News & Notes

1. Richard Strafer's memorial service will be held on August 6 at 10am at Kendall Mt. Nebo, 5900 SW 77th Avenue. Miami, FL 33143.

2. We filed an emergency petition in the Supreme Court for former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli. Jay Weaver covers it here:

Attorneys for former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who is being detained in Miami on an extradition request to his homeland, filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday that asserts his constitutional rights have been violated because his bid for bond was denied.

Martinelli’s legal team argued that federal courts nationwide have “misconstrued” a 114-year-old Supreme Court decision “as having erected a heavy presumption against bail in such [extradition] cases.”

“The belief that [this decision] imposed an unlawful presumption has prevailed [in extradition cases] for so long that it is now binding across the country,” Miami attorneys David O. Markus and Ricardo Bascuas wrote in Martinelli’s emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus. “Only this court can resolve the confusion at this point.”

Markus and Bascuas, who were added to Martinelli’s legal team led by attorney Marcos Jimenez, said the U.S. Supreme Court was the former president’s only recourse because bond denials cannot be appealed in extradition cases in the federal district or appeals courts.

3. David Lat is blogging about Katherine Magbanua's case. Magbanua is represented by Chris DeCoste and Tara Kawass. Full disclosure, we represent Charlie Adelson.

4.  SCOTUS protestors get a taste of jail.  Via WP:

Five protesters who disrupted a session of the U.S. Supreme Court by shouting disapproval of its rulings on campaign finance law were sentenced to one or two weekends in prison Monday after losing a bid to overturn a 1949 law restricting public protest at the court.

U.S. prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper in Washington to order 10-day jail sentences for the defendants, members of an organization called 99Rise. They had stood and spoken one-by-one just after the court was gaveled into session April 1, 2015, about a year after the justices had struck down overall limits on campaign contributions.