Here is some of the legal news making the headlines this week:

Federal prosecutors charged Ryan Routh with attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump.

• In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, Ryan Routh was charged with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and assaulting a federal officer. These three charges were added to the two federal firearms charges Routh already faces. Routh is accused of targeting Trump at the Trump International Golf Club on September 15.
• The new charges were brought after investigators uncovered additional evidence against Routh, including a handwritten list of Trump’s scheduled public appearances and a handwritten letter that said, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry I failed you.”
• In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Violence targeting public officials endangers everything our country stands for, and the Department of Justice will use every available tool to hold Ryan Routh accountable for the attempted assassination of former President Trump charged in the indictment. The Justice Department will not tolerate violence that strikes at the heart of our democracy, and we will find and hold accountable those who perpetrate it. This must stop.”
• A federal magistrate judge ordered Routh to remain behind bars while the proceedings continue. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will oversee the case. Cannon recently dismissed criminal charges against Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the presidency. 

Missouri executed Marcellus Williams after the Supreme Court declined to postpone his execution.

• Williams, a Black man, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for the stabbing murder of a white woman in 1998.
• In the years since his conviction, lawyers on both sides of the trial have questioned Williams’s guilt. There was no DNA evidence linking Williams to the crime scene or to the knife used in the killing. Prosecutors also admitted to mishandling the knife by touching it without gloves, and they admitted to improperly excluding a juror from the trial due to race. The victim’s family also objected to Williams’s execution.
• Earlier this week, Williams and a local prosecutor petitioned the Supreme Court to put the execution on hold. In a brief unsigned order, the Court’s conservative majority declined to intervene. The Court’s three liberal justices wrote that they would have granted Williams’s request to postpone his execution.
• This is not the only death penalty case the Supreme Court will review this term. Next month, the justices will hear oral arguments in Glossip v. Oklahoma. In that case, the Court will consider whether to overturn the guilty verdict against Richard Glossip, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1997 killing of his employer. In his appeal, Glossip argues that the prosecution suppressed evidence about a key witness’s mental health in violation of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 ruling Brady v. Maryland, which held that prosecutors must provide the defendant with all exculpatory evidence.

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