Law and Opa: Recent Episodes
Thomas M. Coffin
Former Federal Prosecutor and retired Federal Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Coffin dispenses master classes on the law, constitution, democracy, criminal procedure, and some fascinating courtroom drama stories from a career that has spanned more than 50 years.
In this episode, dad explains how the gun industry is criminally liable. He uses comparison's to infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout. Dad explains what the Deliberate Ignorance Defense is in the law, and how the gun industry is relying on that defense, but that it doesn't work.
In part 2 of dad's biography, he discusses his law school years and being a prosecutor straight out of law school. There are a lot of stories of dad getting laughed at in this one- he got laughed at when people heard he had applied to Harvard, he got laughed at while at Harvard when people found out that his pedigree was working class St. Louis, he got rejected at his first job application with the Federal Defenders office, and he got laughed at by the entire jury at one of his earliest trials. He learned a lot through all this.
In part 1 of dad's biography, we go back to his childhood in St. Louis and some very formative events in his life including a stint in a Catholic orphanage, a bicycle accident, subordination in the ROTC that may have saved his life, but came at the cost of caring for a goat, and the time he defied his athletic director in college and instead of spending the athletic department's budget on new blazers for the athletes, he spent it all to hire Ike and Tina Turner to play a concert.
The Local 89 case is a complex fraud case that dad prosecuted. He talks about how the investigation was run, what the rules are that he came up with for bringing a defendant to the grand jury for indictment, and what he learned conducting the three-month trial. Also, hear which novel Dad thinks should be required reading in law school for all future trial attorneys.
Dad discusses this 2010 case in which an insurance company denied coverage for a successful treatment of a patient with a rare type of brain cancer. Dad decided that their process for denying coverage was unreasonable. The insurance company appealed and the ninth circuit overturned his ruling in an unpublished opinion.
This informative episode explains what ERISA is, what the processes are under ERISA plans, what "de novo review" means, what the "arbitrary and capricious" standard is, why dad ruled that the Phase 3 trial status wasn't relevant to this particular drug being experimental, and what an unpublished opinion is and why it disappointed him that the Ninth Circuit wouldn't explain themselves.
Dad talks about an interesting case he had where a landfill had been sued for leeching pollutants into the groundwater. Environmental groups sued it and wanted it to be fined. Dad not only found that groundwater is covered under the clean water act (which was often interpreted to only cover surface water), but he had a creative solution to the problem rather than the fines. This solution became a success story.
This is part 2 of the episode about what a trial against Trump would look like, where Dad explains generally why creating a trial record is important, and the most notorious decisions that have been handed down recently by the Supreme Court are unencumbered by trial records that the justices would have to take into consideration. Which is why trials are important.
This is a two-parter. In part one, Dad essentially breaks down what a trial against Donald Trump might look like, the most difficult aspects of one, and how he would go about prosecuting the case if he were the prosecutor.
Dad covers a lot of ground in this episode. We begin by talking about the FBI search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and in general what is involved in issuing a search warrant. Then dad goes into part 2 about the problem with the Supreme Court and how the historically excluded can get their rights back that the majority on the Supreme Court is determined to keep people excluded from accessing. At the end of the episode, dad points out one of the major glaring problems that many people overlook when they wave off the rulings of the Supreme Court as "the final say in what the law is": Where is the trial record? The people need to go to trial to create a record of fact. Otherwise, the Supreme Court can (and has) make up any facts they want to support their rulings. We need to go to trial to get the facts out there.
Episode 7, Part 1: Dad discusses a particularly challenging rape and murder case he had as a prosecutor in San Diego.
The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Nation , and the Congress lacks the power to nullify its precepts and its rights bestowed on the people through legislation that shrinks and even eradicates what the Constitution guarantees.
Yet that is precisely what Congress has attempted to accomplish through the infamous immunity legislation, enacted in 2005, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). The findings made by Congress to justify this immunity legislation have since been shown to be false—e,g,. that gun dealers are not complicit in the criminal misuse of the assault weapons they sell. That evidence consists in part of their marketing techniques, some of which we will review and which reveal the intent to market toward children and the very high-risk groups who routinely use these weapons to commit mass murder.
Furthermore, the PLCAA was enacted relatively soon after the expiration of the assault weapons ban. The strategy in place, to mass market military grade weaponry to private citizens, goes back to the '70s and '80s when the NRA began funding legal research and legal seminars, promoting the idea of a personal right to such weapons. Part of the justification was the false, illogical notion that the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to rebel (aka commit treason) against the very Constitutional government providing such a right. Jump to our present-day crisis and it's not difficult to see how we got January 6, 2021, or the epidemic of mass shootings across the nation.
Who is funding these movements? Who profits? We examine the financial motivations behind these developments, as well.
The Second Amendment was not intended to ensure individual access to weaponry without state regulation. And it does not exist as the supreme law which cancels out our rights under the rest of the Constitution, such as our right to assemble, or our right to life, liberty and property.
Dad talks about Juliana v. United States- the Climate Change Case that kids brought to a Federal Court in DC, got dismissed, got to his court where he denied the motion to dismiss, went around the appeals process, and is now hanging on by the thread of an amended complaint. What is at the heart of it? Do we have a Constitutional right to a habitable planet? What is the public trust doctrine? Does it apply? Dad will also reference Citizens United, Brown v. Board of Education, and Korematsu v. United States.
Dad dissects Alito's 98-page decision for flouting not only the Constitution, but also Catholic doctrine (Dad is a Catholic scholar as well). Mary and Kim get some rants in as well.
Dad (Opa) explains how to interpret the second amendment including the history of it, the definition of terms, when the understanding changed and why, how the current understanding is at odds with the First Amendment, he dissects the NRA's " Standard Model" and then he talks about why Heller is a terrible case.
Today in Law and Opa, Judge Coffin uses some of his past experiences as a federal prosecutor and adjunct criminal law professor to explain how federal investigations work, and then he describes the unique situation of the January 6 investigation, and responds to some of the more common criticisms Garland has been facing in the public.