"43 stun-gunned at prisons' Take Your Kids to Work Day"

For real!

Justice Moreno??

Obama's short list for filling Justice Souter's seat on the Supreme Court has been leaked. And there's a Moreno on the list. Unfortunately, it's not our Moreno -- it's California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno (that's him on the left). Here's the rest of list:

Solicitor General Elena Kagan
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
U.S. Appeals Court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Pamela Wood

This and that

1. Mike Tein is in the NY Times today, discussing the Liberty City verdict: “If you sledgehammer the square peg three times, eventually you’re going to blast it into the round hole. This isn’t a terrorism case; it’s an overcharged gang case.”

2. Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley imposed death sentences today on Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez Jr. in the Turnpike murder case. It is the first federal death penalty case in the District. A snippet from the AP article:

"I must confess I have no confidence that Mr. Troya would not do this again if the opportunity presented itself," the judge said before reading the sentence.
Troya was shackled around the waist and guarded by four bailiffs. He offered an apology during the hearing, .
"First and foremost, to the victims and family members, I would like to apologize," he said. "Basically, I'm sorry to my family, the people that put faith in me to be good."
He also apologized for throwing a plastic water bottle at prosecutors in March after a jury recommended the death penalty for Troya and co-defendant Ricardo Sanchez Jr.
As he was led from the courtroom, Troya nodded to his mother, father and sister, who were silently crying.
The judge said Troya grew up in a "wonderful family" and added, "I have no idea how Mr. Troya got to be the person he is today, but he is an enormously dangerous person who has no regard for the taking of a human life."

3. And Jason Taylor re-signed with the Fins today.

Sentencing question

So will the Liberty City 7 6 5 get more or less time than Jose Padilla? Remember that Judge Cooke sentenced Padilla to 17 years and his co-defendants to less time. (The over-under line was 20 years). Certainly the Liberty City defendants will be citing to Padilla's case and arguing that they should get way less time. We'll set the over-under in this case at 17 years, the same sentence that Padilla received, for the lead defendant. What do you all think the appropriate sentences are now that they have been convicted?

Five of six convicted in Liberty City 6 case

Naudimar Herrera was acquitted (represented by Richard Houlihan). The rest, including lead defendant Narseal Batiste, were convicted. Initial Herald article here.

UPDATE (4:24pm): South Florida Lawyers has a funny post on the verdict. The Sun-Sentinel covers the case here. And the AP is also covering the case. Sentencing for the 5 convicted is set for July 26.

What an unbelievable case. Press releases by the Attorney General. Three really long trials. Two hung juries. Tens of millions of dollars spent. Two acquittals. An acquitted defendant being deported. Five convictions. Sick jurors. Replaced jurors. And now the appeals...

Should prosecutors hire jury consultants?

Michael Froomkin, blogging at Discourse, raises the very interesting question here. From his post:

If the US Attorney’s office uses jury consultants to tell them how to select a prosecution-friendly jury, that would seem to me to be not just unsavory, but to raise some due process and right to jury trial issues.

But, I have to say that based on a cursory survey of the literature, it seems my instincts here may be misplaced: I’ve found half a dozen academic articles that just report on this phenomenon as if there is nothing odd or unsavory about it; if anything the drift is that the poor under-resourced prosecutors (the ones who just spent $5-10 million on the Liberty Six trials) need consultants to level the playing field.

I suppose if all the consultants are doing is helping the prosecution spin better then that doesn’t raise a constitutional question, although I still think that it is not a good use of public money. But if they are helping prosecutors identify pro-prosecution jurors, even by attitudinal rather then demographic factors, that seems to to me to take us yet another step away from the jury system we would wish for.

Some surely would say that the government is only responding to an arms race started by wealthy criminal defendants and, who knows, there may be something to that in some cases. But in this case the defendants are not wealthy. Has the public defender’s office got jury consultants too? If they do, couldn’t they make a non-aggression pact on the jury consultants and save us all some money?

Prosecutors use jury consultants in high-profile cases all of the time. Other than the cost, I had never thought that it was an issue, but Froomkin raises some interesting points. Thoughts?

FBA lunch this Wednesday

Judge John Gleeson is speaking at the Federal Bar Luncheon this Wednesday at the Banker's Club at 11:45. Please RSVP to Celeste Higgins at Celeste_Higgins@fd.org

Gleeson is a District Judge in the Eastern District of New York, and was a former federal prosecutor -- the same John Gleeson that prosecuted John Gotti.

Gotti's defense lawyer, Albert Krieger, will be in attendance. Should be fun...

Back from the West Coast

It was a fun week in San Francisco (I can't believe I missed the Father Cutié drama)...

I see the blog was in good hands while I was away. Rick was great and we hope to have him back on a regular basis.

Just a couple of quick hits before we get going for the week:

-- The Liberty City 6 jury (the latest version of it) will continue deliberating this week. That case is truly jinxed... (In his post on last week's LC6 happenings, Rick missed Mike Tein -- who, of course, is the most quotable lawyer in the District -- from the Blum article: "What a shameful waste of our taxes at the worst possible time. Just think what $10 million could have done for our schoolchildren in Liberty City.")

-- The District now has a Wiki page. It's interesting to look at the historical makeup of the Court. (Some trivia pointed out on the page: "This federal district has the dubious distinction of having had more judges removed through impeachment than any other district, with a total of two, one-third of all federal district judges so removed.")

-- Justice O'Connor had this to say about judicial elections: "They're awful. I hate them." More here.

-- Rick posted on the FIU faculty vote for Dean, and FIU law professor Howard Wasserman has a lot to say about the vote and the coverage here. Howard criticizes the open proceedings and compares it to watching sausages being made. Gotta disagree with Howard here -- we wanna know how sausages are made. Open proceedings are a good thing. Better to have the press in there and reporting (even if the coverage in this case wasn't complete) than the alternative of having the doors closed.

-- Rumpole demonstrates why the Ben Kuehne case needs to be dismissed.