11th Circuit Limits "Safety-Valve" Sentencing Relief.

Hi kids, SFL here, killing time while David O undoubtedly does something glamorous and exciting I am sure.

I'm glad I don't do any criminal, because if I did I'd have to use the term "safety-valve" as part of my work.

Instead I'm stuck with delightful words and phrases such as "Celotex," "Iqbal," "Venetian Salami" and "mending the hold."

But for those of you who derive some kind of legal meaning from a safety valve, you may consider this new 11th Circuit opinion of value, which disagrees with several other circuits on this question:

The question we must resolve today is this one: can a district court grant safety-valve relief when reducing a defendant’s sentence pursuant to section 3582(c)(2)? The answer is “no,” because the safety-valve is inapplicable to sentence-modification proceedings.

Best I can tell, the 11th reasons that a Section 3582(c)(2) proceeding is not a "sentencing or resentencing" proceeding, but is instead a "modification of a term of imprisonment."
 
But then later there's a footnote in which the 11th acknowledges "they are in some sense a sentencing proceeding."

So I'm glad crim law makes as much sense as civil litigation?

Big news from the road

Judge Paul Huck has informed President Obama that he will be taking senior status. That makes three current openings; Judge Hurley (to be filled by Kathy Williams); Judge Gold; and now Judge Huck.

Judge Huck has been a wonderful district judge and is regarded as the hardest working judge in the District. I have lots more to say when I can get to a computer instead of this phone. In the meantime, congrats to Judge Huck.

Good luck to...

... Brian Stekloff, who after making a good name for himself at the PD's office, is off to Paul Weiss in DC.

They needed someone to try cases, and they found the right guy.

Straw buyers walk

Four of em... Before Judge D after an 11 day trial. Defendants repped by Phil Horowitz, Alan Kaufman, Brian Tannebaum, and John Wylie. Congrats.

Get ready for the guest bloggers

Taking a little break from the blog for a week. Starting tomorrow, you'll have SFL, Rumpole, and Rick Bascuas entertaining you. Enjoy.

Magistrate feels “like a schoolmarm scolding little boys."

The whole opinion is definitely worth a read. Here's a snippet:

• My practice is to preliminarily review every motion called an “emergency” the day it
  is filed. However, other cases, motions filed, scheduled hearings and settlement conferences do not afford me the luxury of dropping everything to hear a party’s perceived “emergency” especially when it involves a case that has already taken an inordinate amount of the court’s time (to the detriment of other litigants who need decisions in their matters) to resolve yet another in a series of routine discovery disputes. Thus, as the motion has worked its way up the tall stack of other matters on my desk, there are no longer any depositions to take.
• I am not the Maytag repairman of federal judges desperately hoping for something to do.
• Counsel for Plaintiff could not resist replying. Mr Kossack’s reply adds up the number of Mr. Cannon’s improper objections during Mr. McCurdy’s deposition and compares them to the number of improper objections Mr. Cannon accuses him of making. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to engage equally unseemly “tit-for-tat,” Mr Kossack pads his reply with gratuitous comments which include a reference to counsels’ respective choice of beverages during depositions.
• To ensure that reading the 185 pages of these exchanges was not a complete waste of time, I assigned this motion to a law student extern to prepare a legal memorandum to further his education. In a short period of time he was able to prepare a well-written, concise memo which identified a large number of state and federal cases throughout the country articulating the standards for making deposition objections and identifying improper conduct for which lawyers have been admonished or sanctioned. He correctly concluded that both lawyers engaged in misconduct which violated Rule 30(c)(2).
• The exchanges related in excruciating, repetitive detail in the moving and responsive papers and their attachments were painful to read. If I was an elementary school teacher instead of a judge I would require both counsel to write the following clearly established legal rules on a blackboard 500 times.
• Although these papers, and the conduct they relate, make me feel like a school marm scolding little boys, I am the judge whose duty it is to decide this motion. Accordingly, Mr. Kossack and Mr. Cannon are admonished for engaging in conduct which I know you know violates Rule 30(c)(2). You are better men and better lawyers than the conduct in which you have engaged illustrates.

Being on a plane...

... with 8 rows is not fun. Tampa for the day. Back tonight.

Tuesday News and Notes

1. Moving sucks.

2. The FBI is taking the absurd position that Wikipidea shouldn't use its emblem.

3. Law.com covers the Irey case.

4. Roberts v. Kagan, per Dahlia Lithwick.

5. More on Kagan -- she is only 6th SCOTUS law clerk to become Justice.

6. Miranda is losing its teeth.

7. Obama is having a tough time getting judges confirmed. Another article on it here.

8. Conrad Black writes on his time in a federal prison. The whole thing is worth a read:

In the Coleman Low Security compound, there are 1,800 residents and it is a little universe terminally addicted to gossip about the custodial system and especially the goings-on of the group confined there. By this time there were large numbers of journalists and photographers clustered at the gate of the Coleman complex and ongoing television coverage watched with some bemusement by my fellow residents in the television rooms of the residential units.
A steady stream of well-wishers from all factions of the compound came to say goodbye, as I put my books and papers and a few clothes items into cardboard boxes. (The only article of clothing that I took that was not among the few things I had bought myself was the nondescript brown shirt bequeathed to me when he left by the don of one of the famous New York gang families).
The Mafiosi, the Colombian drug dealers, (including a senator with whom I had a special greeting as a fellow member of a parliamentary upper house), the American drug dealers, high and low, black, white, and Hispanic; the alleged swindlers, hackers, pornographers, credit card fraudsters, bank robbers, and even an accomplished airplane thief; the rehabilitated and unregenerate, the innocent and the guilty, and in almost all cases the grossly over-sentenced, streamed in steadily for hours, to make their farewells.
Most goodbyes were brief and jovial, some were emotional, and a few were quite heart-rending. Many of the 150 students that my very able fellow tutors and I had helped to graduate from high school, came by, some of them now enrolled in university by cyber-correspondence.