The Constitutional Criminal Procedure Champion is...

... Justice Scalia.

I'm not kidding. He's penned Blakely (rendering unconstitutional the Federal Sentencing Guidelines) and Crawford (breathing life back into the Confrontation Clause). And after the oral argument in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, I'd bet Scalia is going to write another important criminal procedure decision, again supporting the criminal defendant -- this time defending one's Sixth Amendment right to have the lawyer of his choice.

The oral argument looked like a lot of fun, going so far as to invoke every criminal lawyer's favorite film, My Cousin Vinny.

Scalia had this to say at oral argument: "I don't want a 'competent' lawyer. I want a lawyer to get me off. I want a lawyer to invent the Twinkie defense. I want to win."

Alito countered: "Let's say the defendant wanted to be represented by a relative who specialized in real estate law. If that lawyer was disqualified and the defendant was eventually represented by an experienced criminal defense lawyer with a national reputation, "why wouldn't that be harmless error?"

That would still be "unquestionably a Sixth Amendment violation," Jeff Fisher (yes, that Jeff Fisher of Blakely and Crawford fame), the defendant's lawyer, replied.

Here's an article about the case.

Meth and the Florida Bar

The website has been down all day. Sorry...

I tried to make up for it with a catchy (even if a little misleading) title.

Meth labs have never been big down in South Florida. But apparently this has changed, according to this Herald article.

In unrelated news, the litigation between Louis Robles' former clients and the Florida Bar has been transferred to District Judge William B Hunt, Jr., a senior judge in Atlanta. The case was filed in the Southern District of Florida and initially was assigned to Judge Huck, who recused. Chief Judge Zloch then asked the 11th Circuit to assign a judge outside of Florida to handle the case. The story was in the DBR this morning (password required).

Double Agent...

The Miami Herald's Jay Weaver and Oscar Corral have this interesting story on the confidential informant in the weapons case involving Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat. Here's the intro:

A federal informant playing a critical role in a South Florida weapons case against the wealthy Miami benefactor for Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles also was sharing details about the exiles with a Cuban government official known as ''Daniel'' as far back as 2001, prosecutors have revealed.

Prosecutors also disclosed for the first time that the FBI informant, Gilberto Abascal, traveled by boat with Posada's benefactor and other friends last year to pick up the CIA-trained Posada in Mexico and bring him back to the United States illegally.

Details of Abascal's past contacts with a Cuban official and Posada's entry into the United States surfaced Friday as attorneys for the weapons-case defendants, Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, sought to obtain more information from prosecutors that could help their clients' defense.

For months, prosecutors claimed to have no evidence that Abascal communicated with Cuban government officials. Yet the April 6 letter made public Friday acknowledges that Abascal met with ''Daniel'' and perhaps others at least six times -- an admission that could bolster claims that the defendants were set up by the Cuban government.

The explosive admission was made public just two weeks before the May 8 trial in Fort Lauderdale, a location opposed by the defendants because they maintain they cannot get a fair trial outside of Miami-Dade.

I want...

... this case.

Slow blogging

I have to apologize again for the slow blogging. I just got back from Atlanta where I had an oral argument in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel was Judges Anderson, Fay, and Siler. I always enjoy arguing appeals, as I did in this case, but I'm always amazed at how much preparation goes into a 15 minute argument. The preparation time to argument time ratio is all out of whack in the appellate court, isn't it?

And if you are a blog/law nerd, Ian Best at 3L Epiphany now has this post collecting law review articles citing legal blogs. Some recent related posts:
Judges on blogs and blogging
Blogging news and notes
The power of legal blogs
Amazing taxonomy of legal blogs