Over the previous couple weeks, authorities say Appearing Supreme Court docket Justice Susan Capeci obtained a number of threatening messages from the account of legal professional Nicholas Leo. From May 27 until just last week, the judge got texts like “I hope you die” and the extra particular “I want you die tonight in a automotive fireplace” from the lawyer at the moment concerned in a custody dispute in Capeci’s courtroom the place he’s racked up a few contempt rulings.
As threats made by legal professionals go, it’s no “anally raped by an asteroid,” however that doesn’t make it any higher. He’s being held with out bail proper now and no matter occurs, there’s now a protecting order barring him from contacting Capeci.
After all it will be a lawyer whose threats pointedly keep away from saying that HE deliberate to do something. Oh, I didn’t say I used to be going to set your automotive on fireplace… simply that it will be welcomed warmly by me if in some way you probably did buy a Tesla. The messages learn like somebody intent on committing aggravated harassment however who thinks he can get round it if he makes positive to make use of the passive voice sufficient.
Very lawyerly… and most unlikely to work.
The weaponized wishful considering didn’t impress District Lawyer Susan Cacace, who dusted off Chief Justice Roberts’s annual report in remarks quoted within the NY Publish:
“At a time of accelerating threats to members of the judiciary, the defendant’s alleged conduct is very alarming,” she mentioned. “As U.S. Supreme Court docket Chief Justice John Roberts noticed in his 2024 report on the federal judiciary, ‘violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges due to their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable.’
That Roberts report sounds nearly spectacular when you possibly can cherry-pick the direct passages and don’t must take care of his rambling equivocating about how media criticism of partisan opinions is sorta like burning a cross on a decide’s garden within the 60s.
However whereas Roberts tried to make use of the uptick in threats towards judges to grind his private axe concerning the media being imply simply because Sam Alito flies insurrection flags, the hazard to judges is actual and must be addressed. Judge Salas’s son was killed by a disgruntled litigant making an attempt to get to her and the Trump administration is whipping up his followers by claiming a few of the most even-keeled jurists in America are Marxist threats to the nation.
“We mustn’t ever enable any such conduct to develop into normalized,” Cacace added. “The sanctity of our authorized course of calls for nothing much less.”
The sanctity of the our authorized course of calls for fairly a bit extra, however that is positively the naked minimal.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Regulation and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Be at liberty to email any ideas, questions, or feedback. Comply with him on Twitter or Bluesky for those who’re considering legislation, politics, and a wholesome dose of school sports activities information. Joe additionally serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
