The first grand jury proceeding in the Broadview Six case began with a *textbook example* of forbidden prosecutorial vouching. Misconduct from the start. Just incredible stuff.
Now here is a grand juror doing the 5th Amendment proud www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...
You can't read too much into a GVR (grant, vacate, remand). But if you combine this decision with Rutherford, it sounds like the conservative supermajority is shrinking the First Step Act's expansion of compassionate release to exclude consideration of wildly unfair, overlong, irrational sentences.
Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
#BREAKING Transcripts from grand jury proceedings that led to the "Broadview Six" indictment have been made public.
Here is the first, from Oct. 9: www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...
This is the same Trump judge who said Trump has unreviewable authority to send the National Guard into American cities
This decision is alarming because Rutherford dealt with defendants who were sentencing BEFORE the First Step Act and would've received less prison time had they been sentenced AFTER it.
Now the majority implies that compassionate release may never been available because of ANY sentencing disparity?
JUST IN: "The Court authorizes the release of the Grand Jury Transcripts from 10/9/2025, 10/16/2025, and 10/23/2025 …."
Stay tuned.
As Sotomayor indicates, this application of Batson is wrong. When a defendant is denied the opportunity to raise a Batson claim, that's a structural error that requires a new trial. The defendant should not be forced to prove that they would've been acquitted if they'd exercised their Batson rights.
I cannot stress enough that there is no language in the First Step Act that suggests Congress intended such a parsimonious reading of compassionate release; indeed, there is language that suggests the exact opposite. One major goal was to expand compassionate release. So why is SCOTUS shrinking it?
