The biggest news story of the week is a gunman’s attempt to assassinate former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from a semiautomatic AR-style rifle in Trump’s direction. Trump was struck in the ear, rally attendee Corey Comperatore was killed, and two other men were critically wounded in the attack. The New York Times analyzed video, audio, and photographs of the event and created this narrative video timeline. The Times video ends with this question: Why was the former president allowed to remain on stage when the threat emerged minutes before shots rang out?
Cell phone analysis. A key part of the FBI’s investigation into Crooks’ motives for the attack involved searching his cell phones. If you are curious about how law enforcement may gain access to a password-protected phone and its encrypted content, you may be interested in NPR’s Monday morning interview with David Gee, chief marketing officer with Cellebrite, a company that provides the FBI with technology to unlock smart phones. Gee emphasized repeatedly that his company helped law enforcement “under the jurisdiction of the courts” to “lawfully” extract phone data. Gee kept the trade secrets under wraps, but allowed that technology permitting the rapid entry of multiple passcodes was one way to gain access.
Multiple news outlets have reported that even after gaining access to the contents of Crooks’ phone, his motivation remains unclear.
Indictment in Santa hate crime plot. The Justice Department reports that Georgian national Michail Chkhikvishvili was indicted on Monday for soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence in New York City. Chkhikvishvili was arrested in Moldova on July 6 pursuant to an Interpol Wanted Person Diffusion. He is said to be a leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, also known as MKY, an international extremist group that promotes violence against racial minorities, the Jewish community and other groups it deems “undesirables.” DOJ alleges that in November 2023, Chkhikvishvili began planning a mass casualty attack in New York City to take place on New Year’s Eve. The scheme involved having a person dressed as Santa Claus hand out poisoned candy to racial minorities. Chkhikvishvili later suggested providing poisoned candy to children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn. Chkhikvishvili allegedly drafted step-by-step instructions to carry out the scheme and shared with an undercover FBI employee manuals on creating and mixing lethal poisons and gases.
Algorithms may be predictive, but they aren’t perfect. The New York Times has published an in-depth analysis of Spain’s reliance on software intended to help law enforcement combat gender violence by assessing whether a current victim is in danger of being attacked again. The software, VioGen, requires victims to complete a survey and then uses an algorithm to predict the level of risk. The Times reports that the software has become “so woven into law enforcement that it is hard to know where its recommendations end and the human decision-making begins.” Since the country adopted the system, repeat attacks have decreased significantly, but some victims who were found to be at low risk have been reattacked, sometimes fatally. The report recounts a by-now-somewhat-familiar tale of a technology that provides valuable aid in prioritizing efforts and deploying limited resources, but also is an incomplete and imperfect solution to a complex problem.
Last minute stay of execution granted by US Supreme Court. Twenty minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection on Tuesday evening, the United States Supreme Court granted Texas inmate Ruben Gutierrez’s application for a stay of execution. Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery in 1998 killing. He has maintained that DNA testing will help prove that he was not responsible for the murder. This was the second eleventh-hour reprieve granted by the high court in Gutierrez’s case. In 2020, his execution was blocked about an hour before it could have been scheduled to permit Gutierrez to pursue his claim that Texas’s refusal to allow a chaplain to accompany him to the death chamber violated his First Amendment and religious rights.
North Carolina clemencies and pardons. Earlier this month, Governor Roy Cooper reduced the sentences of four people and issued pardons to four others. The Governor’s office reported that the actions followed “an intensive review of cases, including the circumstances of the crimes, length of the sentences, records in prison, and readiness to reenter communities successfully after prison.”
The Juvenile Sentence Review Board recommended one of the granted commutations: Forty-five-year-old Kareem Phifer’s sentences resulting from his participation in armed robberies when he was 15, in which a co-defendant sexually assaulted a victim, were reduced to time served.
You can read more here about the other individuals afforded relief. The News and Observer reports that, including these actions, Cooper has issued a total of 14 commutations and 21 pardons.
Webinar featuring the work of the Criminal Justice Innovation Lab. On August 7, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance is hosting a free webinar called Successful Pretrial Strategies in Rural Communities: Small Town Solutions to Solve Big Time Problems. Hannah Turner from the CJIL is a presenter and will discuss the Lab’s work with Columbus County in the NC Rural Jail Project. Interested persons can register here: https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_NlLyzVoFSwm47BOnbuMn7g#/registration