iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Carissa Byrne Hessick

Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Kash Patel is suing the Atlantic for a quarter billion dollars. I am begging people who are not familiar with Oscar Wilde’s downfall to read about his legal case. He filed a similar weak defamation suit, lost, and ended up serving two years of hard labor for the “gross indecency” the trial revealed.

history.com

Oscar Wilde Trial | HISTORY

Lord Alfred Douglas Wilde kept his homosexuality a secret. He married and had two sons. But in 1891, Wilde began an a...

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

ICE and Border Patrol claim that they can arrest people who follow them, record them, blow whistles, refuse to follow orders, etc for "impeding" their official actions. But the law officials are referencing is much narrower than they seem to think. prawfsblawg.com/what-does-it...

prawfsblawg.com

Understanding 18 U.S.C. § 111: Are ICE Tactics Legal?

Discover why ICE and Border Patrol may misinterpret 18 U.S.C. § 111 when arresting civilians for following them. Explore the legal implications.

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Thomas Frampton @tframpton.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Wild opinion: Virginia has been violating the Readmission Act of 1870 for about ~125 years, illegally denying the vote to 1000s convicted of crimes that weren't "common law felonies." (Credit to @cbhessick.bsky.social & Edward Ayers, both of whom served as expert witnesses for the plaintiffs.)

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

“No one teaches the Western canon anymore!” “Look, Plato’s Symposium is right here on my syllabus!” “Whoa, whoa, whoa—not that!”

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

For those who are trying to assess the legitimacy of the charges against Bolton: 1) these charges came from the MD US Atty’s office—which is led by a career prosecutor 2) the investigation predates Trump taking office 3) the indictment suggests large amounts of classified material were involved

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Whatever ends up happening in the James Comey prosecution, our country needs to grapple with the fact that public confidence in the impartiality of criminal prosecutions has been terribly damaged over the past few years.

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Josh Vaughn @joshuapvaughn.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Voting ends Oct 9 vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting...

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

I’m sure that bodes well for getting a conviction at trial

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James Chalmers @jameschalmers.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Oddly striking how this teenager, in accounting for her admittedly criminal behaviour, frames it as self-care. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"When I eventually encounter the gang, I'm faced with a 14-year-old girl in pink leggings and Crocs.
"I'm not claiming to be innocent because I'm not," she tells us. "I've threatened people and I've hit people, I'll admit to that."
"The second you get into one bit of trouble with the police, you fall into it too deep and you can't get out," she adds.
She says an injury forced her to give up sport and that behaving badly offers an alternative energy release. "I found that I get the same adrenaline boost from being in trouble with the police and being missing and stuff."
But there's little remorse. "I regret what I do, but I don't say sorry," she says to cheers from the rest of the gang.
She seems bright but deeply troubled. She admits drinking and she's vaping while we talk. Muhammad had already told us he had experienced racist abuse - something the girl firmly denies being involved in.
One of her friends chimes in. "I know what we're doing is wrong but we're teenage kids, we're going to have a bit of fun," she tells us. "I'm sorry for most of the people we have damaged, but I have no sympathy… it's just one way of taking my anger out.""

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Given what’s been happening in DC, I would think no one in DOJ should feel particularly confident about whether a grand jury will indict anyone right now.

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

I decided to look at all 66 prosecutor elections this fall. Why? Prosecutors have huge power over sentencing, charging, second chances, and even immigration implications. Here's everything you need to know, from East to West Coast. New from me:

boltsmag.org

Your Guide to the 2025 Prosecutor Elections - Bolts

Most of November's prosecutor races feature just one candidate, as usual. But key races will shape the politics of criminal justice, from Philly to Seattle — plus a wild card in New Jersey.

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Prof Jane Mitchell @jane-mitchell.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

I enjoyed reading through @cbhessick.bsky.social's latest "Prosecutors and Politics" study. Surprising to learn that most media coverage about prosecutors is neutral in tone (only 6% of 2020 coverage about prosecutors was negative). Is that still true in 2025, in today's era of weaponized justice?

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Just posted my new paper (coauthored with Andy Hessick), called Facts, Policy, and Discretion, which is is forthcoming in the @ucdavislaw.bsky.social law review We address an important error that I keep seeing in criminal justice cases about the nature of discretion papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 18/07/2025

Calling it: Grand Jury Bluesky will be the worst Bluesky so far.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Curious whether anyone could tell me more about this statutory restriction on plea bargaining in Kansas. The conventional wisdom is that the parties will always evade plea bargaining prohibitions. I'm curious whether that has been the experience in KS with this limited carveout

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Erin Gallagher @3r1ng.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

These 2 paragraphs are bananas. Truly incredible stuff c/o US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Screenshot of 2 paragraphs from linked WSJ article.

Text:
“In a Fox News interview in May, she made the claim that since Trump had taken office, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had seized more than 21 million fentanyl pills, and “that’s 21 million lives saved, in my opinion.” Critics seized on it as a dubious claim, given that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May said synthetic opioids including fentanyl were involved in 48,422 deaths in 2024 and 76,282 deaths in 2023.

Two days later, Bondi said the fentanyl seizures had saved 119 million lives, which would be roughly one-third of the 340 million people living in the U.S. In a cabinet meeting, she revised her statement again, this time claiming the seizures had saved 258 million lives. McGavick posted on social media an equation intended to show that the number of seized pills could hypothetically kill 258 million people.”

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 12/07/2025

I'm a professor at the flagship university for the fourth whitest state in the US. Over 80% of our students are white. The biggest barrier to access here is that due to lack of state funding, we have top 10 highest tuition per capita of public unis in the country. We also have a food pantry.

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Milan Weibel 🔷 @weibac.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

this is all downstream of people finding it aversive to change their mind

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I increasingly feel certain that the thing that has driven politics insane is the growing ability of people to find ways to validate their beliefs, no matter how incorrect and irrational. It started in right-wing media but has become central to all political discussion.

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Ann M. Lipton @annmlipton.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

we call this "fighting antisemitism"

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Cait (spooky edition 🦇) @caitesq.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I always get caught off guard by Memorial Day weekend. It's somehow not on my list of summer occasions.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Important statistics. But questionable claim that SCOTUS isn’t willing to defend the rule of law.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

This is the best assessment of the Trump administration vs universities battle that I've seen. Definitely worth the read. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Harvard Derangement Syndrome

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Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Can't wait until Trump's DHS spokespeople start trying to convince us this American toddler is actually a wife beating human trafficker

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Trump is putting 100% of the responsibility and blame for Garcia’s release on “his lawyers” in DOJ Also, the implication of these comments is either that the lawyers are lying to Trump or that he can’t understand what they’re telling him.

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Max Hardy @maxjlhardy.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

I think if Jack Lowden is going to play Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice it’s only right that Gary Oldman should play Mr Bennet and Kristin Scott Thomas should play Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

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Matthew Segal @segalmr.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

I argued before Judge Wilkinson as an assistant federal defender. It generally didn’t go well for my clients. His opinion today is a credit to him and an indictment of everyone in the administration who brought us to this moment.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

That is not what this clip says. It says a bunch of awful and divisive stuff. But it doesn’t suggest criminally charging people who call for due process. Come on people—what this administration is doing and saying is bad enough. There’s no reason to invent fictional bad things.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I am of the firm belief that law professors should not publish op eps on important legal issues until AFTER they’ve done the hard work required to produce a publishable article on a topic. The op ed is only getting published because the status of the prof is an implicit claim to expertise.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

The man told them he was an attorney, and that his email contained privileged information. Nonetheless, government agents insisted on looking through his phone, exploiting their power to search at the border. This is something that all attorneys need to address immediately.

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Jason Gottlieb @ohaiom.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I want everyone to have due process rights, because I believe in the constitution and the rule of law. But sometimes a small part of me wants everyone to have the same due process rights that they advocate for others. Wonder how JD Vance would like being sent to prison without a hearing?

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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

It's genuinely hard to express to sort of normal not politically plugged in non-lawyers *how* lawless the Trump administration is, and I think that's some part of the problem. You sound like you're hyperventilating, but it's just a flat description of what is going on.

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Amelia Smith Rinehart @aksrinehart.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Read and follow @cbhessick.bsky.social to learn how proliferating plea bargains damaged our criminal justice system and why they should not be used to prohibit any exoneration claims. And read and follow @robertmannbooks.com, too.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

An excellent essay here from @alanrozenshtein.com on the presumption of regularity. Highly recommended reading for those who are paying attention to the Trump administration’s defiance of the courts. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...

lawfaremedia.org

What Happens When Courts Can’t Trust the Executive Branch?

In the lower courts, the presumption of regularity is in free fall—if it hasn’t crashed already.

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Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Well, El Salvador let Kristi Noem film a commercial inside the dang prison so maybe she could go there and escort him out.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Rupar isn’t the only active poster who does this with regularity—posts a video with a misleadingly incomplete or just flat out false caption. It’s terrible behavior.

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

-concentration camps -zero free speech -mass executions -complete repression of all ethnic and social minorities -one party state with no elections in which it’s illegal to criticize the government

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Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Canadians are pissed off. Cory Booker is pissed off. It's revenge of the nice people out here

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Bondi’s statement says that this man *firebombed* a Tesla dealership. Reasonable people can disagree about whether 20 years is too much for that crime. But I don’t think that “vandalizing” is a fair way to characterize her statement.

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Carissa Byrne Hessick @cbhessick.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Maybe I am misunderstanding the email that this group sent to law students, but it looks like they’re telling students that they have to preserve their personal statements to the law review in perpetuity. I’m no civ pro expert, but forever seems like a long time to have to preserve something.

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Jonathan H. Adler @jadler1969.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Good for Clement, standing up for BigLaw, even when BigLaw didn't stand up for him.

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

We have had nearly two decades of panic about Free Speech on Campus and not a single case, not even the ones they made up, were as bad as what's happening now

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Women Also Know Law @womenknowlaw.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Congratulations to @mrparsh.bsky.social and @cbhessick.bsky.social on the forthcoming publication of their article "The Nuances of Prosecutorial Nonenforcement" in the William & Mary Law Review! You can check out the abstract below. #WomenAlsoKnowLaw

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

The deans at WV and UNC--both public schools in states w GOP governors who have ALREADY targeted those universities--signed the letter. Which makes the silence of the top-most law schools--almost all privates in deep blue states--all the more unacceptable.

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