Pictures Pictures Pictures

I know you all are upset with me -- I missed Star Wars day yesterday (May the 4th be with you). So, I won't miss Cinco de Mayo today...

Another day, another attack on JAABlog and Bill Gelin, this time from a lawyer upset with a picture he posted. Here's the basic question -- do the Florida Bar Rules apply to lawyer-run blogs? And if so, did Gelin violate any rules by posting the picture? Bob Norman (and now SFL and Rumpole) have weighed in. I'm sure you can guess my opinion -- Gelin has nothing to worry about on this one. (Yesterday, I had picture day at the blog. True, they weren't like the one posted at JAABlog, but one of them included a state rep looking at naughty pictures. Do the Florida Bar Rules prohibit me from posting that picture? No way.)

Okay, back to the news of the blog. Tony Mauro wrote an article about minority clerks. Our own Judge Martinez is quoted:

Judge Jose Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said that, in recent years, he has seen "way more [minority] applicants for clerkships — and they're getting better."
Recruiting minorities for clerkships has long been a challenge, Martinez said, because of missed educational opportunities and also because good candidates often have massive law school tuition debt to pay off. "We're competing for the top-notch minority lawyers with the big firms," Martinez said. "We have to show them it is a long-range benefit to be a clerk — it's a hell of a stepping-stone."
One helpful tool for doing that, Martinez said, has been the American Bar Association's 10-year-old Judicial Clerkship Program, which has provided hundreds of minority law students with internships that expose them to clerkship possibilities on both federal and state courts. The students see that "this is a viable thing for them to do," Martinez said.
But Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he has seen no recent increase in minority applicants for clerkships. "I don't receive the numbers I would like," he said. "They have so many other opportunities to make a lot more money than you can make as a law clerk."
Walton, who generally looks for applicants with a couple of years of law firm experience, said it is nearly impossible to hire minorities away from high-paying firms when he can only pay clerks less than $80,000 a year and when the firms are making "a big push to keep them on board." A recent clerk, Walton said, took a $100,000 pay cut from a major Washington firm to clerk for him.
Walton, himself an African-American, added that, with females outnumbering males among black law students, "the most difficult demographic to attract is the African-American male. The disparity is stark."

New Courthouse

The DBR has some info on the new courthouse in today's paper. Here's the article.

Judge Martinez had this to say: "I was perfectly happy where I was. I don't like high-rise buildings. If it was up to me, it would have been an old-fashioned courthouse. But I'm not in charge of the world today."

If federal judges aren't in charge of the world, then who is in charge!?!

Is 23 years an appropriate sentence for a business opporunity fraud case?

That's the question posed by Vanessa Blum in this Sun-Sentinel article:

"A once in a lifetime opportunity." "A part time business that earns a full time income." "Call now!" "Don't miss out!"The late night television ads for the Box Office Express DVD rental machine peddled a dream. But it didn't take long for customers of the Hollywood firm to realize they'd been sold an empty promise.In some cases the machines never came. Sometimes they arrived but didn't work properly. Those that functioned would never yield impressive profits.Today federal prosecutors are asking a Miami federal judge to sentence the founder of American Entertainment Distributors Inc. to 23 years in prison for conspiracy, fraud and violating a court order banning him from selling business opportunities. Russell MacArthur, 43, pleaded guilty to those charges in February.

Prosecutors contended the false statements and inflated profit forecasts MacArthur, used to sell the DVD vending machines at American Entertainment amounted to a massive fraud that cost 400 investors a total of nearly $20 million. His plan all along, according to prosecutors, was to make as much money as possible and then declare bankruptcy and fold.It's an area where federal authorities in South Florida have been cracking down. A string of recent cases targeting so-called "business opportunity fraud" have involved the sale of debit card dispensers, Internet kiosks, payphones and anti-aging devices.So far, 14 individuals affiliated with American Entertainment have been convicted, not including MacArthur's partner, Anthony "Rocco" Andreoni, who died in March just hours before he was set to plead guilty.The defendants had worked for at least 16 other business ventures in which most customers lost almost all their investment, prosecutors alleged.In a recent court filing, MacArthur's attorney, Frank Rubino, asserted that prosecutors have exaggerated financial losses tied to American Entertainment. Most customers received the DVD rental machines they paid for, if not the profits they expected, Rubino said.But prosecutor Patrick Jasperse of the Justice Department's consumer fraud section responded that the machines, which sold for $28,000 to $40,000, had no value because American Entertainment failed to provide locations for them and other services that were promised.

This afternoon, Judge Martinez sentenced MacArthur to 23 and 1/2 years.

UPDATED -- Here's the story of the sentencing by Blum. A couple of reasons for the lengthy sentence:

[Judge] Martinez said MacArthur deserved extra punishment for violating a court order banning him from selling business opportunities and for fleeing to Costa Rica after his indictment in 2005. He pleaded guilty in February.The judge called the DVD rental machine, which sold for $28,000 to $40,000, "a worthless piece of junk."

The defense lawyer responds:
Defense attorney Frank Rubino called the 23-year prison term "excessive" and a sentence more suitable for a drug lord or a terrorist."I'm not making light of this crime, but my god, 10, 12, 13 years is a long time," Rubino said.

The prosecutor:
But prosecutor Patrick Jasperse asked for harsh punishment, saying MacArthur was responsible for stealing the life savings and college funds of retirees and hardworking individuals."Russell MacArthur is a danger to the public," Jasperse said.

Judge Martinez speaks at the Federal Bar Association today

As expected, he was entertaining and the turnout to see him speak was great.

Apparently, the judges have been delayed moving into the new building because GSA forgot to order them the audio-visual equipment. This is not even funny anymore!

The buzz at the luncheon, of course, was whether the feds would retry the Liberty City group.

Happy Valentine's Day, loyal readers!

Well, not much going on in the District the last couple days except that Dore Louis (of Go, Dore, Go fame) was on federal jury duty. I hear that even though he's a former prosecutor, the government struck him! No matter, the jury (in front of Judge Martinez on a misdemeanor case of bringing a knife into a federal building) acquitted in about an hour.

In other news, the WSJ blog posts this interview by the BBC of Justice Scalia. Enjoy:

On physical interrogation:
Smacking someone in the face could be justified. You can’t come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say ‘Oh it’s torture, and therefore it’s no good.’

On assuming that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment applies to torture:
Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution? . . . . It would be absurd to say you couldn’t do that. And once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?

On Europe’s view of capital punishment:
If you took a public opinion poll, if all of Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today. There are arguments for it and against it. But to get self-righteous about the thing as Europeans tend to do about the American death penalty is really quite ridiculous.