Over the previous couple weeks, authorities say Appearing Supreme Court docket Justice Susan Capeci obtained a number of threatening messages from the account of lawyer Nicholas Leo. From Could 27 till simply final week, the choose received texts like “I hope you die” and the extra particular “I want you die tonight in a automotive hearth” from the lawyer presently 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 might 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 hearth… simply that it might be welcomed warmly by me if one way or the other 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 impossible to work.
The weaponized wishful pondering didn’t impress District Lawyer Susan Cacace, who dusted off Chief Justice Roberts’s annual report in remarks quoted within the NY Put up:
“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 virtually spectacular when you’ll be able to cherry-pick the direct passages and don’t should cope with his rambling equivocating about how media criticism of partisan opinions is sorta like burning a cross on a choose’s garden within the 60s.
However whereas Roberts tried to make use of the uptick in threats in opposition to judges to grind his private axe concerning the media being imply simply because Sam Alito flies rebel flags, the hazard to judges is actual and must be addressed. Choose Salas’s son was killed by a disgruntled litigant attempting to get to her and the Trump administration is whipping up his followers by claiming a few of probably the most even-keeled jurists in America are Marxist threats to the nation.
“We mustn’t ever enable this kind of conduct to turn 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 undoubtedly the naked minimal.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Regulation and co-host of Pondering Like A Lawyer. Be at liberty to e-mail any suggestions, questions, or feedback. Comply with him on Twitter or Bluesky when you’re inquisitive about legislation, politics, and a wholesome dose of faculty sports activities information. Joe additionally serves as a Managing Director at RPN Government Search.
