Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Poor Judge Cooke...

She has to deal with a lot of sentencing objections in Jose Padilla's case (via the AP).

Go, Dore, Go!




In our continuing Go, Dore, Go! segment, here is Dore Louis from yesterday's hearing in front of Judge Cooke:




An attorney for Jayyoussi, a fundraiser for Muslim causes, launched a more direct assault on the government. ''The CIA and Justice Department destroyed evidence taken from people alleged to be unindicted co-conspirators in this case,'' argued Marshall Dore Louis. ``That's a problem.''


More from the Herald article here.

Jose Padilla sentencing to start today

Any bets as to what Judge Cooke will impose?

The early over-under line is 20 years.

--David Oscar Markus
www.markuslaw.com
305-379-6667

Monday, January 07, 2008

Standby Liberty City 7

Judge Lenard had to continue jury selection because of an emergency situation for one of the defense lawyers. Status conference on Wednesday.

Liberty City 7 retrial

It's now the Liberty City 6, and the retrial starts today, three weeks after the jury hung in the last trial.

Here's coverage by the Herald and AP. What do you think is going to happen? Another mistrial? That's what some of the jurors from trial #1 think (from Jay Weaver's article):

''From now on, they are going to have a hung jury just as we did,'' said Jose Viola, 58, an audio-visual technician for Miami-Dade public schools, who sat on the first panel and thought all of the defendants were innocent.
''There are going to be people who won't have the stomach to send these men to prison because they were set up,'' Viola said. ``And there are going to be people who will want to send them to prison because of al Qaeda.''
Delorise Thompkins, 64, who works at South Miami Hospital, agreed with her colleague on the first jury.
''I think it may hang again,'' she said. ``You're going to find someone always afraid of terrorist groups, but then when you see the evidence, there's not a lot there -- no plans, no papers, no pictures, no nothing, connecting them to Osama bin Laden.''


If that happens, will they go for trial #3?

And while Liberty City starts up, the Padilla sentencing starts Tuesday. Here's Vanessa Blum's coverage.