Federal Bar Association to honor Judge Alan Gold

I am very pleased to announce that the South Florida Chapter of the Federal Bar Association will be honoring Judge Alan Gold with the "Ned" Award, named after our beloved Edward B. Davis.

The  Annual Awards and Installation Dinner will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Brickell, on Thursday, October 11, 2018, at 5:30 pm. You can purchase tickets here.

Judge Davis would have been thrilled that Judge Gold is receiving this award.  Gold is a UF grad and then attended Duke for law school.  He served as a state judge and then President Clinton nominated him in 1997 to fill Jose Gonzalez's seat.  He took senior status in 2011.  Judge Rosenbaum filled his seat.

District updates

While Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh is proceeding with his confirmation hearing (follow live Scotusblog here), our District is also undergoing some changes:

1. New U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan has been confirmed. She will be taking the reigns shortly.

2. District judge nominees Roy Altman and Rudy Ruiz have not yet been set for final hearings. That may happen sometime in October. The other nominee Rodney Smith has not yet had his initial judiciary committee hearing so it is unclear when he will be confirmed. The other two open slots remain open and there is no pending action on them.

3. The magistrate judge committee will be interviewing 15 candidates for two slots on October 1. The district judges will then vote on the slate at the judges' meeting on October 4.

4. There is one constant in the District, Federal Defender Michael Caruso.

So you wanna be a magistrate judge?

We will have two new magistrate judges in the beginning of 2019.  The magistrate judge committee is set to interview 15 of the applicants.

I don’t have the whole list, but I am hearing that there are some favorites emerging to get the two slots (in alphabetical order):

1.  Jacqueline Arango (Akerman, former AUSA)
2.  Jacqueline Becerra (Greenberg Traurig, former AUSA)
3.  Sowmya Bharathi (AFPD)
4.  Steven Petri (AUSA)
5.  Erica Zaron (County Attorney’s Office)

Good luck to everyone!

How do the Cuban courts work?

Local South Florida prosecutors caught a glimpse during a murder trial.  The whole article is worth a read, but here’s the intro from the Miami Herald:

A witness box occupies the center of the courtroom. Five judges in long black robes listen to testimony. The defendant watches from the front row of the gallery with an armed guard at his side. There is no jury.

This is how justice operates in Cuba’s socialist system. Or at least that is what Florida prosecutors gleaned from a murder trial in Havana that was groundbreaking on several fronts: The star witness was a detective from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office; the defendant was a Cuban national accused of shooting a Jupiter Farms doctor in the head before he fled to the island, and a Florida prosecutor helped prepare the Cuban prosecution team for trial.

“It was fascinating. I was impressed how much it resembled our courtroom process,” said Assistant State Attorney Aleathea McRoberts, who was part of the team that made arrangements for the defendant, Marcos Yanes Gutierrez, to be tried in Cuba and watched the trial from the gallery. “There were opening statements, the presentation of evidence and closing arguments.”

‪Breaking — Ariana Fajardo Orshan confirmed as U.S. Attorney. ‬

Big congrats to Ariana Fajardo Orshan on her confirmation as U.S. Attorney for the best District in the country—the Southern District of Florida.

She takes over one of the busiest and certainly most exciting districts. Good luck to her!