| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
119th Congress. | |
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| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Michael Fox. | ||
| He's a legal fellow at the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute. | ||
| Mike, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me, Mimi. | |
| So federal authorities arrested a Wisconsin judge on Friday. | ||
| Can you get us up to speed about that case and what are the facts of the case? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| So Judge Hannah Dugan, who is a judge in Milwaukee Superior Court in Wisconsin, was arrested by the federal agents. | ||
| So it seems like it was ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement, the FBI, as well as the DEA Drug Enforcement Administration, which seems kind of weird that they were somehow involved in this. | ||
| But they sent six officers to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, and they had had what's known as an administrative warrant. | ||
| So when most people think of a warrant, they think of a judicial warrant, which is something that's signed by a judge, you know, a neutral and detached magistrate in federal court. | ||
| They're called Article III judges. | ||
| They're judges who are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate. | ||
| They're independent. | ||
| So law enforcement would present or prosecutor will present facts to a judge. | ||
| Judge would decide if there's probable cause and issue a warrant. | ||
| That is not what happened here at all. | ||
| This is an administrative warrant. | ||
| It's issued by ICE, meaning that ICE itself, Immigration Customs Enforcement, has reason to believe that the person is unlawfully in the United States and wants to initiate deportation proceedings. | ||
| So they sent six federal agents to the courthouse on April 18th to arrest Mr. Flores-Ruiz. | ||
| And when they did that, Judge Dugan, you know, sort of, I guess, was caught off guard, didn't know what was going on. | ||
| She had questioned them. | ||
| I know they also talked to the chief judge, found out they only had an administrative warrant. | ||
| I am not one inclined to believe anything the government tells me, so I'm going to not take what's in the complaint or what the Attorney General alleges as fact. | ||
| But from what I understand, the judge led her into a back hallway that actually led out the same direction that she would have been, that they would have been if they were in a public hallway. | ||
| So I don't know why she did that, if she was caught off guard, if she was intending to conceal him. | ||
| I will say, having been a public defender myself, these are, you know, I'd imagine a very busy, you know, criminal courtroom in a city that has a lot of violent crime. | ||
| She probably had a lot going on. | ||
| They said she appeared angry. | ||
| My guess is she just did not want to create more drama in her courtroom. | ||
| She probably took them out the back door and was like, let's deal with this out here. | ||
| Of course, I wasn't there. | ||
| I don't know what happened. | ||
| But to me, that seems like it could be entirely plausible. | ||
| And what is she actually being charged with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so she's being charged with two federal statutes. | |
| One is obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a U.S. department or agency. | ||
| And this is something that I find interesting because one of the questions that, you know, whether she goes to trial and it's a jury and she gets convicted, an appeals court has to address this is whether or not immigration removal counts as an investigative proceeding. | ||
| So that is one thing that they're going to have to prove to prove this case. | ||
| The other charge that she was charged with is concealing an individual to prevent discovery or arrest. | ||
| And as I was looking through this, two things stood out to me. | ||
| One is whether or not an administrative warrant actually counts as a federal warrant, because some of the elements of this offense are that the person had a federal warrant and that the judge knew about the federal warrant. | ||
| In this case, he had an administrative warrant. | ||
| It's abundantly clear that Judge Dugan knew about the administrative warrant, but it's not clear that an administrative warrant counts as a federal warrant because it's not issued by a judge. | ||
| It's issued by ICE itself. | ||
| So I think that's one plausible defense theory. | ||
| And then another thing that I was interested in is it also proves they also, you know, the Department of Justice would have to prove that she had the intent to conceal Mr. Flores Ruiz. | ||
| And it's not clear to me that that's the case. | ||
| It seems to me totally plausible that the judge just did not want this in her courtroom and she literally just took it outside in a place that she thought there wouldn't be a lot of people to address it there. | ||
| Of course, I don't know what happened. | ||
| And, you know, this is a perfect example as to why, you know, the criminal jury trial is so vital and fundamental, right? | ||
| So if, you know, in the federal system, 98.3% of cases are resolved by guilty pleas. | ||
| That means less than two out of every 100 cases go to trial. | ||
| But jurors are the conscience of the community. | ||
| So a jury would not just have to decide whether or not, you know, she actually, the Department of Justice could satisfy the elements of all these offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. | ||
| The maximum exposure she has is six years in prison. | ||
| One of these charges is one year. | ||
| The other is five. | ||
| So they're going to, a jury would have to decide that. | ||
| But it's also worth noting that historically the role of criminal jurors has encompassed a lot more than just deciding guilt. | ||
| Jurors, as I mentioned earlier, were the conscience of the community. | ||
| So it is entirely plausible that a jury in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, could believe that even if she is guilty and even if they can satisfy the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, that this is not something that they, as members of the community, think should be prosecuted. | ||
| And they have the historic power and prerogative to acquit against the evidence. | ||
| And the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution contains something called the Vicinage Clause, and that is expressly there to make sure that these types of trials occur in front of similarly situated people. | ||
| In other words, her trial would occur. | ||
| We'll leave this here to take you live to the State Department, where spokesperson Tammy Bruce is speaking to reporters. | ||
| Live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| Did I come in too quickly? | ||
| Maybe I did for a change, but not too quickly technically. | ||
| Obviously. | ||
| Busy day. | ||
| Okay, |