News and notes

1. When a lawyer runs for office, is his choice of clients a fair target for attack? Vanessa Blum covers this debate here: "Less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Broward County Commissioner Jim Scott is attacking challenger Ken Keechl for his legal representation of a company accused of defrauding investors out of nearly $1 billion. Scott wants voters to know that Keechl, a Democrat making his first run for public office, defended Mutual Benefits Corp. in lawsuits across the country as a partner at Fort Lauderdale law firm Brinkley, McNerney, Morgan, Solomon & Tatum." I particularly like Mike Tein's quote: "I think it's irresponsible and reprehensible for Ken's opponents to even suggest he did anything wrong simply because he represented Mutual Benefits," Tein said. "Any line drawing between the firm and the investigation into this former client is absolutely misguided."


2. The Florida Bar has come out with its Media Awards. "This year’s grand prize winners are The Miami Herald and The Florida Times-Union (newspapers and other periodicals with circulation more than 50,000), The Villages Daily Sun (newspapers and other periodicals with circulation less than 50,000), WTSP-TV of St. Petersburg (television), and WUSF of Tampa (radio). Honorable mentions are awarded to The Daytona Beach News-Journal and The Daily Business Review. " The Herald won for Jay Weaver's investigative series about Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor, which prompted the NAACP to file an ethics complaint against her with the Judicial Qualifications Commission. Where are the blogger awards!

Acosta sworn in

Alex Acosta was sworn in today as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Great turnout in the Central Courtroom. Justice Alito -- who Acosta clerked for when he was on the Third Circuit -- spoke and administered the oath. When they were standing next to each other, they actually looked liked brothers. Striking similarity...

The program for the event had a quote that I often cite:

"The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he in a peculiar way and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer."
-- Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 88 (1935) (Sutherland, J.).

The AP already has coverage of it here.

News and notes

1. Rumpole is going off about federal sentencing....

2. Judge Moore ordered restitution in the Masferrer case.

3. Big plea in the Mutual Benefits case.

4. Alex Acosta is being sworn in tomorrow at 2PM.

Read more about other law bloggers

here.

Weekend reading...

Here's a New Times article by Carl Jones accusing a criminal defense lawyer and some DEA agents of some bad bad things. The first in the three part series starts this way:

Back in July 1998, Pensacola prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for a 28-year-old father of three named Antonio Monroy. He had been charged with three counts of cocaine trafficking. Soon he was picked up in Miami. He was sent to a federal prison in Coleman, Florida, northwest of Orlando, and a few months later, with a trial looming, he pleaded guilty.
It was the kind of case that breezes through the courts every day.
Then a friend of Antonio's contacted his mother, Virginia. A Miami lawyer could get her son out of prison early, he said.
At the time, Israel Perez Jr. was a defense attorney with almost twenty years of experience, including time clocked as a prosecutor in Fort Myers and Miami-Dade, where he served under Janet Reno. Before he met Antonio Monroy, the only blight on his record had been a 1993 public reprimand by the Florida Bar for improperly handling the funds of a client. Perez had an office in a black and tan tower called the Gables International Plaza in Coral Gables. He seemed like a reputable guy.
Virginia agreed to meet the lawyer, who soon showed up at her aging apartment building on Indian Creek Drive across from the Intracoastal Waterway in Miami Beach. According to the woman's description of that meeting, Perez laid out a plan. Perez would fly to Coleman and tell Antonio to expect two Drug Enforcement Administration agents to visit him after sentencing. Then agents would tell the court he deserved to be freed. It was a sure thing.
The cost to Antonio and his mother would be $100,000.