Carissa Byrne Hessick

Understanding 18 U.S.C. § 111: Are ICE Tactics Legal? Discover why ICE and Border Patrol may misinterpret 18 U.S.C. § 111 when arresting civilians for following them. Explore the legal implications.

ICE and Border Patrol claim that they can arrest people who follow them, record them, blow whistles, refuse to follow orders, etc for "impeding" their official actions.

But the law officials are referencing is much narrower than they seem to think.

prawfsblawg.com/what-does-it...

Wild opinion: Virginia has been violating the Readmission Act of 1870 for about ~125 years, illegally denying the vote to 1000s convicted of crimes that weren't "common law felonies."

(Credit to @cbhessick.bsky.social & Edward Ayers, both of whom served as expert witnesses for the plaintiffs.)

“No one teaches the Western canon anymore!”

“Look, Plato’s Symposium is right here on my syllabus!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—not that!”

I think you’re misusing the concept of whataboutism

More importantly, you seem to be assuming that criminal cases either can’t or shouldn’t be assessed on their individual merits

You are obviously free to form your own opinion of the case. I’m just offering my analysis

The Comey case looks like a political prosecution in part because of the ridiculous installation of Halligan as the US Atty in the EDVa

The Bolton case comes out of DMd, which as I said, is being run by a career prosecutor.

Also the FBI investigation of Bolton predates the Trump presidency

Yes. Exactly. Which is presumably why criminal charges were filed against Trump

You mean the judge whom I literally referred to by name in the previous post?

Trump was charged, but not convicted

So I’m not sure I’d say he got away with it

But I certainly understand being dissatisfied with how that case was handled by Judge Cannon

And the indictment itself is here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton indicted He's the third prominent Trump adversary to face criminal charges in recent weeks, following former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

I recommend this NBC article for more background: www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

To be clear—the fact that Trump has called for Bolton to be charged is highly inappropriate. It undermines the public legitimacy of the charges.

But that doesn’t mean the charges should not have been brought.

To the contrary, there are good reasons to think the charges are warranted

For those who are trying to assess the legitimacy of the charges against Bolton:

1) these charges came from the MD US Atty’s office—which is led by a career prosecutor
2) the investigation predates Trump taking office
3) the indictment suggests large amounts of classified material were involved

I mean the Daniels case. And we will have to agree to disagree about the business records charges in that case.

But at least some of the criticisms of the Comey indictment can be made about the NYS prosecution of Trump for the Stormy Daniels payments.
There were clear political reasons to bring that case, the underlying actions were far from egregious, and reports from the Manhattan DAs office were troubling

It's tempting to focus only on Trump's public statements to Bondi and others, directing them to indict Comey and the public reports about how career prosecutors warned against bringing the charges against Comey.

These facts all look really horrible, and there are many reasons to criticize this case

Whatever ends up happening in the James Comey prosecution, our country needs to grapple with the fact that public confidence in the impartiality of criminal prosecutions has been terribly damaged over the past few years.

Voting ends Oct 9

vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting...

I’m sure that bodes well for getting a conviction at trial

"When I eventually encounter the gang, I'm faced with a 14-year-old girl in pink leggings and Crocs. "I'm not claiming to be innocent because I'm not," she tells us. "I've threatened people and I've hit people, I'll admit to that." "The second you get into one bit of trouble with the police, you fall into it too deep and you can't get out," she adds. She says an injury forced her to give up sport and that behaving badly offers an alternative energy release. "I found that I get the same adrenaline boost from being in trouble with the police and being missing and stuff." But there's little remorse. "I regret what I do, but I don't say sorry," she says to cheers from the rest of the gang. She seems bright but deeply troubled. She admits drinking and she's vaping while we talk. Muhammad had already told us he had experienced racist abuse - something the girl firmly denies being involved in. One of her friends chimes in. "I know what we're doing is wrong but we're teenage kids, we're going to have a bit of fun," she tells us. "I'm sorry for most of the people we have damaged, but I have no sympathy… it's just one way of taking my anger out.""

Oddly striking how this teenager, in accounting for her admittedly criminal behaviour, frames it as self-care. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I’m writing a book & it’s keeping me busy!

Given what’s been happening in DC, I would think no one in DOJ should feel particularly confident about whether a grand jury will indict anyone right now.

Your Guide to the 2025 Prosecutor Elections - Bolts Most of November's prosecutor races feature just one candidate, as usual. But key races will shape the politics of criminal justice, from Philly to Seattle — plus a wild card in New Jersey.

I decided to look at all 66 prosecutor elections this fall.

Why? Prosecutors have huge power over sentencing, charging, second chances, and even immigration implications.

Here's everything you need to know, from East to West Coast. New from me:

Thanks, Jane!

I enjoyed reading through @cbhessick.bsky.social's latest "Prosecutors and Politics" study. Surprising to learn that most media coverage about prosecutors is neutral in tone (only 6% of 2020 coverage about prosecutors was negative). Is that still true in 2025, in today's era of weaponized justice?

Just posted my new paper (coauthored with Andy Hessick), called Facts, Policy, and Discretion, which is is forthcoming in the @ucdavislaw.bsky.social law review

We address an important error that I keep seeing in criminal justice cases about the nature of discretion papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Yup. I think we write symposium papers more quickly, and sometimes include summaries of prior work. Because they're written quickly, I think the summaries tend to be less carefully caveated than our primary work.

I’ve been wondering whether we could check professors’ symposium pieces to see a) what their priors are and b) how they perceive the core of their arguments when stripped bare of our ordinary hedging and careful language

Calling it: Grand Jury Bluesky will be the worst Bluesky so far.

Tagging in some folks @steveleben.bsky.social @coreyryung.bsky.social to make sure they see the post . . .