Scalia's secret trip to Texas

The Washington Post has an article by Mark Berman and Jerry Markon about the death of Antonin Scalia:

Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death over the weekend at a West Texas ranch (photo of his deathbed, above) raised questions about the nature of his travel, who paid for the trip, and whether justices are subject to the same disclosure guidelines as other judges or Federal officials.
Justice Scalia died at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort tucked away in the Big Bend region of Texas, about thirty miles from the border with Mexico. The ranch is a thirty-thousand-acre getaway that is home to John B. Poindexter, according to the website of J.B. Poindexter & Co. It is a remote location that has reportedly attracted the likes of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, and Bruce Willis. When Tommy Lee Jones directed a movie more than a decade ago, he filmed several scenes at the ranch, according to the Houston Chronicle.
All of which raises the question: who pays for a Supreme Court justice to make this kind of trip? Not Scalia, it turns out. Poindexter told The Washington Post that Scalia was not charged for his stay, something he described as a policy for all guests at the ranch.
“I did not pay for the Justice’s trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch,” Poindexter wrote in a brief email. “He was an invited guest, along with a friend, just like 35 others.” Poindexter added: “Scalia was treated no differently by me, as no one was charged for activities, room and board, beverages, etc. That is a 22-year policy.’’ However, Poindexter said he did not pay for Scalia’s charter flight to Texas.
A person familiar with the ranch’s operations said Poindexter hosts such events two or three times a year. Poindexter, who would not identify Scalia’s friend, is a Texas native and decorated Vietnam veteran who owns Houston-based J.B. Poindexter & Co., a manufacturing firm.
The company has seven subsidiaries, with combined annual revenue of nearly a billion dollars, according to information on its website. Among the items it manufacturers are delivery vans for UPS and FedEx and machine components for limousines and hearses. The company has five thousand employees, the site said.
One of Poindexter’s companies was involved in a case that made it to the high court. Last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving an age discrimination lawsuit filed against one of these companies, court records show.
The nature of Poindexter’s relationship with Scalia remained unclear Tuesday, one of several lingering questions about his visit. It was not known whether Scalia had paid for his own ticket to fly to the ranch, or if someone else picked up the tab, just as it was not immediately clear if Scalia had visited before.
It is also still not known who else was at the Texas ranch for the weekend, and unless that is revealed, there could be concerns about who could have tried to raise an issue around Scalia, said Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal and judicial ethics at the New York University School of Law. He compared it to unease that arises when judges and officials from major companies are invited to seminars or educational events that bring them together for periods of time. “People worry at those kinds of things; there’s a creation of access on the part of people with an interest in the courts, and that is unfair,” Gillers said.
How do justices disclose their gifts and investments? Much the same way other Federal judges do: by filing reports outlining their outside income, gifts and times they are reimbursed for things. The 1978 Ethics in Government Act, passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, states that all Federal judges, up to and including the Chief Justice and the associate Justices, are required to report certain gifts. It also requires them to identify and describe when someone who is not a relative gives them “transportation, lodging, food, or entertainment” worth a certain amount.
A review of Scalia’s recent disclosure reports posted online by OpenSecrets.org shows that, like his colleagues, he regularly filed for unspecified reimbursements from universities, legal societies, and other organizations, like the conservative group the Federalist Society, after making trips for lectures and speeches. Scalia was among the court’s most active travelers. However, these disclosure forms offer scant details about who else attends events with the justices.
Judges must report reimbursements related to travel totaling $335 or more, according to filing instructions posted by the group Judicial Watch. Judges are not allowed to accept anything of value from a person who has a case in their court, the document notes.
These instructions include an exemption for “food, lodging, or entertainment received as a personal hospitality,” which includes a stay at a property owned by a person. As a result, it is unclear if Scalia’s stay would have ultimately been reported, said Gillers. (Travel, however, is not exempt.)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted part of his 2011 report on the state of the Federal judiciary to the topic of disclosures. He also made sure to note that it was not entirely clear, in the court’s eyes, whether Congress could even extend such disclosure requirements to the justices. “The Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “The Justices nevertheless comply with those provisions.”
The biggest ethical questions involve when justices should recuse themselves from cases, says Gillers. “Is the justice the final arbiter of whether or not he has to recuse himself? And the answer is yes,” he said. “Every other Federal judge below the Supreme Court, every other Federal judge’s decision about whether or not he should be recused is potentially subject to the review of a higher judge or other judges on his court. But no one reviews the decision of a Justice.” He pointed to perhaps the most famous case involving a justice and recusal, which involved Scalia himself. Scalia joined then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney on a hunting trip while Cheney was the subject of a lawsuit over his energy task force, and in response to calls that he sit out the case, Scalia issued a highly unusual 21-page argument explaining why he refused to do so.
There are also calls for recusal stemming from things justices did before they joined the bench. Justice Elena Kagan, who served as the Obama administration’s solicitor general before her appointment, dismissed suggestions to recuse herself from decisions on health-care reform. Kagan had said that, while in the administration, she was not involved in preparations for legal challenges the act would face.
For his part, Roberts has defended the court’s policy allowing justices to decide for themselves if they should step away from certain cases, defending the court’s members as capable of making this decision themselves. In his 2011 report, Roberts noted that, while lower courts can substitute for one another, there is only one Supreme Court, “and if a Justice withdraws from a case, the Court must sit without its full membership”. The justices have “an obligation to the Court” before making the decision on recusal, he wrote. Roberts issued his report at the end of a year in which more than a hundred law professors nationwide asked Congress to give the Supreme Court an ethical code of conduct, after it emerged that Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas had attended private political meetings sponsored by billionaire conservative donors David and Charles Koch. That same year, Kagan was called on to recuse herself from hearing challenges to health-care reform, and a watchdog group said Thomas had failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank before he amended his financial forms. While Roberts did not specifically mention those issues, he said it would not be wise for justices to review the recusal decisions made by their peers. He said that “it would create an undesirable situation”, enabling justices to play a role in determining which others get to weigh in on cases. “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” he wrote. “They are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”

Gregory Krieg has a CNN article about various theories on Scalia's death:

Three days after Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in his room at a luxury hunting ranch in remote West Texas, the conspiracy theories about his passing continue to swirl.
A local judge's decision not to order a post-mortem examination have triggered a round of questions ranging from scrutiny of the procedures to the bizarre.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump referenced a report from the scene about Scalia's body when asked on a radio show to comment on the possibility that Scalia may have been murdered and whether there should be an independent investigation into this death. "They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow," Trump said on conservative radio The Savage Nation. Savage called for the equivalent of a Warren Commission-style investigation into Scalia's death.
In a statement, the owner of the ranch clarified to CNN what he meant when he told the San Antonio Express the judge was found with a pillow over his head: "I think enough disclosures were made and what I said precisely was accurate. He had a pillow over his head, not over his face, as some have been saying," John Poindexter, owner of the Cibolo Creek Ranch, where Scalia was found, told CNN over the phone. "The pillow was against the headboard and over his head when he was discovered. He looked like someone who had had a restful night's sleep. There was no evidence of anything else."
A US law-enforcement source told CNN: "There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in Justice Scalia's room. There were no signs of foul play." The source added that law-enforcement agents know know the difference between someone dying in their sleep and being suffocated to death with a pillow.
But, despite the assertions of law enforcement and local justice officials that all signs pointed to death from natural causes, questions about the process they followed have flared on social media.
The former head of criminal investigations for the Washington, DC, police, poured fuel on the conspiracy theory fire. "As a former homicide commander, I am stunned that no autopsy was ordered for Justice Scalia," William O. Ritchie wrote in a Facebook post. After seeking to cast doubt on the conclusion of the deputy US marshals who responded to a call from the ranch, he added: "My gut tells me there is something fishy going on in Texas." Ritchie told CNN that there is still time to act because Scalia isn't lying in repose at the Supreme Court until Friday and his funeral isn't until Saturday. "At least you have a trained medical professional look and make an examination," Ritchie said. "There is sufficient time to do that."
The conspiracy theories surrounding the death run the gamut. In an "emergency transmission" posted on Facebook, Infowars' Alex Jones said that "the question is was Scalia murdered?" while the site Harddawn.com speculated that "the Illuminati" might have been responsible, calling Leonard Nimoy,who died last year, "the wild card in this equation". And a number of sites have made reference to a so-called "heart attack gun", a secret CIA weapon that could, per their claims, have been used to kill Scalia.
At issue are a series of decisions made by the Texas county judge who took charge in the aftermath of Scalia's passing when two justices of the peace sought out by those at the ranch could not make it to the site.
Reached by The Washington Post late Monday, Brian Monahan, a Navy rear admiral and the doctor who had reportedly cared for Scalia, declined to comment, citing "patient confidentiality."
The county judge, Cinderela Guevara, didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment. Guevara was within her rights to declare Scalia dead without having seen the body under Texas law, The Washington Post said.
The US Marshals Service coordinates with the Supreme Court police to provide security for the justices, but they may decline protection. In this instance, the USMS detail was declined, so USMS personnel were not present at the ranch. Deputy US Marshals from the Western District of Texas responded immediately upon notification of Scalia's death.
Members of the high court do not routinely make their health information public, like presidents and presidential candidates.
Guevara did not order an autopsy; the same decision, according to The Post, that the Scalia family made when speaking to the El Paso, Texas funeral home that received his body. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said an autopsy should have been performed.
"Frankly, I'm surprised there was not an autopsy," Turley told CNN's Dugald McConnell. "I was also surprised at how casual the treatment of the scene appeared to be. I mean, you had someone pronounced dead over the description of Marshals on the phone. This is not just anyone, this is a member of the Supreme Court, one of the highest officials in the judicial branch, therefore one of the highest officials in our government." Asked about the conspiracy theories, Turley said that"there's obviously an insatiable desire from many people to look at facts and see something untoward or suspicious. The Internet doesn't help that. We are living at a time where conspiracy theories are a virtual sport. The fact that you had a justice who died and was left in his room for hours doesn't mean this is some Hollywood script. What it probably means is that a justice passed away in his room and was left for hours. Nino Scalia did have medical problems, and he was 79 years old." 

Rico says he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop: that Scalia was gay... (But if you wrote this as fiction, particularly with Cinderela as a judge, no one would believe it.)