Trials in the news

D.O.M. and Michael Pasano are in separate trials, and both are in the news. (D.O.M.’s trial violates topicality for this blog because it is not in the SDFla, but, given that D.O.M. doesn’t really take topicality seriously at all, I figure I can get away with a link.)

Pasano’s tax fraud trial is in this district, before Judge Zloch, and since I can’t readily link to the DBR, I’ll again follow D.O.M.’s lead and liberally quote from it:

Michael Pasano, a partner at Carlton Fields in Miami, on cross-examination accused [government witness] Habib Levy of trying to hide assets from the government of Venezuela. He also brought up an affair the married Levy had with a woman who worked for Cohen Assor at a perfume business in Paris.

The exchange was clearly the most colorful in a trial full of technical documentation and signature comparisons.

Okay, one more thing: a look at the docket shows that the government and Pasano had a little pre-trial skirmish in their supplemental trial briefs about the latitude the Sixth Amendment affords a criminal defendant in demonstrating bias on the part of a witness. I will leave the government’s position to your imagination. Suffice it to say that, if I had 20 students in my evidence class rather than 140, I could use trial briefs like these to have way more interesting class discussions than the textbook affords.