Myrtle Beach, SC Forum-shopping is a feature of ordinary criminal practice the way rain is a feature of a beach vacation. Everybody knows it happens, and that does not mean a hurricane is just weather. But before I make that argument I have to deal with something inconvenient, because I spent a week with the … Continue reading Should federal courts intervene earlier to police venue in the documents and January 6 prosecutions, or is forum-shopping an accepted feature of American criminal practice that has only become a scandal because of the caption?
Weekly Correspondents’ Forum 2023
Was the Fulton County racketeering indictment a conventional use of a state RICO statute against an alleged effort to overturn a certified result, or a county prosecutor’s attempt to nationalize a political dispute the voters were already going to retry?
Gastonia, NC The word doing the work in this indictment is "enterprise," and I want to start there because I spent two days last week finding out that the word does not mean what I assumed it meant. My assumption, and I suspect most people's, was that a racketeering statute reaches organizations whose business is … Continue reading Was the Fulton County racketeering indictment a conventional use of a state RICO statute against an alleged effort to overturn a certified result, or a county prosecutor’s attempt to nationalize a political dispute the voters were already going to retry?
Is the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment on a records theory that requires a federal-election overlay a legitimate local prosecution, or the first attempt to turn a misdemeanor records statute into a presidential disqualification device?
Gastonia, NC A legitimate local prosecution does not need a presidential campaign to explain why a check stub is a felony. That is what has bothered me since Tuesday, and reading the unsealed instrument three times has not made it go away. I read copy for a living, which means I spend my days hunting … Continue reading Is the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment on a records theory that requires a federal-election overlay a legitimate local prosecution, or the first attempt to turn a misdemeanor records statute into a presidential disqualification device?
