John Pacenti covers the amicus briefs filed in support of the Cuban 5:
Nobel laureates, scholars and international organizations have flooded the U.S. Supreme Court with legal briefs in support of five convicted Cuban spies, arguing the defendants were sandbagged from the start because the Miami trial took place in a city defined by decades of anti-Castro fervor.
A dozen amicus briefs focus mainly on U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard’s denial of a defense motion to move the trial 25 miles north to Fort Lauderdale.
Her refusal "guaranteed that jurors would be drawn from a cross-section of a community inflamed by passion, warped by prejudice, awed by violence and menaced by the virulence of public opinion," according to a petitions filed by the Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law in Washington.
The Howard brief has particularly offended the Cuban-American community, said Roland Sanchez-Medina, president of the Cuban American Bar Association. If the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, he said his organization would respond with an amicus brief of its own.
"They obvious did zero actual research to do with anything about the Cuban-American community," he said. "It’s unbelievably inflammatory, ignorant and completely baseless."
Supreme Court stud Tom Goldstein is heading up the Supreme Court litigation for the five:
Tom Goldstein of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, who is handling the Supreme Court appeal for the convicted spies, noted support for the defendants has come "from people from all over the world."
Judge Lenard ruled anti-Castro hostility related "to events other than the espionage activities in which defendants were allegedly involved," and any partiality could be vetted during jury selection.
"This was a serious injustice, and it sent all the wrong signals to the world about our commitment to a fair and impartial trial," Goldstein said.
Interesting article, but Pacenti should have given a little more pub to Richard Klugh, who has been guy writing the legal papers throughout these proceedings.
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8 comments:
"[A] community inflamed by passion, warped by prejudice, awed by violence and menaced by the virulence of public opinion."
The Howard brief really is a hot stinking load. Sure we have our share of nuts, but no more than any other group. That a "historically black" university would file such racist non-sense is ironic, if not downright hypocritical.
Amen 3:42 p.m. Accepting the unruly premise raised by the defendants leads to an unholy mess. The reason why the argument should fail is the same reason why we don't accept the argument that prospective inner city black jurors cannot be fair and impartial in a case involving a crack dealer from the inner city due to years of police misconduct/brutality.
I can't think of the last time I managed to keep an inner city African American on one of my crack or gun case juries. But that's beside the point.
Anyone who thinks that an accused cuban spy can get a fair trial in Miami is either not from Miami, is fooling himself or is not being truthful. This is the city where Cigar Aficionado magazine was banned from the airport because it contained an article that was allegedly flattering to Cuba. Have you ever heard about such a thing (related to Cuba) happening anywhere else in the US? How about this one: google "Miami-Dade school library" and most of the top entries returned will relate to the decison to ban a book for elementary school kids about Cuba. The fact is that there are some topics that hit too close to home for people not to be biased or at the very least, to raise a concern that people may not be able to put their feelings aside. Its not a reflection on the person; it is a recognition of reality. The reality is that this community is not the right place for this case to have been tried.
See...11:45's comments support that the Howard brief is a hot stinking load. As described by 11:45, people are people, and are by nature imperfect, and that's ok. However, saying things like Miami-Cubans are "warped by prejudice, awed by violence and menaced by the virulence of public opinion" is just plain ignorant.
The clowns at Cigar Aficionado are Communist Cuba sympathizers.
are hoffman, cronin and gilbert going down?
If Goldstein loves Cuba so much he should go live there
does al goldstein want to move to cuba?
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