Sharhazad Mir Gholikhan is back in trial before Judge Cohn. You remember her -- she's the one who is accused of exporting night vision goggles to Iran. Bill Barzee represented her at her first trial where the jury could not reach a verdict. This time she is representing herself! Yesterday she conducted voir dire and did her opening in her prison khakis. When asked why she wouldn't wear civilian clothes, she responded that she had nothing to hide from the jury....
Here's the trailer from the movie Find Me Guilty, about a mobster who represented himself in the longest trial in U.S. history.
The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com
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Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Tuesday on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder.
foolish.... barzee gets her a hung jury; she will get herself hung by the jury.
Another political witch hunt by Pat Fitzgerald.
Hang em high Bill. Hangs em and leaves em.
Somebody call the Q!!! (or at least Joel Denaro).
FYI
In a decision important to high-dollar white-collar prosecutions, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals bolstered the broad discretion of trial judges to issue sentences far below, or far above, sentencing guidelines. The court Tuesday upheld the 42-month prison sentence of former Impath Inc. chief operating officer Richard Adelson, despite an 85-year sentence recommended by the guidelines. Federal prosecutors had appealed seeking more time for Adelson.
So this $14 billion bailout bill currently making its way through the halls of Congress stands mostly to benefit the U.S. auto industry. But it also, oddly, stands to benefit federal district judges.
Here’s why: The bill attaches an annual cost-of-living adjustment — or COLA — for federal judges, which, when implemented, will bring them in line with members of Congress, who get a $5,000 boost at the start of the year. District judges and members of Congress make $169,300. Here’s the AP story. Click here, here and here for other LB posts on the topic of judicial pay, which has been raging for years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the bill. The Senate passed the judicial pay measure as a separate bill in November, but the House never acted. As a result, Reid has taken the unusual step of linking the obscure but important judicial pay issue to the unpopular auto bailout.
There is concern among many policymakers that judges are not paid enough relative to the importance of their offices, and in six of the past 13 years, judges have been denied their pay raise as lawmakers opted not to take their own COLA.
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