News & Notes

1. The Joe Cool jury is still out. It's been two sleepless nights for the lawyers.

2. The Chuckie Taylor trial is underway before Judge Altonaga. (More via the Miami Herald here).

3. I closed today... We ended sooner than expected. So regular blogging to resume soon. (Here's a short article about the case).

FIRST MONDAY IN OCTOBER FAST APPROACHING

And as everyone knows, the First Monday in October signifies that rich American tradition: Start of the Yankees-Red Sox baseball playoffs. Woops. Not this year. It also signifies the start of the new term for the Supreme Court (Motto: "Just callin balls and strikes.Hahahahaha")

Anyway, the wonderfully informative SCOTUS blog has the pending petitions for cert in their "Petitions to Watch"  part of their blog. Here are some, and we are not making any of these up:

"Whether a prison librarian can face personal liability for preventing a prisoner from using a "comb-binding machine" to file a petition for cert at the supreme court." Huh? A petition for cert about a petition for cert? What's a comb-binding machine? 

There's a case named "Kickapoo."  Seriously. What if it becomes settled law? Can you imagine walking down the hallways of federal court. You bump into a friend. 

"Hey where are you going?"

"Aww I have a Kickapoo hearing before Judge Huck at 11." 

Here's one that just seems all wrong:

Lucero v. Texas Issue: Whether, under the Sixth Amendment, a jury foreman may read Bible passages during deliberations to persuade holdout jurors to impose the death penalty.

Wouldn't you assume the bible reader would be arguing for life, not death?  Wait.  It was a Texas juror. Never mind. 

Here's a scary one:

Lee v. Louisiana Issue: Whether the Sixth Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, allows criminal convictions based on non-unanimous jury verdicts.

And this one shows how times have changed:

Case name: Lowery, et al. v. Euverard, et al. Issue: Whether, under the First Amendment, a high school football coach may dismiss players for circulating a petition calling for his termination.

Rumpole notes that in our day, doing that would have resulted in you running the stadium steps and then scrubbing the showers. Now everyone has lawyers. 

There are some important pending petitions for Cert that effect all of us, including search and seizure issues, sentencing issues post Booker, and evidentiary issues. The SCOTUS BLOG does a great job and any federal practitioner should scan it once a week or so, especially while court is in session. 

Joe Cool defendant testifies

From Vanessa Blum's article:

Zarabozo, in short, matter-of-fact responses to lawyers' questions, said he was on the Joe Cool because Archer told him they would be working a security job in Bimini.Zarabozo said he was in the bathroom when he heard gun shots and emerged to see Archer standing near the lifeless body of Samuel Kairy, the boat's first mate.The corpses of Capt. Jake Branam, his wife Kelley, and Branam's half-brother Scott Gamble were outside on the deck, Zarabozo said.He said Archer ordered him to help dump the bodies overboard and clean the boat."He was pointing my gun at me," Zarabozo said.In her cross examination, prosecutor Karen Gilbert pressed Zarabozo for more details and suggested aspects of his testimony differed from earlier accounts."Sir, it's not hard to remember if it really happened," Gilbert said."All I've done for the past year is try to erase that day from my mind," Zarabozo replied.Zarabozo showed little emotion and seldom glanced at the jury during more than three hours on the witness stand.At one point, his lawyer, Anthony Natale, instructed him to look directly at the jury and answer: "Did you shoot anyone on that boat?""No," Zarabozo said.

The jury will have the case tomorrow....

Federal Bar Association dinner

My dear readers:

You are cordially invited to attend the annual

Federal Bar Association Dinner and Installation of Officers

Friday October 17, 2008

Reception 7:00pm
Dinner 8:00pm

The Biltmore Hotel
Alhambra Ballroom
1200 Anastasia Avenue
Coral Gables, Florida

$90 per person/open bar

RSVP Lourdes Fernandez at Lourdes_Fernandez@flsd.uscourts.gov or 305-523-5770

Celeste Higgins is your incoming president. I'm outgoing.

SUBSTITUTE BLOGGER

While David battles the forces of evil in West Palm Beach (not to mention I-95 traffic)  I have agreed to post some thought provoking articles. It's either my drivel or staring at David's post announcing the start of the Joe Cool trial for the next few weeks. 

I realize this is the Federal Blog, and there is a certain level of decorum that is expected. (Click here for my idea of decorum). So I won't be duplicating my state court blog posts and ponder cross dressing judges or lawyers and clerks being caught under the bench canoodling. Just log on to the Broward Blog if you need more of that. 

This NY Times Article on the  diminishing impact of US Supreme Court decisions in foreign jurisdictions caught our eye. After years of Supreme Court Judges bashing Justice Kennedy and his citations to foreign decisions, the courts of other nations have decided to reciprocate. 

From the article:

"One of our great exports used to be constitutional law," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson  School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. "We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had."

From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six.

Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.

Rumpole asks: does it matter? Do we want to be recognized and admired for our legal system, or do we just not give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks about us?

Personally, we think this just highlights a trend of diminishing American prestige and influence among the rest of the world. 

When the Supreme Court issues decisions like it did in  Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. ____2007, closing the courthouse doors to a prisoner, who following a federal judge's instructions filed a notice of appeal on the 17th day after a decision, when the law only gave him 14 days, there is nothing much for us to be proud of. The decision in Bowles prompted this outburst from Justice Souter:"it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way." He added, "There is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch."

Based on how our system treats its own citizens, we think it's not surprising that the rest of the world relies less and less on what our judges write. Now how we treat our insurance companies and brokerage houses that go belly up- that's an entirely different story. 

Go get em David. 

See You In Court. 

News & Notes

Why appointments are better than elections. (via Sun-Sentinel)

Joe Cool case continues; apparently "four days before Guillermo Zarabozo and his accomplice chartered the Joe Cool fishing vessel for a trip that led to his arrest for murder, he received a letter from Miami-Dade police accepting him as an applicant." (via Miami Herald).

Anyone want to guest blog for a couple weeks?

Openings in the Joe Cool case

The jury was picked in a morning and both sides already have given opening statements. If this was state court, it may have taken a week to pick a jury in a murder case. Not in federal court....

Here's Vanessa Blum and Curt Anderson on openings and Luisa Yanez on jury selection.

Jeffrey Tsai opened for the government.
Tony Natale for defendant Guillermo Zarabozo.

Co-defendant Kirby Archer, who pleaded guilty to life in prison, is not expected to testify for the government. The defense has painted Archer as the criminal and stated in openings that Zarabozo was also a victim.

Slow blogging....

Week two of trial begins tomorrow.

Some coverage here and here.