Attorney Allegedly Texts Judge, ‘I Wish You Die Tonight In A Car Fire,’ But Doesn’t Say HE’S Going To Do It, Making This The Most Lawyerly Threat Ever

Over the past couple weeks, authorities say Acting Supreme Court Justice Susan Capeci received multiple threatening messages from the account of attorney Nicholas Leo. From May 27 until just last week, the judge got texts like “I hope you die” and the more specific “I wish you die tonight in a car fire” from the lawyer currently involved in a custody dispute in Capeci’s courtroom where he’s racked up a couple of contempt rulings.

As threats made by lawyers go, it’s no “anally raped by an asteroid,” but that doesn’t make it any better. He’s being held without bail right now and whatever happens, there’s now a protective order barring him from contacting Capeci.

Of course it would be a lawyer whose threats pointedly avoid saying that HE planned to do anything. Oh, I didn’t say I was going to set your car on fire… just that it would be welcomed warmly by me if somehow you did purchase a Tesla. The messages read like someone intent on committing aggravated harassment but who thinks he can get around it if he makes sure to use the passive voice enough.

Very lawyerly… and very unlikely to work.

The weaponized wishful thinking didn’t impress District Attorney Susan Cacace, who dusted off Chief Justice Roberts’s annual report in remarks quoted in the NY Post:

“At a time of increasing threats to members of the judiciary, the defendant’s alleged conduct is especially alarming,” she said. “As U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts observed in his 2024 report on the federal judiciary, ‘violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable.’

That Roberts report sounds almost impressive when you can cherry-pick the direct passages and don’t have to deal with his rambling equivocating about how media criticism of partisan opinions is sorta like burning a cross on a judge’s lawn in the 60s.

But while Roberts tried to use the uptick in threats against judges to grind his personal axe about the media being mean just because Sam Alito flies insurrection flags, the danger to judges is real and needs to be addressed. Judge Salas’s son was killed by a disgruntled litigant trying to get to her and the Trump administration is whipping up his followers by claiming some of the most even-keeled jurists in America are Marxist threats to the nation.

“We must never allow this type of conduct to become normalized,” Cacace added. “The sanctity of our legal process demands nothing less.”

The sanctity of the our legal process demands quite a bit more, but this is definitely the bare minimum.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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