No more test for the SDFLA

This just came across CM/ECF:



Administrative Order 2012-14 In re: Elimination of Attorney Admissions Examination
Pursuant to Administrative Order 2012-14, the Judges of this Court have decided to eliminate the requirement that an attorney take our examination in order to be admitted as a member of this Courts Bar. Although this information does not apply to current members of our Bar, we are sending this notice in an attempt to receive as broad dissemination as possible. Effective immediately, the attorney admissions examination is discontinued. If you know attorneys who may seek admission to our Bar in the near future, please advise them to monitor our website for updated admissions procedures that will be posted in the near future.

Too bad -- I mean there were really important reasons that lawyers had to memorize the questions and answers that were given before the test.

SDFLA judicial happenings

Judge Jordan was sworn in on Friday so he can begin working on the 11th Circuit.  His formal investiture is coming up.

Magistrate Judge Robin Rosenbaum may be moving up to the district court soon.  Rumor has it that her hearing is this Wednesday.  As of this morning, this link shows that there will be hearings, but does not list who will be heard.  I'm hearing that Rosenbaum will be on this calendar.

The JNC is taking applications for the open district seat (because of Jordan's elevation).  It will be interesting to see how many people apply as state circuit judge John Thornton is the presumed candidate to get the seat because of what occurred before.

“It presumes that the government is going to have a ministry of truth . . . and I just don’t think that’s our tradition."

That was Justice Kennedy in the Stolen Valor case today.  More:

The Supreme Court jousted for an hour Wednesday about whether the First Amendment allows the government to prosecute people for lying about earning military honors, and, if so, what else might be fair game.
Lying about whether your child received a medal? wondered Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Holocaust deniers? asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
People who lie about extramarital affairs? offered Justice Elena Kagan.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor tried out a personal example: “I take offense when someone I’m dating makes a claim that’s not true.”
***
He seemed to have one sure supporter in Justice Antonin Scalia, whose comments were uniformly protective of the government’s interests.
“When Congress passed this legislation, I assume it did so because it thought that the value of the awards that these courageous members of the armed forces were receiving was being demeaned and diminished” by those who falsely claimed them, Scalia said.
And Verrilli had one clear skeptic in Sotomayor.
“I thought the core of the First Amendment was to protect even against offensive speech,” she said. “You can’t really believe that a war veteran thinks less of the medal that he or she receives because someone’s claiming that they got one.”
But the rest of the court seemed more conflicted. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, asked Verrilli if the government could criminalize lying about whether one received a high school diploma.

In other news, the 11th Circuit came out with a fascinating opinion today (In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated March 25, 2011 USA v. John Doe), creating a Circuit split:

We turn now to the merits of Doe’s appeal. In compelling Doe to produce the unencrypted contents of the hard drives and then in holding him in contempt for failing to do so, the district court concluded that the Government’s use of the unencrypted contents in a prosecution against Doe would not constitute the derivative use of compelled testimony protected by the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. This is so, the court thought, because Doe’s decryption and production of the hard drives would not constitute “testimony.” And although that was the Government’s view as well, the Government nonetheless requested act-of-production immunity.13 The district court granted this request.

For the reasons that follow, we hold that Doe’s decryption and production of the hard drives’ contents would trigger Fifth Amendment protection because it would be testimonial, and that such protection would extend to the Government’s use of the drives’ contents. The district court therefore erred in two respects. First, it erred in concluding that Doe’s act of decryption and production would not constitute testimony. Second, in granting Doe immunity, it erred in limiting his immunity, under 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002 and 6003, to the Government’s use of his act of decryption and production, but allowing the Government derivative use of the evidence such act disclosed.

“Drugs are very harmful. They’re very dangerous.”

That's the governor's argument for random drug testing of all state employees.  Judge Ungaro pounced on this silly argument:

A federal judge in Miami Wednesday cast serious doubts about Gov. Rick Scott’s order requiring thousands of state government employees to undergo a random drug test, suggesting his policy “sweeps too broadly.”
U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro peppered a government lawyer with questions about the constitutionality of Scott’s policy, saying she had “trouble understanding the circumstances under which the executive order would be valid."

***

Ungaro said she would soon make up her mind about the legal challenge to Scott’s policy by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. The group argues that his order violates the Fourth Amendment rights of state workers because the testing requirement is “suspicionless” and therefore an illegal search and seizure.
“For the consent [to the search] to be valid, it has to be voluntary,” ACLU lawyer Shalini Goel Agarwal argued. “This blanket drug testing is unconstitutional.”
The legal challenge to the governor’s order, which has been placed on hold by Scott himself until the dispute is resolved, centers on whether the state has a constitutional right to require random drug tests of existing public workers and mandatory testing of all new employees. The governor issued his order last March.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/2654971/federal-judge-in-miami-will-hear.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/2654971/federal-judge-in-miami-will-hear.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

So you wanna be a federal judge?

Hot off the Court's website:

Pursuant to the instructions set forth in the attached letter from Senator Bill Nelson and Senator Marco Rubio, dated February 16, 2012, the Florida Federal Judicial Nominating Commission is now accepting applications for the following position:

• U.S. District Judge, Southern District of Florida

This vacancy was created by the Senate's recent confirmation of U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The revised Rules of Procedure for the Judicial Nominating Commission, dated April 11, 2011, application forms with incorporated instructions, and the names and addresses of the members of the Commission, dated February 14, 2012 are available at the following websites:

1. The Florida Bar (www.floridabar.org)
2. U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida (www.flnd.uscourts.gov)
3. U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (www.flmd.uscourts.gov)
4. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (www.flsd.uscourts.gov)

In addition, these materials may also be obtained from the Commission's Statewide Chair:
John M. Fitzgibbons
The Law Office of John M. Fitzgibbons
707 North Franklin St
Suite 700
Tampa, FL 33602
Telephone: 813-221-8800

Completed applications must be received by the Commission's Statewide Chair and each Commission member in the manner specified by the Rules of Procedure by 5:00pm., Monday, March 26th, 2012. Applicants who are selected by the Commission for personal interviews will be interviewed on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at the Judge's Conference Room, 14th Floor, Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 400 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida. The names of the applicants who are selected for personal interviews with the Commission, as well as the interview times, will be published on each website on or before April 18, 2012.

Snitching aint easy

The Herald has an interesting article this morning about a "cooperating witness" who wants to cut 13.5 years off of his sentence.  Chief Judge Moreno wants more information:

A federal prosecutor Tuesday recommended cutting one-time Haitian drug lord Jacques Ketant’s 27-year prison sentence by half, citing his “invaluable information” that helped authorities convict a dozen fellow traffickers, politicians and police officers from Haiti.


But U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno delayed his decision, saying he wants more details about the government’s attempt to recover $15 million in drug profits from Ketant, who was convicted in 2003 of smuggling 30 tons of cocaine into South Florida and New York.

Moreno also inquired about the status of Ketant’s Port-au-Prince mansion as well as an art collection of more than 200 paintings that boasted a Monet.

“It should be worth at least a million dollars,” Moreno said of the painting by the French Impressionist painter. “You don’t know where the Monet is?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Kirkpatrick said the U.S. government already seized the Monet, was able to recover only a small portion of the drug profits, and that Ketant’s mansion was turned over to the Haitian government.

Uh-oh -- I hope that Monet isn't sitting in a DEA warehouse somewhere in Miami getting all moldy.  I wonder why the U.S. gets it as opposed to Haiti where this guy committed most of his crimes, except possibly murder which is alleged to have occurred here:

But the judge really caught the prosecutor and defense attorney by surprise when he disclosed that he had recently received a letter from a man who said Ketant was responsible for the alleged 1997 killing of his mother in South Florida, according to Moreno, who did not disclose names nor file the letter in the court record.


In court, Kirkpatrick said she was unfamiliar with the murder allegation and Oliva said it was unfounded.

The judge ordered both sides to address his questions within two weeks before he holds another hearing on the proposed sentence reduction for Ketant, who is imprisoned in Arkansas.

Ketant, 48, had lived as a virtually untouchable kingpin in his hilltop mansion overlooking Port-au-Prince. In 2003, Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide expelled him under U.S. pressure because Ketant’s bodyguards beat up an official at a private school attended by children of U.S. Embassy personnel.

Stolen Valor Act debated in High Court today

Hope everyone had a nice long weekend....

Today the Supreme Court is debating a fascinating case about how far the federal criminal code can be expanded.  The Stolen Valor Act makes to falsely claim to have been awarded military honors and decorations.  But are such lies covered by the First Amendment?  From the Washington Post:

The case has generated huge interest and divided First Amendment advocates, including the media, and veterans groups, who see the act as a necessary weapon to discourage what appears to a boomlet of self-aggrandizers.
According to a brief filed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and two dozen veterans groups: “Pretenders have included a U.S. Attorney, member of Congress, ambassador, judge, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and bestselling author, manager of a Major League Baseball team, Navy captain, police chief, top executive at a world-famous research laboratory, director of state veterans programs, university administrator, pastor, candidate for countywide office, mayor, physician, and more than one police officer.”
“This case is about theft, not lying in general,” wrote D.C. lawyer Michael T. Morley in the brief. “Alvarez, and others like him, have misappropriated for their own benefit an unearned share of the two centuries’ worth of goodwill and prestige associated with American military awards.”
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco agreed with Alvarez that the law did not meet the high standard courts must apply to attempts to restrict speech.
“Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in response to the government’s request that the decision be reconsidered.
“Without the robust protections of the First Amendment, the white lies, exaggerations and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse would become targets of censorship” and set up the government as “truth police” with the power to punish.
Other judges have seen it differently. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in a separate Stolen Valor case, upheld the law’s constitutionality.
“As the Supreme Court has observed time and again, false statements of fact do not enjoy constitutional protection, except to the extent necessary to protect more valuable speech,” U.S. Circuit Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich wrote for another divided panel.

 Gotta love Kozinski....

Tony Mauro has a nice summary of what to look out for in today's argument here.  I will post the argument when it goes online.  Should be interesting.

What's better than one Pryor on the 11th Circuit?

Well, two Pryor's of course.  Today, President Obama officially nominated Jill Pryor (no relation to Bill Pryor) to the 11th Circuit, a day after Judge Jordan was confirmed to that Court. Judge Edmonson must be very proud -- his former clerk will get to serve on the court with him.

From the White House Press Release:

President Obama Nominates Jill A. Pryor to Serve on the US Court of Appeals

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama nominated Jill A. Pryor to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

“Jill A. Pryor has displayed exceptional dedication to the legal profession through her work and I am honored to nominate her to serve the American people as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals,” President Obama said. "She will be a diligent, judicious and esteemed addition to the Eleventh Circuit bench."

Jill A. Pryor is a partner at the law firm of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, LLP, in Atlanta, Georgia, where she specializes in complex business litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.

Pryor was born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. in 1985 from the College of William & Mary, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. She then attended Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Law Journal and obtained her J.D. in 1988. After graduating from law school, Pryor clerked for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She joined Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore as an associate in 1989, becoming a partner at the firm in 1997. She represents both plaintiffs and defendants in the areas of business torts, corporate governance and shareholder disputes, class actions, trade secrets, intellectual property, fraud, and the Georgia and federal RICO laws.

Throughout her career, Pryor has been actively involved in the Atlanta legal community. She currently serves on the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors and on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Legal Services Program. She has also served as President of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers and as Chair of the State Bar of Georgia’s Appellate Practice Section. Additionally, Pryor was formerly a member of the Lawyers Advisory Committee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers.

Judge Jordan confirmed 94-5!

Congratulations to the judge and his family. What a great addition to the 11th Circuit. He will be missed on the trial bench...

Glenn Sugameli has all of the scoop here, here, and here.

Judge Adalberto Jordan's vote at noon today

Barring any unforeseen roadblocks, he should be on the 11th today.

Here's the Herald with the latest.

Sen. Patrick Leahy quotes this blog regarding Judge Jordan

Check out Sen. Leahy's statement here (regarding Judge Adalberto Jordan's status before the Senate), which quotes this post from yesterday:

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,

On the Nomination Of Judge Adalberto Jordan To The Eleventh Circuit

February 14, 2012

Republican Senators delayed a final vote on the nomination of Judge Adalberto Jordan of Florida even though the Senate voted 89-5 last night to end a Republican filibuster that has already prevented a vote for four months.  This is a consensus nominee who Senator Nelson has been strongly supporting and who Senator Rubio also supports.  He should have been confirmed four months ago.  He should have been confirmed last night after the overwhelming cloture vote.  Instead, obstruction needlessly delayed the Senate acting to fill the emergency judicial vacancy on the Eleventh Circuit.
Senator Nelson has worked hard for this nomination, working to get Judge Jordan’s nomination cleared by every Democratic Senators in October immediately after it was reported unanimously by the Judiciary Committee.  We were ready to vote in October.  We were ready to vote in November.  We were ready to vote before the end of the last session of Congress in December.  It is hard to believe that it is now the middle of February, over four months after Judge Jordan’s nomination was reported with the support of every Democrat and every Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate still has not voted to fill this judicial emergency vacancy affecting the people of Florida, Georgia and Alabama.  I appreciate why Senator Nelson is frustrated.  I understand why Hispanics for a Fair Judiciary and the Hispanic National Bar Association are, too.

Let me refer to some of the reporting on this.  One post begins:

“So, here’s the absurdity of our judicial confirmation process – the full Senate voted 89-5 to invoke cloture, meaning that Judge Jordan’s nomination to the 11^th Circuit would finally come to a vote.  But then Senator Nelson said that one Senator is holding up the merits vote by demanding 30 more hours of ‘debate’ post-cloture.  Senators Leahy and Boxer both then commented how ridiculous such a request was, but that’s the way it is.  It looks like we’ll have [to] wait another 30 hours for Judge Jordan to move up to the 11^th.  Silliness in our Congress . . . .”

The article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:
“South Florida lawyers praise him.  Both of Florida’s U.S. senators have recommended him.  And the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve his nomination.
But U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan of South Florida has been blocked for four months from rising to the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, the latest sign of a polarized and dysfunctional Senate.
A Senate filibuster that has kept Jordan waiting and the appellate court undermanned fizzled on Monday when the Senate voted 89-5 to move toward a final confirmation vote.
But Jordan is still waiting because one senator . . . objected to attempts to complete action on Monday . . . .”
I have not heard from any Republican Senators objecting to this Judge explaining what they find wrong with this highly-qualified Cuban American.   I am at a loss as to why Republican Senators continue to delay a vote on this outstanding nominee.  This nominee is beyond reproach.  This is another nomination battle that has nothing to do with the nominee and his qualifications.  This is another example of obstruction based on a collateral objective.  The people of Florida, Georgia and Alabama should not be made to suffer a judicial emergency vacancy when this highly-qualified nominee should be confirmed without further delay.  Nor did anyone come forward to explain the Senate Republicans’ delay for the last four months.   Cloture has been invoked by the Senate and the filibuster will be ended.   There was no good reason to continue to hold up a vote that has already been delayed for four months.
When I first became Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 2001, I followed a time when Senate Republicans, who had been in the majority, had pocket filibustered more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominations, blocking them with secret holds in backrooms and cloakrooms, obstructing more with winks and nods, but with little to no public explanation or accountability.  I worked hard to change that and to open up the process.  I sought to bring daylight to the process by making the consultation with home state Senators public so that the Senate Republicans’ abuses during the Clinton years would not be repeated.
When Senate Democrats opposed some of President Bush’s most ideological nominees, we did so openly, saying why we opposed them.  And when there were consensus nominees—nominees with the support of both Democrats and Republicans-- we moved them quickly so they could begin serving the American people.  That is how we reduced vacancies in the presidential election years of 2004 and 2008 to the lowest levels in decades.  That is how we confirmed 205 of President Bush’s judicial nominees in his first term.
Now we see the reverse of how we treated President Bush’s nominees.  Senate Republicans do not move quickly to consider consensus nominees, like the 15 still on the Senate Calendar that were reported unanimously last year and should have had a Senate vote last year.  Instead, as we are seeing today and have seen all too often, Senate Republicans obstruct and delay even consensus nominees, leaving us 45 judicial nominees behind the pace we set for confirming President Bush’s judicial nominees.  That is why vacancies remain so high, at 86, over three years into President Obama’s first term.  Vacancies are nearly double what they were at this point in President Bush’s third year.  That is why half of all Americans—nearly 160 million—live in circuits or districts with a judicial vacancy that could have a judge if Senate Republicans would only consent to vote on judicial nominees that have been favorably voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee and have been on the Senate Executive Calendar since last year.
This is an area where we should be working for the American people, and putting their needs first. This is a nomination that has the strong and committed support of the senior Senator from Florida, Senator Nelson, as well as that of Senator Rubio, Florida’s Republican Senator.  Judge Jordan had the unanimous support of every Republican and every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee when we voted last October, although one Republican switched his vote last night to support the filibuster of Judge Jordan’s nomination. This is the nomination of a judge, Judge Jordan, who was confirmed to the district court by a vote of 93 to one in 1999, even while Senate Republicans were pocket filibustering more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominees.
I regret that Republican Senators chose to delay a final vote on Judge Jordan’s confirmation.  He is fine man who, after emigrating from Havana, Cuba at the age of six went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Miami law school and clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.  He served as Federal prosecutor and Federal judge.   The needless delay of Judge Jordan’s confirmation is an example of the harmful tactics that have all but paralyzed the Senate confirmation process and are damaging our Federal courts.
It should not take four months and require a cloture motion to proceed to a nomination such as that of Judge Jordan to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the Eleventh Circuit. It should not take more months and more cloture motions before the Senate finally votes on the nearly 20 other superbly-qualified judicial nominees who have been stalled by Senate Republicans for months while vacancies continue to plague our Federal courts and delay justice for the American people.  The American people need and deserve Federal courts ready to serve them, not empty benches and long delays.

Well done Senator.  Now let's get Judge Jordan confirmed!

Judge Adalberto Jordan confirmation stalled (briefly?)

So, here's the absurdity of our judicial confirmation process -- the full Senate voted 89-5 to invoke cloture, meaning that Judge Jordan's nomination to the 11th Circuit would finally come to a vote. But then Senator Nelson said that one Senator is holding up the merits vote by demanding 30 more hours of "debate" post-cloture. Senators Leahy and Boxer both then commented how ridiculous such a request was, but that's the way it is. It looks like we'll have wait another 30 hours for Judge Jordan to move up to the 11th. Silliness in our Congress....  (For lots of discussion, see Glenn Sugameli who is closely covering the process).

UPDATE -- Roll Call has this discussion of what happened:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is delaying the confirmation of Adalberto Jose Jordan to join the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as well as a transportation bill in an effort to force Senate leaders to schedule a vote on his proposal to cut off aid to Egypt until Americans being held there are released.


The Senate voted 89 to 5 to end debate on Jordan’s nomination and now the Senate must wait 30 hours before voting to confirm Jordan, as Paul has made it known that he would object to anyone seeking to shorten the post-cloture period.

Senate Democratic leadership aides said talks with Paul are ongoing in an effort to work out a deal.

But if no agreement is reached, the vote would take place Wednesday morning, forcing the Senate to waste up to two days and halting progress on a surface transportation bill currently on the floor.

“What’s happened on the Senate floor tonight is just ridiculous,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. “We are supposed to be on a highway bill, a bill that will protect 1.8 million jobs and create” more.

Just before the Senate adjourned for the evening, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), in announcing the Senate’s business for Tuesday, said Democrats expect Jordan to be confirmed Tuesday.

More from NPR here:

During the floor vote, Sen. Nelson expressed frustration at the tactic.


"Is it any wonder we can't get anything done around here?" he asked.

LINNING!

Your Monday Morning inspiration: The big news this morning is that Judge Jordan could be confirmed by lunch. Check back this afternoon for updates.

Judge Jordan to be confirmed Monday?

There's a very good chance of that according to Glenn Sugameli, who has been all over the judicial appointment process.  Here's the Senate Floor Schedule for Monday:

Following morning business, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider Calendar #437, the nomination of Adalberto Jose Jordan, of Florida, to be United States Circuit Judge for the 11^th Circuit with one hour of debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley or their designees .

 Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Meantime, tonight was the big Federal Bar gala at the Hyatt.  It was packed with judges and lawyers.  Brett Barfield has done an unbelievable job as president of the organization.  Even the food was better tonight.  I think I had 8 of those mini-beef tacos.

Red Lobster and Bowling

This is a great story from the Sun-Sentinel, and Judge Hurley does the right thing:

A marital spat that began when a Plantation man didn’t wish his wife a happy birthday and then escalated into a domestic violence charge, resulted in an unusual bond court ruling by a perceptive judge.

Instead of setting bond or keeping Joseph Bray locked up, he ordered him to treat his spouse to dinner, a bowling date and then to undergo marriage counseling.

“He’s going to stop by somewhere and he’s going to get some flowers,” Judge John “Jay” Hurley said during the first appearance hearing. “And then he’s going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster. And then after they have Red Lobster, they’re going to go bowling.”

Hurley emphasized that he would not have ordered such whimsical conditions for Bray, 47, if his domestic violence charge was more serious, or if his wife appeared to be injured or in danger of being harmed.

The video is worth watching so you can see that the Judge handles this just right.

Santorum!

What a day for the guy!  I can't believe what still exists as the #1 hit on Google for his name.  Shouldn't these results trump?

Other news:

1.  In dissent, the 10th Circuit makes fun of the sentencing guidelines by starting the opinion this way:

In the richness of the English language, few things can create as much mischief as
piling prepositional phrase upon prepositional phrase. The child says, “I saw the man on
the hill with the telescope.” Did the child use the telescope to see the man on the hill? Or
did the child see a man — or even a hill — bearing a telescope? A newspaper headline
heralds, “Brothers Reunited after 20 Years on a Roller Coaster.” Did the brothers
recently bump into each other at an amusement park? Or were they the long suffering
experimental subjects of some evil genius?

2.  While the 9th Circuit is deciding Prop 8, the 11th Circuit has this opinion as described by the AP:

The federal appeals court in Atlanta has rejected claims by a former counselor for the CDC who said she was was fired for refusing to advise employees in same-sex relationships because of her religious beliefs.

The court said it accepted Marcia Walden's sincerity that her devout Christian beliefs prohibited her from counseling clients in same-sex relationships. But it found Walden was laid off because her superiors disapproved of the way she referred a lesbian client to another counselor and were concerned how she would handle future referrals.

3.   The FBI isn't going to use GPS devices as much now, but they aren't happy about it or that pesky 4th Amendment:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said GPS surveillance is the subject of legal analysis within the intelligence community.

"We are now examining … the potential implications for intelligence, foreign or domestic," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.

"That reading is of great interest to us. In all of this, we will — we have and will — continue to abide by the Fourth Amendment."

Ray Mey, a former FBI counterterrorism official, said the bureau's decision to limit GPS use, if only temporarily, poses potential risks and staffing problems.

4.  If a judge orders you to disclose a password and you forget, what happens?

A Colorado woman ordered to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors may use the files against her in a criminal case might have forgotten the password, the defendant’s attorney said Monday.
The authorities seized the Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating alleged mortgage fraud. Ruling that the woman’s Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination would not be breached, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop.
“It’s very possible to forget passwords,” the woman’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. I don’t know if she will be able to decrypt it.”
The decryption case is a complicated one, even if solely analyzed on the underlying Fifth Amendment issue. Such decryption orders are rare, and they have never squarely been addressed by the Supreme Court.

A similar issue was addressed by Judge Cohn, but he determined that the government could not force a suspect to disclose the password. This issue seems likely to go up to the Supremes...

Deja vu all over again

1.  What a game. Fun stuff. It's always amazing to me how close the odds-makers pick the spreads, even on the prop bets. Just an example -- the over/under on Kelly Clarkson's rendition of the National Anthem was 1:34 and she came in at 1:34 exactly.

2.  Best ad of the game:

3. In the other big game over the weekend, the Canes beat Duke in NC for the first time. Bubble team right now...

4. Closer to home, there is a debate about the word "Gypsie":

A Fort Lauderdale family of accused psychic swindlers has come under fire for allegedly conning clients out of $40 million, but one defense attorney in the case says the fortune-telling business isn’t the only thing on trial — the family’s ethnic heritage, too, has become a target. At issue: the word “gypsy,” which has been mentioned several times in the case against the Marks clan, a three-generation psychic family of Romanian Gypsy descent. Defense attorney Fred Schwartz says the word constitutes a slur, and is comparable to the N-word being leveled at African-Americans. “The connotation of the word ‘gypsy’ is a group of wandering people who go from city to city committing crimes,” said Schwartz, who accuses prosecutors of employing the word as a “tactical advantage” that will make the Marks family seem guilty. The case is expected to go to trial later this year. ***

Hogwash, say prosecutors, who insist there’s nothing inherently derogatory about saying gypsy. In court filings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld said all the G-word hoopla amounts to nothing more than a defense team “trying to ‘muddy up the waters’ in an attempt to discredit the government.” Bardfeld noted that defense attorneys, too, had used the disputed word in open court, and he even cited several dictionary definitions of the word as further proof of its inoffensiveness. From the Oxford English Dictionary: “A member of a wandering race (by themselves called Romany), of Hindu origin, which first appeared in England beginning of the 16th [century] and was then believed to have come from Egypt.” Lastly, Bardfeld singled out one of the family members on trial, Ricky Marks. Marks has posted several family videos on YouTube in which he uses the word gypsy, including a “Gypsy Super Bowl Trip” video that also showcases the family’s collection of luxury cars — the fruits of their lucrative psychic enterprise.

5.  Yes, Rumpole, Justice Scalia even says he is "defendant-friendly."

6.  And from my favorite item of the weekend, the inmates in Vermont are pretty funny:

Prison inmates who make decals for the Vermont State Police slipped a pig into the official seal, and up to 30 patrol cars wound up sporting the subliminal epithet, the Burlington Free Press tells us. The police emblem features a cow, an evergreen tree and snowy mountains (along with three unidentifiable creatures). Back in 2008, an inmate artist at the Northwest State Correctional Facility went into the computer file and modified one of the cow's spots to resemble a pig, the common derogatory term for police, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito told the Free Press, like USA TODAY a Gannett paper. In 2009, the state police ordered 16-inch door decals. Pallito said he believes 60 altered decals were made. Some new cruisers have two, while older cars may have just one if a door was replaced. New decals, costing $780, are expected Monday. State officials learned of the prank Thursday. They blamed quality control at the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Alban. Prison authorities are trying to identify the inmate behind the Rorschach test.

Bad week of blogging

Sorry for the slow blogging this week. There just wasn't much happening in the District. I have confirmed that Bill Matthewman is going to be the new Magistrate in WPB, which is very cool. He will join Dave Brannon as the new dynamic duo up north. Brannon had his going away party last week at the PD's office, and I heard it was a great event with judges and lawyers toasting him. Have a nice Superbowl weekend. Your moment of zen:

New Times covers Pakistani Terrorist case

Here; it's their cover story. Khurrum Wahid gets some nice coverage:

Khurrum Wahid is the attorney representing the younger imam, Izhar Khan. He is a former public defender with an open face and a relaxed, scruffy goatee — the look of a working dad who can't be bothered with pretense. He says the case against the imams is based on rhetoric — the rants of an older man talking to his children. "Does rhetoric make you a terrorist?" And Izhar, he adds, is just a sweet kid who did his father's bidding. Born in Pakistan and raised in Canada, Wahid is now thoroughly American. He roots for the Dallas Cowboys. And he was working as a public defender in Miami when the twin towers fell. Wahid began representing immigrants detained for questioning in the wake of the terrorist attacks. When he opened a private practice in 2004, he started taking cases other lawyers might shun. He defended the man who was convicted of plotting to bomb New York City's Herald Square subway station in 2004, as well as Boca Raton doctor Rafiq Sabir, who was convicted of conspiring to treat wounded Al-Qaeda militants. He also recently represented Rais Bhuiyan, a convenience store clerk in Texas who tried to prevent the execution of the man who shot him in the face after 9/11. *** "I think people are more accepting of me representing a serial rapist than they are of me representing an imam [accused of] giving support to the Taliban," Wahid says.

Go Dore Go!

Nice win today for friend of blog Dore Louis (as well as Joe Rosenbaum and Marcia Silvers) before Judge Cooke. Jay Weaver has the details on this crazy case:

In October, his criminal case on cigarette smuggling charges ended in a mistrial when the FBI arrested a juror who tried to extort money from the defendant’s family in exchange for the promise of a “not guilty’’ verdict. On Monday, a federal judge threw out the charges altogether, saying prosecutors failed to make their case against the Davie construction executive at his second jury trial. Marrero’s two-step journey rarely, if ever, happens in Miami federal court. “They were prosecuting an alleged fraud that occurred in Europe in a U.S. court,” said Marrero’s attorney, Joseph Rosenbaum. “They never should have charged him in the first place.” A year ago, Marrero, 48, was charged with conspiracy and money laundering. The indictment accused him of trying to “enrich himself” by buying cigarettes overseas, hiding the cartons inside cargo containers at the Port of Miami and shipping them to Portugal, Ireland and Germany — without attaching proper documents or paying customs duties. But U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke granted Rosenbaum’s motion for acquittal after the prosecution rested its case, saying the statute of limitation in the conspiracy case dating back to 2001 had expired. Cooke’s judgment of acquittal followed a guilty plea earlier this month by one-time juror Italo Campagna, just as Marrero’s second trial was getting underway. Campagna, 55, of Miami, was charged with soliciting a bribe after demanding between $50,000 and $100,000 from Marrero’s relatives to sway the 12-person jury during the first trial in October. Marrero and his family immediately contacted authorities.