You don’t have time for three hours of doomscrolling, twenty half-baked takes, and some guy online screaming READ THE THREAD. We are Front Page Detectives, this is your morning Drive-By, and here is what is real.
Judge William Sullivan cited an immediate safety risk after jurors were identified online, secretly filmed outside court and dragged into an increasingly bitter public battle.
The identities of all 18 jurors and alternates from Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial will remain secret indefinitely after the judge overseeing the case warned that releasing their names could expose them to “immediate and irreparable injury.”
Judge William Sullivan initially sealed the list for 14 days after declaring a mistrial September 4, when the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict following roughly a week of deliberations. He has now extended that protection without an expiration date, pointing to the “significant and divisive” national attention surrounding the case and the increasingly heated reaction to what happened inside the jury room.
The concern is hardly theoretical. A 56-year-old woman was arrested after allegedly recording jurors as they left the courthouse, jurors have reportedly been identified publicly without permission and at least one asked Sullivan to keep the names sealed. Meanwhile, jurors who voluntarily spoke to reporters revealed an 11-1 split favoring a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible because of insanity, placing enormous attention on the lone holdout.
Clancy admitted strangling Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, but denies criminal responsibility. Prosecutors maintain the killings were planned and deliberate. With the verdict unresolved, the people asked to decide that question have now become part of the story themselves.
Hot Take: Jurors sign up to weigh evidence, not to become suspects in somebody else’s internet investigation. Whatever anyone thinks of that 11-1 split, Sullivan is right to lock these names in the courthouse safe. The mob outside the jury room doesn’t get a thirteenth vote.
The billionaire refused to return for a deposition. Today, lawmakers will consider recommending that the full House hold him in contempt of Congress.
Leon Black’s escalating confrontation with Congress reaches another stage today as the House Oversight Committee considers recommending that the billionaire investor be held in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas tied to its Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
Black failed to appear for a September 3 deposition after the committee demanded additional testimony and nondisclosure agreements. Chairman James Comer argues the records are relevant because of Black’s extensive financial relationship with Epstein, who received $158 million from Black between 2012 and 2017 for tax, estate-planning and related services. Black denies involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
Black has instead sued the committee, arguing its demands exceed legitimate congressional authority and could expose private information about women unconnected to Epstein. Today’s markup could send the matter toward a full House contempt vote while that legal challenge proceeds separately through federal court.
Hot Take: Leon Black has traded the empty chair for a courtroom barricade. Congress says open the files. Black says get a warrant from the constitutional referee. Either way, $158 million guarantees nobody is closing this particular casebook quietly.
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Records detail threats, fights and clashes with corrections officers during the three years Duane Davis spent behind bars awaiting his Tupac Shakur murder trial.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis repeatedly clashed with guards and inmates while awaiting trial for Tupac Shakur’s murder, according to newly obtained disciplinary records covering his nearly three years inside the Clark County Detention Center.
The incidents allegedly included threatening to punch an officer during an argument over recreation privileges, kicking his cell door during another dispute and resisting officers attempting to confiscate an unauthorized second mattress. Davis was separately convicted over a December 2024 fight with another prisoner and sentenced to 16 to 40 months. Records describe another alleged fight in December 2025 that ended when an officer deployed pepper spray.
None of those incidents formed part of the evidence that convicted Davis of Tupac’s murder. A Las Vegas jury found him guilty August 31 after prosecutors relied heavily on his own years of public statements about the 1996 shooting. Sentencing is scheduled for October 13, and Davis says he will appeal.
Hot Take: Keffe D spent years talking himself into a murder trial, then apparently spent the wait fighting over recreation time and spare mattresses. Now the jailhouse disciplinary file is merely background noise. The conviction is the cell door that matters.
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Investigators reportedly believe the actress may have taken what she thought was oxycodone as the DEA investigates who supplied drugs before her death.
The investigation into Hayden Panettiere’s sudden death is reportedly focusing on a suspected fentanyl-laced pill as federal agents work to determine who may have supplied drugs to the 36-year-old actress.
Panettiere was found unresponsive at a Greenville short-term rental August 16 and could not be revived. TMZ, citing law-enforcement sources, reports investigators believe she may have taken what she thought was oxycodone but which contained fentanyl. Authorities are reportedly examining a longtime Los Angeles-area drug dealer, while the DEA has become involved. No official cause or manner of death has yet been announced.
Meanwhile, Panettiere’s on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson was handcuffed but not arrested following a weekend bar confrontation reportedly sparked by heckling over her death. His brother Zach was arrested for disorderly conduct. Both men were at the residence when Panettiere died, and investigators have not accused either of causing her death.
Hot Take: The noise around the bar fight makes easy copy, but the real trail runs through one pill and whoever put it in Panettiere’s path. Find the source and detectives may find the answer.
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The Republican congresswoman suggested a firing squad or electric chair and said killing Clancy publicly would send a “warning to women everywhere.”
Rep. Nancy Mace has taken the already poisonous debate surrounding Lindsay Clancy into extraordinary territory, calling for the Massachusetts mother to be publicly executed and suggesting either a firing squad or electric chair would suffice.
“Her children are dead, she should be dead too,” the South Carolina Republican told TMZ Monday. Mace said Clancy “deserves nothing less” than the death penalty and argued a public execution would serve as a “warning to women everywhere [that] you don’t kill your kids.” There is an obvious legal problem before even reaching the rhetoric: Massachusetts abolished capital punishment decades ago.
Clancy’s first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors split 11-1 in favor of finding her not criminally responsible. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will retry her, while a September 29 hearing approaches. Mace, meanwhile, has injected talk of publicly killing a defendant who has not been convicted into a case already volatile enough that the judge has indefinitely sealed jurors’ identities over safety concerns.
Hot Take: If a foreign official demanded a woman’s public execution as a “warning to women everywhere,” American politicians would line up to condemn it. Imagine the reaction if those words came from the Taliban. Mace deserves the same condemnation. Clancy should face justice under the rule of law, but her criminal responsibility remains unresolved after a mistrial, and Massachusetts does not permit the punishment Mace is demanding. A congressional title does not entitle her to substitute her bloodlust for a verdict.
