Ho hum

Scott Rothstein finally pleaded today. (Here's the agreement.) And Kim Rothstein made an appearance:



And there were even scuffles outside the courtroom.

UPDATE -- so I read the Rothstein plea agreement. It's pretty standard stuff. Things that jumped out at me about it -- the government agreed that if the guidelines are life, they will agree to a downward variance. I think that's quite a concession and one I rarely see in plea agreements. Second, Rothstein agreed to waive his right to appeal and to waive his right to a habeas proceeding. That means that Judge Cohn can sentence Rothstein anywhere from zero to life, and Rothstein cannot attack the sentence. He will have to eat whatever Judge Cohn gives him. (I never understood how a defense lawyer can agree to have his client waive his habeas rights -- if the defense lawyer is ineffective, how can he advise his client to waive that?)

Sick of the Rothstein stuff.... well, fellow geeks, check out this 7th Circuit opinion on Dungeons and Dragons -- finding that it's a threat to prison security! Above The Law covers it here. HT: SB.

1 millliooooon dollars

Julie Kay says lawyers are going to make a lot of money off of the Scott Rothstein mess:

While Scott Rothstein's alleged $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme has proved a tragedy to hundreds of former employees, creditors and investors, it has been a boon to one group -- South Florida's lawyers.
According to experts, when all is said and done, the case will result in legal fees topping $15 million. That figure includes fees to the receiver, Herb Stettin; the two law firms he hired to assist him; a cadre of lawyers and firms hired by creditors and the attorney for the creditors' committee; defense fees for banks, insurance companies and other sued parties; and fees paid to all the criminal defense lawyers hired by Rothstein partners, associates and family members.
``This is like the lawyer's relief act,'' said Guy Lewis, a Miami attorney and former U.S. attorney who has served as receiver in numerous Ponzi/fraud cases. ``It's going to be an eight-figure case. It's probably the biggest receivership in the country right now.''

Bedtime stories

Two articles worth a look:

1. "After 34 Years, a Plainspoken Justice Gets Louder" in the New York Times about Justice Stevens. HT: Rumpole

2. "U.S. Attorney candidates face attacks from old adversaries" in the St. Pete Times about the fighting to become U.S. Attorney in the MDFLA. HT: SFLawyers

Who dat

Looking forward to the Saints/Colts Superbowl. Thank goodness it's not the Jets.

What up people?

Anyone in trial?

Bob Norman was at the Scott Rothstein auction and took some video here.

Here is the Florida Bar's webpage addressing its Haiti relief effort.

That's all I got for you this Monday morning. Hit me up with some news.

UPDATE -- Curt Anderson covers the Supreme Court's decision not to review Manuel Noriega's case.

Justice Stevens has a bad day

Yesterday was a big day in the Supreme Court with the campaign finance decision. But it was also noteworthy because those in the courtroom noted that Justice Stevens was having some trouble reading his dissent. Many have speculated that Justice Stevens is going to retire at the end of the Term, in part because he's hired only one clerk. From the BLT:

It's rare, and always dramatic to watch, when a Supreme Court justice reads from a dissent on the bench. On Thursday, when Justice John Paul Stevens read at length from his stinging 90-page dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, it was also a little painful to watch.
For more than 20 minutes, Stevens spoke haltingly as he read from a summary of the dissent, a task he'd ordinarily breeze through. The 89-year-old justice seemed off his game, tripping on some words, getting stuck on others. At one point, he kept mispronouncing the word "corporation" as something like "corpo-russian," and he could not quite get it right.
As CBS News Court correspondent Jan Crawford noted on her blog with similar observations, "Maybe it was just a bad day, and Lord knows we’ve all had those." And the written product is more important than how it was read aloud. But with a justice who is said to be on the verge of retiring at the end of this term, and in a case of such high impact, it was hard not to notice Stevens' tough morning.

Where are the judges?

Jeffrey Toobin asks this question in the New Yorker. It's a fair question. What is taking Obama so long? Toobin:

When Obama took office, there were more than a hundred vacancies on the federal appeals and district courts. One year into his tenure, Obama has made only thirty-one appointments to those courts, and just twelve have been confirmed. In George W. Bush’s first year, with a similar number of vacancies, he made sixty-four nominations. White House officials assert that ten new district court nominations are imminent, but the overall pace remains astonishingly slow. I wrote about this aspect of Obama’s Presidency last September, and the trend has continued.

Why is this? In part, it’s because a Supreme Court vacancy, which the President filled with the admirable Sonia Sotomayor, occupied the White House through the summer months. That successful nomination is both more important—and was more time-consuming—than any of the others.

But there is another major factor as well. As a former Senator himself, the President is a believer in the tradition of senatorial direction of district-court nominations, and senatorial influence on appeals-court choices. The President wanted to include senators in the process, including those of the opposition party. It was an example of Obama’s post-partisan plans in action. If Republicans had a voice in the judicial nominations process, the theory went, partisan bickering would slow, if not cease, and the judiciary would inch away from the culture wars.
As in other areas, Obama’s hopes for post-partisanship failed when it came to the judiciary. Republicans have stalled on many nominations, fought others, and mostly done their best to slow down the pace. What’s perplexing is that Obama himself has not filled the pipeline with nominations; if he did, Republicans might feel some pressure to move the process along. Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held prompt hearings for all of Obama’s nominees, but he can’t hold hearings on nominations that haven’t yet been made.

I don't think either of these explanations work. So what that the administration was working on Justice Sotomayor? It should have been working equally hard on filling the other slots. And as for wanting the Senators' support, I'm not sure this is true. In Florida, for example, the rumors are that the Oval Office did not want a recommendation from the Senators (even though that's how it had worked in the past), which delayed the process. Thankfully, Kathy Williams is finally being vetted. But more openings are on the horizon in the District; hopefully we'll see them filled faster.

UPDATE -- Well, at least one open seat (Lanier Anderson's) just got filled -- the Senate just confirmed new 11th Circuit judge Beverly Martin 97-0. Congrats!

Supreme Court addresses case of the chocolate penis

This is not a joke -- check out Wellons v. Hall, a case that comes out of the 11th Circuit. Here's the AP and the ABA:

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider the claims of a Georgia death row inmate who is challenging his rape and murder conviction based on some unusual chocolate gifts given to the trial judge and bailiff.
Some jurors hearing the case against defendant Marcus Wellons gave the trial judge chocolate shaped as male genitalia and the bailiff chocolate shaped as female breasts.
In a 5-4 ruling (PDF), the U.S. Supreme Court in a per curiam opinion ordered the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider whether Wellons is entitled to discovery and a hearing in light of a high court ruling last year on behalf of an inmate who contended prosecutors withheld evidence of his drug addiction.
“Neither Wellons nor any court has ascertained exactly what went on at this capital trial or what prompted such ‘gifts,’ ” the Supreme Court wrote in the per curiam opinion. “Wellons has repeatedly tried, in both state and federal court, to find out what occurred, but he has found himself caught in a procedural morass.”
The court said that defense counsel did not learn until after the trial about unreported ex parte contacts between jurors and the judge, that jurors and a bailiff planned a reunion, and that jurors gave the chocolate gifts to the judge and bailiff either during or immediately after the penalty phase of the trial.
“From beginning to end, judicial proceedings conducted for the purpose of deciding whether a defendant shall be put to death must be conducted with dignity and respect,” the Supreme Court said in the per curiam opinion. “The disturbing facts of this case raise serious questions concerning the conduct of the trial, and this petition raises a serious question about whether the Court of Appeals carefully reviewed those facts before addressing petitioner’s constitutional claims.”

Ah, that's just too good. In other news: Judge Jordan sentences the Crime Stoppers cop to two months.

And American Idol is back:

Justices Better at Precedent Than Prescience

That's the title to this interesting Adam Liptak NYTimes article. Liptak argues that the Supreme Court Justices aren't too good about making predictions. I particularly like the discussion of broadcasting federal court hearings. I think it's absurd that we don't allow cameras in the courtroom. From the article:

The Supreme Court’s main strength lies in adjudicating disputes based on things that have already happened. It is less good at predicting the future.
On Wednesday, for instance, it shut down plans to broadcast the same-sex marriage trial in San Francisco partly for fear that witnesses in the case would be harassed if their public testimony were made more public. That conclusion is known in the trade as speculation.
Consider first of all that we are talking about a trial held in open court and subject to intense press coverage. The witnesses are mostly paid experts whose views on the subject are already well known. “They’re not, after all, in the witness protection program testifying against Mafia bosses,” Eva Rodriguez wrote in The Washington Post.
Then add to the analysis that the additional coverage the court forbade was only closed-circuit transmissions to a few other federal courthouses around the country. (There had been talk of posting video on YouTube, but the idea was never approved and so was not before the Supreme Court.)
The people viewing the transmissions in the remote courthouses would have been barred from making recordings of the proceedings. Allowing the transmissions, Eugene Volokh wrote on The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, was equivalent to “holding the trial in an extra large courtroom.”
“And most of the extra audience would be far from California,” Mr. Volokh added, “and therefore not especially likely to be able to effectively harass the witnesses in ways that turn on seeing the witness’s testimony.”
There were other grounds for the court’s 5-to-4 decision, including the majority’s sense that lower-court judges in California have twisted the procedural rules to allow video coverage, a point that resonated with Ms. Rodriguez and other commentators. But the court also grounded its ruling on a finding that opponents of same-sex marriage “have demonstrated that irreparable harm would likely result” from the transmissions.