Raffanello Trial: Charges against former DEA chief survive – for now

That's the headline from the DBR:

The defense in Miami maintains the destruction of papers in a 95-gallon bin was part of a routine shredding schedule and that the documents were duplicated on the firm’s computer servers. “The evidence is at best thin,” said visiting Judge Richard Goldberg. He said he would let the trial go forward but may reconsider the request for a directed verdict of acquittal later. The prosecution rested Monday, and the defense called its first witness late this morning. Sitting at the defense table were prominent Miami criminal defense attorneys Richard Sharpstein and Ed Shohat, who jointly argued the motion, as well as former Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey and Jane Moscowitz. Scheduled character witnesses are former Miami U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis and Michael “Pat” Sullivan, deposed Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega’s lead prosecutor.

It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read.”

That was former SG Seth Waxman on this cert petition written by a bank-robber named Shon Hopwood for another inmate John Fellers. Cert was granted, and Waxman took over the case, but only if Hopwood would stay involved. Here's the NY Times:

Shon R. Hopwood was not a particularly sophisticated bank robber.
“We would walk into a bank with firearms, tell people to get down, take the money and run,” he said the other day, recalling five robberies in rural Nebraska in 1997 and 1998 that yielded some $200,000 and more than a decade in federal prison.
Mr. Hopwood spent much of that time in the prison law library, and it turned out he was better at understanding the law than breaking it. He transformed himself into something rare at the top levels of the American bar, and unheard of behind bars: an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner.
He prepared his first petition for certiorari — a request that the Supreme Court hear a case — for a fellow inmate on a prison typewriter in 2002. Since Mr. Hopwood was not a lawyer, the only name on the brief was that of the other prisoner, John Fellers.
The court received 7,209 petitions that year from prisoners and others too poor to pay the filing fee, and it agreed to hear just eight of them. One was Fellers v. United States.
“It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read,” said Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general who has argued more than 50 cases in the Supreme Court. “It was just terrific.”
Mr. Waxman agreed to take the case on without payment. But he had one condition.
“I will represent you,” Mr. Waxman recalled telling Mr. Fellers, “if we can get this guy Shon Hopwood involved.”
Mr. Fellers said sure. “It made me feel good that we had Shon there to quarterback it,” he said.
The former solicitor general showed the bank robber drafts of his briefs. The two men consulted about how to frame the arguments, discussed strategy and tried to anticipate questions from the justices.

Pretty cool stuff! He won other cases too:

The law library changed Mr. Hopwood’s life.
“I kind of flourished there,” he said. “I didn’t want prison to be my destiny. When your life gets tipped over and spilled out, you have to make some changes.”
He was a quick study, but he had a lot to learn.
“In 2000,” he said, “I couldn’t have named a right in the Bill of Rights.”
By 2005, the Supreme Court had granted a second petition prepared by Mr. Hopwood, vacating a lower court decision and sending the case back for a fresh look. Mr. Hopwood has also helped inmates from Indiana, Michigan and Nebraska get sentence reductions of 3 to 10 years from lower courts.
Mr. Hopwood was released from prison in the fall of 2008. Mr. Fellers was out by then, and he owned a thriving car dealership in Lincoln.
“Here,” Mr. Fellers said, presenting his jailhouse lawyer with a 1989 Mercedes in pristine condition. “Thank you for getting me back to my daughter.”

Now Hopwood is working for a Supreme Court printing company:

Mr. Hopwood now works for a leading printer of Supreme Court briefs, Cockle Printing in Omaha.
“What a perfect fit for me,” he said. “I basically get to help attorneys get their briefs polished and perfected.”
His boss at Cockle, Trish Billotte, said she had some misgivings about hiring Mr. Hopwood. It was hard to believe his story, for starters, and it struck her as curious that an aspiring paralegal was driving around in a Mercedes.
But she called Mr. Hopwood’s references, including the former solicitor general. “You don’t get through to Seth Waxman,” Ms. Billotte said. But she did, and Mr. Waxman confirmed the facts and offered his endorsement.
“We did take a risk, but we have no second thoughts,” Ms. Billotte said. “Zero regrets.”
Mr. Hopwood, who is 34, said he hoped to apply to law school next year. Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan who worked with Mr. Hopwood on the briefs for a recent Supreme Court case, said that he had already talked to the admissions office there about saving a spot.
Mr. Hopwood’s personal life is looking up, too. He married in August, and he and his wife had a son on Christmas Day.

Superbowl Monday

Great game; great weekend for Miami. Now what peeps? Who's in trial? What's going on?

Here are a couple of items:

1. Justice Thomas is making the rounds. Here he is speaking at UF Law. Thomas gave a big shout out to a Florida lawyer in his talk. He'll be here in April.

2. Who should Obama nominate for the S.Ct. pick? Let the debate begin.

3. What about the other judges though?

4. More on Alito vs. Obama here.

Who wants to be a Magistrate? (UPDATED TWICE)

Unfortunately, the applicant list and interviews for the open magistrate position were kept secret... That said, the committee acted quickly and cut the list to 5. Now the judges get to pick the next magistrate. I've heard from multiple sources about 4 of the 5 candidates:

1. Jackie Arango (AUSA)
2. Rick Del Toro (AUSA)
3. Jonathan Goodman (Akerman Senterfitt)
4. Daryl Trawick (State Circuit Judge; U.S. Attorney finalist)
5. UPDATE -- well, we got this one wrong, so I am taking it down.... Sorry! I will post it back up when I have the right info! SECOND UPDATE -- Okay, now I got the right person: Alicia M. Otazo-Reyes (Legon Ponce & Fodiman)

If you know who the 5th person is, please email me. (UPDATE -- thanks to all my tipsters!)

So who do you all want for the job?

Four of the five are current or former federal prosecutors...

"It has become so partisan, it's really uncomfortable."

That was Justice Thomas, not speaking about the Supreme Court, but instead answering why he doesn't attend the State of the Union. There's lots more in the article, but here's a snippet of the article covering his talk at Stetson Law School:

Race and politics don't appear to be his favorite subjects. But Thomas, one of the most conservative thinkers on the court, didn't shy away from them.
"They don't care that I don't judge a case as a Catholic," he said. "But they yell because I don't judge a case as a black man."
During President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech last week, Justice Samuel Alito appeared to mouth the words "not true" after the president criticized the court's campaign finance decision.
Thomas wasn't at the speech and wouldn't address the issue. Politics, he said, is why he stopped going to the annual address.
"It has become so partisan, it's really uncomfortable for a judge," he said. "There's a lot of things you don't hear on the broadcast.
"You have catcalls and people muttering under their breath."

Justice Thomas will be addressing our District at the Bench & Bar conference in April.

Lots of shredding

The first Allen Stanford trial is underway. From the South Florida Business Journal:

Jury selection is under way this morning in the case against two South Florida men charged with shredding evidence in the case of R. Allen Stanford.
Former Stanford security personnel Bruce Perraud and Thomas Raffanello are the first to go to trial in Miami federal court in what federal prosecutors have alleged is a $7 billion Ponzi scheme led by Stanford and run through his Antigua-based bank.
Perraud, a global security specialist in the Fort Lauderdale office of Houston-based Stanford Financial Group, allegedly oversaw the shredding of documents at a warehouse facility last February. He was indicted in June.
Raffanello, who once led the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office, worked as a security director for Stanford and is the husband of well-known defense attorney Susan Raffanello, of the Coffey Burlington law firm in Miami.

Interestingly, the case is being tried before visiting judge Richard Goldberg, who told jurors that the trial would last about two weeks.

The first witness testified today that in February 2009, there was more shredding than in any other month. Here's the AP on the first witness.

"A Law for the Sex Offenders Under a Miami Bridge"

Miami is in Time Magazine again. This time for sex offenders living under the bridge:

The Julia Tuttle Causeway is one of Miami's most beautiful bridge spans, connecting the city to Miami Beach through palm-tree-filled islands fringed with red mangroves. But beneath the tranquil expanse sits one of South Florida's most contentious social problems: a large colony of convicted sex offenders, thrown into homelessness in recent years by draconian residency restrictions that leave them scant available or affordable housing. They live in tents and shacks built from cast-off supplies, clinging to pylons and embankments, with no running water, electricity or bathrooms. Not even during a recent cold spell, when nighttime temperatures dropped into the 30s, could they move into temporary lodging.

***

But with the disturbing bridge colony putting Miami under increased national scrutiny — it has managed the improbable feat of arousing sympathy for pedophiles — Miami-Dade County hopes to return some sanity to the issue. A new law takes effect on Monday that supersedes the county's 24 municipal ordinances, many of which make it all but impossible for offenders to find housing. It keeps the 2,500-feet restriction, but applies it only to schools. It also sets a 300-foot restriction to keep offenders from loitering near anyplace where children gather, which many experts call a more practical solution than harsh residency restrictions.

County officials, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, hope the law will prod states and perhaps even the U.S. Congress to craft more-uniform laws to prevent the kind of residency-restriction arms race that Florida let local governments wage. "The safety of Floridians has suffered as local politicians have tried to one-up each other with policies that have resulted in colonies of homeless sex offenders left to roam our streets," says state senator Dave Aronberg, a Democrat running for state attorney general. The excessive rules, he adds, "have the effect of driving offenders underground and off law enforcement's radar." Aronberg is co-sponsoring a new bill that would establish uniform statewide residency rules fixed at 1,750 feet — studies show that in many cities, over 50% of available housing is within 2,500 feet of schools — and include the sweeping no-loitering zones.

Monday morning...

Monday morning + Rain = FREAKING HORRIBLE TRAFFIC

As you all know, I'm not a fan of judicial elections. Tony Mauro writes that the recent Citizens United decision might kill judicial elections:

For years now, judicial reform groups have more or less resigned themselves to the reality that the public likes to elect its state judges and will fight any effort to appoint them instead.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Jan. 21 decision in Citizens United v. FEC may have altered that sober truth -- or at least has given reformers a glimmer of hope that it might. By supersizing possible corporate domination of judicial elections, the thinking goes, the Supreme Court's decision may finally make the public see how unseemly the elections are -- and move toward merit-based selection as an alternative.
"There is a silver lining to the decision," said Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who has taken the lead in seeking change in Ohio's elective system for judges. "For those of us who have been trying to impress upon the public the deleterious effects of money in these elections, it helps us make the point that we need to get the money out."
"The time is now for change," said Rebecca Kourlis, former Colorado Supreme Court justice and executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver. "I believe we can revitalize the merit-selection movement."
Kourlis spoke at a Georgetown University Law Center conference on judicial elections convened on Jan. 26 by retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In retirement, working with Kourlis and others, O'Connor has become a merit-selection evangelist who energizes the movement by her sheer presence. O'Connor's calendar is dotted with meetings with local good-government groups across the country aimed at jump-starting the effort to change the way state judges are chosen. Currently, O'Connor said, more than 80 percent of state judges have to win a political election to gain or retain their seats.