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Parade shooter signed his trial waiver ‘Donald Trump;’ will it make a difference?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 6, 2025, 12:25 pm CST

An Illinois man accused of killing seven people and wounding 48 others at a 2022 Fourth of July parade in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to all charges Monday, but he did not sign his name to a trial waiver.

Robert Crimo III of Illinois signed his name as “Donald Trump,” but that shouldn’t affect his oral guilty plea, legal experts told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“He can sign Mickey Mouse or Donald Trump,” Richard Kling, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told the newspaper. The important thing, Kling said, is the transcript of Crimo’s oral guilty plea showing that a judge “asked the magic questions, and he gave the magic answers.”

Defense lawyer Adam Sheppard agreed with that assessment but said the Trump signature could raise questions about Crimo’s ability to understand he was waiving trial.

“The fact that he used the president’s name may raise an eyebrow in terms of fitness,” Sheppard told the Chicago Sun-Times.

During the plea hearing, prosecutors summarized key evidence against Crimo in the 2022 shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, according to previous coverage by the Lake County News-Sun via the Chicago Tribune. He was spotted dropping a semiautomatic rifle covered in cloth after the shooting, DNA linked him to the crime, and he had confessed on videotape.

Still ongoing are civil lawsuits filed by victims and their families. Defendants include Crimo’s father, who sponsored his son’s Firearm Owner’s Identification card, and the Illinois State Police, which approved the application. Other defendants include Smith & Wesson and the companies that sold the weapon.

See also:

After deadly shootings, ABA House pushes for tighter gun controls

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Criminal Justice

Former lawyer gets prison time after posing as BigLaw alum, former football player in quest for jobs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 13, 2025, 9:00 am CDT

Updated: An Ohio lawyer has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for Social Security fraud after using fake identities in a quest for law firm jobs.

Richard Louis Crosby III, 37, of Mason, Ohio, was sentenced Monday, according to Reuters and a March 10 press release. In addition to serving time in prison, Crosby will have to pay $171,000 in restitution to defrauded firms.

Crosby had used the name Richard Williams while applying to firms and claimed at various times to be a former Marine, a former University of Michigan football player and a Kirkland & Ellis lawyer, according to the press release.

He used fake identities to get job offers with at least seven firms that often offered six-figure salaries and, in some cases, signing bonuses, the press release said. One California firm hired Crosby at an annual salary of $250,000 the month before his federal indictment.

Crosby pleaded guilty to three federal counts of Social Security fraud in July 2024. He had used identifying information for his elderly father, his girlfriend, a dead man and others, federal prosecutors said.

Crosby used the fake identities beginning in June 2021, after he indicated that he intended to resign from the practice of law. Crosby was indicted in the state on theft charges in June 2021 and November 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio. “After his indictments, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio entered an order disbarring Crosby,” the news release states. However, he applied at a second firm in June 2022.

The Supreme Court of Ohio’s directory still lists Crosby as “Resigned-Discipline Pending,” and an employee in the clerk’s office confirmed that he has not been disbarred by the Supreme Court of Ohio.

He pleaded guilty in the Ohio theft cases in May 2023 and was sentenced to probation the next month.

Updated on March 14 to note that while the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio refers to him as disbarred, the Supreme Court Of Ohio Attorney Directory refers to him as resigned with discipline pending.

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Allegations that murder defendant was ‘a drug ho’ who practiced witchcraft leads to tossed conviction

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 25, 2025, 9:15 am CST

The New Mexico Supreme Court has overturned a woman’s 2022 murder conviction and barred a retrial because of “severe and pervasive prosecutorial misconduct, exacerbated by a lackluster defense.”

The state supreme court tossed the conviction and the case against Desiree Lensegrav, concluding in a Feb. 20 opinion that her “entire trial was filled with theatrics, hyperbole and disparaging inflammatory statements.”

In his opening statement, the prosecutor called Lensegrav “a worthless mother” and “a drug ho—not my words!” the opinion said. During the trial, the prosecution called a witness who accused Lensegrav of witchcraft. In closing statements, the prosecutor encouraged jurors to convict Lensegrav “for the stench of death that permeated this courtroom.”

The prosecutor was referring to the introduction of “foul-smelling” physical evidence that was attached to the victim’s body, which caused a trial adjournment.

The Legal Profession Blog posted highlights from the opinion, while the Taos News and KOB had coverage. The state supreme court also issued a Feb. 20 press release.

The opinion identified the lead prosecutor as Assistant District Attorney Cosme Ripol of the Eighth Judicial District in New Mexico. He will not be commenting in response to an ABA Journal request, according to the district office manager.

Eighth Judicial District Attorney Marcus J. Montoya issued a statement.

“Though we prepared fully to present this case at trial, secured a conviction and would have preferred to keep this truly bad actor in prison, we accept the opinion of the supreme court, and we will always learn and evolve so as to continually improve,” Montoya said.

Lensegrav’s husband, Aram Montoya, pleaded guilty to murder in the killing in 2021 and received a life sentence. In his opening statement, Ripol told jurors about Aram Montoya’s statements incriminating Lensegrav, even though he was not on the prosecution witness list.

Referring to Lensegrav, Ripol said jurors will hear a story “of a strong, smart, determined, manipulative, vengeful, capable, controlling, resilient, cunning human being with a profound drug problem” who used her “needy, insecure” husband to commit murder.

Ripol also told jurors about expected testimony from the owner of a drug house. The owner would testify that Lensegrav suggested on several occasions that she was a witch, and she “would put menstrual blood concoctions” in her husband’s food to control him, Ripol said. The owner saw Lensegrav’s eyes turn “black. With fury. And rage,” Ripol said. “And it was like a Hollywood movie. He could feel the wind coming out of her.”

Lensegrav and Aram Montoya became suspects in 2020 after Aram Montoya was accused of trying to kill Lensegrav by repeatedly stabbing her in the neck and back with a paring knife. After Lensegrav came out of a medically induced coma, police gave her a Miranda warning and began to question her about the 2019 murder of Joseph Morgas. Police told Lensegrav that her husband had confessed to the murder, and her husband had thrown her “under the bus.”

Lensegrav told police that she wanted Aram Montoya to beat up Morgas because of his statements at the drug house. Morgas was a relative of a man who raped and impregnated Lensegrav when she was a teenager.

Lensegrav said Morgas laughed at her, called her a drug whore, and said she deserved to be raped. He also said he had video of Lensegrav at the drug house, and he would share it with his family, so they could get custody of her child.

Aram Montoya and Morgas fought outside the drug house, Lensegrav told police. Aram Montoya put Morgas in a headlock and “choked him out,” causing him to turn purple and go limp, she said. Lensegrav said she helped dispose of the body, fearing that Aram Montoya would kill her, too, if she didn’t cooperate.

Ripol told jurors that Lensegrav had confessed to strangling Morgas with twine, directed her husband to burn the body and to cut off Morgas’ head with a shovel, and had thrown the shovel and head in the river.

“None of these allegations would conform to the evidence,” the New Mexico Supreme Court said.

“Inexplicably,” the state supreme court said, “defense counsel did not object to the vast majority of instances of prosecutorial misconduct that defendant identifies on appeal.”

The New Mexico Supreme Court concluded that the prosecutorial misconduct was so unfairly prejudicial that it presented a double jeopardy bar to a retrial under the New Mexico Constitution.

“Prosecutors are held to the highest ethical standards in all courtrooms, and any time that standard is not maintained, reversal and this type of circumstance is the result. Like many trials get, this case became emotionally charged,” Montoya said in his statement to the Journal.

“Fortunately, the person we know was physically guilty of taking Mr. Morgas’ life is still in prison, and he will stay there,” Montoya said.

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Expected noncompliance with court orders shouldn’t defeat standing, Kavanaugh says in DNA-test arguments

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 25, 2025, 11:08 am CST

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided Monday in arguments over a death row inmate’s quest for a DNA test to show that he wasn’t inside a trailer where robbery accomplices killed an 85-year-old woman.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh was among the justices appearing sympathetic to Texas inmate Ruben Gutierrez’s bid for testing to establish that he didn’t deserve the death penalty for the 1998 murder, report Courthouse News Service, Law.com, SCOTUSblog and the New York Times.

Kavanaugh wrote the 6-3 Supreme Court decision in 2023 that allowed Texas inmate Rodney Reed to pursue a DNA test.

The issue in the Reed case was whether the statute of limitations barred his request for a DNA test in his federal civil rights lawsuit. Before reaching the issue, however, the Supreme Court said Reed had sufficiently alleged an injury that would be redressed by a finding that state DNA testing procedures violate due process.

In Gutierrez’s case, the issue is whether Gutierrez had standing to challenge Texas statute that allows postconviction DNA testing only when it could lead to an overturned conviction. The law does not allow testing when it affects only the sentence, as in Gutierrez’s case.

Texas argues that Gutierrez doesn’t have standing to bring a due process challenge to the statute because he would still be eligible for the death penalty under Texas law and wouldn’t be entitled to the test.

Texas law permits a capital murder conviction in a robbery scheme even if other accomplices killed the victim and even if the defendant didn’t anticipate the murder.

Lawyers for Gutierrez, on the other hand, argue that jurors would not have sentenced Gutierrez to death if DNA showed that he was not in the home and that he wasn’t a “major participant” in the crime. They also argue that courts don’t have to determine whether state officials would redress Gutierrez’s injury if courts were to declare the statute unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh “appeared to take umbrage at the suggestion” that prosecutors might not allow DNA testing even if the Texas statute is found unconstitutional, according to Law.com.

SCOTUSblog reported on Kavanaugh’s comment.

“I just don’t see,” he said, “how we can say something’s not redressable just because the prosecutor is going to say I’m not going to comply with a court order. You know, if President Nixon said I’m not going to come turn over the tapes no matter what, you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I guess we don’t have standing to hear the executive privilege case.’”

Courthouse News Service points out that Kavanaugh’s comment comes following suggestions by Vice President JD Vance that presidents could ignore court orders that interfere with their lawful exercise of power.

The case is Gutierrez v. Saenz.

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Noella Sudbury knew she was onto something big when she helped organize Utah’s first free “Expungement Day” in 2018. The former public defender and Goldman Sachs compliance attorney had gone to work in 2016 for Ben McAdams, then-mayor of Salt Lake County. McAdams had introduced initiatives to address criminal justice reform, and Sudbury had become immersed in improving the expungement process.

One in three adult Americans has a criminal record, which she says can create significant barriers to housing, employment or even volunteering in their children’s classrooms.

Expungement was also expensive and complicated and, at that time, typically took about 18 months to complete, Sudbury says.

After hundreds of people came to the Expungement Day event, Sudbury knew she needed to do more.”It was the first time I think as a lawyer that I realized how big of a justice gap we had and how access to this simple legal proceeding could absolutely transform someone’s life,” says Sudbury, 39, who earned a bachelor’s degree in social justice from the University of Utah in 2006 and a JD from the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law in 2009.

Sudbury founded Clean Slate Utah, a nonprofit that raises awareness of automatic record clearance, in 2021. She also had begun working on clean slate laws in other states; there are now 12.

Sudbury started Rasa Legal in 2022 to make the process of clearing a criminal record simpler and more affordable. She researched how to use technology to assist with expungement and learned about Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate law. By the following year, she had helped introduce and pass a similar clean slate law in Utah. It requires the government to automatically clear certain misdemeanor records.

“Noella sees individuals as they are and not by their record,” says Destiny Garcia, the executive director of Clean Slate Utah, who worked with Sudbury to clear her own criminal record. “She will sit down with someone, and she will listen to their story. She will take the time to get to know them and understand how to help them.”

In the course of her work, Sudbury realized many people still needed help determining their eligibility for expungement and finding a lawyer to complete the process. That’s where Rasa comes in. Using its $15 eligibility screening tool, in less than three minutes, people can see what’s on their record and whether it can be cleared. If they have eligible cases, they can hire Rasa to clear those records using custom software that streamlines the process. While law firms can charge thousands of dollars for expungement, Rasa starts at $250 per case.

“What sets Noella apart is she’s out there changing the structural framework of the laws that then enable her to serve consumers in a way she thinks is necessary,” says Natalie Anne Knowlton, the founder of Access to Justice Ventures and a 2023 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.

According to Sudbury, Rasa, which has 16 employees and now offers its services in Utah and Arizona, has helped nearly 17,000 people and fully cleared more than 3,000 records. It is currently working to expand into other states and provide workforce development services to clients.

In her free time, Sudbury loves spending time with her two kids, traveling and being in nature.

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

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This BigLaw firm will represent Trump in appeal of hush-money conviction

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2025, 12:47 pm CST

Sullivan & Cromwell will represent President Donald Trump in his appeal of his conviction and sentence for falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.

The lead lawyer on Trump’s election-interference case is Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra Jr., report Reuters, Law.com, the New York Times, Law360, Politico and Above the Law.

According to the New York Times, the law firm’s handling of the appeal “underscores how New York’s legal power players have warmed to the president. Mr. Trump was spurned by lawyers from major firms when he left office four years ago, but his second victory has brought about a sea change.”

Trump was convicted in May 2024 after the Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York argued that he falsified records to cover up a crime—namely, violation of a New York law that bars using illegal means to promote a candidate for political office. The concealment made the crime a felony.

Earlier this month, Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge, which meant that there would be no legal penalty.

Trump’s trial lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove of Blanche Law, have been nominated to top positions in the U.S. Department of Justice. Blanche had resigned from Cadwalader to represent Trump.

Other members of Trump’s team are Sullivan & Cromwell partners James McDonald, Morgan Ratner, Jeffrey Wall and Matthew Schwartz. All the lawyers on the team have served as clerks for U.S. Supreme Court justices.

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Criminal Justice

Former BigLaw partner, fen-phen lawyer among those granted commutations by Biden

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 8, 2025, 8:50 am CST

A former Jenkens & Gilchrist partner and an ex-diet-drug lawyer are among nearly 1,500 people granted commutations by President Joe Biden in December.

All those granted commutations had been placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and had “successfully reintegrated into their families and communities,” according to a White House press release.

Law.com has the story on the former Jenkens & Gilchrist partner, Paul Daugerdas, while the Louisville Courier Journal has a report on the ex-diet-drug lawyer, William Gallion.

Daugerdas, who headed the Chicago office of Jenkens & Gilchrist, was convicted in a fraudulent $8 billion tax shelter scheme that led to the 2007 dissolution of his law firm. He was sentenced in June 2014 to 15 years in prison for the scheme in which legal opinion letters backed the phony tax shelters.

Daugerdas was ordered to forfeit $165 million and pay $371 million in restitution, penalties upheld by a federal appeals court in 2022.

Gallion and another lawyer were convicted in April 2009 for cheating clients out of $94.6 million in settlement funds in litigation over the diet drug fen-phen, which was removed from the market after it was linked to heart problems. Gallion was sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

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The Modern Law Library

When should life sentences be overturned? Judge shares how he decides

By Lee Rawles

January 8, 2025, 9:30 am CST

A federal judge’s new book is giving readers a rare inside glimpse at how a judge determines which prisoners deserve to have their sentences overturned.

In his memoir, Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge, Judge Frederic Block introduced readers to his colorful life and career. In Crimes and Punishments: Entering the Mind of a Sentencing Judge, he explained the rationale that judges use when deciding sentences and the human toll that it can take. And now, in A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It, he’s shining a light on how judges consider resentencing and compassionate release.

Without the passage of a key federal law in 2018, A Second Chance would not have been written. A bipartisan piece of legislation signed by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term and supported by the ABA, the First Step Act was one of the biggest criminal justice reforms in the past decade. Among its sentencing reforms, it allows federal judges to reconsider sentences given out during tough-on-crime crackdowns and for prisoners to petition for compassionate release.

Block, who is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, soon found himself asked to reconsider sentences under the First Step Act. In the book, he outlines the crimes and rehabilitations (or lack thereof) of six federal prisoners. From a former police officer who assaulted an innocent Haitian immigrant to a trio of mobsters, Block selected an array that represents the types of cases that he’s being asked to consider. Later in the book, he reveals the fate of each—whether life sentences were overturned or unrepentant prisoners were returned to their cells.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Block tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles how his views on sentencing have changed since he ascended to the bench in the 1990s.

In a case that made the news after A Second Chance went to press, Block overturned a sentence that he gave out 27 years ago, during his second year on the bench. Block had imposed a quintuple life sentence on Walter Johnson after the man was convicted of robbery, cocaine possession and witness tampering. At age 61, Johnson has now been released from prison, and Block discusses that decision in the episode.

Block sees a moral imperative for all strata of the justice system to work together to address mass incarceration. In addition to calling on judges to be open-minded when considering resentencing offenders, he encourages criminal defense attorneys to go through their lists of former clients to see whether any would be eligible for relief under the First Step Act.

Most importantly, Block is calling upon citizens to lobby for sentencing reforms like the First Step Act on the state level because the legislation only applies to federal prisoners. He points out that only about 200,000 of the approximately 2 million incarcerated Americans are federal prisoners; the vast majority are overseen by state courts.

Block also discusses the public response to President Joe Biden’s recent clemency decisions and how collateral consequences have influenced his initial sentencing decisions.

See also:

Federal judge pens memoir about his time on the bench and his high-profile cases in ‘Disrobed’

What goes on in the mind of a sentencing judge?

The status of the First Step Act one year later

In unusual lineup, SCOTUS rules for pro se prisoner who sought lower sentence under First Step Act

In This Podcast:

Judge Frederic Block

Judge Frederic Block is a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He has been at the forefront of releasing prisoners and has received praise and grief in the media. Block is the author of several books, including his memoir, Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge, and the reality-fiction novel Race to Judgment, the basis for an incipient TV series. His latest book is A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It (The New Press). He lives in New York City.