Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed new crime accountability laws on Tuesday and issued a direct challenge to the Florida House of Representatives: impeach the judge whose decision to release a convicted sex offender on bond allegedly set the stage for the murder of a five-year-old girl.
The judge in question is Leon County Judge Tiffany Baker-Carper, who allowed Daniel Spencer to remain free after his conviction in an underage sex sting case. Spencer was later charged, along with Chloe Spencer, in the 2025 killing of his stepdaughter, Missy Mogle. The state is seeking the death penalty for both.
The law DeSantis signed, known as Missy's Law, exists because a judge decided that a convicted sex offender belonged on the streets instead of behind bars. A child is dead. And the governor wants consequences that extend beyond new statutes.
Baker-Carper released Spencer on bond before sentencing. That is the fact at the center of this story, and no amount of procedural abstraction changes what followed. A man convicted in an underage sex sting walked free, returned to his household, and now faces capital murder charges in the death of a five-year-old girl who should have been under his protection.
DeSantis did not mince words at the news conference, according to Fox News:
"This should be such an easy call to make sure that this guy was put behind bars, and this judge refused to do it, knowing the risks. And the result has obviously been a tragedy."
He called the situation "an outrage" and "a miscarriage of justice, a dereliction of judicial duty." Then he turned to the remedy.
DeSantis pointed out that the Florida Legislature holds more than the two-thirds majority needed to impeach a judge, and he made clear he expects them to use it.
"To my friends in the Florida House of Representatives, I don't think what you've done is enough. You have the power, and you have sufficient numbers in your chamber, to impeach this judge, Tiffany Baker-Carper."
This is not a symbolic gesture. The governor is telling legislators that passing laws alone will not solve the problem if the judges who apply them continue exercising discretion in favor of dangerous criminals. New statutes are necessary. They are not sufficient.
"Until you start holding these judges accountable, they are going to continue to find ways to benefit the criminal element."
DeSantis added that he believes some Democrats would support impeachment given the facts of the case. Whether that prediction holds remains to be seen, but the underlying logic is sound: this is not a close call on the merits.
The law closes the gap that Baker-Carper exploited. Under Missy's Law:
In short, the law removes judicial discretion in exactly the scenario that killed Missy Mogle. DeSantis signed House Bill 1159 alongside it as part of a broader package of crime accountability measures.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier framed the law's origin plainly:
"Last year, we proposed Missy's Law after the tragic murder of 5-year-old Missy Mogle at the hands of a convicted, abusive pedophile who was allowed to remain out on bond by Judge Tiffany Baker."
Uthmeier noted that the law "removes judicial discretion and ensures dangerous criminals are locked up after conviction."
DeSantis himself offered the sharpest summary of why the law matters:
"If we had this bill in place then, Missy would be alive today."
Baker-Carper won her judicial seat on Nov. 3, 2020, becoming the youngest woman and youngest Black candidate elected judge in Florida's 2nd Judicial Circuit. That biographical detail circulated widely at the time as a milestone. It means nothing to Missy Mogle's family.
The pattern DeSantis identified extends well beyond one judge in Leon County. Across the country, the criminal justice reform movement has produced a class of judges and prosecutors who treat leniency as a virtue in itself, divorced from the specific danger a defendant poses. Convicted sex offenders are not low-level drug possession cases. They are not teenagers caught shoplifting. The distinction matters, and the refusal to make it has real victims.
The progressive theory of criminal justice holds that the system is too punitive, that incarceration should be a last resort, and that judges need more discretion to tailor outcomes to individual circumstances. The Missy Mogle case is what that discretion looks like when it collides with a predator. A judge had the facts. A judge had a conviction. A judge chose leniency. A child died.
This is why conservatives have argued for years that removing discretion in cases involving violent and sexual offenders is not harshness. It is baseline competence. You do not need to be a tough-on-crime firebrand to believe that a man convicted in an underage sex sting should not be walking free before sentencing. You need only possess common sense and a minimal regard for the safety of children.
Laws change the rules going forward. Impeachment addresses the failure that already happened. DeSantis is pursuing both, and the distinction matters.
Missy's Law ensures that future judges cannot replicate Baker-Carper's decision. But the impeachment call sends a message that the judiciary is not a consequence-free zone. Judges who exercise discretion recklessly, who prioritize leniency ideology over public safety, should face removal. Not reassignment. Not a stern letter. Removal.
"Some of these judges are going to find other ways to benefit the criminal element unless they know there's going to be a really significant check and balance that's going to be administered to them."
The Florida House now has a choice. The governor has given them the political framework and public justification. The facts of the case are not ambiguous. The legal authority exists. What remains is the will to act.
A five-year-old girl is dead because a judge decided a convicted sex offender deserved freedom before his sentence was imposed. The law that should have prevented it now exists. The question is whether the people who let it happen will ever be held to account.
Missy Mogle cannot answer that question. The Florida House can.
Nicole Daedone, the 58-year-old founder of the San Francisco-based "orgasmic meditation" company OneTaste, was sentenced Monday to nine years in federal prison after a Brooklyn jury convicted her of grooming workers and members to have sex with clients and investors. Judge Diane Gujarati ordered Daedone to forfeit $12 million and pay roughly $890,000 in restitution to seven victims, the New York Post reported.
Former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz was sentenced Monday afternoon to six and a half years for her role in the same conspiracy. Nine former OneTaste employees took the stand during trial. Their testimony painted a picture of a company that operated like a cult, one where workers were manipulated into performing sexual acts and forced to labor for little to no pay for more than a decade.
Federal prosecutors had asked for 20 years. They got less than half. But the sentence Gujarati handed down still carries a blunt message: wrap exploitation in the language of wellness and empowerment, and a federal court will still call it what it is.
Gujarati left no room for the spiritual gloss that OneTaste and its defenders tried to apply. She told the courtroom that Daedone "took actions that stripped victims of their dignity" and that "she does not appear to be remorseful."
Then she went further, dismantling the company's carefully cultivated mystique:
"What she was doing wasn't about enlightenment or operating in a different dimension. It wasn't a game or a show. It wasn't Harry Potter or the Matrix. It was criminal."
When given the chance to address the court before sentencing, Daedone, standing in a beige jail jumpsuit, declined. "No, thank you," she said. That was it.
The contrast between a defendant who had nothing to say and a courtroom full of people living with the consequences of her decisions told its own story. The broader pattern of powerful figures facing accountability for the exploitation of vulnerable people has become a recurring theme in recent years, as seen in Ghislaine Maxwell's refusal to testify before House Oversight without a clemency deal.
Federal prosecutors laid out the mechanics of Daedone's operation in their sentencing request. They accused her of recruiting victims who had suffered past traumas by claiming she could help fix their sexual suffering. Once inside the organization, those recruits found something very different from healing.
Prosecutors said Daedone and Cherwitz used economic pressure, psychological manipulation, intimidation, and sexual coercion to force followers into sex acts they found uncomfortable or repulsive, including with prospective investors or clients, the Washington Times reported.
One detail from the prosecution's filing stands out for its sheer cruelty. Prosecutors said the company enlisted an employee identified as a rape victim to "reenact" the incident before a crowd for a so-called taboo course. The employee performed oral sex on a partner while being told "I love you", the same words her real rapist had used.
That is not therapy. That is not wellness. That is the systematic re-traumatization of a vulnerable person for the benefit of a business.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella put it plainly after the sentencing, as AP News reported:
"Coercion disguised as wellness or empowerment is still exploitation and it is a crime that causes harm to vulnerable victims."
Prosecutors framed the entire enterprise in a single line from their court filing: "Hers was a crime of exploitation masquerading as empowerment."
One former employee, identified only as Michal, who asked that her last name not be published, told the court that her time at OneTaste left her in financial ruin and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I trusted Nicole... in reality, I fell into Nicole's trap. I was a perfect target because I was a vulnerable woman looking to improve my life."
Michal's account was not unique. Nine former employees testified during the trial. They described years of coercion, manipulation, and unpaid or barely paid labor, all wrapped in the language of personal growth and sexual liberation. The financial harm alone stretched across more than a decade.
The case of OneTaste joins a broader pattern of powerful individuals and networks exploiting the vulnerable while shielding themselves behind wealth and influence. Ongoing investigations into the Epstein case have raised similar questions about how long such operations can persist before anyone is held to account.
Daedone's lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, pushed back on the severity of the case. She noted that none of the accusers described being the victim of physical violence, and that Daedone was charged and convicted only of forced labor conspiracy, not sex trafficking or sexual assault.
"There are still many people today who see Nicole Daedone as a transformative force."
That claim had some backing, at least on paper. More than 200 people submitted letters to the court before sentencing. More than two dozen members of OneTaste attended the hearing.
Among the letter-writers was Van Jones, the CNN correspondent and former adviser to President Barack Obama, who described Daedone as "a woman of uncommon wisdom, grace and moral courage." The company had also once gained an endorsement from Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop website.
Celebrity endorsements do not age well when a federal jury returns a guilty verdict. And the fact that prominent media figures and lifestyle brands lent their credibility to OneTaste raises its own uncomfortable questions about the vetting standards of the wellness industry. Congressional scrutiny of powerful networks that evade accountability has intensified in recent years, as reflected in the House panel's push for contempt charges in the Epstein investigation.
OneTaste has since been rebranded as the Institute of OM. Its current CEO, Anjuli Ayer, attended the sentencing hearing and spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.
"This is a terrifying day for freedom. Once persuasion becomes a crime, anyone can be a defendant, and anyone can be a victim. We must correct the record or everyone will suffer."
Ayer's framing, that the conviction threatens free speech and persuasion, is worth examining. A federal jury heard weeks of testimony from nine former employees. It weighed the evidence. It convicted. A judge reviewed the record and imposed a substantial sentence along with $12 million in forfeiture and nearly $900,000 in restitution. Calling that outcome a threat to "freedom" is a remarkable repackaging of a forced labor conviction.
Bonjean's narrower legal point, that the conviction was for forced labor conspiracy, not sex trafficking, is technically accurate. But the distinction offers cold comfort to the women who testified that they were coerced into sexual acts with clients and investors, worked for years without real pay, and emerged with PTSD and shattered finances.
The wellness industry has long operated in a gray zone where charismatic leaders can build enormous followings with minimal oversight. OneTaste thrived in that space. It attracted celebrity endorsements, media coverage, and paying members. The growing public demand for accountability when powerful figures face scrutiny for their conduct reflects a broader shift in how these cases are treated.
Nine years is less than the 20 prosecutors sought. But it is a serious federal sentence for a forced labor conspiracy conviction. Combined with $12 million in forfeiture and restitution to seven victims totaling about $890,000, the financial consequences are substantial.
Cherwitz's six-and-a-half-year sentence signals that the court viewed the former sales director as more than a passive participant. Former employees testified that both women ran the business like a cult and manipulated workers into performing sexual acts.
Daedone sold OneTaste at some point before her conviction, and the company continues to operate under its new name. The question of whether the organization's culture has actually changed, or merely its branding, remains open.
Judge Gujarati's language at sentencing left little ambiguity about how the court viewed the operation. She rejected every attempt to cast the enterprise as spiritual practice, alternative therapy, or anything other than what the jury found it to be: a criminal conspiracy that stripped vulnerable people of their dignity and their labor.
When exploitation wears the mask of enlightenment, the people who pay the price are always the ones who showed up looking for help. The court, at least, saw through it.
Los Angeles police arrested 74 people for allegedly failing to disperse after Saturday's "No Kings" demonstration in downtown Los Angeles turned from a peaceful march into a confrontation outside a federal detention center, with some protesters hurling chunks of concrete at officers and a masked demonstrator spray-painting "Kill Your Local ICE Agent" on a nearby surface, Fox LA reported.
The arrests, 66 adults and eight juveniles, came after hours of warnings, a citywide tactical alert, and what the LAPD described as non-lethal crowd-control measures deployed by federal authorities near the intersection of Alameda and Temple streets. One additional person was arrested on suspicion of possessing a dirk or dagger.
The rally had started peacefully enough. Tens of thousands gathered at Gloria Molina Grand Park, across from City Hall, around 2 p.m. Saturday. A roughly 1.5-mile march kicked off at 3 p.m. from Spring Street. But by late afternoon, a faction of demonstrators peeled away from the main crowd and headed for the federal detention center, and the tone changed fast.
Around 5:10 p.m., the LAPD's incident commander declared a citywide tactical alert after a group of demonstrators began kicking a fence in front of the federal detention center at Alameda and Temple. The LAPD posted on social media that protesters "have been warned multiple times by federal authorities to not attempt to tear down the gate and not throw items."
Federal authorities then used what the LAPD described as "non-lethal measures to move crowd back." The Washington Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security said some protesters threw rocks, bottles, and broken concrete blocks at officers, injuring two who received medical attention.
By around 7:25 p.m., the LAPD posted that "multiple arrests being made" were underway. The tactical alert was canceled at 8:03 p.m.
Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, did not mince words on social media:
"To those who were smashing concrete blocks and throwing them at our officers, we have you on video. We will find you and arrest you too. You've been warned."
Earlier Saturday, Essayli had posted a sharper warning still, writing that his office had "authorized immediate arrests for anyone assaulting law enforcement. You will be arrested and charged with a federal felony." He also shared a video showing a masked demonstrator spray-painting the threatening phrase near the Metropolitan Detention Center, called it "a federal crime," and posted the DHS tip line number, 866-347-2423, asking the public for help identifying the individual.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass weighed in on social media with a statement that read more like a greeting card than a response to concrete being thrown at federal officers. "Peaceful protest is our constitutional right," Bass wrote. "When people come together to make their voices heard, that is democracy in action. Please stay safe and look out for one another."
What Bass did not address: the violence, the graffiti calling for the killing of ICE agents, or the 74 arrests. Her statement made no mention of the demonstrators who tried to tear down a fence at a federal facility, nor the officers struck by debris. The gap between her words and the evening's events speaks for itself.
The Washington Examiner reported that authorities declared an unlawful assembly after a group of roughly 150 to 200 protesters allegedly threw rocks, bottles, and concrete at Department of Homeland Security officers. At least two officers were struck by concrete and needed medical care. The Examiner's count put total arrests at 75, one higher than the LAPD figure reported by City News Service.
The administration's handling of arrest-related public communications has itself become a flashpoint. Federal judges have recently clashed with the DOJ over social media posts publicizing arrest photos, a sign that law enforcement transparency in politically charged cases is under growing judicial scrutiny.
The Los Angeles demonstration was the largest flashpoint in what organizers called a nationwide day of action against the Trump administration. The group 50501 claimed more than 3,300 events across all 50 states, with at least eight million participants, a figure it called "the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in US history." That claim has not been independently verified.
Newsmax reported that organizers said more than 3,100 events were registered, with demonstrations also held in Europe and other countries. Most were described as peaceful. Los Angeles was the notable exception.
Within Los Angeles County alone, at least 40 separate demonstrations took place Saturday, with events in Burbank, Culver City, Hollywood, Long Beach, Malibu, Venice, Woodland Hills, and Rancho Palos Verdes, where a protest was held outside Trump National Golf Club. More than a dozen additional events were held across Orange County, in cities including Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Santa Ana, and Westminster.
In Malibu, Doug Emhoff, husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke at a rally held near their home. Comedian Kathy Griffin and actor Sam Elliott also attended. The downtown Los Angeles event featured scheduled speakers including actress Jodie Sweetin and Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which bills itself as the nation's largest union representing public school teachers and other education personnel.
Organizers framed the day in sweeping terms, stating: "As unconstitutional deportations and inhumane treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers continue across the United States, and as illegal and unauthorized wars are perpetrated around the globe, Los Angeles unites in solidarity with a peaceful march and rally." That framing sat uneasily beside the evening's images of torn fencing, thrown concrete, and tear gas.
Andre Andrews Jr., a Navy veteran and independent journalist who was present, drew a clear line between the marchers and the agitators. As Breitbart reported, Andrews said: "The peaceful protest was good for the cause. You have the right to do that. But the other people, they were definitely causing problems."
That distinction matters. Tens of thousands of people showed up, marched, and went home. A smaller group chose a different path, one that led to a federal detention center, a torn fence, and felony warnings from a U.S. Attorney's office.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson dismissed the protests entirely. She told the New York Times that "the only people who care about these Trump derangement therapy sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them." Whether that framing holds when two federal officers are receiving medical treatment for concrete impacts is another matter.
Several questions remain open. What specific criminal charges, if any, will be filed against the 74 arrestees beyond failure to disperse? How many of the arrests were tied to alleged violence versus simply remaining in the area after the dispersal order? Were any protesters injured? The LAPD has not publicly detailed the non-lethal measures used, and the specific federal agency whose officers were targeted with thrown debris has not been identified.
Caltrans had anticipated trouble. Crews placed security gates along on- and off-ramps to the Hollywood (101) Freeway in the downtown area on Friday, a day before the rally. Streets in the Civic Center area, including sections of Broadway and Spring Street, were blocked Saturday. The city knew what was coming. The question is whether it did enough to prevent the predictable escalation.
The broader pattern is hard to miss. When defendants in politically charged cases test the boundaries of legal accountability, and when federal agencies face internal upheaval over investigations with political overtones, the public's confidence in equal enforcement of the law erodes. What happened outside that detention center Saturday evening was not a gray area. Throwing concrete at officers is a crime. Spray-painting threats against federal agents is a crime. Essayli said as much plainly.
The right to protest is not in question. The First Amendment protects speech, assembly, and the airing of grievances, even loud, angry ones. What it does not protect is assaulting federal officers, attempting to breach a detention facility, or painting messages inciting violence against law enforcement.
Mayor Bass chose to celebrate "democracy in action" while saying nothing about the violence. Organizers chose to frame the day as peaceful solidarity while a faction of their crowd threw concrete. The gap between the rhetoric and the record is wide enough to drive a Caltrans truck through.
When leaders refuse to name what went wrong, they guarantee it will happen again. And the people left to deal with the consequences, the officers, the taxpayers, the residents whose streets were blocked and whose city was vandalized, deserve better than platitudes about democracy in action.
Scottsdale police confirmed Sunday that a body pulled from an Arizona canal belongs to 28-year-old Passion Schurz, a Native woman whose family reported her missing just one week earlier, and whose advocates say was denied a statewide alert designed to protect Indigenous people exactly like her.
Schurz's body was found Saturday, March 28, near Scottsdale and Indian Bend roads. Police said they identified her based on her tattoos and physical description. A medical examiner is now working on a full report, including toxicology results. The cause of death has not been determined.
The timeline is short and troubling. Schurz was last seen on March 19. Her family reported her missing to Salt River Police on March 22. Six days later, her body turned up in a canal. No suspect has been named. No indication of foul play, or the absence of it, has been publicly disclosed. What has been disclosed is that advocates tried and failed to get authorities to issue a Turquoise Alert, Arizona's specialized notification system for missing Indigenous people.
Leila Woodard, an employee of the Missing in America Network, told the Herald that Schurz's family contacted her after the young woman vanished. Woodard described the circumstances as immediately alarming.
"She left without her wallet and her purse, which she never did that. And so just the circumstances around her being missing was very concerning."
Woodard painted a picture of a woman deeply connected to her community and her children. Fox 10 Phoenix reported that Schurz's family reached out to Woodard after Schurz was last seen on March 19.
"She was very loved by her family and community in that she was a mother, you know, and this was very unusual."
The Scottsdale Police Department released a statement extending condolences but offering few details about the investigation itself.
"This is not the outcome anyone looking for Passion Schurz was hoping for. We extend our most heartfelt condolences to her family, friends, and community during this difficult time."
Police asked anyone with information about Schurz's disappearance and death to call the Scottsdale Police Department at 480-312-5000.
Arizona's Turquoise Alert system exists for one stated purpose: to help locate missing Indigenous people in a state that, by multiple accounts, faces a severe crisis of disappearances among Native communities. The missing person must be under 65 years old. Schurz was 28. Yet no alert was issued.
Woodard said advocates from the Missing in America Network "tried to work with the police to get a Turquoise Alert, but everyone was told she didn't meet the criteria." No further explanation of which specific criteria Schurz allegedly failed to satisfy has been made public.
That gap, between the system's stated mission and its application in a case like this, drew sharp frustration from Woodard. Missing persons cases involving mothers who vanish under unusual circumstances tend to generate enormous public attention, but advocates say Indigenous women rarely receive the same urgency.
"Turquoise Alert was intended to help the missing murdered Indigenous peoples crisis in our state and entire North America and whenever it's not utilized, we were really upset."
Woodard did not mince words about the scale of the problem. She described Indigenous women and girls going missing "at disproportionate rates" and stated they are "10 times likely to be found deceased in Arizona." She added that Arizona ranks second in the nation for missing people and missing Indigenous people.
"The missing and murdered Indigenous person crisis is a really big deal. Indigenous women and girls, especially, go missing at disproportionate rates. And they're 10 times likely to be found deceased in Arizona. We're No. 2 in the nation for missing people and missing Indigenous people. So, we have to kind of band together as a community."
The investigation is still in its early stages, and the list of unanswered questions is long. Police have not said whether they suspect foul play. They have not described any persons of interest. The medical examiner's full report, including toxicology, is pending.
The specific circumstances that led Schurz to leave home on March 19 without her wallet or purse remain unclear. The three-day gap between when she was last seen and when her family reported her missing to Salt River Police has not been publicly explained. Questions about the quality and speed of law enforcement response in missing-persons cases have surfaced repeatedly in Arizona in recent months.
Nor has anyone explained, beyond a vague reference to unmet criteria, why the Turquoise Alert system did not activate for a 28-year-old Indigenous mother who vanished under what her own family and an advocacy organization described as highly unusual circumstances. If a young Native woman who left home without her belongings and never returned does not meet the threshold, it is fair to ask what the threshold actually is, and whom the system is designed to serve.
Arizona Family reported the Scottsdale Police Department's statement on the identification. The case now sits with the Scottsdale police and the medical examiner's office, with no public timeline for when additional findings might be released.
The broader pattern Woodard described, Indigenous women disappearing at rates far exceeding other populations, with outcomes disproportionately fatal, is not new. What is new, each time, is the specific name. This time it is Passion Schurz, a 28-year-old mother.
Arizona created the Turquoise Alert precisely because lawmakers recognized that Indigenous people were going missing and dying at alarming rates. The system was supposed to be an answer. In Schurz's case, it was not deployed.
When public systems designed to protect vulnerable populations sit idle during the exact emergencies they were built for, the failure is not abstract. It lands on a specific family, in a specific community, with a specific outcome. Investigations into bungled searches and missing suspects have drawn scrutiny across Arizona before. This case may well join that list.
The facts here are still incomplete. The cause of death is unknown. The circumstances of the disappearance are murky. But the timeline, last seen March 19, reported missing March 22, found dead March 28, alert never issued, speaks clearly enough on its own.
A system that exists on paper but fails in practice is not a safety net. It is a brochure.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the criminal case of Joseph Maldonado-Passage, the eccentric exotic cat breeder better known as Joe Exotic, leaving his murder-for-hire conviction intact and all but closing the door on his years-long effort to escape a 21-year prison sentence.
As is typical when it turns away a case, the high court offered no explanation. But the effect is plain: Maldonado-Passage, 63, will remain behind bars at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, where inmates receive care for serious medical conditions. He has said publicly that he is battling prostate cancer.
The denial marks the final stop on a legal road that began in an Oklahoma courtroom in April 2019, wound through a federal appeals court, drew a brief burst of celebrity from a Netflix documentary, and ended with a one-line refusal from the nation's highest court. For anyone who believes the justice system should hold people accountable for plotting to have another human being killed, the outcome reported by The Daily Record is the right one.
In April 2019, an Oklahoma jury found Maldonado-Passage guilty on two counts of hiring people to murder Carole Baskin, a Florida-based animal rights activist with whom he had feuded bitterly. One of the people he recruited turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
Jurors also convicted him on charges that he had killed multiple tigers, sold tiger cubs, and falsified wildlife records. Maldonado-Passage later admitted he fatally shot five tigers and buried them at his zoo, though his attorneys would eventually argue the killings were "medically necessary" and that the animals had been "euthanized."
He was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld the convictions but ordered the trial court to resentence him, finding the original penalty had been improperly calculated. The trial court shaved a single year off, leaving him with a 21-year term.
The Supreme Court's docket this term has been crowded with high-profile disputes, including pending arguments on the birthright citizenship executive order. Maldonado-Passage's petition did not make the cut.
Maldonado-Passage became a household name in 2020 when Netflix aired "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness," a documentary that turned his feud with Baskin and his flamboyant zoo operation into binge-worthy television. The show made him famous. It did not make him innocent.
His attorneys pushed two main arguments in seeking Supreme Court review. First, they claimed problems with witness testimony, a contention bolstered, they said, by recantations. Second, they pointed to what they called new evidence that the tiger killings were medically justified rather than criminal.
Neither argument persuaded the 10th Circuit, which had already upheld the convictions. Fox News reported that Maldonado-Passage lost his last appeal before that court in July.
Meanwhile, Baskin, the intended target of the murder plot, urged courts to keep him behind bars. Whatever one thinks of the broader "Tiger King" spectacle, the jury heard the evidence, weighed the testimony, and returned guilty verdicts on every count.
Maldonado-Passage has maintained his innocence throughout. In 2022, before his resentencing, he appealed directly to the trial court.
"Please don't make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free."
That plea, reported by the Associated Press, did not change the outcome. The court trimmed one year and nothing more.
After Monday's Supreme Court denial, Maldonado-Passage took to X to vent his frustration. The Court's handling of its docket has drawn scrutiny from multiple directions this term, but declining to hear a murder-for-hire case with a clean appellate record is hardly the stuff of controversy.
Fox News reported that Maldonado-Passage wrote on X:
"I lost my appeal for a new trial today. The United States Government wants me to die in prison even though they know their witnesses were lying under Oath."
He also appealed publicly for a presidential pardon, writing: "Make this right and allow me to go home." There is no indication that request has gained traction.
Celebrity culture has a way of softening the edges of serious crime. A documentary with a catchy title and colorful characters can make a convicted felon look like a folk hero. Social media can turn a prison cell into a platform. None of that changes the underlying facts.
Maldonado-Passage was convicted of trying to have a woman killed. He hired people, one of whom was an FBI agent, to carry out the job. An Oklahoma jury said so unanimously. A federal appeals court agreed. And now the Supreme Court has declined to intervene.
The justices this term have faced enormous pressure on cases ranging from immigration authority to executive power. Letting a straightforward murder-for-hire conviction stand required no courage. It required only the absence of a reason to act, and there was none.
Maldonado-Passage's attorneys raised the kinds of arguments defense lawyers raise when the trial record has already been picked over: witness credibility, new evidence, sentencing errors. The 10th Circuit addressed the sentencing issue and corrected it. The rest did not clear the high bar the Supreme Court sets for granting review.
Baskin, whatever her own controversies, was the target of a murder plot. The system worked. A jury convicted. An appeals court affirmed. The highest court in the land saw no reason to look further. The debates over how the Court manages its emergency docket are real and worth having. This case is not part of that debate.
At 63, with a cancer diagnosis and 21 years ahead of him, Maldonado-Passage faces grim arithmetic. That is the consequence of plotting to kill someone and getting caught. Sympathy for a sick man is natural. Leniency for a convicted would-be murderer is something else entirely.
The law did what the law is supposed to do. No Netflix special changes that.
The Supreme Court last week handed down a unanimous decision reversing a billion-dollar copyright verdict against Cox Communications, ruling that the internet service provider cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by its own subscribers. The decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, dismantles years of lower court rulings that had treated ISPs as de facto enforcers of the recording industry's intellectual property claims.
The ruling overturns decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which had upheld findings of willful contributory infringement against Cox. The case has been remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Court's opinion.
For anyone who believes the government shouldn't conscript private companies into policing the behavior of their customers, this is a significant win.
Justice Thomas, joined by seven justices, wrote for the court with a clarity that left little room for reinterpretation, according to Just the News. The opinion drew a firm line between providing a general-purpose service and actively facilitating illegal activity:
"Cox neither induced its users' infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement."
That distinction matters enormously. The record labels, led by Sony Music Entertainment, had argued that Cox's mere knowledge that some subscribers used its network to pirate music was enough to make the company a contributory infringer. Thomas rejected that theory outright:
"Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights."
Thomas also noted that ISPs have limited ability to monitor or control individual behavior beyond enforcing contractual terms that prohibit infringement. In other words, Cox already told its subscribers not to pirate. What more, exactly, was it supposed to do?
Cox Communications serves about 6 million subscribers across the country. A jury had awarded the record labels damages exceeding $1 billion. Pause on that number. A billion dollars, not because Cox itself copied a single song, but because some of the millions of people who pay for internet access used that access to break the law.
The legal theory behind the original verdict would have transformed every internet provider in America into a copyright enforcement arm of the entertainment industry. If sustained, it would have created a regime where ISPs faced existential financial liability for failing to sufficiently surveil and punish their own customers. The incentive structure is obvious: cut off users at the first accusation, ask questions never.
Cox itself framed the ruling in a public statement as "a decisive victory for the broadband industry and for the American people who depend on reliable internet service." The company also made a point that should have been obvious from the start: ISPs "are not copyright police and should not be held liable for the actions of their customers."
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, concurred in the judgment but wrote separately. She agreed Cox could not be held liable on these facts but expressed concern that the majority opinion unnecessarily narrowed potential common-law theories of secondary liability, such as aiding and abetting.
Translation: she wanted to leave the door open for future plaintiffs to try different legal theories against ISPs. The majority chose to close that door more firmly. Given the stakes involved, that was the right instinct. Vague, expansive theories of secondary liability are precisely the kind of legal ambiguity that invites litigation-as-business-model strategies from industries that would rather sue intermediaries than adapt to the digital marketplace.
This case fits a familiar template. A legacy industry, confronted with technological disruption, turns to the courts to force intermediaries into doing its enforcement work. The recording industry has spent two decades cycling through targets:
Each escalation represents the same underlying refusal to accept that the internet changed the economics of content distribution permanently. Rather than innovate pricing and access models (which, to be fair, streaming services eventually did), the industry's legal apparatus kept searching for a deep-pocketed defendant to hold responsible for consumer behavior.
The Supreme Court just told them the ISP isn't it.
Digital rights advocates and internet access groups praised the decision. Representatives of the music industry warned of potential consequences, though the record labels have not yet publicly commented on their next steps.
The practical implications are straightforward. ISPs will not be forced to become surveillance networks monitoring what their subscribers download. They will not face billion-dollar judgments for providing the same general-purpose internet access that every American household and business depends on. And the principle that providing a lawful service does not make you liable for every unlawful use of that service remains intact.
For conservatives who have watched with alarm as corporations are increasingly deputized to police speech, behavior, and content on behalf of powerful interests, this ruling reinforces a critical boundary. There is a difference between a platform and a publisher, between a conduit and a co-conspirator, between a service provider and an accomplice.
The Court saw that line. Nine justices agreed it exists. That unanimity, in this era, is worth noting all by itself.
Karla Faye Tucker killed two people with a pickaxe in 1983, told police the act sexually aroused her, then spent fourteen years on death row reinventing herself as a born-again Christian. A retired FBI agent says the confession that haunted the public never stopped haunting investigators either.
Candice DeLong, a retired FBI agent, criminal profiler, and host of the true-crime podcast "Killer Psyche," recently explored Tucker's case in what she called "The Death Row Convert," examining how Tucker's jailhouse conversion to Christianity divided the nation. In comments to Fox News Digital and on her podcast, DeLong laid out a case study in how childhood destruction, drug abuse, and a single grotesque admission can chart the course from crime to execution chamber.
According to the New York Post, Tucker, a Houston, Texas, native, was convicted of her role in the 1983 murders of Jerry Lynn Dean, 27, and Deborah Thornton, 32. Tucker and her then-boyfriend, Daniel Ryan Garrett, broke into Dean's apartment intending to steal motorcycle parts. Dean had reportedly angered Tucker over a dispute involving a motorcycle. Thornton, who had met Dean earlier that evening, was also present.
Both were killed. Tucker later admitted to participating in both killings.
Then came the detail that would follow her to the death chamber. Tucker told police she experienced sexual arousal during the attack, statements she later appeared to distance herself from. DeLong told Fox News Digital that this admission destroyed any hope Tucker might have had:
"Karla was doomed from the beginning, once people found out what she did. And the worst thing she did, and she did not help herself by telling people this, that she had an orgasm when she was killing, while she was stabbing someone."
Tucker's defense attorney argued she was intoxicated during the crime, but she was found guilty of capital murder. Garrett was also sentenced to death but died in prison in 1993 from complications related to hepatitis.
DeLong spent considerable time tracing the roots of Tucker's violence. The picture she drew was grim but deliberate, the kind of case study profilers use to explain, though never excuse, what comes later.
"Karla Faye Tucker had a pretty sad and horrible childhood. Her family broke up, and her mother became a sex worker. Now she's got three young girls at home, teenage girls at home. And the mother's doing drugs. Karla Faye starts using drugs at a very young age."
DeLong pointed to neuroscience research suggesting that drug and alcohol use in undeveloped brains, which scientists say are not fully mature until the mid-20s, can create lasting psychological damage, including a propensity for violence toward others and suicidal behavior.
"There was a lot of neglect. When mom was around, she partied with her daughter. One of the things that we know can happen — drugs, alcohol and marijuana in an undeveloped brain — can create a psychological situation where, when that child or adolescent is an adult, they may have a violent streak, violence toward others and frequently suicidal behavior. We see that as well."
None of this, in DeLong's telling, amounts to an excuse. It amounts to a map. She questioned how any child could emerge intact from the environment Tucker grew up in:
"How was a kid supposed to grow up normal when the mother is buying, providing and sharing her drugs that she gets from money through sex with strangers? How is a kid — a girl, a teenage girl — supposed to deal with that and come out OK on the other side, meaning the other side of childhood?"
Her conclusion was blunt:
"Karla never stood a chance, a chance of having a normal life, in my opinion. She didn't get what she needed, and she got a lot of bad stuff from someone who was supposed to take care of her."
This is the line that true-crime analysis walks constantly, and it is a line that matters in a culture increasingly eager to blur it. Understanding the mechanics of how a killer is made does not obligate society to forgive the killing. A conservative framework recognizes both realities simultaneously: broken homes and absent parents produce damaged people, and damaged people who murder still owe a debt to justice.
The left often treats these origin stories as arguments against accountability. If the system failed her, the reasoning goes, then the system has no standing to punish her. That logic collapses the moment you remember Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton, who did not get a second chance at life, regardless of what failed Karla Faye Tucker.
After arriving at the Texas State Penitentiary in 1984, Tucker identified herself as a born-again Christian. In death row interviews, she appeared soft-spoken as she pleaded for mercy. Her case drew significant support for clemency, including from religious leaders and public figures.
DeLong was skeptical:
"She found God, she found Jesus, so the thought among her supporters was 'spare her.' The thing about finding God, though — I don't think so. A lot of prisoners find God and become religious in prison, yes, but not as soon as the handcuffs go on. So it does make me question."
On her podcast, DeLong offered a more nuanced take, acknowledging that prison may have genuinely helped Tucker in ways freedom never could:
"Prison is exactly where she belonged for obvious reasons. Karla needed to be contained, monitored, regimented, and above all, drug-free. Finding God helped her reconstruct her identity and separate her new self from her old murderous self. It helped her find stability after a life filled with instability and chaos."
But DeLong quickly added the counterweight:
"There could be many reasons why Karla found God in prison. Many people do. We come across many killers who make the same claims. But with Karla, she eventually had masses of people across the country rooting for her."
That last observation cuts to something deeper than one case. The American public has a recurring weakness for redemption narratives, especially when the killer is articulate, remorseful, and, frankly, female. Tucker's soft-spoken death row interviews generated a sympathy that a male killer with the same crime and the same confession would almost certainly never have received. The double standard is worth naming.
Tucker was executed in 1998 at age 38, becoming the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War. DeLong framed the public's reaction to Tucker not as bloodlust but as a rational response to something deeply disturbing:
"It raises the thought of, 'If she could do that once, could she do it again? What if she got out?' I'm not saying she deserved the death penalty or not. It would have been fine with me for her to spend the rest of her life in prison. But we, as members of society, when we are so repulsed by what someone not only did but then brags about it, we just want it gone. We want them gone. We want the memory gone. And how do you do that? The 'Death Chamber.'"
DeLong did not shy away from her own assessment of the risk Tucker posed. Even with the religious conversion, even with the soft-spoken interviews, she believed the threat was real:
"Regarding Karla, there's no reason to believe, based on what she did, that there was any place in society that could be safe from her other than a jail cell or a prison cell. If I had to roll the dice, I'd say if she had not been convicted and was released, or if she escaped, she would've been involved in sex, drugs and violence very quickly."
On her podcast, DeLong delivered perhaps the sharpest summary of all:
"But as I see it, Karla Faye Tucker was everybody's worst nightmare. She was a hedonist who lived a life of drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll and, above all, violence."
"She was a woman who sexually enjoyed killing another person, and she was proud of it. Juries are afraid of people like Karla. They not only want them contained, but they want them gone forever from the face of this Earth and from our collective consciousness."
The Karla Faye Tucker case endures not because of its gore but because of the questions it forces. Can a person be genuinely transformed in prison? Does transformation matter once the crime crosses a certain threshold? And who gets to decide?
Conservatives have long argued that the justice system exists to protect the innocent, not to rehabilitate the guilty at the innocent's expense. Tucker's case is Exhibit A. A woman who confessed to sexual pleasure during a double pickaxe murder managed, through fourteen years of good behavior and religious devotion, to convince a meaningful segment of the public that she deserved mercy. The victims' families got no such campaign.
DeLong's analysis, rooted in decades of profiling killers, reinforces a truth that sentimentality often obscures: understanding why someone became a monster does not make them less of one. Tucker's childhood was a catastrophe. Her crimes were still her own. The justice system weighed both and acted.
Two people went to sleep in a Houston apartment in 1983 and never woke up. Forty-plus years later, we are still talking about their killers' feelings.
A Los Angeles Unified School District IT employee allegedly told the CEO she was funneling millions to him, claiming she had "broken all the law" for him, according to incriminating text messages now at the center of a $39 million fraud case that has rocked the nation's second-largest school district.
Hong "Grace" Peng is charged with two felonies: money laundering and having a financial interest in a contract made in an official capacity. Gautham Sampath, CEO of Texas technology company Innive, faces four felony counts, including money laundering and aiding and abetting a government official to have a financial interest in a contract. Both face seven years in state prison if convicted.
LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman says Peng conspired with Sampath in a pay-to-play scheme where Peng fed more than $22 million in contracts to Sampath's company from 2018 to 2022. Sampath then routed and laundered more than $3 million in kickbacks back to Peng through various intermediaries, Hochman alleges. In total, Innive received over $39 million in payments from LAUSD between 2017 and 2023.
A text chain between Peng and Sampath, reported by the New York Post, reads less like a conversation between a public employee and a vendor and more like a heist script written by people who forgot to whisper.
Sampath opened the bidding, so to speak, with a question that prosecutors say reveals the scheme's scope:
"What r the other opportunities in LAUSD. That we can exploit."
Peng was happy to oblige. In a text later in 2018, she laid out the strategy with remarkable candor:
"Let's grab these money first.. Its already in the pocket. Low hanging fruits… let's get these money… It'll be good for us."
By June 2018, the scheme was apparently humming along. Peng described her method for inflating the take:
"I have a way to get those money. Can load them up more work, then charge more hours."
She also reminded Sampath exactly who was making all of this possible. When Sampath asked why Innive was "lucky," Peng did not mince words:
"Because you have me… I broke all law for you already lol."
The "lol" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
What makes these messages particularly damaging is not just the admissions. It is the awareness of wrongdoing paired with the refusal to stop. As early as February 18, 2018, Sampath texted Peng with instructions to destroy evidence:
"Delete all watsup chats… if anyone sees the text about these internal things it will be a prb."
Evidently, they did not delete all the chats.
Sampath also discussed setting up shell companies to launder the kickbacks. He told Peng they would need "at least 3-4 companies "to take out the money, adding that "close to a million will be transferred to you," but that it would be "easy to track unless we are very careful." Peng, for her part, floated the idea of creating companies in Hong Kong, China, or Singapore to further distance the funds from scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Peng signed a contract integrity certification, a document meant to confirm that no conflicts of interest existed. Her response on the form: "No."
The charges land at a moment when LAUSD can least afford another scandal. Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho was relieved of his post following an FBI raid last month. The details surrounding that raid remain sparse, but the timing paints a picture of an institution where oversight was either absent or actively circumvented at multiple levels.
This is a school district. The $39 million that flowed to Innive was public money, taxpayer dollars earmarked for educating children in Los Angeles. Every inflated invoice, every fabricated work hour, every laundered kickback was money that did not go toward classrooms, teachers, or students. The people who suffer most when a public institution is looted from the inside are always the people it was supposed to serve.
The broader question conservatives have raised about massive public school bureaucracies finds fresh evidence here. LAUSD is not a small operation. It is a sprawling, multi-billion-dollar enterprise. And yet a single IT employee allegedly steered $22 million in contracts to one company over four years without triggering a single alarm. Sampath's firm collected $39 million over six years. The scheme, according to prosecutors, involved:
None of this was subtle. These were people texting each other about "exploiting" opportunities and "grabbing" money that was "already in the pocket." If the system cannot catch theft this brazen, it raises serious questions about what else is slipping through.
This is what happens when institutions grow so large and so insulated from accountability that the people inside them stop believing anyone is watching. Peng and Sampath allegedly operated for years, cycling tens of millions through a scheme they discussed openly on their phones. The district's internal controls either failed or did not exist in any meaningful form.
Conservatives have long argued that simply pouring more money into public education without structural accountability produces waste, not results. LAUSD just handed them $39 million worth of proof.
The children of Los Angeles deserved better. They got "lol."
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on April 1 in Trump v. Barbara, the case that will almost certainly determine whether President Trump's executive order redefining birthright citizenship passes constitutional muster. A decision is expected by late June.
Nearly 15 months after President Trump signed Executive Order No. 14,160 on his first day back in office, the legal battle over its meaning has finally reached the merits stage. No more procedural detours. No more jurisdictional sideshows. The Court will confront the question head-on: Does the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee automatic citizenship to every child born on American soil, regardless of whether their parents are here legally?
The answer will reshape American immigration law for a generation.
The executive order, titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," targets two specific categories. First, children born to mothers who are illegally present in the United States when the father is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident. Second, children born to mothers whose presence is "lawful but temporary," such as those on tourist or student visas, when the father likewise holds no permanent status, as National Constitution Center reports.
The legal resistance was almost instantaneous. On Jan. 21, 2025, one day after the order was signed, Washington state and three other states hauled the administration into court. A district court issued a temporary universal injunction blocking the order, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld it. That sequence surprised no one.
In Trump v. CASA (2025), a divided Supreme Court stepped in but only to rule that the district court lacked the authority to issue a universal injunction. It declined to address the underlying constitutional question. On the same day, a group of individuals, led by a plaintiff under the pseudonym "Barbara," sued the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. That court approved a class of potentially affected individuals and issued its own injunction.
The Trump administration submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari on Sept. 26, 2025. The justices granted it on Dec. 5, agreeing to decide "whether the Executive Order complies on its face with the Citizenship Clause and with 8 U.S.C. 1401(a), which codifies that Clause."
That is as clean a question as the Court could have framed. And it is long overdue.
The Citizenship Clause reads:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
For decades, the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has been treated as a formality, a constitutional afterthought with no independent force. The prevailing assumption, hardened by repetition rather than rigorous analysis, has been that physical birth on U.S. soil is the only requirement. The executive order challenges that assumption directly.
The amendment was ratified in the aftermath of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the decision that held Black Americans had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The Citizenship Clause was designed to guarantee that formerly enslaved people and their children would never again be denied membership in the political community. That purpose is beyond dispute.
What is very much in dispute is whether the framers of that clause intended it to confer citizenship on the children of people who entered the country in violation of its laws, or who are present only temporarily and owe no lasting allegiance to the United States.
United States Solicitor D. John Sauer anchors the administration's argument in two Supreme Court precedents, both written by the same justice: Horace Gray.
The first is Elk v. Wilkins (1884). John Elk, a Winnebago Native American, was born on a reservation but moved to Omaha, where he was employed and paid taxes. He was not allowed to vote. On appeal, Elk cited Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Gray, writing for the majority, ruled that Elk was:
"No more 'born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' within the meaning of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations."
Gray also wrote that the amendment was designed to place "beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside."
That phrase, "owing no allegiance to any alien power," does significant work for the administration's position. Illegal immigrants and temporary visitors, by definition, retain allegiance to their home countries. Sauer argues that their children therefore "do not qualify" for citizenship "because their parents are not domiciled in, and thus do not owe the requisite allegiance to, the United States."
The second case is United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which opponents of the executive order treat as dispositive. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to parents who were both Chinese citizens, and the Court held that he automatically became a United States citizen at birth. But Sauer reads Wong Kim Ark narrowly, characterizing it as establishing a "general rule of citizenship by birth in the territory for children of persons 'domiciled within the United States.'" Wong Kim Ark's parents were legal, long-term residents. They were domiciled. The case, the administration argues, does not extend to illegal immigrants or short-term visitors.
The American Civil Liberties Union, representing opponents of the order, takes the opposite reading. Their argument centers on Wong Kim Ark as a sweeping affirmation of common law jus soli, the principle that birth on the soil equals citizenship, full stop.
The ACLU contends:
"Wong Kim Ark's basic holding is that the Clause enshrines the preexisting common law of citizenship. Under the common law—including the dominant American decision of the era, Lynch v. Clarke, (N.Y. Ch. Ct. 1844)—the rule was citizenship by birth, regardless of parental nationality or immigration status. Domicile was irrelevant."
They further argue that "even temporary visitors are 'subject to the jurisdiction' of the United States," citing Justice Gray's reference to The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon (1812).
Notice the sleight of hand. The ACLU collapses criminal jurisdiction, the power to arrest and prosecute someone on your soil, into political allegiance. Every person physically present in the United States is subject to its criminal laws. That has never been contested. The question is whether that kind of jurisdiction is the same as the jurisdiction contemplated by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment when they wrote "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Justice Gray himself, in Elk v. Wilkins, clearly distinguished between the two. His own rulings suggest the answer is no.
The legal debate is intricate, but the policy reality is simple. Under the current interpretation, any person who crosses the border illegally and gives birth on American soil produces an American citizen. That child then becomes an anchor for future chain migration claims. The incentive structure is obvious, and it has operated unchallenged for decades, not because the constitutional text demands it, but because no administration had the nerve to test the question.
This administration did.
The justices now face a choice between two readings of the same clause, written by the same justice, in two different cases decided 14 years apart. Elk v. Wilkins suggests "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" carries real substantive weight, excluding those who owe allegiance elsewhere. Wong Kim Ark is either a broad endorsement of birthright citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, or a narrower ruling limited to the children of domiciled legal residents.
The ACLU wants the Court to read Wong Kim Ark as broadly as possible and Elk v. Wilkins as narrowly as possible. The administration asks the Court to read them together, as a coherent body of law from the same jurist.
One approach requires ignoring half of Justice Gray's jurisprudence. The other requires taking all of it seriously.
By late June, we will know which path the Court chose.
A Florida judge is facing a public reprimand after he asked a Black defendant's great-uncle whether he owned land where the court could "have her work it" and then launched into a discussion about chopping cotton during a plea hearing last July.
Judge John Jordan of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court presided over the hearing on July 28, 2025, involving a 33-year-old Black defendant. While exploring community service options, Jordan turned to the woman's great-uncle and asked a question that court filings now describe as conduct unbecoming of the bench.
"Do you own any land where I could have her work it for 30 hours?"
When the great-uncle responded, Jordan continued:
"You ever—You ever chopped cotton before? You know what that is? You take a hoe and you knock out the weeds. That'll—That'll straighten you up real quick doing that stuff."
He also added, "All my family's farming. They'd love me out there." Florida's Judicial Qualifications Commission was not amused.
According to court filings reviewed by The Independent, Jordan acknowledged that he failed to consider how his comments would land. The Commission's language was pointed:
"In particular, Judge Jordan acknowledges that he failed to consider how his comments, as a judge considering whether to order a black defendant to 'work the land,' immediately followed by a reference to 'chopping cotton,' could have been interpreted (and indeed were interpreted) as inappropriate, especially in light of the historically demeaning stereotype associating black people with picking cotton."
Jordan admitted his comments were "ill-considered." He further conceded that his remarks were "not dignified," could "lessen the public's perception of the judiciary," and could "weaken the public's confidence that the justice being meted out by the judicial branch is based only the facts and the law, and not a person's race", as The Independent reports.
That's a remarkable string of admissions from a sitting judge. And the Commission, while accepting Jordan's stipulation, made clear it wasn't fully satisfied with his level of self-awareness:
"However, the Commission remains concerned that Judge Jordan failed to grasp in the moment, or in the days thereafter, how his words clearly were inappropriate."
Not in the moment. Not in the days after. That's the detail that elevates this from a bad choice of words to a genuine question about judicial temperament.
The cotton remarks weren't the only incident that drew the Commission's attention. In April 2025, three months before the plea hearing, Jordan told two public defenders to "shut up" during jury selection outside the presence of the jury. Court filings described his behavior as having "unprofessionally scolded two public defenders in a manner that was not patient, dignified or courteous."
Two incidents in three months. One involving racially loaded language directed at a defendant, the other involving open contempt for defense attorneys doing their jobs. Together, they paint a picture of a judge whose courtroom manner has drifted well below the standard the public has a right to expect.
Jordan and the Commission have entered into a stipulation recommending a public reprimand. The stipulation still requires approval from the Florida Supreme Court. Jordan's attorney, Thomas Sommerville, offered "no comment" when contacted by The Independent.
Conservatives have long argued that the judiciary must be held to the highest standard of impartiality and professionalism. That argument doesn't bend based on which judge is in the spotlight. A courtroom is the one place in American civic life where every citizen, regardless of background, is supposed to stand before the law as an equal. When a judge's words undermine that promise, even unintentionally, the damage is real.
The Commission stated that it believes the sanction "will serve to deter Judge Jordan's misconduct in the future and serve as an example and reminder to the judiciary about the high standard of courtroom decorum and behavior expected of judges."
A public reprimand is a serious mark on a judicial career, but it is also the lightest formal sanction the Commission can impose. Whether it proves sufficient depends entirely on whether Jordan absorbs the lesson he apparently couldn't grasp on his own for days after he delivered it.
The integrity of the bench doesn't rest on good intentions after the fact. It rests on the words a judge chooses while holding power over someone's life. Jordan's words failed that test.