In The Courts: November 08, 2026

Thanks for joining us for In the Courts this week. I'm Katie Barlow. And off the top, a bombshell admission in the murder trial of Naresh Bhatt, the Prince William County man accused of murdering his wife and the mother of his infant daughter at the time, Mamta Koffelbott. He admitted in court to dismembering his wife's body on the witness stand. And he claims that she took her own life and he did it to spare her and the family judgment. How were you feeling that night? Again, we're talking about July 30th. How were you feeling that night after you'd gotten Nima home and you were able to put her to sleep? All the whole universe, bad thing is in my head. I don't know how to describe, but I never ever feel that before. I don't think anybody feel that in their life. So it was hard to say. I don't know what I was feeling. It's completely out of normal. Normally, people cannot, I never feel that before, even when I was about to, when I had a first time kidnap and then about to get killed, even I did not feel at that time. Did you, were you able to sleep that night at all? No. Were you afraid? Yes. What were you afraid of? Everything, including ghosts. The prosecution focused on the fact that he has actually been lying for the past two years, it seems. You told everybody today. That you are a liar, right? Yes. You've been lying about Manta for over two years, right? No. You've been lying about how Manta died for two years? No. Didn't you tell the police and the family and the community and everybody that was willing to listen to you that she ran away? Not for two years, maybe three weeks. No, it's since 2024. The trial resumes tomorrow morning. Now to the midterm elections and voters across the country overwhelmingly elected Democratic candidates on Tuesday. Those elections will have consequences in the courts. First, now the Democrats have a majority in the Senate next Congress with as many as 56 Democratic senators. President Trump will have a very difficult time getting any of his judicial picks confirmed to the federal bench. In fact, it could mean that no more judges get confirmed until there's a new president There's also the question of whether Trump may get one more pick to the United States Supreme Court. Friend of the show and former guest Sarah Isker with both the Dispatch and SCOTUS blog suggested on social media that the president doesn't need a Supreme Court justice to announce his or her retirement in order to nominate someone and have the lame duck Senate confirm that person before the new Senate comes in in January. She said she didn't think it would happen, but that there would be no legal hurdles preventing it. Let's bring in Law 360's Courtney. who's been tracking how the election results will affect what happens in the courts and welcome back to the show. Good to have you. Thanks for having me. So two things really keeping in mind right now there are still judges to confirm before January putting aside whether or not there's going to be a Supreme Court vacancy. I know everybody wants to talk about that and then what happens after January if there are vacancies. So talk a little bit about what you've looked into so far. Yeah, for sure. So there's several dozen judicial nominees in the pipeline right now, and we're really going to see a rush between now and mid-December, maybe end of December when the Senate goes out of session, because it's really going to be an uphill battle if the Democrats are going to even consider some of these judicial nominees come next year. For a piece I did for Election Day, I heard from Phil Brest, who ran judicial confirmations in the Biden White House, and he was like, remember the precedent that Republicans set the last time that That they control the Senate and in the The White House was an opposing party of the Democrats. So I'm expecting the Democrats to play hardball come next year. So we're really going to see that rush in the lame duck period. Do we have a sense of what is going to happen in the next couple of months if Trump is confident or if the Senate has sent a message that they will get his nominees through? I saw the Article 3 project Mike Davis called out Senator Tillis about potentially confirming some of those individuals. Are we going to see pushback maybe from Republicans now who have? Nothing to lose? Yeah, that's a good point. You know, you have two senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cornyn and Tillis, who will not be there next year. And they lately have shown that they're not afraid to buck the party. So maybe there's some holdups there. But there has been pressure on The Senate from Republicans outside of government, that they really want these picks confirmed because, like you said, there's really not going to be an opportunity for at least two years now, really. You mentioned talking to someone who headed up confirmations for the Biden administration. Over the past few years, really longer than that, there have been kind of escalating responses in the Senate after the filibuster was blown up or two of Obama's judges went to the D.C. Circuit. And Republicans escalated and then Democrats escalated. and we've seen kind of different moves There are not too many things left other than blowing up the filibuster perhaps for a Supreme Court nominee. But what are you seeing in terms of escalation now that we are going to a democratically controlled Congress with a Republican that they very much disagree with in the White House? Yeah. So, you know, the judiciary has become so polarized over the last 10, 15, 20 years and I think we're seeing an escalation of that now. And even in the lame duck period, Democrats are accusing Republicans of breaking committee precedent to speed up the nominations before the end of the year. Usually there's more time in between hearings and the process they're speeding it up. So I think we might see some procedural tactics with that. I do think the blue slip will stay in place, but that's another thing that could get rid for district court judges. That's a good point you bring up, the blue slip, because that is in fact why we may very well end up with a Democratic senator. In Mississippi because the senator that he looks like he's going to be to actually withheld her approval in blue slip for now almost Senator Alex Scott-Colombe. I don't think it's been called yet. But nonetheless, let's talk also briefly about investigations because that's going to be a dueling priority in terms of also lowering cost of living for the American public. They also want to go after the Trump administration and some of the executive officials. What do you see as a top priority going into day one? Oh man, there's just so many topics that they're going to investigate from what DOJ has been doing to the affordability issues you mentioned, AI. But I think we have to remember that this administration is going to push back and we've already seen. Some, you know, statements from the attorney general and other officials. So I think Democrats really need to be ready that this is an administration that is not afraid to say no to Congress. They're not afraid to be held in contempt of court. So it's truly going to be a battle the next two years. This administration has also had an interesting relationship with the private sector. There have been all kinds of accusations about corruption between the administration and the private sector. They don't have as much control over preventing testimony and documents coming out of the private sector. Do you see maybe that as a tactic? going into this next Congress of going after CEOs and AI companies, and we're seeing the NVIDIA CEO facing some trouble that may pose for an investigation in the coming weeks and months. What do you think about the private sector versus going after the executive branch? Yeah, that's certainly a workaround for them to get information on the administration. I will say there was an Office of Legal Counsel opinion released in August that said executive privilege could apply to the president's outside advisors. So we'll have to see if the administration tries to apply that maybe to CEOs or others. But again, I really think the administration is going to throw a lot of tactics for these Democrats. All right, Courtney Buble with Law360. Where can folks find your work and where are you on social media? Yeah, you can find me on social media at Courtney Buble and all my stories are on Law360.com. That's great. Law360, always getting into the legal weeds just like we like to do here. Courtney, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Congress also has subpoena power that is not new. In fact, they've used it in both administrations to target the opposite party, but some of the subpoenas are about to change and the subject of those subpoenas are going to change as we just hinted at. California Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, who is the likely incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, they have the power to investigate the executive branch specifically, issued a two-word warning on social media after it became clear. The Democrats would take both the House and the Senate lawyer up, he said. He was telling current and former officials to prepare to receive letters from the committee and potentially have to testify. Now, the president does enjoy something called executive privilege through which he could block the committee from some of their goals. I think you might be hearing a lot about executive privilege in the next two years. So we're going to go ahead and define it early. But we'll come back to it time and again, no doubt. Executive privilege is explicitly... Is not explicitly laid out in the Constitution, but in a case called United States v. Nixon about then President Nixon, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the president does have privilege over documents and conversations with his advisers as a key part of the separation of powers. It says nowhere in the Constitution is there any explicit reference to a privilege of confidentiality. Yet, to the extent this interest relates to the effective discharge of a president's powers, it is constitutionally based. The idea here is that the president needs to be able to have free and candid conversations with his advisers when weighing options and making decisions, all without worrying about whether those discussions will land on the front page of a newspaper. Generally, it allows the president to fully explore ideas, even crazy ones, before making a decision. Executive privilege helps protect that concept. But it doesn't mean that it's infinite and that it covers everything, as we saw with As we've seen in this administration, there's always a way for information to get out. But don't be surprised if we have an executive privilege battle that makes its way up to the Supreme Court during the final two years of Trump's term. And speaking of the Supreme Court, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has been tapped to conduct a criminal investigation of who leaked the Supreme Court's draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in Dobbs back in 2022. The court conducted its own internal investigation after the leak, but they never found the leaker. Pirro's investigation has reportedly been ongoing for the past year. The New York Times reports that Pirro's office has ramped up the investigation in recent weeks, including sending out grand jury subpoenas for testimony. Meantime, a federal judge has temporarily blocked construction of President Trump's proposed 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from breaking ground on the project. Thursday night, the National Capital Planning Commission gave its final approval, and a group of veterans, along with Virginia and D.C., have all filed lawsuits challenging construction. Still ahead, a man convicted of murder and sentenced to die is now free. We'll discuss the allegations of misconduct that helped get him out of prison with the attorney who helped make it happen next. William County in a high profile 2001 jury trial. He was convicted of drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder. He was released a couple of weeks ago after multiple court battles revealing prosecutorial misconduct. And you'll have to hear straight from the source to believe what happened in this case. He's joining us now. On this remarkable case, the lawyer behind the effort, Scott Abley. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Tell us a little bit about the conviction and then tell us what happened. So Justin was convicted in 2001 when he was 20 years old of murder for hire and a couple of other crimes, including drug distribution. Um, he was convicted, um, not of killing, uh, uh, Justin was a drug dealer, an admitted drug dealer back in those days. Um, and, um, the person who was murdered was a fellow drug dealer and they were connected. Uh, one supplied the other and a third drug dealer in that crew, um, confessed to killing, uh, Danny Petroli was the victim's name. And he was pressured, that guy's name was Owen Barber, he was pressured to, against the threat of the death penalty to testify against Justin and say that he was hired by Justin. Owen was sentenced to 40 or 50 years, spared the death penalty, but Justin was convicted and that was his first conviction before. Thank The prosecutorial misconduct began to come to light in 2005 or so. And there's kind of two sets of prosecutorial misconduct here. Let's talk about the first set that came to light in 2005. Prosecutorial misconduct is when prosecutors do things that they are not allowed to do in order to get a conviction, and it can often lead to the entire conviction in the case you. getting thrown out. So in this case, the Prince William County prosecutors and investigators So I think we're going to have to They bullied Mr. Barber into saying that Justin had hired him. They were the ones who put the idea in his head in the first place. They then coordinated all the other witnesses to tell the same story. I'm sorry. And that was what caused Justin to be convicted at his trial. There was only one witness, Owen Barber, who had killed Mr. Petroli, who had ever connected Justin to the murder. And so based on that testimony, he was convicted, and it was only later that Mr. Barber said that he was bullied into lying on the stand in order to spare his own life. And Out of that, as a result of that all coming to light, the Eastern District of Virginia issued an order vacating Justin's convictions. you The Fourth Circuit upheld that, but that only meant that... very You could maybe get a new trial. Yeah, exactly. So in 2011, the court threw it out much. because of that prosecutorial misconduct, but the award that you get there is potentially facing a brand new trial where prosecutors are then expected to follow all of the rules. But they didn't, and so after this was thrown out, what did the prosecutors do? So I had mentioned Owen Barber, who was the confessed killer. Justin had. earned a new trial because Mr. Barber came forward and testified in his post-conviction, at the post-conviction stage, that Justin had not hired him, that he had lied. And that was why his convictions were vacated in the first place. So as soon as that decision came down, that same group of prosecutors and the lead investigator Went to Owen Barber in prison, surprised him. Spent an hour browbeating him into telling him, look, if this happens again, we're going to tear up your plea agreement and retry you for capital murder. And remember how. We forced you to confess as a condition of your plea. Well, we're going to use that against you, too. I mean, how did they not know that that was all recorded and that that could be used against them? Well, they were the ones who actually recorded it. I don't know if you're a fan of the HBO show The Wire, but they recorded their own conspiracy. Okay. We only have about a minute left, but what happened to the prosecutors here in this case who repeatedly engaged in this misconduct? Because it's very difficult. To hold prosecutors accountable for misconduct. So these prosecutors were eventually voted out of office. This prosecutor, Mr. Ebert, had been the Commonwealth attorney in Prince William from 1968 through the 2018 or so. He was finally replaced by the person, Ms. Ashworth, who took over, who won election. And she was the one who we were able to make a deal with. Now that all the old prosecutors The prosecutors were gone. They didn't have anybody to defend anymore. And so after we had success in the Fourth Circuit, we were able to make a deal with them and get Justin out after all this time. But political consequences, not any kind of criminal consequences, which you would think maybe would flow from that type of conduct and taking away someone's liberty. And in this case, he was sentenced to death. He would have had his life taken from him. Thank you so much, Scott Abeles, for your work on this case, for sharing the story with us and your continued help on these types of cases. It's remarkable work in Virginia. Thanks for having me. All right. We have much more to come on in the courts when we come back. Don't go away. We just talked. Now to stories ripped from the headlines this week. A California appeals court ruled that hit TV series The Pit is close enough to the long-running award-winning series ER that a lawsuit can go forward. The suit was filed by the estate of ER's creator Michael Crichton. According to the New York Times, Crichton's estate deal has a deal with Warner Brothers that actually freezes any publishing related to ER without his approval and agreement. Actor Russell Brand has been found guilty of rape and three sexual assaults in a trial in the UK. Four women accused him of sexual assault and walked the jurors through their terrifying experiences. Brand was taken to prison after the verdict was announced. The BBC reports that he will be sentenced tomorrow. Dolly Parton's estate agreed to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit against her nephew and former head of security Brian Seaver. Dolly's manager had accused Seaver of making violent threats including referencing his military background. There was no explanation made or statement about dropping the suit. Seaver's attorney told TMZ Mr. Seaver cares deeply about his Aunt Dolly, her music, her family and the incredible legacy that she left behind. California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom effectively eliminated the state's death row by commuting the sentences of 548 inmates who were set to be killed by the state. Newsom claims the death penalty system in California is fundamentally flawed and morally incompatible with California's values. All death sentences will now get converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now time for Sports in the Courts. Rasheed Rice, wide receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs, filed for bankruptcy in Texas this week. He blames several lawsuit settlements related to his 2024 car crash for putting him over the $3 million in debt that he claims. The crash led to his suspension for the first six games of last year's season. According to Yahoo Sports, Rice claims that just over $650,000 of total property assets remain. Five retired Major League Baseball umpires are going after the league they claim for underpaying retirement. The group, including well-known ump Joe West, filed the federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, according to the New York Post. Each claimed they got shorted in their pension plan that is supposed to be calculated based on years worked. MLB has declined to comment on the lawsuit so far. Still ahead in the courts, I'll be back with some final thoughts from the week. Don't go away. Well, we've talked about some of the national implications of what happened as a result of Tuesday's midterm elections, but there are also some major constitutional changes in store right here in our region. In Maryland, voters approved giving the legislature more power to redistrict the state's congressional districts in response to Republican-led states' gerrymandering efforts leading up to the 2026 midterms, although the 2026 midterm results may give Maryland lawmakers pause given how positively some of those gerrymandered districts ended up being. We'll be back the same time next week, but until then, have a good night, everyone. Thank you, everyone.