Unnamed AUSA's mailbox burned down

Here's the Sun-Sentinel article.

The assistant U.S. attorney — whose name has not yet been released — called authorities Sunday when she saw her mailbox on fire at her home in the Caloosa equestrian neighborhood.
***
"At this point in time, we are just thinking of this as mischievous vandalism," ATF spokesman Carlos Baixauli said.

Wesley Snipes' conviction and 3-year sentence affirmed

Wesley Snipes was only convicted of three misdemeanors (and acquitted of all the felonies), yet the 11th Circuit has affirmed his 3-year sentence.  That seems harsh to me, especially because he was sentenced based on the relevant conduct for which he was acquitted.  From the reasonableness portion of the opinion:

Here, the district court carefully complied with the sentencing procedures. The judge conducted an extensive sentencing hearing and listened to Snipes’s allocution, several character witnesses, and argument about sentencing. The court correctly calculated the guideline range and, again, noted that the guidelines were advisory. The sentencing transcript reveals that the judge weighed each factor embodied in the Section 3553(a) calculus before pronouncing the sentence, which was within the recommended guideline range. The sentence was not procedurally unreasonable.


Next, we “consider the substantive reasonableness of the sentence imposed under an abuse-of-discretion standard.” Id. at 1190 (quoting Gall, 552 U.S. at 51). “[W]e will not second guess the weight (or lack thereof) that the judge accorded to a given factor . . . [under § 3553(a)], as long as the sentence ultimately imposed is reasonable in light of all the circumstances presented.” Id. at 1191 (citation and quotation marks omitted). The party challenging a sentence has the burden of establishing that it was unreasonable. United States v. Talley, 431 F.3d 784, 788 (11th Cir. 2005).


The district court gave ample consideration to each of the relevant considerations found in 3553(a). Although the discussion about general deterrence was somewhat longer than the discussion of the other factors, its length corresponds with the emphasis the Sentencing Guidelines placed on deterrence in the criminal tax context. The introductory commentary to the Tax section of the Sentencing Guidelines explains that 

[b]ecause of the limited number of criminal tax prosecutions relative to the estimated incidence of such violations, deterring others from violating the tax laws is a primary consideration underlying these guidelines. Recognition that the sentence for a criminal tax case will be commensurate with the gravity of the offense should act as a deterrent to would-be violators. U.S.S.G. Ch. 2 Pt. T, intro. Comment (emphasis added).

Moreover, “[w]hen the district court imposes a sentence within the advisory

Live blogging Willy Ferrer's swearing-in

Willy Ferrer's investiture today

Chief Judge Moreno swears Willy in at 3pm today at the new courthouse.  So, those of you who came to work in casual clothes today or who are planning to sneak out early, you're gonna miss it. 

Congrats to Willy.

"The facts of this case are riddled with extraordinary cruelty and evil."

You know that you aren't going to win an appeal with that as the opening line of the opinion.  And that's how Judge Marcus started off his 87-page opinion in USA v. Chuckie Taylor.   And here's the conclusion:

In sum, we affirm Emmanuel’s convictions and sentence in full. The Torture Act’s proscriptions against both torture and conspiracy to commit torture are constitutional, and may be applied to extraterritorial conduct. The district court did not plainly err in applying § 924(c) to Emmanuel’s extraterritorial conduct, nor in its conduct of this lengthy trial. Finally, Emmanuel’s advisory Sentencing Guidelines range was correctly calculated by the district court, and the sentences imposed violate neither the CAT nor the Constitution.

UPDATE -- here's the AP story.

Barefoot Bandit appears before Judge Dube

It was a really quick hearing -- according to Curt Anderson: 

The American teenager who police call the "Barefoot Bandit" made his first appearance in a U.S. court since being extradited from the Bahamas.

Colton Harris-Moore appeared briefly in federal court in Miami on Wednesday. He is charged with committing a two-year string of break-ins and plane thefts across the United States. A judge set another hearing Friday to give Harris-Moore time to hire a lawyer.

The 19-year-old convict's alleged crime spree ended Sunday when Bahamian police shot out the engines of a stolen boat and arrested him. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to entering that country illegally and was deported hours later.

He had arrived in the Bahamas last week, crash landing a plane he allegedly stole in Indiana

Barefoot Bandit headed to Miami

His real name is Colton Harris-Moore and he was caught in the Bahamas. The kis was born in 1991.  From his Wiki page:

Harris-Moore became known as the "Barefoot Bandit" or as the "Barefoot Burglar", by reportedly committing his crimes while barefoot.[3] In Fall 2009, police found footprints at an airport hangar in Bonners Ferry, Idaho; a Cessna 182 stolen from there crash-landed approximately 260 miles (418 kilometers) to the west near Granite Falls, Washington after a few unsuccessful attempts to land at the small airport there. Police in the San Juan Islands also found cartoonish, chalk-outlines of feet all over the floor of a grocery store that was broken into in February 2010.[11] In Fall 2009, a Facebook fan page was set up, drawing thousands of entries,[10] and one local Seattle man started selling T-shirts bearing his picture with the words, "Momma Tried".[9] Local people from Camano Island have also attempted to vent their frustrations through a song,[19] as well as a blog which includes the sale of merchandise and accepts donations to purchase the services of a bounty hunter.[20] In April 2010, 20th Century Fox purchased the film rights to the book Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw, based on a proposal by Bob Friel.[21] Harris-Moore's mother has retained celebrity lawyer O. Yale Lewis to seek control of entertainment interests related to her son. She has also hired John Henry Browne to handle her son's criminal defense.

From ABC on his arrest:


The "Barefoot Bandit" faces deportation to the United States, where a slew of federal officials wait to begin the complicated process of sorting out a lenthy list of crimes that span half the country.


Monique Gomez, Harris-Moore's attorney, told ABC News that he might leave the Bahamas as early as tonight.


Colton Harris-Moore pleaded guilty today in a Bahamian court to a relatively minor charge of illegal entry into the country, The Associated Press reported.


Instead of the extradition process many expected, he'll simply be deported though the U.S. Attorney's Office. Western District of Washington spokeswoman Emily Langlie told ABC News that authorities had not received confirmation of exactly what will happen.


Once on U.S. soil, Langlie said, Harris-Moore would appear in federal court in Miami, the closest district to where he was apprehended, on a single count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. The charge was filed in December 2009, stemming from an incident in which a plane was stolen from Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, and crashed in Granite Falls.

The judge will decide bond for Harris-Moore, basing it according to his flight risk and danger to the community.


"I think the expectation in any detention hearing is the government will argue that Colton Harris-Moore is a flight risk," Langlie said. "I think he's proven that."


Harris-Moore's highly publicized exploits came to an end Sunday when he was taken into custody by Bahamian police after a high-speed boat chase off Harbor Island. The arrest capped off more than two years on the run in which he achieved a folk hero-type following from tens of thousands of Internet fans, even as he left a growing trail of increasingly brazen crimes in his wake.

Get ready for some fun in Magistrate Court this week.  He'll have to wear the prison flip flops to Court...

Tuesday News and Notes

It's pretty quiet in the District right now.  A couple news items:

1.  Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Health and Human Servies Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be in the SDFLA (at the James L. Knight Center) on Friday July 16 at 9:45 to have the first in a series of day-long regional summits to discuss innovative ways to prevent fraud within the U.S. health care system.

2.  Lindsay Lohan made Professor Erik Luna famous.

3.  Mel Martinez didn't last long at DLA Piper.

4.  Gravity may not exist (according to one string theorist), but I'm not convinced by the "hair frizzles in the heat and humidity" analogy.

5.  Socratic method: good or bad?  I disagree with Bainbridge -- it works if it's done right.

What else people?