Court Watch #108: Meth, Heroin, and...Weapons-Grade Plutonium?

Welcome to Court Watch #108. We’ll get to the clickbaity but also somehow true weapons-grade plutonium headline soon. We’ll also cover bombs, mass firings of court officials, DOJ’s new fancy Miami real estate, a billion-dollar heist, a Russian mercenary caught at the border with two passports, and a progressive news site sued for wage theft. Plus a lot of other things. 

But first, let’s talk about Saints, Stenographers, and the Sherman Act. 

A Monopoly On Words

Our love of court reporters, the folks that every day diligently transcribe for lawyers and the public the thousands of court proceedings, can most likely be traced back to our Catholic grade school education. You see, back in the early 1990s, around the same time PACER was created and then never updated again, we, at an impressionable age, were taught the histories of the Saints. Long-time readers of Court Watch will know this well but, whether it is court records or obscure history, we tend to be drawn to stories that are not well-known. Which is why an Italian man named Cassian caught our eye because it combined both of those points. 

As lore, legend, and the occasionally shaky written word from that time state, Cassian was essentially a 4th Century court reporter and stenographer, tasked with the far-too-busy job of documenting the ongoing criminal trials against practicing Christians who were being persecuted and killed by the Roman Empire for their faith. Moved by what he transcribed, Cassian is said to have converted, quit his job, and became a school headmaster with a focus on teaching students how to use shorthand for notes with their wax tablet and Roman stylus. In modern days, Cassian of Imola has become a de facto patron saint of school teachers, stenographers, and court reporters. 

Conversely, court reporters perform modern miracles every day. They are trusted confidants of judges, understanders of the unintelligible mumbles of a witness, and workers of nights and weekends to get a transcript to a lawyer in time for their emergency appeals. They exist in the professional background noise of the U.S. justice system, recording but rarely becoming the story. 

So last Friday when two veteran court reporters stepped out of the courts’ shadows to file their own lawsuit, we took notice.

Kelly Palazzi and Cindy Jenkins, two court reporters with over half a century of combined experience, are suing the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) alleging the organization is operating as a monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act. 

The lawsuit states, “For over a decade, NCRA has abused and continues to abuse its powerful position within the stenographic community to collect membership dues through anticompetitive means.” NCRA is a membership-based organization that represents stenographers who work as court reporters and as captioners for TV broadcasts. In all, the plaintiff's attorneys estimate that nearly 60% of court reporters in the U.S. are NCRA members. 

According to the attorneys, certified stenographers have to attend thirty hours worth of NCRA-sponsored education sessions every three years to maintain certification by NCRA (that are similar to CLEs but the attorneys contend are not educationally productive). The organization also imposes a $300 membership fee that stenographers have to pay to not give up certification. Even retired stenographers have to pay a membership fee to be able to say they were previously certified.

The attorneys wrote that thirty-nine state judiciaries require certification to work as a court stenographer. Of those thirty-nine, twelve states mandate certification through solely NCRA to become a court reporter. The other twenty-seven offer a state-run stenographer test or the option to choose between NCRA and another private stenographer organization. The attorneys argued in the suit that NCRA effectively corners the court reporter market in those states without fair competition while forcing stenographers into paying unnecessary dues.

NCRA declined to comment to Court Watch at this time while they reviewed the lawsuit. They issued a statement on their website that said they would defend against the lawsuit, calling it “frivolous and without merit.” A lawyer for Palazzi and Jenkins did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The lawsuit was reported first by Reuters. 

As part of reporting this story, we noted that the 2025 Court Reporting and Captioning Week is just a little over three weeks away. We’ll see if we have an update for you on the lawsuit then.

We trust that disagreements over whether or not one needs to be in a specific in-group, be it work-related or religious, have evolved significantly since the heady days of St. Cassian. After all, he was martyred after refusing to denounce his new found Christian faith, in defiance to the emperor’s order that he pray to the existing Roman gods. Julian The Apostate, who would become the last non-Christian emperor in part because of his heavy handed approach to cracking down on minority religious groups, had a flair for the dramatic. He ordered Cassian’s former stenographer students to reportedly stab to death their old teacher with their own writing instruments. A lesson for both parties that stubbornness may win in the long run but also never mess with court reporters.

Adapting ever so slightly from our guy Billy, we talked about the Saints, let’s dance with the sinners in this week’s federal court docket roundup.

The Docket Roundup

• On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen reversed a previous judge’s decision not to detain Brad Spafford, who was charged with a firearms offense after an FBI search of his property reportedly revealed the largest batch of homemade explosives in FBI history. In the order to keep Spafford detained, Judge Wright Allen wrote, “Nothing in the Bail Reform Act requires that the Court wait until Defendant actually blows someone or something up (besides his own hand), if the Court concludes that it cannot reasonably assure the safety of the community through conditions of release.” On Thursday, Spafford was indicted on the firearm charge and an additional charge of possessing an unregistered destructive device. We’ve updated our landing page for that docket with all the new filings.

• We don’t typically cover state courts but the vibes feel a little tense at the Arkansas Supreme Court.

• Defective parts started an investigation into a Pennsylvania-based defense contractor, who set up multiple companies, including one in his daughter’s name, to do business with the DOD.

• A sailor was arrested for selling Percocet pills laced with fentanyl on the U.S.S. Lincoln that are allegedly tied to one sailor’s fatal overdose.

• Prosecutors say an Arizona state government employee took a $3,000 bribe in exchange for signing off on a fraudulent unemployment benefit application.

• A man who made $650,000 on the stock market after his childhood friend, who is an investment banker at JP Morgan, funneled him insider information was sentenced to two years in prison. 

• A bloody mary, a need to go pee, and a family that tried its best. Justin has the writeup. 

• A woman from California is suing a man for secretly recording them having sex and uploading the video to an adult site. 

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s sister, Ann Altman, is suing him with allegations that he sexually abused her when they were both children. Sam Altman and his family have denied the accusations. 

• Washington-based Athira Pharma agreed to pay over four million dollars following allegations that its former CEO falsified and manipulated research in NIH grant applications.

• New year, time for new year resolutions to get our finances in order. The federal government is tracking down that $10,000 the other part of the federal government owes it. 

• Our Humble Proposal: A new DOJ offsite. 

• “Photoshop!? C’mon, Salah. C’mon.” – Arguing with the FBI that a picture of you allegedly dropping off a fake bomb in a church is photoshopped is an interesting legal strategy.

• A Japanese gang leader pled guilty to trafficking heroin, meth, and <checks notes>…weapons-grade plutonium?

• The Justice Department announced that over a billion dollars was given to nearly 1,900 victims of state-sponsored terrorism. The victim fund accepted more than 4,500 new claimants in 2024, bringing the total to over 20,000 victims. The Department estimated that more than $120 billion still needs to be paid on the victims’ claims.

• Vail Resorts got sued for not letting folks know they weren’t (fine…allegedly) paying a living wage and there was a employee strike.

• Travis Scott, Kayne West, SZA all in one lawsuit filing.

• Border Patrol arrested a Russian mercenary from the Wagner Group this week at the Southern Border. The court documents are bland but one of our favorite local Texas reporters Dave Hendricks showed everyone how important it is to actually attend a hearing in person.

• CAIR, the nation’s largest Muslim American civil rights organization, is fighting a judge’s order to reveal their donor list to a former employee suing over defamation claims. The organization is also pushing back on a discovery request to provide a payment list of all defamation, sexual harassment, or other type of settlements by CAIR in the past. 

• We have no proper words to describe the ridiculousness of this.

• Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the Special Counsel’s Office to halt the release of its report. Here’s the motion by President-elect Trump’s former co-defendants in the case. Then there was an appeal to the Appeals. Side note, this all seems like a super easy end around for bored reporters with a straightforward FOIA request for any of Jack’s recent emails.

• More crypto-based fraud. This time involved an apparently fake insurance agent and two crypto accounts, “Tradingislove” and “Tradingislife.”

• The Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice announced a new program in which the public can submit proposals to address gaps in rural justice. The top proposals will compete for a cash prize. We applaud any contest that seeks to lower the bar of entry into understanding the U.S. legal system. However, the simplest way to make courts more accessible to the public would be to continue the far too temporary processes that worked well during COVID, which is online access to hearings and video recordings in the court. You guys can keep our prize money.

• Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief statement on January 6th that thanked the work of law enforcement and prosecutors.

• Federal public defenders representing the man accused of plotting to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a motion to suppress evidence from law enforcement’s warrantless search of the man’s suitcase. 

• Two companies in India and a senior executive were charged with trafficking chemicals used to make fentanyl into the U.S. and Mexico.

• If you kill a wild burro on federal land, the Bureau of Land Management will use all instruments of national power to find you. Let’s put those guys in charge of the January 6th bomber investigation.

• It was temporarily available and then sealed shortly after, but a Canadian man being held in an ICE detention center and who is wanted in his home country for making threats and armed robbery is on a hunger strike. The U.S. Government wants a judge’s permission to force feed him to keep him alive.

• For the Trump trials beat, every reporter is focusing on New York today but for our money, we think the last couple paragraphs of President-elect Trump’s motion in Pennsylvania citing anti-SLAPP laws is more interesting. 

• A man in New Jersey is set to plead guilty to submitting falsified fishing vessel trip reports and dealer reports to the NOAA.

• If you’re reading this newsletter, you're a legal junkie. We have your fix. If you want to nerd out on how the Justice Department prosecutes terrorism cases, this Tuesday our editor is interviewing the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York. You can RSVP to the online panel here at NCITE. You can also email him with any possible questions you’d like to be asked.

• Exxon is suing several environmental groups for allegedly saying mean things about its recycling .

• DOJ’s Civil Division filed a suit against Nevada for mispractice at its state-run children’s behavioral health facilities.

• A $2,500 bribe to a U.S. government employee turned into millions.

• The chairman and CEO of MoviePass’ parent company pled guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy for lying to investors about profits from its money-losing “unlimited” movie theater passes for less than ten dollars a month.

• The Justice Department and ten other state AG’s offices filed a suit against six landlord companies for algorithmic pricing rents.

• Jay-Z supports sanctions.

• Ocean’s 11 involved 3 major casinos, tricking dozens of guards, evading countless cameras with 360 views, a trapeze artist, a bomb specialist, nine other con men, a precise replica of a vault, a stolen and then used electronic magnetic pulse machine, explosive jewels, and a jilted ex-lover dating a mark, all timed and executed perfectly to get away with 150 million dollars. Meanwhile, the feds said some programmer stole a billion dollar code because his old company didn’t turn off his access when he got a new job.

• Two men whose death sentences President Biden commuted to life in prison filed in federal court to block their commutations, perhaps believing that an active death verdict positioned them better for a successful appeal. A judge in Indiana ordered for one of the men to receive counsel while noting that the court likely does not have the power to stop a President’s commutation order.

• We’ve never seen a federal judge reject a motion to arrest a material witness, not only once, but twice. 

• The progressive site, Daily Kos, was sued by a former employee alleging that he was fired when he raised concerns about their privacy compliance of readers’ data and alleges he was not paid certain wages. We asked for a comment a few days ago from the site, no response. 

• Shot. Meet Chaser. 

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