Welcome to Court Watch #148. This weekly roundup should lead the news but before that let’s take a minute to go deep on a case in California.
Which U.S. Government Agency Takes Precedence?
The card game Uno is a staple in most households. With its simple design and easy to pick up rules, it quickly becomes a crowd favorite for any family game night. There are strategies to the game. Do you hoard all the same colors till the bitter end and blitz your opponent? Play the numbers first and the colors second? Or do you play it straight and let the chips fall where they may? Regardless of your approach, wild cards are always useful, but none are more important than the reverse card.
Which brings us to the curious case of a Mexican national named Geovany Espinoza Norzagaray, who appears to have tried a sleight of hand in the game of criminal sentencing. Before pleading guilty, Norzagaray decided to play just one last move – the Executive Order 14159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” wild card. In a wager that almost paid off, he decided to go all in and bet that the executive branch cared more about immigration deportations than his drug prosecution.
On June 1st, 2022, Norzagaray was arrested for distributing 500 grams of meth in California’s Eastern District. Fast forward three years, Norzagaray informed the court on August 5th that he was prepared to plead guilty, but before he could attend his plea hearing on September 23rd, he wanted to take a trip to see his grandmother. His pre-trial services officer agreed to the trip, but Norzagaray apparently took an unexpected detour, showing up at a Border Patrol station on September 15th.
Federal prosecutors said Norzagaray had someone in a blue pickup truck drop him off at the Border Patrol Station with only American dollars and several thousand Mexican pesos in his possession. According to prosecutors, Norzagaray told ICE agents that he had never been arrested and asked if ICE could speed up his deportation under the administration’s voluntary removal for financial incentive program.
When Norzagaray didn’t show for his change of plea hearing, the government asked the court to issue an arrest warrant, citing his pre-trial release stipulations that Norzagaray had to appear for his hearings. His capable federal defender, Megan Hopkins, said that Norzagaray had not violated his pretrial release conditions, arguing in vain that because Norzagaray was in ICE custody, his absence from the plea hearing was beyond his control. Moreover, according to Hopkins’ filing, “Mr. Norzagaray had a legal obligation to contact ICE, identify himself as an undocumented person from Mexico, and follow the directives of ICE. He also had an obligation to do so in order to comply with the standard conditions of pretrial release. He obtained permission from pretrial services to visit a relative in the same area where he learned there was a border patrol station and elected to check in.” Therefore, his lawyer noted that Norzagaray was bound by President Trump’s Executive Order 14159 to turn himself in immediately to ICE.
We were unable to connect with Hopkins before our publishing deadline. Notably, court records indicate that prosecutors were unable to arrange for Norzagaray’s court appearance with ICE unless the judge issued a bench warrant, despite Norzagaray’s ongoing criminal case and already being detained in federal custody.
After requesting briefs from the parties on what to do next, Judge Kimberly J. Mueller ultimately decided to yell Uno on the last card in Norzagaray’s hand. Judge Mueller ordered Norzagaray arrested and transferred from immigration custody. Thus, closing one of the more interesting legal loopholes we’ve ever seen. His plea hearing was rescheduled for November 18th.
The Docket Roundup
We were putting the final touches on this issue around 10 pm last night. We thought it needed a better opening roundup case. So we went searching through all the dockets again and boy did we find it. In Louisiana, the FBI arrested Mahmoud Amin Ya'qub Al-Muhtadi charged him with participating in the Hamas-led October 7th terror attack. Authorities say he was a member of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and when hearing that the attack was taking place, joined forces with Hamas. Charging documents say he later lied on his visa and came to the United States in 2024. His initial appearance is today at 10 AM in the Pelican State.
Trader Joe’s legal department is having back-to-back bad weeks. Smucker’s, the jam company that produces Uncrustables PB&J sandwiches that end up in school lunch boxes galore, is suing the supermarket for copyright infringement.
The FBI says Ashley Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, smuggled classified documents from secure State Department facilities. The FBI also disclosed that Tellis attended monitored meetings with Chinese government officials.
Late last night, President Trump filed his amended defamation complaint against The New York Times. The previous version was dismissed by a judge for being “improper.”
Jim Comey’s lawyer said they would challenge Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The move comes after the statute of limitations passed on Comey’s charges. The Trump administration has fought with judges to appoint U.S. Attorneys in other districts.
This is awkward. A plaintiff got in trouble for the second time with a New Mexico judge for filings that appear generated by AI. A judge in Alabama also bench-slapped an attorney this week for submitting a filing with AI-hallucinated case citations.
The feds charged a man from Memphis, Tennessee, after he allegedly elbowed a state trooper, who was deputized two days before as a special deputy U.S. Marshal, in the chest and ran away from a traffic stop. They also say a DEA agent, who was riding along with the trooper and chased after the man, “sustained an injury to his arm that likely occurred when he jumped over the fence in pursuit of [the defendant].” If any of our defender readers are curious, there’s a picture of the injury included in the filing.
A Chicago school superintendent, a principal, a school athletic director, and one other were charged in a kickback scheme.
Some ChatGPT users aren’t happy with Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in.
It’s finally official. The U.S. Courts have declared Kendrick the winner of the beef and dismissed Drake’s case: “The penultimate song of this feud, ‘Not Like Us’ by Kendrick Lamar, dealt the metaphorical killing blow… Because the Court concludes that the allegedly defamatory statements in ‘Not Like Us’ are nonactionable opinion, the motion to dismiss is granted.”
See if you can spot the repeated typo (hint: Bill Belichick and Michael Jordan).
A college counseling service for international students sued the State Department to turn over information about how many F-1 student visa applications it receives.
The federal defender representing a woman accused of burning a Tesla in Colorado said that all plea negotiations have to go through Main Justice rather than the local U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Double check your corndogs, folks (no, that’s not a euphemism).
Two SUNY professors sued Apple, claiming the company used their copyright-protected research to train its AI model.
Here’s a 109-page stockholder suit challenging Jack Dorsey and CashApp’s compliance measures.
The Republican fundraising platform WinRed and a pro se plaintiff are tangling over discovery.
A lot of y’all signed up for a yearly Court Watch subscription around this time last year. Just a reminder, if you don’t want to auto-renew, make sure to change your status. We hope you don’t. We like having you around.
Two crypto influencer bros, known as Blockchain Daily and Alex Crypto, are going at it over terminally online comments about who actually has more viewers on YouTube. We’re on Team Meteor.
Decide what to be and go be it for our song of the week.
President Trump’s case against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer is winding down. Selzer’s lawyers and President Trump’s are still at odds over whether the judge should dismiss it with or without prejudice.
One of the men whose sentence on death row was commuted by President Biden is now facing state murder charges for the same case in South Carolina, where local prosecutors have said they’ll pursue the state’s death penalty. His federal defenders in Indiana sought a temporary restraining order to prevent his transfer to South Carolina custody, citing unfair retaliation and vindictive prosecution, which was denied.
2 Gringos, a family-owned meat seasoning and sauce business in Texas, wants injunctive relief against a former employee who reportedly still has company documents on his personal laptop.
The Justice Department charged 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, a statute that prohibits providing material support for terrorism, for the first time in an Antifa case.
A pro-Palestine student group sued Northwestern University.
One guy in Oklahoma allegedly got way too heated over his guns being taken away following several arrests.
Happy Oktoberfest, everyone.
A lecturer at Auburn University is suing over her termination following a post she made on Facebook about the Kirk assassination.
Sandwich guy and one of the best defenders in the business filed a motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution. The filing includes a meme-worthy screengrab of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
A group of October 7th victims and their relatives quietly agreed to dismiss their case against two Qatari banks and a charity over the organizations’ purported ties to Hamas.
A judge halted the administration’s efforts to fire more federal workers during the shutdown, at least temporarily.
Bank of America and the Bank of New York were both sued by a Jane Doe for their ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, some of Epstein’s victims are fighting for the right to sue the FBI for allegedly not properly investigating the monster.
One overlooked part of the government shutdown: The FBI can’t pay its informants.
Your pro se of the week is about a man trying to overturn his conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm on Second Amendment grounds. A judge set a motion schedule.
Welp, this filing’s images will stay in the federal court system forever. We will have to live with the fact that we paid PACER fees to make that happen.
“After the officer replied that threatening to shoot someone is not covered by the First Amendment, Baxter told the officer to ‘fuck off’ and hung up.” Mr. Baxter, a Hawaiian man, was arrested for communicating a threat shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, prosecutors say a man haphazardly offered a local street gang <checks notes> 1.8 billion dollars to kill the mayor of Gary, Indiana. Also, an Arizona man was charged with threatening to murder the Prime Minister of Israel’s son. With the number of threat cases this week, we’re running out of transition words. Additionally (?), a Wisconsin man purportedly asked folks to “Do more Charlie Kirks. Do a lot more Charlie Kirks” against federal officials. And (editor’s note: we’ve reached our synonym limit), a Minnesota man was indicted on charges of threatening an associate Supreme Court Justice and seven federal district judges. One of the threats reportedly stated, “That POS Judge, [District Judge 1], MUST have her life ENDED Immediately! Get it done, Patriots!” Lastly, a California man was arrested after he allegedly mailed a death threat to Benny Johnson. The letter reportedly referenced Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Can everyone just chill out? It’s exhausting to keep up with all the threat cases.
A Tennessee teacher fired for her online posts about Charlie Kirk’s assassination is allowed to go to her daughter’s school in the district pending the lawsuit.
Honestly, footnote 14 is a piece of judicial art. It’ll upset a lot of crypto enthusiasts. We don’t care. It weaves 19th-century opera into an opinion. Nothing better than that in life. We have no notes. You must read it.
Body cameras may be coming to federal immigration agents in Chicago.
As we are prone to do, we found ourselves on a Thursday evening randomly thinking about a criminal case from four months ago we wrote two sentences about. So our curiosity is your gain. The Iraqi man who was charged in April on a misdemeanor voting case courtesy of a DOGE referral still hasn’t been arrested.
During the shutdown, the Justice Department is only supposed to work on things such as “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.” There must be an asterisk somewhere in the rules that also allows them to file motions to seize 14 billion dollars in cryptocurrency. Fun fact, for these types of cases, the U.S. government takes a while to unload its seizures. In the past, the government has sometimes doubled or tripled its money as the price of crypto rose between the date of seizure and the time they liquidate it. This is all to say, 14 billion dollars in cryptocurrency may end up balancing the federal budget.
Thanks for reading. And for a final note, here are the rules for Uno.