The Bounty Hunter

11/15/22 • 37 min

Bounty hunters. Figures from folk tales, fantasy and reality TV; free agents that work as an extension of the law. Whatever comes to mind, this latest chapter in vigilante justice is shaking things up even more at a polarized time in the country.
The enaction of Texas's Senate Bill 8 allows private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who provides or helps someone attain an abortion, with a possible award of at least $10,000 per lawsuit. Since then, California has passed a law modeled on Texas, allowing private citizens to sue gun law violators.
How likely are they to catch on in the future?
These sorts of citizen enforcement laws aren't totally new, but the way SB 8 has played out is a lot different than a hired hand chasing after a bank robber who skipped town on bail.
What does it mean to put this kind of power into the hands of ordinary people who end up selecting themselves to take up the cause of policing or surveilling others' decisions?
We talked to experts in our penultimate episode to explore the implications of SB 8 and what it could mean for other constitutionally protected rights. And, to really understand what can happen with these laws, we go back in time to some of the darkest chapters in U.S. history: the enforcement of slavery and Jim Crow laws.
Special guests:

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Previous Episode

A Nightmare on Legal Street

Pour yourself a hot drink, settle in beside the fire and get ready for a hauntingly good time as we bring you four chilling tales just in time for Halloween.
In our first chapter: McKamey Manor, arguably the scariest haunted house in operation, with an even scarier 40-page liability waiver. Among the things that you agree to possibly experience? Medieval torture devices. Nails removed from their nail beds. You may be subjected to extreme temperatures or have your head enclosed in a box with bees and wasps. These experiences aren't enough to stop over 20,000 fright seekers from joining the waitlist.
Next up on the demon docket: Stambovsky v. Ackley, also known as the Ghostbusters ruling. A man bought a house in Nyack, New York, that turned out to be so haunted that not only did he get out of his purchase, but the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court found that, "as a matter of law, the house is haunted."
A copyright case to turn your blood cold: the battle to keep "Dracula" out of the public domain and the classic silent film "Nosferatu" out of homes. Eventually, the fight landed before a German judge who ordered all remaining copies of “Nosferatu” to be burned, but it was too late — the movie and the infamous vampire live on.
We finish our tour of scary stories with one steeped in the occult: Mark Twain's return from the grave. Or, alleged return. Two mediums, Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hayes, claimed to speak with the spirit of Mark Twain. The famous storyteller supposedly tasked them with recording his next novel, "Jap Herron: A Novel Written From the Ouija Board.”

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Next Episode

The Year in Review

While some aspects of 2022 felt like a return to easier, simpler days, the news coming out of courthouses across the country did not stop.
In this episode, we look at the year's most memorable trials: the ones that made us laugh, the ones that made us cry and the ones that made us stop and question how we got here.
We take you back to the Alex Jones defamation trials in Texas and Connecticut, which garnered enormous damages for the family members of Sandy Hook victims and swamped our social media feeds. Jones wasn't the only right-winger to see his day in court: members of the Oath Keepers were held accountable for seditious conspiracy for their parts in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and in Michigan, a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went bust.
It was also a big year for celebrity trials. R&B singer R. Kelly's child abuse conviction in a Chicago courtroom, film producer Harvey Weinstein's second sexual assault trial, a jury deadlocking on rape charges against "That '70s Show" actor Danny Masterson, and a certain defamation trial involving movie stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. The headlines didn't stop as trial after trial captured the attention of readers and reporters.
Come on in, settle down and let us bring you back through the year as we take you through these cases and more until we are back in 2023.

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Sidebar by Courthouse News - The Bounty Hunter

Transcript

[Intro music]

Nina Pullano: Hello, hello. Welcome back to Sidebar, a podcast from Courthouse News. I'm Nina Pullano, your host and a reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Let me ask you something without overthinking it. What do you think of when you hear the term bounty hunter? Is it cowboys and wanted signs? Boba Fett chasing down Han Solo and Star Wars? Maybe it's a certain TV star with blonde hair past his shoulders and sports sunglasses. By the way, this came as a surprise to me at