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Author: Chris Palmer

  • In dozens of cases, Philly’s federal judges have found Trump’s mandatory detention policy unlawful

    In dozens of cases, Philly’s federal judges have found Trump’s mandatory detention policy unlawful

    Federal judges in Philadelphia have ruled dozens of times against a Trump administration policy that mandates detention for nearly all undocumented immigrants — joining a nationwide wave of decisions criticizing the government for applying the policy in unlawful ways.

    In the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, U.S. District Judge Juan R. Sánchez wrote in a memorandum this week that more than 40 people who have been detained in the region under that policy, which was rolled out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last summer, have sought relief in the courts — and judges have ruled against the government in every case.

    Chief Judge Wendy Beetlestone was even more blunt in an opinion filed last month, writing that “the law is piled sky high against the government’s position” to mandate detention and deny bond hearings for all undocumented immigrants — even those seeking to stay here via appropriate legal channels.

    The administration’s insistence on employing the policy and defending it in court, Beetlestone wrote, was akin to the Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill.

    “The Government’s hope, presumably, is that if it keeps pushing the boulder of its argument up the hill, at least one judge may rule against the weight of the authority,” Beetlestone wrote. “But the tale before the courts is the traditional one of Greek mythology: the Government returns again and again to push the same theory uphill, only for courts to send it rolling back down again.”

    The pushback has added to a chorus of similar decisions in courts nationwide. Sánchez, appointed by George W. Bush, wrote in his memo that people challenging their detention in federal district courts “have prevailed, either on a preliminary or final basis, in 350 … cases decided by over 160 different judges sitting in about fifty different courts spread across the United States.”

    A Politico analysis of court dockets published this week put that tally even higher, reporting that over the last six months, more than 300 federal judges — comprising appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan — have ordered some form of relief in mandatory detention cases to about 1,600 challengers.

    Spokespeople for ICE did not reply to questions about the judicial rebukes, and many of the government’s court filings in cases challenging detention have been made under seal.

    Still, the Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to boost the number of people in federal immigration detention. And the mandatory detention policy has helped push the number of confined immigrants past 65,000, a two-thirds increase since Trump took office in January.

    Lilah R. Thompson, an immigration attorney in the community defense unit at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said in an interview that mandatory detention “plainly violates the law and is an illegal policy.” But she said most challenges to it so far have come in individual cases, and the potential legal avenues seeking to strike it down nationwide are protracted and legally complex.

    In the meantime, Thompson said, the government has seemed content to use the policy in its attempt to apply pressure to immigrants and, ultimately, increase deportations.

    “[Authorities] are applying a blanket policy because when people are in detention, they aren’t able to withstand the horrors of detention,” Thompson said. “It makes their circumstances much more difficult.”

    A dramatic change in precedent

    ICE’s detention mandate was rolled out amid the Trump administration’s aggressive push to crack down on immigrants nationwide.

    It came as the Board of Immigration Appeals — the highest administrative body for interpreting the nation’s immigration laws — issued three precedential rulings that made it dramatically harder for detainees to be released on bond.

    In one of those rulings, the board held that immigration judges lack the power to hear or grant bond requests to people who entered the United States without permission — even if they had been in the country for years, or had few other infractions that might warrant detention as their cases wound through the immigration system.

    That upended decades of established government practice, which typically allowed otherwise law-abiding people who entered the country illegally to at least receive a bond hearing and determine if they could remain in the community as their cases moved forward.

    The decision also meant that thousands of detained immigrants who previously would have been eligible for bond hearings could be released only if they filed and won a federal lawsuit.

    For many detainees that created an impossible situation because they have neither a lawyer nor the money to hire one.

    “There are so many people that are getting picked up [under] the unlawful mandatory detention policy, but because they don’t have an attorney to file a [legal challenge], they’re still experiencing the consequences of the policy,” said Maria Thomson, another attorney in the Defender Association’s community defense unit.

    Officials at the federal Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the BIA, declined to answer questions about the rulings.

    “The Executive Office for Immigration Review does not comment on federal court decisions,” spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said in a statement.

    Detainees who have been able to hire attorneys and appear before federal judges have been winning relief at near-universal rates, with the courts ordering their freedom or directing the immigration court to hold a bond hearing.

    “The district courts have been overwhelming on this question. It’s been extremely lopsided,” said Jonah Eaton, a veteran immigration attorney who teaches law at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, adding that even some Trump-appointed judges “have said this is nonsense.”

    Earlier this week, District Judge John Murphy said in a court filing that judges had sided with detainees in all 50 cases filed so far in Pennsylvania’s Eastern District.

    And in November, District Judge Paul Diamond wrote that he’d found 288 district court decisions nationwide addressing the issue — and that judges had ruled against the administration in 282 of them.

    Diamond then went on to criticize the government’s attempts to justify its policy using what he said were competing interpretations of the law.

    It is “difficult to credit the Government’s squarely contradictory position here,” Diamond wrote.

    Significant challenges

    Still, not all wins for detainees are comprehensive.

    In some instances, immigrants are granted bond hearings before an immigration judge. But Eaton said some of those immigration judges will either deny bond or set an impossibly high figure. In Philadelphia, he said, it’s become common for attorneys to ask the federal judges to order release themselves, “because immigration judges won’t do it.”

    Immigration Court is part of the executive branch, not the judiciary, run by the Department of Justice. That has for years called the courts’ impartiality into question.

    “Even when we’re seeing bond hearings happening, they’re being denied at a higher rate,” said attorney Emma Tuohy, a deportation-defense specialist at Simon, Choi & Tuohy in Philadelphia. So immigrant defenders “are going straight to district court and filing habeas corpus, on the premise that people are being unlawfully detained.”

    Habeas corpus, Latin for “you have the body,” is a demand that the government bring a detained person to court and prove that they have been legally imprisoned. It’s considered a fundamental protection against arbitrary detention.

    Beyond bond hearings, Thompson, of the Defender Association, said there are challenges in seeking to provide ample legal assistance to people who have solid grounds to fight their detention: Many can’t afford lawyers, she said, there is no statewide funding to support lawyers pursuing such challenges, and ICE can move detainees to different jurisdictions at its discretion, increasing the difficulty of petitioning for release.

    “They are doing it because they can, and because the consequences are that most [immigrants] cannot fight this and will end up being deported,” she said.

    Cases that might threaten the overall detention policy, meanwhile, are likely to take time to wind through appellate courts, she said — and the administration could seek to litigate the matter in jurisdictions that have been more traditionally conservative.

    In the meantime, federal judges are going to continue having to confront the issue in district courts. Murphy wrote this week that there are approximately 25 petitions awaiting a ruling in Philadelphia’s federal courthouse.

    If Beetlestone’s opinion is any guide, the judges would prefer that ICE change its position — rather than continuing down the same path and hoping the ruling will be different next time.

    Relying on hope in the courts, Beetlestone said, “resembles a game of whack-a-mole, in which the mole (here, the Government) insists on repeatedly volunteering to get struck by the judicial gavel.”

  • A Philly man whose murder conviction was overturned is now a suspect in two more homicides and a shooting, police say

    A Philly man whose murder conviction was overturned is now a suspect in two more homicides and a shooting, police say

    A Philadelphia man whose murder conviction was overturned because of its connection to disgraced former homicide detective Philip Nordo is now a suspect in two new homicides, and he was arrested this weekend after authorities say he committed yet another violent crime.

    Arkel Garcia, 32, had been on the run since November, when police said he beat an elderly acquaintance to death inside an apartment complex in the city’s Stenton section. Authorities described that crime as a robbery, and issued an arrest warrant for Garcia on murder charges.

    Weeks after that, authorities in Florida said they were seeking to question Garcia in connection with another killing there, on Nov. 28 in St. Lucie County. The sheriff’s office said a victim — whom it did not identify — died from blunt force trauma and smoke inhalation after a residence was intentionally set ablaze. Authorities did not provide many additional details about the crime, but said Garcia was considered a person of interest “based on evidence recovered at the crime scene and witness interviews.”

    The most recent incident occurred Sunday afternoon, when police said Garcia, back in Philadelphia, shot a 34-year-old man in the arm inside a residence on the 5200 block of Germantown Avenue. Another man, age 37, then stabbed Garcia, police said, and began struggling with Garcia over his firearm, at which point the gun went off and struck Garcia.

    Responding officers found Garcia suffering from gunshot and stab wounds in a nearby parking lot and took him to a hospital, where he was to be treated before being arraigned on murder charges. He had not been arraigned as of Tuesday afternoon.

    The string of crimes occurred about a year after Garcia was released from prison after the collapse of his earlier murder case — an outcome prosecutors said was necessary because of Nordo’s misconduct.

    In 2015, a jury had found Garcia guilty of fatally shooting Christian Massey, a 21-year-old man with special needs who was killed in Overbrook over a pair of Beats by Dre headphones. Garcia was sentenced to life in prison.

    But four years later, District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office charged Nordo with raping and sexually assaulting male witnesses he met on the job. And as part of that investigation, prosecutors said they uncovered emails and recorded phone calls showing that Nordo had pursued secret sexual relationships with key witnesses while seeking to compile evidence implicating Garcia.

    A confidential informant who spoke to Nordo about the Garcia case later told The Inquirer Nordo sexually assaulted him and also failed to protect his identity in the neighborhood. The informant was later convicted of killing someone after he said he was threatened because of being labeled a snitch.

    In 2021, prosecutors persuaded a judge to overturn Garcia’s murder conviction in the Massey killing, and Krasner’s office declined to retry him.

    But Garcia was not released from prison right away. After being found guilty of Massey’s murder, he fought with a sheriff’s deputy in the courtroom and was later convicted of aggravated assault. A judge sentenced him to five to 10 years in prison for that crime, and he remained incarcerated for it until he was paroled in October of 2024.

    (Nordo, meanwhile, was convicted of sex crimes in 2022 and sentenced to 24½ to 49 years in prison.)

    Late last year — while Garcia was still on parole — police said he fatally beat 68-year-old David Weinkopff inside an apartment on the 4900 block of Stenton Avenue. Weinkopff was wheelchair-bound, authorities said, and neighbors told police they’d seen Garcia going into and out of the building before the crime.

    About two weeks after a murder warrant was issued in that case, authorities in Florida announced they were seeking to question Garcia over a homicide in Fort Pierce, a coastal city about an hour north of West Palm Beach.

    Detectives there believe Garcia may have come to the area to visit estranged relatives, but are not sure how or why he killed the 51-year-old victim found dead on the 600 block of South Market Avenue. By the time authorities said they were seeking to question Garcia, they said he may have been attempting to return to Philadelphia by bus.

    Still, Garcia remained on the lam until Sunday, when police said he got into an argument with several people inside a residence in Germantown.

    Witnesses said the episode turned violent when Garcia fired his gun, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore, and officials said Garcia was the only one with a firearm.

    Vanore said Garcia was expected to face charges including aggravated assault, illegal gun possession, and reckless endangerment — in addition to the murder charges he will face for the killing on Stenton Avenue in November.

    A relative of Massey’s, who asked not to be identified to discuss Garcia’s new arrest, said she and her relatives had felt “let down” by the system — and were heartbroken that Garcia, whom she still believes killed Massey, had been freed to hurt other people.

    “This is a violent individual,” she said. “How is that not clear?”

  • Philly’s new U.S. attorney has largely avoided the chaos swirling around other parts of Trump’s Justice Department

    Philly’s new U.S. attorney has largely avoided the chaos swirling around other parts of Trump’s Justice Department

    When President Donald Trump announced earlier this year that he was nominating David Metcalf to be Philadelphia’s U.S. attorney, it initially seemed as if the move was in line with Trump’s chaotic and contentious attempt to upend the nation’s justice system.

    The decision was abrupt, apparently made without advanced input from Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), who’d set up a commission to identify candidates to serve as the region’s top federal prosecutor.

    Metcalf was 39 and, unlike many of his predecessors, didn’t have deep roots in the region — but did have some reported ties to officials who’d sought to help Trump adviser Roger Stone years earlier.

    And the appointment was announced as Trump was openly pledging to “clean house” in the Justice Department and pull the agency more directly in line with the White House.

    But in the months since Metcalf has assumed control over the office and its 140 lawyers, what has stood out so far has been the serious temperament the veteran prosecutor has brought to the role, and the relative lack of drama he’s overseen — particularly in comparison to nearby jurisdictions, where U.S. Attorney’s Offices have been embroiled in controversies over leadership appointments and whether to indict Trump critics.

    During a recent interview with The Inquirer at his Center City office, his first since being appointed in March, Metcalf said his deliberate approach toward his first few months in the job has been influenced by his decade-plus career as a Justice Department lawyer — one that included stints in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

    He has met with a host of other local stakeholders since taking over — including Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and federal judges — and has avoided ushering in drastic upheaval within his office.

    U.S. Attorney David Metcalf outside the federal courthouse in July, with Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel standing behind him.

    Instead, he said, a key focus has been to encourage his prosecutors to pursue large, ambitious, complex investigations targeting violent crime, synthetic opioid abuse, and healthcare fraud — subjects he said were critical to public safety in the Philadelphia region.

    “I do not feel some personal impulse to burn my brand on this office by restructuring and reorganizing it,” he said, later adding: “The greatest offices and the greatest cases come from prosecutors who are hunting them down and competing for them … and that’s the breed of prosecutor we’re trying to create here.”

    Composed and self-assured, Metcalf was uninterested in commenting on the broader political landscape surrounding his job. He instead concentrated on the work of his office, whose lawyers prosecute matters including drug trafficking, political corruption, and terrorism across nine counties from Philadelphia to Allentown and west past Reading. They also litigate civil matters on behalf of the federal government.

    “I don’t want to say that I’m … bound by precedent or a devotee to the status quo,” he said. “But I do believe in stability, and I’m certainly not going to change things just for the sake of changing them.”

    That approach has been generally well-received by many lawyers in his office, particularly given the volatile environment across other parts of the Justice Department.

    Even Krasner — an outspoken progressive Democrat who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Trump, and who was engaged in a long-running feud with a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney four years ago — said he had a “professional and pleasant lunch” with Metcalf earlier this year.

    “We have always worked well with the career prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and our teams seem to be continuing to work well together,” Krasner said in an interview.

    Rod Rosenstein, who was the deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, said in an interview that he hired Metcalf a decade ago, when Rosenstein was the U.S. attorney in Maryland. And their paths continued to intersect over the years as their careers wound through the Justice Department.

    Rosenstein said Metcalf had “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment” — two qualities he views as critical for leading a U.S. attorney’s office.

    “I think people recognize he’s got the right qualifications,” Rosenstein said.

    U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in his Center City office.

    ‘An exhilarating vocation’

    Metcalf grew up in northern Virginia and graduated from The Wakefield School, a private prep school about an hour west of Washington, D.C. His father was once an Army colonel, he said, and his grandfather was Joseph Metcalf III, the Navy vice admiral who led the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

    Metcalf was a standout soccer player in high school, and was recruited to play by more than 80 college teams, the Washington Post reported in 2003. He used the situation to his advantage, the paper reported — making a deal with his mother that he could let his hair grow down past his shoulders once Division I colleges started sending him letters.

    He ended up attending Princeton — playing soccer all four years — and then went on to graduate from the University of Virginia’s law school.

    After clerking for U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, Metcalf spent a few years in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland under Rosenstein.

    Metcalf said he didn’t have a single epiphany that made him realize he wanted to become a prosecutor. But he said he was quickly drawn to the work, which he found more interesting and important than other legal jobs.

    “I thought it was really just an exhilarating vocation in a profession that doesn’t always have the most glamorous applications,” he said.

    High-profile connections

    From 2015 through 2022, Metcalf worked as a line prosecutor in Baltimore and, later, in Philadelphia — the office he now leads. The two years he spent here were unusual, he said, because they unfolded during the peak of the pandemic, when many aspects of the court system were disrupted and most people were working from home.

    Metcalf also spent time during the first Trump administration in Washington, D.C. While there, he worked closely with prominent Justice Department officials including Rosenstein; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen; Timothy Shea, the onetime U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.; and then-Attorney General William Barr.

    Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 26, 2019.

    Metcalf’s name was briefly in the news in 2020, when Barr and Shea, Metcalf’s then-boss, intervened in the prosecution of Stone, Trump’s longtime ally, who had been convicted of lying to Congress. After the trial prosecutors wrote in court documents that Stone should be sentenced to at least seven years in prison, Barr and Shea ordered them to walk that back and reduce their recommendation.

    Some assigned to the case viewed that as political interference and an attempt to placate Trump. A Justice Department investigation later faulted “ineffectual” leadership by Shea for how the episode unfolded, not politics.

    In 2022, Metcalf left the public sector and went to work as a corporate counsel for Amazon. But this March — after Trump was reelected for a second term — Metcalf was suddenly thrust back into the Justice Department, as the White House announced it was nominating him to be Philadelphia’s U.S. attorney.

    From nominee to confirmation

    The decision came as something of a surprise.

    McCormick, Pennsylvania’s newly elected GOP senator, had made a point of publicly announcing that he’d formed a committee to review and vet potential candidates for federal law enforcement positions across the state. And other GOP-connected lawyers in the region had been jockeying for months to try to figure out who might be able carve a path toward the coveted position.

    When the White House named Metcalf its permanent nominee, the process was effectively short-circuited.

    Metcalf said he couldn’t speak to how or why the process played out the way it did. He said he applied for the job, and “had relationships with folks in the Trump administration” due to his time in Washington during Trump’s first term.

    He didn’t specify who those people were. And some of his former bosses — particularly Barr — had fallen out of favor with Trump after his first term.

    But Rosenstein said “it’s a mistake to think that people are the people they work for. It’s a big government, and not everyone agrees all the time.”

    And in any case, Rosenstein said, he believed Metcalf was nominated “on merit, not on connections.”

    Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general during President Donald Trump’s first term, says Metcalf has “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment.”

    William McSwain, who served as U.S. attorney during Trump’s first term, said he believed Metcalf was “extremely well-qualified for the position.”

    It took the U.S. Senate six months to vote to confirm Metcalf along with a host of other Trump nominees, but by then, the Philadelphia region’s federal judges had already voted to extend Metcalf’s appointment indefinitely while the process played out.

    That move stood in contrast to several other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, where the judiciary declined to extend the tenure of Trump’s nominee, Alina Habba. For months afterward, that office was thrust into turmoil as questions swirled about who could legally serve as its leader.

    Pursuing notable cases

    During his tenure so far, Metcalf said, he’s been seeking to focus his prosecutors on finding what he called “nationally significant” cases, particularly those targeting violence, drugs, and healthcare fraud, which he views as priorities for the region.

    One of the first big indictments he announced was in October when FBI Director Kash Patel visited Philadelphia to help reveal that 33 people had been charged with being part of a Kensington-based drug gang. Metcalf said the case was the largest single prosecution in the region in at least two decades.

    FBI Director Kash Patel helping announce the arrest of dozens of suspects in a Kensington drug case.

    He also helped create a new program dubbed PSN Recon, an initiative designed to help Philadelphia Police more readily share intelligence with state and federal agencies about which groups or suspects should be investigated.

    Prosecutions overall have increased on his watch, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization that collects federal courts records.

    So far this fiscal year, prosecutions in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania were up 32% compared to last year, TRAC found, and were on their highest pace since 2019. The most common types of cases charged this year were immigration violations, drug offenses, and illegal firearm possession, according to TRAC.

    Earlier this year, Metcalf was reportedly involved in one particularly significant case: an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in producing an intelligence assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Brennan went on to become a prominent Trump critic.

    Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017.

    National outlets including Axios and the New York Times reported that Metcalf had been leading the probe, and that he had concerns about its viability — a notable development given Trump’s public demands to prosecute other adversaries, including former FBI Director James Comey.

    Metcalf never commented publicly on his purported involvement in the Brennan case, and declined to do so again during his interview with The Inquirer. The investigation is now reportedly being handled by federal prosecutors in Florida.

    Metcalf did allow a short peek into his professional mindset when he was asked more broadly if he’d ever felt pressure from Washington to sign off on a decision he didn’t agree with.

    After declining to comment on any discussions he may or may not have had with Justice Department leaders, he paused for a moment and added one final point.

    “I will also say that I would be very surprised if that ever happened to me,” he said. “I don’t see it as a problem here.”

  • A couple told patients they’d created a breakthrough medical device. In a Philadelphia courtroom, they admitted it was all a lie.

    A couple told patients they’d created a breakthrough medical device. In a Philadelphia courtroom, they admitted it was all a lie.

    She went by Dr. Mary, and her promise was a tantalizing medical breakthrough.

    At clinics operated in Arizona and several other states, Mary Blakley and her husband, Fred, told patients that for just $300, they could provide a full-body scan that utilized a proprietary “smart chip” to detect a variety of potential illnesses, including cancer.

    In addition, the Blakleys boasted, their technology could actually help cure some patients’ maladies — blasting away kidney stones with a laser, killing cancer cells by injecting a special cream, or cleaning out lungs with a prototype “sweeper” approach.

    But in federal court in Philadelphia on Monday, the couple admitted that their clinics were a sham — that in reality, they only administered basic ultrasounds to patients while lying about the other fantastical benefits.

    Their guilty pleas were the latest development in a fraud prosecution with a variety of unusual elements. Mary Blakley, for example, had not only lied about being a doctor to build her clinics, prosecutors said — her background included a prior federal conviction for manufacturing methamphetamine.

    Fred Blakley, 61, meanwhile, also pleaded guilty Monday to a separate set of firearms charges, admitting that as he was perpetuating the healthcare fraud, he was also stockpiling dozens of guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition for what he said was a forthcoming civil war against the U.S. government.

    Neither of the Blakleys said much in court Monday beyond responding to routine questions from U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh. They pleaded guilty to counts including mail and wire fraud and conspiracy.

    Prosecutors said the couple — from Lake Havasu City, Ariz. — generated more than $2 million in fraudulent billings over the years. Their clinics operated in places including their home state, California, and Colorado, prosecutors said, and some of their patients had ties to Pennsylvania, which is where they were ultimately prosecuted.

    Their chief offering was a signature “full-body scan,” which they ran through a traditional ultrasound machine — but said had been enhanced with their proprietary smart chip technology. They told patients their machine could detect, treat, and cure a variety of illnesses, and also said the technology was a secret and should not be discussed with anyone.

    The Blakleys would often go on to prescribe various creams or drugs that had little to no benefit, prosecutors said, and sometimes said a patient would need to continue using the prescription for life. One of the substances, fenbendazole, was approved for use in animals by the Food and Drug Administration, prosecutors said, but was not approved for use in humans.

    To bolster her standing with clients, prosecutors said, Mary Blakley, now 66, lied about her background, falsely claiming she had worked at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; saying she had developed pharmaceuticals for Merck; and claiming she had received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

    She hung a fake degree from the Swedish school on the wall of her clinic office, prosecutors said, along with others from Gatesville University and Almeda University — two online institutions that prosecutors described as “diploma mills.”

    To try to avoid detection, prosecutors said, the Blakleys asked their patients to pay with cash or check, refused to keep client records, and avoided keeping records of the full-body scans, which they sometimes described as “research.”

    They also sought to expand their empire, sometimes by selling their purported devices to others, or by charging trainees to open franchise branches of their clinics.

    In the meantime, court documents said, Fred Blakley was amassing a collection of more than two dozen guns and 30,000 rounds of ammunition, some of which he stored in the garage of his pastor. He was not allowed to own any firearms because he had been convicted alongside his wife in the prior methamphetamine case.

    As undercover FBI agents investigated the couple for their healthcare fraud, court documents said, Fred Blakley was captured on an audio recording in 2022 telling one of the agents he was “planning on shooting some humans.”

    “We’re gonna have to go to war with our own government … a civil war,” he said, according to court documents, later adding: “You better arm up good. I’ve got thousands of rounds of ammunition, and I’m ready to rock.”

    The couple’s downfall began several years ago, when local authorities in Arizona received complaints about the clinics, including from the couple’s estranged daughter.

    The FBI then began an extensive investigation, court documents said, and the couple were indicted in federal court in Philadelphia earlier this year.

    They are scheduled to be sentenced by McHugh in April. The couple are in custody at the federal detention center in Philadelphia. Each faces the possibility of being sentenced to more than 150 years behind bars.

  • A Main Line man who brought guns to a ‘No Kings’ protest and had bombs at his house pleaded guilty in federal court

    A Main Line man who brought guns to a ‘No Kings’ protest and had bombs at his house pleaded guilty in federal court

    A Malvern man who brought a gun and other weapons to a “No Kings” protest in West Chester over the summer — and who was rearrested days later after police found homemade bombs at his house — pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday morning.

    Kevin Krebs, 32, said little while pleading guilty to a charge of possessing an unregistered firearm or explosive device. Krebs had been taken into federal custody this fall, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him earlier this month by information, a process that typically indicates a defendant plans to plead guilty.

    The charges against him relate to his conduct in West Chester six months ago. On June 14, Krebs was arrested by local police after other attendees at a “No Kings” protest in the borough told authorities they thought they had seen Krebs carrying a gun.

    When police stopped Krebs and searched him, they found a loaded Sig Sauer handgun along with extra rounds of ammunition, a knife, a bayonet, pepper spray, and other weapons, prosecutors said. He also had an AR-15 rifle in his car nearby.

    Krebs did not have a concealed carry permit for his handgun, and he was charged with illegal gun possession.

    Two days later, police searched his home on Conestoga Road and found 13 homemade pipe bombs, prosecutors said, as well as components used to make detonators, tactical vests, and bullet-resistant armor. Some of the bombs had nails and screws inside, which are often added to improvised explosive devices to increase the amount of shrapnel they can generate.

    Krebs was initially charged by Chester County prosecutors, who said his political beliefs or potential motives were not straightforward.

    Krebs was a registered Democrat but had previously been registered as a Republican and said online that he voted for President Donald Trump. In online postings, he later said he came to regret that vote, and in the weeks preceding the “No Kings” protest he had been posting violent rhetoric aimed at Trump and police officers.

    Before his arrest, Krebs was a licensed electrician and onetime Home Depot employee. His attorneys and relatives previously said he had been diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

    Krebs is scheduled to be sentenced in March by U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Costello. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

  • A former corrections officer pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a prisoner at Philly’s Federal Detention Center

    A former corrections officer pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a prisoner at Philly’s Federal Detention Center

    A former corrections officer at Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center pleaded guilty Wednesday to sexually assaulting a female prisoner inside her cell last year — a violent attack that occurred while the victim was in protective custody because of ongoing mental health issues, prosecutors said.

    Michael Jefferson, 43, said little as he entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Joshua D. Wolson. He is scheduled to be sentenced in April and faces a maximum penalty of life behind bars.

    Jefferson was charged earlier this year with crimes including aggravated sexual abuse and deprivation of rights for attacking a prisoner inside the detention center on the 700 block of Arch Street on July 6, 2024.

    Prosecutors said Jefferson entered the woman’s cell, where she had been sleeping; placed his hands on her shoulders and told her not to say anything; then pinned her down and sexually assaulted her.

    The victim reported the assault to other guards the next morning, once Jefferson’s shift was over, prosecutors said. Evidence supported her account of having been sexually abused, prosecutors said, and showed she had been physically injured during the attack.

    The victim, who was not identified in court documents, later sued Jefferson, describing the attack as a rape and saying it occurred while she was housed in isolation and on suicide watch.

    Her lawyers have accused the Bureau of Prisons of failing to protect her from Jefferson, in part because they said another officer either ignored the assault or was improperly absent from his post when it occurred.

    The detention center can house up to 950 prisoners, most of whom are either awaiting federal trial or serving short sentences after being convicted.

  • A supervisor in Philly DA Larry Krasner’s office has been disbarred in federal court

    A supervisor in Philly DA Larry Krasner’s office has been disbarred in federal court

    A veteran lawyer in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has been disbarred in the region’s federal courts after a panel of judges concluded he “lied repeatedly” while seeking to overturn the death sentence of a man who killed an East Mount Airy couple in their home and left their infant daughter inside to die.

    Paul George, an assistant district attorney who handles appellate cases, was a key player in his office’s attempts to have Robert Wharton’s death penalty reversed so he could serve a life sentence instead.

    U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg denied that request, but not before finding that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office had provided incomplete and misleading information in its efforts to free Wharton from death row.

    After Goldberg made his decision, George and a colleague who handled the case faced federal disciplinary proceedings to examine whether their conduct — which was also criticized by an appeals court — was intentionally deceptive.

    As part of that process, three federal judges concluded earlier this year that George’s actions were “misleading and dishonest,” saying he had lied to Goldberg about key facts, “flouted the interests of the public and the victims’ families,” and acted as the “quarterback” of efforts by the district attorney’s office to undo or undermine all death penalty cases.

    “George’s conduct was the result of a ‘selfish or dishonest motive’ — placing the DAO’s policy priorities above its professional and prosecutorial responsibilities,” wrote U.S. District Judges Paul S. Diamond, Gerald J. Pappert, and John M. Gallagher. They recommended that George be barred from practicing in the region’s federal courts, and Chief Judge Wendy Beetlestone affirmed that in an October order.

    George has denied the accusations and last month filed an appeal. His attorneys acknowledged in court documents that he had made mistakes in his handling of Wharton’s case, but said the opinion recommending his disbarment was based on a broader set of “extraordinary allegations” that lacked evidence and targeted the office he worked for.

    George has displayed “exceptional legal skills and the highest level of professional ethics and honesty” during his 48-year legal career, his attorneys wrote. He is scheduled to retire at the end of this year.

    Krasner said in an interview that he was largely unable to comment because most of the disciplinary matter had unfolded under seal. But he said that George’s career “has been conducted vigorously and ethically,” and that he believed the appeals court would find that the opinion criticizing George was filled with “factually and legally incorrect” statements.

    “We will continue to try to be fair each and every day, and, as change makers often do, we will face the consequences of making change from people who could’ve made it, but didn’t, in their day,” Krasner said.

    The disciplinary saga is the latest chapter in the unusually protracted fallout from Wharton’s death penalty appeal, and it might not be the last.

    George’s colleague Nancy Winkelman — another supervisor in the district attorney’s law division — has also been the subject of a disciplinary inquiry in federal court for her role in the Wharton matter. Records in her case remain under seal.

    The documents connected to George’s case were also supposed to remain secret, but they became public this week when aspects of his appeal were publicly filed in court. On Thursday, his attorney, David Rudovsky, filed court documents to have the entire record of the underlying disciplinary proceeding made public.

    George became involved in the Wharton matter in 2019, while Wharton was appealing his death sentence in federal court.

    Wharton had been convicted along with a codefendant in the January 1984 strangulation and drowning deaths of Bradley and Ferne Hart. A jury concluded that Wharton killed the couple over a disputed debt, then turned off the heat in their home and left the couple’s 7-month-old baby, Lisa, to freeze to death. She survived.

    Bradley and Ferne Hart in a 1983 photo with their baby daughter, Lisa, on her christening day. The husband and wife were murdered in their East Mount Airy home in January 1984 by Robert Wharton and Eric Mason. The baby was unharmed, but left to die in the house. She survived.

    In the decades before Krasner took office, the district attorney’s office had consistently opposed Wharton’s attempts to overturn his conviction and sentence.

    But Krasner said on the campaign trail that he would “never pursue a death sentence in any case.” And after he was sworn in, his office changed its stance on the Wharton case, saying it had “carefully reviewed the facts and the law” and agreed that Wharton should be spared from death row.

    Goldberg did not immediately agree, and wrote in court documents at the time that the district attorney’s office had not sufficiently explained its reasoning for its “complete reversal of course.”

    He then asked the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office to provide materials he said the district attorney’s office was not sharing. And after investigating, the attorney general’s office said it found evidence including documents detailing Wharton’s past attempts to escape from a courtroom — information that Goldberg said would have been crucial to his decision, but that George and Winkelman later said they were not aware of.

    The attorney general’s office also said Krasner’s office had misled Goldberg about its communications with the victims’ relatives. Although the district attorney’s office gave the impression that the Hart family supported its change in stance on the death penalty, the truth was that prosecutors had spoken only to one relative, and never contacted the couple’s only surviving child, Lisa Hart-Newman, who vehemently opposed the idea of lessening Wharton’s sentence.

    George later acknowledged that was a mistake, and Goldberg ordered Krasner to write apology letters to the Harts’ relatives.

    In the disciplinary opinion filed earlier this year, the three-judge panel criticized George’s conduct throughout the case, saying that he “repeatedly lied” to Goldberg and that his efforts nearly undercut the integrity of a duly imposed jury verdict.

    And, in an unusually pointed fashion, they ascribed a motive to his actions — accusing George of flouting legal guardrails to advance the policy interests of Krasner’s office.

    “Upon the current District Attorney’s first election … the DAO established a policy, with Paul George at quarterback, to undermine duly imposed death sentences challenged in post-conviction proceedings,” the judges wrote. “George filed the concession in Wharton pursuant to that policy, not as the result of any review, careful or otherwise, of the facts and the law.”

    George said in court documents that was not true, and his attorneys denied there has ever been an office policy opposing all capital sentences.

    Krasner also said it was “flatly untrue” that his office has ever had a policy against the death penalty, and he denied that the committee he formed to review capital cases — which George once served on — was designed to undo such sentences.

    “We follow essentially the same process as our predecessors, who routinely supported the death penalty and who were usually wrong,” Krasner said. “We actually try to be fair all the time. And that committee has concluded on many occasions that the death penalty should be reversed; it has also concluded with the law division in individual cases that the death penalty had to be affirmed. Those are the facts.”

    George’s disbarment in federal court has not affected his ability to practice in state court, though George, 75, has already begun to wind down his office duties ahead of his retirement, his attorneys wrote in court documents.

    They said that the penalty imposed against him was unwarranted and should be reversed.

    “To label Mr. George as a liar, and by disbarment, place him among the worst of the worst lawyers in our community, is highly disproportionate and offends basic tenets of justice,” his lawyers wrote.

    The federal judges who recommended his discipline disagreed.

    “In the final years of his career,” they wrote, George “used [his] experience to circumvent and subvert, in misleading and dishonest ways, verdicts rendered by judges and juries who heard the evidence and applied the law.”

  • Two windows were smashed at Philly’s federal courthouse, the U.S. Marshals said

    Two windows were smashed at Philly’s federal courthouse, the U.S. Marshals said

    Federal authorities are searching for someone who shattered two windows at Philadelphia’s federal courthouse this week.

    The vandalism occurred late Monday night when someone used a cobblestone brick to smash two glass windows at the front entrance of the James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse on the 600 block of Market Street, said Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark.

    Clark said it was not clear if the attack was targeted. Authorities were also looking into whether there was any link to another report of windows being smashed around the same time that night a few blocks away in Old City, he said.

    Investigators were reviewing surveillance video in hopes of identifying a suspect, Clark said, and the brick that was used was left at the scene.

    The courthouse is where most of the region’s federal civil and criminal cases are heard. It also houses the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

  • Two Philly police officers aren’t federally liable for chasing after a drug suspect who crashed his car and killed a bystander, appeals court rules

    Two Philly police officers aren’t federally liable for chasing after a drug suspect who crashed his car and killed a bystander, appeals court rules

    Two Philadelphia police officers who drove after a fleeing drug suspect until the man crashed his car and killed a bystander are not liable under federal law for causing the fatal collision because the officers didn’t intend to harm anyone, an appeals court ruled.

    In an opinion issued last week, the three-judge panel from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said officers Christian Kane and Alexander Hernandez were forced to make a quick decision in 2020 when they sped after a man they’d seen dealing drugs in Kensington.

    The pursuit of the suspect, Tahir Ellison, proceeded at a normal speed for a few blocks, court documents said, but became dangerous after Ellison drove through a red light and down a one-way street.

    The episode ended in tragedy when Ellison ignored another red light and crashed into Virgen Martinez’s car at the intersection of Allegheny and Frankford Avenues, killing Martinez, a 47-year-old mother of four.

    Ellison pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges including third-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, court records show.

    But Martinez’s relatives sued Kane and Hernandez, arguing in part that the decision to speed after Ellison — which violated the police department’s policy to avoid most car chases — also violated Martinez’s 14th Amendment due process rights and made the officers liable for her death. Last year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott W. Reid agreed that that question should be put before a jury.

    The officers appealed. And in the opinion issued last week, Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote that although Hernandez’s death was a tragedy, the officers made a “snap judgment” to pursue Ellison and did not behave egregiously during the portion of the chase in which Ellison began speeding and ignoring traffic signals.

    “We ask not whether in hindsight [the officers] chose rightly, but whether they intended to cause harm,” Bibas wrote.

    Philadelphia police directives generally prohibit car chases, which are often dangerous for both citizens and officers. Exceptions are made only if officers are seeking to capture suspects fleeing violent felonies, or to prevent imminent death or serious injuries.

    An Inquirer investigation published last year found that about half of all reported chases by Philadelphia police were in violation of department polices and that the city had spent about $20 million since 2020 to settle crash- or chase-related lawsuits involving police.

    Earlier this year, the city agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle a lawsuit over a crash in which a man on a dirt bike being pursued by a city police officer struck two bystanders — including a 6-year-old girl — in Upper Darby.

    In that case, however, the officer initiated the chase without witnessing any crime, continued driving after the man for nearly 10 miles, and was later accused by the department of providing false statements to a superior and falsifying official documents.

    Bibas wrote that Kane and Alexander, by contrast, “had a split second” to decide whether to follow Ellison, whom they’d seen dealing drugs from his car. And the dangerous portion of the pursuit spanned about half a mile and 39 seconds before Ellison crashed into Martinez’s vehicle.

    Jim Waldenberger, one of the attorneys who filed suit on behalf of Hernandez’s relatives, said he and his colleagues disagreed with the ruling.

    Before the officers’ pursuit turned dangerous, Waldenberger said, they pursued Ellison at a normal speed with their police lights on for several blocks, meaning their decision to continue the chase when he sped up was not a snap judgment made under unavoidable pressure.

    The department conducted an internal investigation and found that the officers violated departmental policies regarding pursuits, and each spent at least several months on administrative duty, court documents said. The documents did not specify whether either officer faced additional discipline.

    Sgt. Eric Gripp, a police spokesperson, said Monday that Kane is still on the force but that Hernandez left last year. Gripp declined to comment further.

    Waldenberger said he and his colleagues were still weighing whether to appeal the Third Circuit’s ruling on the officers’ liability.

    The lawsuit can proceed on more limited grounds surrounding whether the city sufficiently trains police officers regarding pursuits, and whether Kane, who was driving the police car, violated state negligence laws.

  • A Philly journalist was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of images and videos of child porn

    A Philly journalist was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of images and videos of child porn

    A Philadelphia journalist was sentenced Friday to 20 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of images and videos of child pornography.

    Michael Hochman, whose work was published over the years by outlets including Visit Philadelphia, the sports website Crossing Broad, and The Inquirer — where he once contributed a freelance column — came to the attention of investigators in 2022 after they learned that he exchanged explicit messages with a teenage girl. Authorities later found that he had downloaded more than 2,000 photos and videos of children being sexually abused onto his computers and other devices, prosecutors said.

    Hochman, 52, of Huntingdon Valley, compiled that collection over the course of more than a decade, prosecutors said, and did so even after he’d served prison time for sexually assaulting a teenager in Kansas in 2002.

    In sentencing Hochman on Friday, U.S. District Judge Kelley B. Hodge cited that conviction as she imposed a prison term five years longer than prosecutors sought.

    Calling Hochman’s actions “shameful” and “vile,” the judge said, “The level of depravity … is without words.“

    Hochman was convicted of child sex crimes two decades ago after prosecutors say he had sex with a 13-year-old girl he met online. He was convicted of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and sentenced to 55 months in prison, court documents said.

    In 2022, prosecutors said, a Missouri woman discovered that her 15-year-old daughter, who had developmental disabilities, had been exchanging explicit messages with an older man online. The mother alerted law enforcement, and authorities traced the messages back to Hochman.

    After investigators seized six devices from Hochman’s home, the documents said, four were found to contain sexually explicit images and videos of children being abused.

    In all, prosecutors said, Hochman possessed about 1,900 photos and 130 videos of child pornography, many of which depicted rapes, and some of which had been downloaded more than a decade ago.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Rotella said it was “very troubling” that Hochman began downloading materials of children being abused not long after he’d been punished for similar crimes.

    “The seriousness of his crimes can in no way be argued with,” Rotella said.

    Hochman’s attorney, Michael Diamondstein, said no one should be defined by their best or worst actions, but acknowledged the gravity of Hochman’s misdeeds.

    “This is a bad case,” he said.

    The judge noted that some of the images on Hochman’s computer depicted children as young as three.

    Moreover, she said, Hochman’s exchanges with the 15-year-old girl in Missouri were “beyond offensive.”

    And Hochman, she said, had a solid upbringing and was a working professional with a college degree, who had opportunities to avoid acting on criminal impulses.

    “You knew better,” she said. “You know how to access help.”

    Hochman apologized for his actions, saying he recognizes the harm he’s caused and will work the rest of his life to avoid doing so again in the future.

    “I made these choices, and I must accept the consequences,” he said.