Quick news and notes for out of town cases

1. Barzee and Pettus are still waiting for a verdict.

2. Another out of town trial -- Matt Menchel is fighting the feds in DC. He is crossing the case agent. From Law360:

Attorneys for four military equipment company executives accused of trying to bribe Gabon government ministers to win contracts sought to undercut the government’s chief informant in the case in Washington federal court Tuesday, alluding to his past appetites for drugs and prostitutes.

Federal Bureau of Investigations agent Christopher Forvour, the lead case agent for the FBI’s sting operation, admitted to Matthew Menchel, attorney for defendant Pankesh Patel, that the FBI knew about informant Richard Bistrong’s previous habits of using cocaine and frequenting prostitutes, which predated his time as an informant.

3. Miamian Nevin Shapiro got 20 years in New Jersey for a billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

4. Health care is being argued in Atlanta today.

Barzee, Pettus still waiting for verdict

The jury in the SDNY insider trading case is apparently sending all kinds of notes, asking for definitions of terms and other itmes. Bill Barzee and "Country Dave" Pettus have to just sit and wait and it's not easy. Fridays are always the toughest day waiting for a verdict. You don't want the jury to feel rushed, but the weekends are always difficult for not guilty verdicts. Here's the latest article, which basically says the jury is deliberating.

You wanna be a federal judge? Read this. "The Path to the Federal Bench" sets out the basic process. Here's my favorite part:

Finally, a word to the wise: Before you are nominated to the federal
bench, you will be subjected to an FBI background check. Have you
ever committed a crime? Failed to pay your taxes? Been embroiled in a
scandal? Staffers from the Department of Justice will likely read
everything you have ever written and will interview members of your
community to determine if you are an appropriate candidate for the
bench. In evaluating your qualifications, subject yourself to The “New
York Times test,” i.e., if anything in your past would embarrass you or—
perhaps more importantly—the president or your home state senators
if it showed up on the front page of The New York Times, then perhaps
pursuing a federal judgeship is not for you.

"Your honor, on behalf of Zvi Goffer, we'll rest."

That was Bill Barzee today in the big insider trading case in the SDNY immediately after the government rested. From Reuters:

A former Galleon Group hedge fund trader did not put on a defense at his insider trading trial, and the judge said the jury will hear closing arguments in the case on Wednesday.

A defense attorney for 34-year-old Zvi Goffer, who once worked at Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group and two other trading firms, told the Manhattan federal court judge on Tuesday he would not present evidence or call witnesses to defend his client.

***

The trial is in its third week. It started days after a jury in the same courthouse convicted Rajaratnam of 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in the biggest Wall Street insider trading trial in years.

Go Heat and Go Bill Barzee!

Go, Bill Barzee, Go!

My suite-mate Bill Barzee showed the SDNY how we roll down here in the SDFLA. He threw a bunch of great body blows today during his opening for Zvi Goffer, the off-shoot of the Raj Rajaratnam case. Via Reuters, the prosecutor threw the first jab:

The opening statements in the Manhattan federal court trial began with a prosecutor, Andrew Fish, turning around to point his right forefinger at one of the three defendants, securities trader Zvi Goffer, and call him "the ring leader of this criminal scheme."

Goffer, 34, who once worked at Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group and two other trading firms, is on trial with his brother and fellow trader Emanuel Goffer, 32, and another trader, Michael Kimelman, 40. The trial comes a week after Rajaratnam was found guilty of insider trading by a jury in the same courthouse.

Barzee then gave the smack down:

"Zvi Goffer, you're fired. That's what Raj Rajaratnam told Zvi Goffer," Goffer's lawyer, William Barzee, said as he began his opening statement, echoing the well-known real estate developer Trump's trademark phrase on his reality TV show. "He was fired because he lost so much money."

Barzee said his client waded into "the river of gossip" of Wall Street for tips and speculation, not for improperly leaked secrets as the government charges. "He was like a gold prospector searching for gold in a river," Barzee said.

Prosecutors have described the broad Galleon probe as the biggest investigation ever of insider trading at hedge funds.

The Goffer brothers and Kimelman are accused of bribing two lawyers at the prominent law firm Ropes & Gray with tens of thousands of dollars for secret information on takeover targets. The case of each man will be decided separately at the trial, which is expected to last up to five weeks.

I just love this part:

Barzee told the jury that another lawyer -- Jason Goldfarb, who the government says also passed tips to the defendants -- was a workers' compensation lawyer who had nothing to do with corporate mergers.

He said Zvi Goffer had a nickname for Goldfarb -- GQ.

"It stood for 'Gossip Queen.' That was the kind of guy Jason Goldfarb was. He would repeat anything that he ever heard from anyone" talking to Zvi Goffer "endlessly about dozens and dozens of stocks." Goldfarb has pleaded guilty.

Go get em Bill.

How do you like my new look?

The DBR has this article on how the courts are dealing with technology and privacy. I was quoted and here's the picture they used of me. How do you like my new look?

In other news:

1. Bill Barzee is starting a big trial in SDNY -- the offshoot of the Raj case. His client, Zvi Goffer, was known as Octopussy. Good luck to Bill and Zvi.

2. The Pakistani Taliban case will be arraigned today. I'm predicting pleas of not guilty.

3. Ellisa Martinez is pleading today. She's the woman who caused the school lockdown in Broward. She is before Judge Moore.

Find me guilty

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.

Hung

Bill Barzee just hung his second jury in a row, this time in the Iranian Night Vision Goggle case. Here's Vanessa Blum's Sun-Sentinel article.

Trials

I was supposed to start a month-long trial this week in West Palm Beach, but it got postponed till next Monday. Here are some stories about other trials that started this week:

1. Participant or just translator? Shahrazad Gholikhan started trial in front of Judge Cohn. She is charged with attempting to export night vision goggles to Iran. This was the case that originally pled out to credit time served, but the government moved to vacate the sentence saying it had made a mistake in the guidelines. Judge Cohn then resentenced her to 29 months. Then the defense moved to vacate the plea, saying that everyone had thought it was a CTS case. Judge Cohn agreed and here we are in trial. Vanessa Blum covers it here:

The strange legal odyssey that led an Iranian woman to surrender last year to face charges she tried to supply Iran with U.S.-made night vision goggles took another turn Tuesday with opening statements to jurors in Fort Lauderdale federal court.A prosecutor told jurors that Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, 30, conspired with her former husband to illegally purchase thousands of military-grade night vision goggles and traveled to Vienna in 2004 to obtain a sample pair.Gholikhan's attorney countered that she went to Vienna without knowing her ex-husband's plan and served only as his translator.

2. The Venezuelan cash smuggling case started up before Judge Lenard. Here's Curt Anderson's take:

A wealthy Venezuelan businessman went on trial Tuesday on U.S. charges that he illegally acted as his government's agent in an elaborate scheme to conceal the source of $800,000 in political cash carried in a suitcase into Argentina.
Prosecutors say Franklin Duran, 40, was doing the bidding of Venezuela's intelligence service when he and others used promises of $2 million in cash and veiled threats of violence to make the cover-up work. The FBI taped dozens of conversations between Duran and his alleged cohorts on the telephone and in South Florida restaurants and coffee shops.
Jury selection began Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, with the trial expected to take up to six weeks. Duran, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy and failing to register with the U.S. as a Venezuelan agent.
The purported cover-up involved a cash-stuffed suitcase brought into Argentina aboard a Venezuelan aircraft in August 2007 that prosecutors say was intended as a contribution for new Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. Both she and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have denounced the trial as politically motivated, but U.S. officials deny that.
Still, the case has further strained the already sour relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela. Duran's lawyer, Ed Shohat, has repeatedly insisted the trial is intended mainly to embarrass Chavez and his allies in Latin America and that Duran wasn't even aware of the registration law he is accused of violating.
"Our view is that this case is a political attack," Shohat said.

You gotta know when to hold em...

They say that the best trial lawyers are good gamblers.

Well, Bill Barzee and Joel Denaro took a huge gamble today, which almost paid off big. After a week of trial before Judge Jordan, the jury was deadlocked. Barzee and Denaro decided to ask for a majority-wins verdict. Jordan said that if the prosecutor, Frank Tamen, would agree the Court would accept the non-unanimous decision. Tamen said no. So mistrial.

What was the vote, you ask.

7-5 for acquittal...

Conventional wisdom from the defense bar is to always require a unanimous verdict; never agree to majority wins. Typically, it's the government, not the defense, that requests such a jury decision.

Dear readers, what do you think about the conventional wisdom? About the Barzee/Denaro gambit? Better to live to fight another day? Or take the verdict with the first trial, your best shot at victory?

Here's some of the Herald article on the case:

Federal prosecutors in Miami have failed to secure a conviction of a man who -- according to his own lawyers -- smuggled enormous amounts of cocaine into the United States from Colombia.
The reason: The feds were unable to prove to the jurors' satisfaction that the crimes of Hernan Prada occurred within the statute of limitations.
As a result, jurors split 7-5 on Tueday in favor of acquittal, forcing U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan to declare a mistrial in the trial of Hernan Prada.
Prosecutors are expected to retry Prada, who authorities said once ran an international enterprise that pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, as soon as next month.
During the seven-day trial, it was never in dispute that Prada at one time oversaw shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Even his lawyers conceded that point.
However, that was not enough for a conviction. The underlying issue of the case was this: Did the alleged Colombian drug-cartel kingpin plan or execute any deals after July 2, 1999, when the statute of limitations in his case would have expired?
When it became clear that a unanimous verdict was unlikely, the defense took an enormous chance.
At Prada's urging, attorneys William Barzee, Joel Denaro and Jelani Davis petitioned the court for a rarely used provision: a non-unanimous verdict. At the time of the proposal, it was not known which side had the most jurors in its corner.
All that was needed to declare guilt or innocence in such a case was a simple majority.
Jordan considered the proposal. Assistant U.S. attorney Frank Tamen dismissed it immediately. Later, it became clear that Prada would have walked if the prosecution had agreed.
''Our instinct was right,'' Denaro said. ``It would have been spectacular if they had agreed. It was really intense.''

Former U.S. Attorney: Terror Watch List is Absurd

Former U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez (and friend of the blog), whose priority while he was the U.S. Attorney was terrorism, is complaining about the terror watch list. Vanessa Blum has the story here:

As a former federal prosecutor with a top national security clearance, Marcos Jimenez would seem an unlikely terror suspect.Yet when he travels, the former U.S. attorney for South Florida endures delays, searches and other inconveniences, because someone with his name appears on the government watch list airlines use to identify possible terrorists.It happened most recently Thursday, as security personnel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport pulled aside Jimenez, once the region's top federal law enforcement official, for an intrusive physical pat down."They put you off to the side like an animal in a little pen. They wand you. They grab you everywhere," Jimenez said. "To go through this hassle and inconvenience every time you get on a plane is just extremely frustrating."

An animal in a little pen..... Nice imagery. So what does our former U.S. Attorney do to get around this:

Even more absurd, Jimenez says, he can avoid the hassle simply by traveling under his middle name."If I use Marcos Jimenez, I get just short of strip-searched. If I go as Daniel Jimenez, I go right through," he said. "If this is really, truly an important terrorist prevention technique, it's not working because I can avoid it extremely well."

He makes a good point. But I just wonder what would have happened if some newbie major crimes prosecutor got a call from TSA about someone going thr0ugh security with his middle name. They would call it attempted boarding of an airplane with an alias or some such nonsense and chalk up the case as a terrorism stat...

In other news, congrats to my office-mate Marc Seitles (and the co-defendants' lawyers Ken Swartz, Steve Amster, and Lisa Colon) on his not guilty before Judge Altonaga in the last trial in the Tower Building. Judge Altonaga and Judge Cooke are moving to the new building this week, the last judges to do so.

As long as we are on my office-mates, Bill Barzee (and Joel Denaro) start trial Monday morning in front of Judge Jordan defending Hernan Prada, who the government says was one of the kingpins in Medellin who took over for Pablo Escobar. The case is being prosecuted by Frank Tamen.

From the most boring post ever to .....

Well, I've been trying not to blog this story for a bunch of reasons, but everyone is talking about this and I have received more than 20 emails from lawyers, judges, and others asking about it and why I haven't written about it (and thanks for all the tips that came in). So, for the few of you who haven't heard, there was an altercation between Bill Barzee and Benson Weintraub yesterday. I am including a passage from someone who claims to have knowledge of what happened:

"Bill Barzee was headed into the FDC yesterday when he ran into Benson Weintraub on the way out. They ran into each other in front of the tower building. Apparently words were exchanged about one of Bill's clients. Benson told Bill that he was taking over the case. He told Bill to go back to his office and write him a check. He told Bill that there was no need to go into the jail. This led to a further exchange of words...

Benson then attacked Bill, punching him twice in the face. Bill was carrying his briefcase in one hand and his jacket in the other. Bill then tried to push and kick Benson away. He put Benson in a headlock and subdued him until the Marshals came and broke it up.

Benson told others that he cold-cocked Bill because of Bill's comments."

If you were an eyewitness or have further information please email me.

"If there is a verdict for her and she is ordered to be released, how can the verdict be changed so suddenly!!!!!!!!!"

That was the defendant's mom after Judge Cohn sentenced Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan to 29 months a week after sentencing her to credit time served. I've tried not to blog about the case because I was involved for a brief time early on in the litigation. Here is the intro from Vanessa Blum's article:

Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian woman accused of trying to export night vision goggles, thought her guilty plea last month would be her ticket back to her family.The federal prosecutor had recommended a term of time served for the 30-year-old mother's role in the illegal plot to trade with Iran, a U.S.-designated terrorist nation. U.S. District Judge James Cohn imposed the sentence at an April 25 hearing in Fort Lauderdale federal court.But on Tuesday that smooth resolution unraveled. Determining the sentence had been a mistake, Cohn extended Gholikhan's prison term from time served to two years and five months.Under the law, federal judges can amend sentences within seven business days that result from "arithmetic, technical, or other clear error."


Gholikhan's lawyer Bill Barzee had this to say:

William Barzee, Gholikhan's attorney, called the resentencing unfair and un-American, saying after the hearing that his client feels like she's back in Iran."I don't think it's fair to [agree on a sentence] and have someone plead guilty and then come back and ask the court for a do-over," Barzee said in court Tuesday.

And a sentencing professor commented:

Jonathan Rosenthal, a Fort Lauderdale defense lawyer who teaches sentencing at Nova Southeastern University, said he found a description of Gholikhan's resentencing "troubling" because the guidelines are only one factor judges should consider."I don't understand how on Monday a sentence of four-and-a-half months is reasonable, but on Tuesday, all of a sudden, that sentence is no longer reasonable," Rosenthal said. "Judges are not supposed to give guidelines any undue weight."

It's a valid point. If a sentence of credit time served is reasonable, how can a sentence of 29 months be reasonable the next day -- especially when the prosecutor had agreed to credit time served. If the situation was reversed -- and the defendant didn't like her sentence -- would a judge allow her to come back to court?