Street Journal’s mid-May report that White House officials were considering a plan for President Trump to issue 250 pardons by July 4th to commemorate the USA’s 250th birthday?

The rumor was that the clemency action might happen on June 14th – Flag Day and Trump’s birthday – or on Independence Day. The buzz was amplified by an Atlantic Magazine article last week, which reported that “the White House is discussing a possible announcement of presidential pardons as a centerpiece of the nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations over the Fourth of July weekend, according to 14 people familiar with the conversations. The idea has been described as ‘250 pardons for 250 years,’ an initiative that would put one of the most politically fraught constitutional powers at the forefront of the country’s birthday festivities.”

White House Pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson was said to be behind the initiative.

However, Trump’s 80th birthday came and went. Finally, on Friday, Trump announced his clemency list of 11 people, nine of whom had been convicted of tinkering with diesel emission controls on trucks. Another was a former lobbyist convicted of fraud who, since his release, had donated millions to Republican causes.

No people convicted of drug, gun or sex offenses made the cut.

While The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal had warned that Trump had not signed off on the “250 for 250” deal, the mere rumor sparked a frenzy among federal prisoners to petition for clemency (or update what was already on file). This predictable result occurred despite law professor and clemency expert Mark Osler warning in April that the Dept of Justice Office of Pardon Attorney is ‘a zombie office, in the sense that they’re assigning numbers to cases that come in, but it’s not clear that anything’s happening beyond that.”

According to a report issued by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) last December, less than 1% of Trump’s 1,700 pardons and commutations came through the OPA.

The Atlantic, The White House Considers Granting 250 Pardons for the Nation’s Birthday (June 29, 2026)

Wall Street Journal, White House Explores 250 Pardons to Mark America’s 250th Birthday (May 13, 2026)

New Yorker, Donald Trump’s Pardon Economy (April 27, 2026)

Ayanna Pressley, Trump’s Clemency Gap: How Trump’s Pardons are Ignoring the People Who Need Them the Most (December 15, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root

SIS Lieutenant Meets the Enemy… In the Mirror – Update for July 7, 2026

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THE UNTOUCHABLES

The poet Juvenal once asked, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”  Who will guard the guards themselves?

Inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the answer is the agency’s Special Investigation Service (SIS). SIS investigates both inmates and staff for everything from violations of the rules to criminal misconduct.

But that answer begs the next question. Who will guard the guards who are guarding the guards?

Prisoners tire of ever-increasing limitations on visitors, changes in mail delivery, more frequent shakedowns, all in the name of cutting down on contraband drugs, tobacco, cellphones and the like in the facility. Largely, they don’t think that contraband should be allowed but rather they bridle because the restrictive measures are punitive while ignoring the 9,000-lb elephant in the room, that is, the flow of contraband into prisons by staff.

Recently, the Denver Post reported that SIS Lt. Michael Popma, who works at FCC Florence, has been indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, providing contraband in prison and unlawful interception of oral communication. Lt. Popma, whom the Post said “was still employed as a lieutenant” as of last week, is accused of being paid more than $15,000 by an inmate’s family to “smuggle 123 cell phones, 415 electronic nicotine vaporizers and 274 bottles of alcohol into the prison,” according to the indictment.

Popma was hired at Florence in 2014 as a correctional officer and became a lieutenant in 2021. A BOP spokesman told the Post that while the agency “does not discuss potential allegations of staff misconduct or comment on matters that are the subject of legal proceedings… we generally can tell you that the Bureau of Prisons takes our duty seriously to protect the individuals entrusted to our custody as well as maintain the safety of correctional staff and the community.”

Popma, of course, is legally presumed innocent until proven otherwise, just as everyone who is now an inmate once was.

Denver Post, Colorado federal prison employee accused of smuggling cellphones, vapes into facility (June 23, 2026)

Indictment, United States v. Popma, Case No. 26-cr-130 (Doc. 1) (D.Colo, June 2, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

‘Fencing’ With the 4th Amendment – Update for July 6, 2026

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SCOTUS SAYS GEOFENCING IS A 4TH AMENDMENT SEARCH

The Supreme Court last week issued its final criminal decision of the current term (called the “October 2025 term,” because that’s when it started), holding that a “geofence warrant” is a “search” under the 4th Amendment and thus cannot be performed without a warrant.

A geofence search is an electronic method for the government to identify who was within a “geofence,” a defined physical area, during a specific period. It is a type of reverse search, used to identify a suspect when none is known, without the data gathered by the warrant. The government defines a limit, such as a half-mile circle from a jewelry store and then issues a demand that companies like Google produce information about cellphones pinging with their technology within a certain area within a particular time period. If three jewelers were robbed over three weeks, a “geofence” warrant for each area fr each of them will identify which cellphones were nearby during the time of each robbery.

The technique really narrows the number of suspects but also sweeps up location data for thousands of people unconnected to the event being investigated.

Opponents of geofencing argue that the potential for the government to misuse the data, to identify people participating in a protest against ICE, for example, is too great. The government argues that it may gather geofencing data without the need for a search warrant at all.

In Chatrie v. United States, the geofence warrant at issue sent to Google demanded that the tech company search the location histories of every one of its users in order to determine which ones were present in the vicinity of a bank robbery. That information ultimately led to the arrest of Okello Chatrie.

Okello argued that the geofence warrant was insufficient, that it amounted to “an unconstitutional general warrant [that] compelled Google to conduct a fishing expedition through millions of Google accounts, without any basis for believing that any one of them would contain incriminating evidence.”

Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan agreed. “The police conducted a search when they gained access to Location History data,” Kagan wrote. “An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information—even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed that Chatrie deserved to win but on the grounds that his “location history data qualifies as his personal property” protected warrantless search by the 4th Amendment.

Chatrie’s impact is uncertain. University of Pennsylvania law professor Michael Levy wrote last week that “[t]here are other geofence cases around the country, including one from a different federal court of appeals, one from Pennsylvania, and one from Colorado. In every one of them, the police had obtained a search warrant. Police and prosecutors have recognized the requirement for a warrant. Questions such as what the government must show to get such a search warrant, and how large the geofence can be, how long the time interval can be will have to wait for another day.”

Chatrie v. United States, Case No. 25-112, 2026 US LEXIS 2878 (June 29, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root