Snitching ain't easy

Paula McMahon from the Sun-Sentinel has been covering an interesting "pill-mill" prosecution before Judge Marra. There have been a series of articles (here, here, and here) covering one cooperating witness in particular -- a Christopher George. Apparently, Mr. George discussed some of the prior testimony with his father, which was recorded on a jail phone:

Christopher George is hoping to get his prison term reduced, provided that federal prosecutors think his anticipated testimony against two South Florida doctors is worth a reward. But a recorded call the 32-year-old inmate made to his father from the Palm Beach County Jail may have put a kink in his plans.
Despite a message that plays at the start of every jail inmate call warning all parties that they are being recorded, the two men had a phone conversation that went on for about 15 minutes last week — with dad John George giving a play-by-play of how another witness testified in court and coaching his son on what questions might come up and what might sound good on the witness stand.
***
On the recorded call, George, his father and a woman who accompanied the dad to court last week, were heard hashing out the details of the first trial witness's testimony and what appeared to be playing well to the jury and what wasn't working.
"We took a lot of notes …. we took pages of notes," John George, 62, told his son during the call, explaining that it didn't look good when a witness downplayed any benefit he might receive for his testimony. "The defense attorneys … jump on that. They will say, 'How much time to do you expect to get off.'"
After detailing the highlights of the defense's strategy and line of questioning, John George threw in a critique of attorney Michael D. Weinstein's cross-examination of the witness: "This guy … really can slice things up … He was pretty good."

Although the defense moved to exclude George's testimony entirely based on these recordings, he has been permitted to testify.  Sounds like the stuff of movies:

The businesses brought in so much cash that his staff quickly stopped using cash registers because they filled up too quickly, he said. They tried cash drawers for a while but George said that slowed down business too much and eventually they settled on dropping the cash into two-gallon trash bins by their desks.
Hassled by police and reporters, George said he moved from the first clinic to locations on Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale, then Boca Raton and Palm Beach County.
As the business evolved, he realized that a prior criminal conviction for illegally importing and selling steroids was bringing more unwanted attention and he put the clinics in a friend's name, though he still ran them.
George testified he saved some money, stashing $5 million in safes in his mom's attic and bedroom, but he also blew a lot of it. He bought three homes, some boats and so many luxury cars that he struggled to recall the details.
"I went through a lot, I don't remember all of them," George testified, listing off Range Rovers, BMWs, a Mercedes, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, and a freightliner truck that cost more than $200,000.

Some great in-depth coverage by Ms. McMahon. 

-- Meantime, another court is fed up with discovery/Brady violations.  This time the 6th Circuit.

-- Finally, a big congrats to Robert Luck, who was named Circuit Court Judge by Governor Scott.  Luck is a good guy, and smart.  A nice addition to the bench.

Wednesday News & Notes

1.  Although Dore Louis withdrew his request for NSA records and although the judge denied his motion based on that withdrawal, the feds filed another classified pleading to "clarify" what it said in the earlier classified filing.  Of course that clarification is redacted, so we have no idea what needed to be explained.

2.  The Federal JNC has been reconstituted.  Finally. Now can we get William Thomas confirmed? Here are the Southern District's members:
 UPDATED -- THIS LIST BELOW IS INCORRECT.  The correct list is here.

SOUTHERN DISTRICT CONFERENCE
John M. Fitzgibbons, Statewide Chair
Kendall B. Coffey, Conference Chair
Georgina A. Angones
Reginald J. Clyne
Vivian de las Cuevas-Diaz
Albert E. Dotson, Jr.
Philip Freidin
John H. Genovese
Carey Goodman
Evelyn Langlieb Greer
Cynthia Johnson-Stacks
Manuel Kadre
Eduardo R. Lacasa
Ira Leesfield
Dexter W. Lehtinen
Charles H. Lichtman
Richard J. Lydecker
Thomas F. Panza
David C. Prather
Dennis Alan Richard
Jon A. Sale
Stephen N. Zack

3.  Tom Almon received the Eugene Spellman Criminal Justice Act Award.*  I'm really happy to post about Tom Almon, who has been a CJA lawyer for a long time and has really provided a wonderful service to indigent defense.  Here's a picture:

Chief Judge Federico Moreno, me, Tom Almon, Judge Bob Scola (picture by Cathy Wade)

I never met Judge Spellman, but he was very close with Judge Davis who told lots of great stories about him.  Here's the NY Times obituary for Judge Spellman:

Judge Eugene P. Spellman, an 11-year veteran of Federal District Court who was known for innovative sentences and supporting social causes, died of cancer today at Mercy Hospital. He was 60 years old.
Judge Spellman was absent from the bench only a week before his death.
He crafted a novel sentence that withstood a challenge in the tax-evasion case of the industrialist Victor Posner, a millionaire who was ordered to give $3 million to the homeless and to serve meals in a shelter.
In other cases, the judge decried "underhanded tactics" used by Federal immigration officials against Haitian immigrants and released on bond a prisoner with AIDS after ruling that the Bureau of Prisons did not offer the prisoner adequate medical treatment.
In a case involving religious freedom, Judge Spellman ruled that public health and needs outweighed the tenets of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion and upheld ordinances banning animal sacrifices in the Miami suburb of Hialeah.
He presided over the 1985 trial of Hernan Botero, a Colombian financier who was convicted of laundering $57 million in drug money, as well as drug cases involving former Government ministers of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean and a former agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I pulled up an old administrative order when Judge King was Chief, appointing Judge Spellman to the CJA committee.  Lots of heavy hitters also on the committee...

*I also received the award this year.  I have a policy about not posting about me or my cases, but I wanted to post about Tom.  Also, Judge Scola ordered me to put this up.  It is a real honor for me to have received this award.


4.  The 9th Circuit really gives meaning to Rule 16 and Brady.  Check out the latest, from Judge Kozinski, here. Another conservative judge is frustrated with how our criminal justice system is operating.  But when is the last time you saw an 11th Circuit opinion like this?

We vacate the conviction and remand for an evidentiary
hearing into whether the prosecution’s failure to disclose the
certificate in discovery or at any point before the proofs had
closed was willful. If it was willful, the district court shall
impose appropriate sanctions. The district court shall, in any
event, dismiss the illegal reentry count of the indictment on
account of the STA violation, with or without prejudice,
depending on its weighing of the relevant factors. See
18 U.S.C. § 3162(a)(2); United States v. Lewis, 349 F.3d
1116, 1121–22 (9th Cir. 2003).
We are perturbed by the district court’s handling of the
reopening issue. The court persisted in giving a reason for
allowing the government to reopen that was contradicted by
the record, despite defense counsel’s repeated attempts to
point out the error. The court also ignored defendant’s twiceraised
Rule 16 objection and made a questionable ruling
regarding defendant’s Speedy Trial Act claim.
“Whether or not [the district judge] would reasonably be
expected to put out of his mind” his previous rulings, and
“without ourselves reaching any determination as to his
ability to proceed impartially, to preserve the appearance of
justice, . . . we conclude reassignment is appropriate,” and we
so order. See Ellis v. U.S. Dist. Court (In re Ellis), 356 F.3d
1198, 1211 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc).

5.  Everyone is focused on the blockbuster cases before the Supreme Court.  But how about the debate about Clue:

[Jusice Kagan] resorted to the game Clue—or the plot line of the musical version of Clue, to be exact—to illustrate her point. Kagan wrote: "(Think: Professor Plum, in the ballroom, with the candlestick?; Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with the rope, on a snowy day, to cover up his affair with Mrs. Peacock?)"
It was an example of the vivid writing, aimed at making complex concepts understandable that Kagan has adopted in her first years on the high court.
But Alito, the sole dissenting justice, was apparently not impressed. Making the point that different ways of committing a crime do not make them different crimes, Alito wrote a footnote responding to Kagan’s reference.
“The board game Clue, to which the Court refers… does not provide sound legal guidance. In that game, it matters whether Colonel Mustard bashed in the victim’s head with a candlestick, wrench, or lead pipe. But in real life, the colonel would almost certainly not escape conviction simply because the jury was unable to agree on the particular type of blunt instrument that he used to commit the murder.”

A nice comeback by Alito, but why is he making faces at Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor:

The most remarkable thing about the Supreme Court’s opinions announced Monday was not what the justices wrote or said. It was what Samuel Alito did.

The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague.
Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur in the workplace when Alito, seated immediately to Ginsburg’s left, shook his head from side to side in disagreement, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his elder and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament or, more accurately, judicial intemperance. Typically, justices state their differences in words — and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But he frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.

Days earlier, I watched as he demonstrated his disdain for Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the two other women on the court. Kagan, the newest justice, prefaced her reading of an opinion in a low-profile case by joking that it was “possibly not” the case the audience had come to hear. The audience responded with laughter, a few justices smiled — and Alito, seated at Kagan’s right elbow, glowered.

Another time, Sotomayor, reading a little-watched case about water rights, joked that “every student in the audience is going to look up the word ‘preemption’ today.” Alito rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Details for Holly Skolnick's memorial

 

Please join her family and friends in a

Celebration of Life

Holly Skolnick

May 7, 1954 - June 23, 2013

 

Sunday, June 30, 2013 at 1:00 p.m.

Gusman Concert Hall at the University of Miami

(Across from the law school)

1314 Miller Drive

Coral Gables, FL 33146

 

Reception to immediately follow at the University of Miami Law School

 

In lieu of flowers and in honor of Holly, please consider a donation to

Americans for Immigrant Justice https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/AIJustice.

Donations will fund the Holly Skolnick Human Rights Fellowship.

 

Openings in Zimmerman case

Check out the difference in opening statements between the prosecutor (strong and dramatic) and defense (flat footed joke that bombs):



Now the defense:



Wow.

RIP Holly Skolnick

Very very sad news...  Holly Skolnick has passed away.  I really liked Holly -- she was a great person.  Smart, energetic, and fun to be around. She's the second from the left in the picture below (with Ellen Roth, Cheryl Little, and Jane Moscowitz):



 Here's the into from the Herald's obit:

Holly R. Skolnick, a veteran attorney at the Miami-based firm Greenberg Traurig, died on Saturday of melanoma. She was 59.
In an email to firm personnel, co-President Hilarie Bass, said that Skolnick “will be remembered as a close friend to so many of us. A brilliant lawyer, a wonderful friend, and someone who was always committed to finding justice for those who needed her help.
“ Whether as the leader of [the firm’s] pro bono efforts, the chair of the country's most important organization for providing legal assistance to immigrants, or her involvement with Equal Justice Works Fellows, Holly will be remembered for her passion for our legal system and helping all of us to try to fulfill it's promise for everyone.’’
Skolnick held degrees from the University of Wisconsin/Madison, 1976, and Harvard University Law School, 1980.
***
Skolnick is survived by her husband, federal appellate attorney Richard Strafer, daughter Jordan Strafer, and her parents.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/23/3466467/holly-skolnick-prominent-attorney.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/23/3466467/holly-skolnick-prominent-attorney.html#storylink=cpy

Celebrate -- pots and pans edition!

Government files two responses to Dore Louis' NSA motion

One is classified and one is public.

 Here's the public one, which was posted by Paula McMahon from the Sun-Sentinel.

She writes:

Federal prosecutors filed two versions of their response in federal court in Fort Lauderdale late Wednesday. The unclassified, publicly filed version was 21 pages long and included several lines that stated "CLASSIFIED INFORMATION REDACTED."
Prosecutors filed a longer, classified version of their response with supporting information under seal with U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum — so even the defense attorneys cannot see it — saying the judge would need additional information to make her ruling.
Prosecutors claimed in court records that the secretive NSA program did not capture "information about where a cellular telephone was geographically located at the time a call was made."
"Thus, the government does not possess the records the defendant seeks," they wrote.
The defense will have an opportunity to respond before the judge issues her ruling, which the prosecution asked should be sealed if it contains any classified information.

If the government does not have the data, then so be it.  But 20 pages seems like a lot of words to say we don't have it.  I found the argument heading on page 17 interesting: "Neither Brady nor Rule 16 permit the defendant to conduct a fishing expedition of highly classified NSA Data." 

Government responds to Dore Louis' motion for NSA records

Last week, the blog broke the story of Dore Louis' motion seeking NSA phone records, and Judge Rosenbaum's order requiring the government to respond.  The story got a lot of attention, which was pretty neat.

The government filed a short motion this morning, asking the Court to appoint a CIPA (Classified Information Security Officer) to watch over the classified information that it will be disclosing to the defense and the Court in its response.  Here's a link to the government's motion, which is unopposed. And here is the most interesting part of it:

As a result of the filing of Brown’s Motion to Compel Production (DE:778) and CIPA Section 5 Notice (DE:779), the government’s response will require the discussion of classified material. Pursuant to the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”), 18 U.S.C. App. 3, and Section 2 of the Security Procedures established under Pub. L. 96-456, 94 Stat. 2025 by the Chief Justice of the United States and promulgated pursuant to Section 9 of CIPA the Court shall designate a CISO in any proceeding in a criminal case in which classified information is reasonably expected to be within.
 To assist the Court and court personnel in handling any motions, pleadings and implementing any orders relating to the CIPA proceedings, the government requests that the Court designate Daniel O. Hartenstein as the CISO for this case, to perform the duties and responsibilities prescribed for CISO’s in the Security Procedures promulgated by the Chief Justice.

All of this means that the government's response is likely to be deemed classified, so the public will not get a chance to see it.  What a shame...