"They want me to lie. They’re yelling at me.”

That was Rick Singer, the ringleader and main snitch in the Varsity Blues case describing what the case agents wanted him to do.  That should make your blood boil of course.  But the cover-up by prosecutors is just as bad, not disclosing this obvious Brady material until after twenty of the defendants have already pleaded guilty and served their time. It's just outrageous.

From the NY Times:

Since the mastermind of the college admissions scandal, William Singer, pleaded guilty last March to racketeering and other charges, he has been mostly offstage, paddleboarding and enjoying the California sun while many of his former clients head off to prison.

But this week, Mr. Singer, who admitted to organizing a scheme to cheat on tests and bribe college coaches to get students into elite schools, was again the center of attention. Lawyers for the actress Lori Loughlin and other parents said that notes Mr. Singer had taken while cooperating with federal investigators showed that they pushed him to lie to incriminate his clients.

They said that Mr. Singer’s own words suggested that parents did not knowingly engage in a conspiracy to bribe coaches, as prosecutors have argued, and they accused prosecutors of sitting on the evidence for months in violation of their legal obligations.

“Loud and abrasive call with agents,” Mr. Singer wrote on Oct. 2, 2018, in a note with several typos and misspellings. “They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where there money was going - to the program not the coach and that it was a donation and they want it to be a payment.”

He added that the agents were essentially “asking me to bend the truth.”

In a hearing on Thursday, a federal judge called the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct “very serious” but did not rule on the issue, directing the parties to submit further motions.

Ms. Loughlin’s lawyers had written in a court filing on Wednesday that the evidence in Mr. Singer’s notes was “devastating to the Government’s case and demonstrates that the Government has been improperly withholding core exculpatory information, employing a ‘win at all costs’ effort rather than following their obligation to do justice.”

I previously wrote about how prosecutors were trying to bully Aunt Becky into pleading guilty.  Turns out they were doing much worse!

So what will happen now? The judge took various motions under advisement.  But the sad truth is that the likelihood that anything will happen to the prosecutors or agents who engaged in this misconduct -- or to the case itself -- is very low.  The right result would be to issue severe sanctions, including dismissal.  That's the only way that we are going to stop prosecutorial misconduct, which is a real problem for the criminal justice system.

The judiciary exists to act as a check on the executive branch.  But unfortunately we don't see much of that at all when it comes to misconduct. Instead, we hear: don't do that again; it wasn't intentional; there was no prejudice; it was harmless; and so on. So prosecutors and agents keep doing it.

At sentencings every day in every courtroom around the country, we hear about deterrence and why severe sentences are needed.  Let's be consistent with prosecutorial wrongdoing.

Roy Altman speaks for new judges at SCOTUS

Very cool honor for Judge Altman who spoke to and on behalf of the new judges (class of '19).  Justice Thomas spoke for the Court, and Justices Sotomayor, Alito, and Kavanaugh attended. Here are some pictures:

Elections matter...

...especially for the Supreme Court.

This week, in a 5-4 opinion, the Court found that a Border Patrol Agent cannot be sued for shooting a teenager from Mexico in the face.

Immune.

Insane.

Inhumane.

And of course it’s Alito writing the opinion. Totally on brand.

The opinion is Hernandez v. Mesa, available here.

The holding in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents does not extend to claims based on a cross-border shooting.

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch say in a concurrence that they would do away with Bivens altogether!

Alito really is the most partisan Justice we have.

And it’s not even close.

Don’t @ me.

Thank goodness for Justice Ginsburg who writes the dissent and explains that allowing the suit to go forward would not impact national security or any other “concern” that the majority has.

It's Judge Newsom, not Newsome

Judge Newsom has quickly become known as one of the more entertaining writers on the 11th Circuit.  He even makes IP litigation fun.  From the intro:

Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, a residential community in Boca Raton, Florida, is home to multimillion-dollar mansions, a championship golf course, and even a private marina. It’s also home, as it turns out, to the contentious real-estate rivalry that spawned this trademark litigation.
Royal Palm Properties, a real-estate broker whose specialty is buying and selling homes in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, sued its competitor, Pink Palm Properties, for infringing its registered service mark on the phrase “Royal Palm Properties.” Pink Palm Properties counterclaimed, challenging the mark’s validity. A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida upheld Royal Palm Properties’ mark but found that Pink Palm Properties hadn’t infringed it. The district court, though, overturned the verdict in part, granting Pink Palm Properties’ renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and ordering the cancellation of Royal Palm Properties’ mark. The question before us is whether the district court correctly flipped the jury’s verdict and granted judgment as a matter of law on Pink Palm Properties’ trademark-invalidation counterclaim.

We hold that the district court erred. To be entitled to judgment as a matter of law, Pink Palm Properties would have had to make quite the showing at trial—such that no reasonable jury could have found that it failed to prove grounds for cancelling Royal Palm Properties’ mark. Based on our careful review of the record, we conclude that Pink Palm Properties didn’t meet this high bar. On neither of its two grounds for cancellation—that the “Royal Palm Properties” mark (1) is not “distinctive” and (2) is “confusingly similar” to previously registered marks—did Pink Palm Properties prove, decisively, that it had won the day. We therefore reverse the district court’s decision to overturn the jury’s verdict and invalidate Royal Palm Properties’ service mark.

I enjoyed this discussion and the footnote especially:*

Pink Palm Properties certainly satisfied the first two Coach House requirements. The “Royal Palm Properties” mark clearly “resembles” the “Royale Palms” marks—the spelling of the dominant words is nearly identical8—and the “Royale Palms” marks were registered several years before the “Royal Palm Properties” mark.

8.Welcome to the author’s life. Compare “Newsom” with “Newsome.”

* Welcome to this author's life as well.  Compare "Markus" with "Marcus."

Stone sentenced to 40 months

The criminal justice world, as well as the political world, are all talking about the Roger Stone sentence.  40 months...

Rumpole has a nice post about it here, calling the sentence too harsh.  He's right of course.  The problem is that so many people see it as lenient because the sentence was below the Sentencing Guidelines.  And that's the problem.  Over 3 years (YEARS!) in prison for a first-time non-violent and elderly offender is not lenient by any stretch.

We've become so accustomed to the Sentencing Guidelines that people -- including judges -- see downward variances as some sort of break.  But once we realize that the guidelines are just made up numbers, which are not based on anything, and that they have completely warped our system into jailing more people for longer amounts of time than any other country in the world, then we will see that downward variances are no break and 3+ years is lenient. 

Maybe we should not call them "downward variances."  That implies that the judge should start off with the guidelines.  Any ideas?

Trump commutes sentence of Judith Negron

In one of the worst examples of the trial tax in this District and around the country, Judith Negron -- a first-time non-violent offender -- was sentenced to 35 years (35 years!!!) in prison for Medicare fraud.  President Trump commuted her sentence yesterday to time served (8 years).  Most people are asking what her connection is to the President, and that's the problem with his commutations.  They are being viewed as individual driven instead of being driven by the unfairness of the system (which is the same criticism of his Stone tweets).  I just wish Trump would use this opportunity to grant more commutations and make some broader statements about the issues with our system.  Let's fix the trial tax and the Sentencing Guidelines.

Here's the WH press release on Negron:

Judith Negron is a 48-year-old wife and mother who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for her role as a minority-owner of a healthcare company engaged in a scheme to defraud the Federal Government.  Ms. Negron has served 8 years of her sentence and has spent this time working to improve her life and the lives of her fellow inmates.  Her prison warden and her counselor have written letters in support of clemency.  According to her warden, Ms. Negron “has always shown herself to be a model inmate who works extremely well with others and has established a good working relationship with staff and inmates.”  This grant of clemency is supported by the Clemency for All Non-Violent Drug Offenders Foundation, Dan Schneider, Matt Whitaker, Adam Brandon, Kevin Roberts, Brett Tolman, John Hostettler, and Alice Johnson, among others.

Roberto Martinez takes on his former colleagues in this Miami Herald op-ed

There are a bunch of former prosecutors calling for AG Bill Barr to resign in light of the recent change in Roger Stone's sentencing recommendation. Former U.S. Attorney Roberto Martinez -- who worked under Barr during the Bush presidency -- did not sign the letter even though he disagreed with Trump's public statements about the Stone sentencing, and he explained why in this Miami Herald op-ed:

Neither the signers of the letter — nor I — have any first-hand knowledge of the facts, the law and the various policy considerations involving the appropriate punishment that were considered by the DOJ and Barr regarding Stone’s sentencing. Neither the signers — nor I — know what conversations took place, when or where they took place, who participated in them, who said what and what issues where considered.

Yet, the letter makes a lot of assumptions and accusations about Barr and his decision that no lawyer or prosecutor (former or current) should ever make without knowing the details. Certainly, none of us would want a prosecutor to make accusations about one of our clients similarly uninformed. And yet, the letter’s signers demand that Barr resign. It is dangerous to make accusations about anyone without fully knowing the facts. Former prosecutors, some of whom are now in the private sector representing clients before the DOJ, probably know that better than anyone.

Meantime, the Federal Judges' Association has called an emergency meeting to address the Stone affair.  From the USA Today:

A national association of federal judges has called an emergency meeting Tuesday to address growing concerns about the intervention of Justice Department officials and President Donald Trump in politically sensitive cases, the group’s president said Monday.

Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, said the group “could not wait” until its spring conference to weigh in on a deepening crisis that has enveloped the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.

“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe told USA TODAY. “We’ll talk all of this through.”

This strikes me as strange.  I bet Judge Amy Berman Jackson does not like the idea that the association is having an emergency meeting about a pending case before her.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the Stone sentencing now, as well as the Michael Avanetti sentencing (which is scheduled for June). In both cases, I'm for a sentence way under the made-up Sentencing Guidelines. I just don't think we need to be sentencing non-violent first-time offenders to prison simply because they decided to go to trial (or really for any other reason). My take on the Stone sentencing is here.

Valentine's Day news and notes

1. The SDFLA Court will be celebrating Black History Month with a presentation on "Effective Legal Activism" on February 24 at 11:30 at the Ferguson Courtroom, 13th Floor. RSVP by 2/18/20 to: FLSD_Program@flsd.uscourts.gov

2. The 11th Circuit judges went at it in a student loan case this week. Judge Martin called Judge Pryor's reading of the statute at issue as "a grammatically incoherent reading." From Law.com:

An opinion affirming that one of the nation’s leading federal student loan guaranty agencies isn’t liable for aggressive tactics it employed over a nonexistent debt has ignited the second textualist split this week at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The ruling published Friday and written by Judge William Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit provoked a strong dissent from fellow Judge Beverly Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Martin chastised Pryor and Judge Gregory Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who joined with Pryor in affirming dismissal of the case, arguing that their findings could “only be achieved by a grammatically incoherent reading” of the statute.

Pryor took issue with Martin’s critique in his majority opinion, writing, “Our dissenting colleague is wrong.”

Katsas was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017. Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, has twice been on Trump’s short list for the U.S. Supreme Court. Martin was appointed by President Barack Obama.

3. Last week, Judge Robin Rosenberg was assigned the Zantac MDL, one of the largest in MDL history. It's a big deal in civil circles. The MDL panel said Rosenberg was “an able jurist who has not yet had the opportunity to preside over an MDL.”

“Let's use Roger Stone's case to fix our broken justice system“

The the title of my latest piece in The Hill, which you can access here.  Please let me know your thoughts.  Here’s the intro:

Every day in courthouses around the country, federal prosecutors ask for grossly outrageous and offensively high sentences. The United States puts more people in prison for longer amounts of time than any other country in the world. And it’s not just violent, repeat offenders who are getting the monster sentences. Those whopping sentences are also doled out like candy to first time, non-violent defendants.

That’s why it should have come as no surprise when the prosecutors handling Roger Stone’s case (involving an elderly first-time non-violent defendant) recommended a sentence of 7-9 years.

As wrong and over the top as that recommendation was, it was not unusual in the slightest. What was unusual was President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice coming in and saying that the recommended sentence was “excessive and unwarranted” and that the sentencing guidelines do not “serve the interests of justice in this case.”

People are rightly upset that DOJ is saying that the sentencing guidelines apply to everyone — except the president’s friends. That’s a huge problem, and it’s no wonder that the prosecutors handling the case resigned. How can they go into court every day and ask for monster sentences across the board except for FOT (Friends of Trump)?

Breaking -- Andrew Brasher confirmed to the 11th Circuit

Another lighting fast confirmation.  The vote was 53-43.

BREAKING -- Judge Federico Moreno to take senior status.

Wow, this is big news.

Judge Moreno has been the heart and soul of this Court for 30 years.  He's been the Chief and on Trump's short list for the Supreme Court. 

He gave his notice today that he will take senior status when his replacement is confirmed or on July 17, 2020 (he has thirty years of service as of July 16), whichever comes first.

Here is the official letter:

I will write more about Judge Moreno shortly, but a big shout out to him for his service to the bar and the community.

54 cellphones, 47 amphetamine pills...

... 25 grams of an amphetamine infused leafy substance, two syringes filled with liquid amphetamine, one opiate-infused paper strip, at least nine cellphone chargers and one 11.5-inch, dagger-like shank fashioned from a piece of copper pipe.

That’s what was found during a recent 30-day sweep at FCI-Miami, according to the Sun-Sentinel. More:

On Jan. 24 this year, unrest broke out in the camp. According to corrections officers who work at the facility, the discovery of more than 50 prohibited cellphones in a single day triggered a lockdown, which in turn led to an inmate strike.
The labor strike, according to corrections officers, included a mass refusal by inmates to eat in the facilities’ food hall.
A Jan. 25 police report of a possible escaped inmate, documented in Federal Bureau of Prison’s documents, only increased tensions. A headcount showed there was no escape, but corrections officers suspect it was someone actually breaking into the compound to deliver contraband.

There have been lots of reports about the lockdown at FCI-Miami. Inmates thinking they were serving time at a low or a camp have been subjected to conditions more like a medium or high.

“Do you have a lot of trouble answering questions in life or just when you come to the court?”

That was Federal Circuit Judge Raymond Clevenger to a DOJ lawyer when she wouldn't answer hypotheticals during oral argument on PACER fees. From Politico:

A lawsuit accusing the federal court system of treating nearly a billion dollars in online access fees like a slush fund got a favorable reception on Monday from an appeals court, where the main question that judges seemed interested in debating was how to calculate the extent to which the public was bilked.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments on a class-action lawsuit filed in 2016 that picked up on federal judges’ claims that the user fees from the so-called PACER system were being used to broadly subsidize the courts’ information technology budget, rather than being used solely to cover costs related to making court records available online.

At issue is about $145 million in fees that users pay each year to search for and download federal court filings. The courts typically charge 10 cents a page for electronic copies of those filings. It’s a meager amount, but the bills can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars a month for law firms, electronic publishers, news organizations and nonprofit groups that use the records for a wide variety of purposes.

Two of the judges, Raymond Clevenger and Todd Hughes, sounded inclined to allow the lawsuit to continue over the objections of the Justice Department, which argued for dismissal of the case.

A Justice Department attorney, Alisa Klein, told the judges that Congress’ directions about what costs could be recovered through user fees were too vague to be the basis for a suit. She also said the alleged overcharges were impossible to calculate because surpluses in the accounts were carried from year to year, with the courts requesting appropriations to make up for shortfalls.

“That’s unknowable,” she said.

Clevenger asked, incredulously, whether the Justice Department was contending that PACER users couldn’t get refunds even if the courts incurred “knowingly, blatantly illegal” expenses on the accounts, like new curtains for the Supreme Court or “gold-plated toilets” for judges. He also raised the possibility that, under the government’s broad interpretation of the law, courts could use the PACER funds to publicize the menu in the Supreme Court cafeteria.

Klein initially resisted those hypotheticals, prompting a barbed response from the judge: “Do you have a lot of trouble answering questions in life or just when you come to the court?”

We really need judges to step up prosecutorial misconduct...

...because no one else will.  The legislature in New York tried, setting up a commission on prosecutorial misconduct.  But it was struck down!  From the AP:

A New York judge has struck down a law that would have created a state commission tasked with investigating prosecutorial misconduct.

Justice David Weinstein declared the law unconstitutional in a decision issued Tuesday, marking a win for a prosecutors’ association that sued over the statute.

The law would have set up an 11-member commission to probe misconduct claims against New York state prosecutors. The panel would have been appointed by the governor, Legislature and New York’s chief judge.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, first signed the law in 2018 and later approved amendments after constitutionality concerns were raised.

Supporters say the law would set up a new way of stopping prosecutors who abuse their power. Cuomo’s office has touted the commission as the nation’s first and said prosecutorial misconduct can lead to wrongful convictions.

The law would have allowed the commission to censure or admonish a prosecutor. It also gave the panel the ability to recommend to the governor that a prosecutor be removed,

Prosecutors have called the law unconstitutional.

In their lawsuit, the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York argued the measure violated the separation of powers and gave state lawmakers too much oversight over independent district attorney’s offices.

Sigh.

Patrick Mahomes is going to Disney World.

And so are all the federal and state judges (and lawyers who want to be judges) to attend the Federalist Society meeting, which was this weekend in Orlando.

.@PatrickMahomes is going to Disney World. And he's bringing everybody. #ChiefsKingdom #SBLIV pic.twitter.com/D4VgzQw9Yx

— NFL (@NFL) February 3, 2020

But should they?  There's a proposal to limit judicial membership in the organization.  Justice Thomas, who was at the meeting, spoke out against the proposal (via WSJ):

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned a proposed ethics rule that would discourage federal judges from belonging to the conservative Federalist Society and its liberal counterpart, the American Constitution Society.

Justice Thomas has long participated in events sponsored by the Federalist Society, which has groomed many of President Trump’s judicial nominees.

“And now I think they’re about to silence the Federalist Society. So I guess I can’t come back,” Justice Thomas quipped Friday at Federalist Society convention at Walt Disney World.

“Some of us are fighting back,” responded U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, a former Thomas law clerk who interviewed his former boss before the audience.

The ethics proposal, circulated last month by the federal judiciary’s policy-making body, the Judicial Conference of the U.S., would tighten existing guidance that lets judges belong to the two groups but not take leadership roles.