A sign of the times

Missouri is attaching little price tags to its pre-sentence reports so that judges realize that executing sentences is not free. Defense attorneys applaud this, and prosecutors decry it. Money quote: “‘No one can put a price tag on being a victim,’ said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.”

Oh, Scott, did they not teach torts at your law school? It turns out that one of the main reasons we have law, Scott, is to put a dollar value on the harm visited upon victims of intentional and accidental wrongs. True, money is never going to bring back the dead, but it’s what we do so that civilization doesn’t crumble in a chaotic cycle of retribution and vigilanteism. It’s been going on for hundreds of years, and it works pretty well.

There’s also a lot of good reasons why we have judges—and not victims—craft sentences. One of those is that judges are supposed to act dispassionately and create a sentence that will maximize the public good—not only vindicate the victim. Judges can do that better if they are aware of the impact their choices have on the public fisc. Plus, if this were implemented at the federal level, it would give probation officers something to put into a pre-sentence investigation report that doesn’t entail having them make legal arguments.

I hope this goes to trial

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the cops from the robbers. That’s more or less what defense attorney Robert Pelier told the press about his client, Hialeah Gardens Police Detective Lawrence Perez. The federal government, for its part, alleges that Detective Perez conspired with one “Negro” and one “Chuchi” to rob a marijuana stash house. The news accounts don’t mention the aliases of Detective Perez’s alleged co-conspirators, but I thought you should know. Negro is supposedly a drug dealer and wanted Detective Perez’s help to rob a competitor. You would never know all this from the indictment, which sticks to the tried-and-true charges of attempting to possess with intent to distribute and conspiring to do so. Thankfully, the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s press releases fill the lacuna of narrative detail. The government and Detective Perez stipulated to a $50,000 corporate surety bond before Magistrate Judge McAliley. Federal Public Defender Kathleen Williams’ office was appointed to represent Negro. There is no record of Chuchi having had his initial appearance. Judge Jordan has the case.

How is this not a bigger deal?

So, I started doing some reading to figure out what’s going on in the SDFla so that I can guest-host while D.O.M. rededicates himself to the practice of law. The news is good and bad. The good news is that the feds caught two people who really needed to be caught and who are guilty of the sort of crime that cries out for federal retribution. The bad news is that the factual proffer from Friday’s plea colloquy before Judge Marra makes me think that there may well be a deep circle in hell set aside for these defendants. Alfonso Baldonado, Jr., and Sophia Manuel admitted to extorting money from Filipino workers and luring them to Boca with false promises of lucrative employment at places like the Ritz. These victims went into substantial debt to travel here only to become an exploited cheap labor pool for the defendants’ staffing company. The two convicts confiscated the workers’ passports and terrorized them with threats of jail and deportation. Thirty workers slept side-by-side “on the kitchen, garage, and dining room floors.” They were fed “chicken feet, necks, innards, and rotten vegetables.” The litany of horribles goes on and on. Sentencing is set for December 10.

What I don’t understand is how this slavery case gets all of four short paragraphs in the newspapers. Maybe part of the reason is that Willy Ferrer put out a very professional and measured quote—“They came here seeking a better life, but found their dream of freedom transformed into a real-life nightmare of servitude and fear.” If I were U.S. Attorney, I would have said something like, “These defendants deserve to be tortured gruesomely and slowly, and I am frustrated that all we can do is put them in the same prisons where we put drug dealers.” Which alone is enough to explain why I’m not U.S. Attorney.

“At this age, I’m not even buying green bananas.”

Gotta love that quote from 103-year old district judge Wesley E. Brown, the oldest federal judge in the country (from the NYT):

Judge Wesley E. Brown’s mere presence in his courtroom is seen as something of a daily miracle. His diminished frame is nearly lost behind the bench. A tube under his nose feeds him oxygen during hearings. And he warns lawyers preparing for lengthy court battles that he may not live to see the cases to completion, adding the old saying, “At this age, I’m not even buying green bananas.”
At 103, Judge Brown, of the United States District Court here, is old enough to have been unusually old when he enlisted during World War II. He is old enough to have witnessed a former law clerk’s appointment to serve beside him as a district judge — and, almost two decades later, the former clerk’s move to senior status. Judge Brown is so old, in fact, that in less than a year, should he survive, he will become the oldest practicing federal judge in the history of the United States.
Upon learning of the remarkable longevity of the man who was likely to sentence him to prison, Randy Hicks, like many defendants, became nervous. He worried whether Judge Brown was of sound enough mind to understand the legal issues of a complex wire fraud case and healthy enough to make it through what turned out to be two years of hearings. “And then,” he said, “I realized that people were probably thinking the same thing 20 years ago.”
“He might be up there another 20 years,” added Mr. Hicks, 40, who recently completed a 30-month sentence and calls himself an admirer of Judge Brown. “And I hope he is.”
The Constitution grants federal judges an almost-unparalleled option to keep working “during good behavior,” which, in practice, has meant as long as they want. But since that language was written, average life expectancy has more than doubled, to almost 80, and the number of people who live beyond 100 is rapidly growing. (Of the 10 oldest practicing federal judges on record, all but one served in the last 15 years.)

Whacked

Judge Zloch sentenced a former Guatemalan soldier, Gilberto Jordan, to the maximum 10 years today lying on citizenship forms about his military service and role in the killings. It was a hefty upward variance. From Curt Anderson's report:

Jordan could have received just six months behind bars under sentencing guidelines. But prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge William Zloch to impose the maximum possible, a 10-year sentence.

They said Jordan admitted to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that he participated in the December 1982 massacre in the Guatemalan village of Dos Erres, including personally throwing an infant down a well.

Investigators say at least 162 people died, many hit with sledgehammers or shot.

"Mr. Jordan admitted to killing a baby. He then participated in the killings of countless other men, women and children," said Hillary Davidson, a U.S. Justice Department senior trial attorney. "He never should have been allowed to live here peacefully for many years."

Zloch was just as harsh, saying Jordan tried to hide "his background as a mass murderer." Referring to the 10-year sentence, the judge said: "Anything less would be totally inadequate as just punishment for this crime and its accompanying heinous acts."

Quick hits

1. I love this story from BLT -- senators are conducting the impeachment trial of U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. and the schedule they are trying to keep to is about 8am to 7:30 pm. They need at least 7 senators to hear evidence. Problem is that they are having a tough time keeping 7 senators around for such a long day:

But senators, who aren’t used to staying in one place during the day, have had trouble keeping to the plan.

Today, for example, the 12-member committee that’s conducting the trial recessed at 11 a.m., so that its members could cast votes on the Senate floor. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the committee’s chairwoman, asked her colleagues to return at 11:40 a.m. to hear more testimony before lunch. But only a few of them did, and seven members must be present before the committee can hear testimony.

“It doesn’t appear we’re going to get seven,” McCaskill said shortly after noon. “We have to have seven members before we can proceed.”

2. Also gotta love the 9th -- they don't put up with the Miranda two-step. Or illegally seizing ballplayers' drug-test records.

3. You all know that I really think that we should have cameras in federal court. But who is going to watch civil trials? Zzzzzzzzzzz.

4. Justices Ginsburg and Kagan know how to parttyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Tuesday

What's with this rain every morning during rush hour traffic? US1 is really fun in the rain.

The Northern District is hearing the health care lawsuits:

Florida takes center stage this week in the fight over the federal health care law that consumed Congress for the better part of a year, and along with it, so will a Pensacola judge who is no stranger to hot button issues.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a Reagan nominee to the bench who presided over two high profile abortion clinic violence cases in the 1980s and 1990s, will hear oral arguments on the U.S. Department of Justice's motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed against the health care law by Florida and 18 other states on Tuesday.
The plaintiffs, the states, argue that the health care law illegally requires all citizens and legal residents to have health care coverage or pay a tax penalty, which they say is a violation the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. The plaintiffs also say the law runs afoul of the states' rights guarantee in the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Also joining the suit: the National Federation of Independent Business and Florida residents Mary Brown and Kaj Ahlburg.
The defendant, the U.S. Justice Department, counters that overturning the health care law would unduly expand judicial review of Congress and other government branches. More specially, the DOJ argues that Congress has the power to determine how federal money appropriated for Medicaid may be spent and can give states an option of setting up their own health exchanges or having the federal government do so.

Vinson is an interesting judge:

Vinson, who was nominated to the federal bench in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, has indicated he knows the legal world will be waiting for his verdict, but that it will almost certainly be immediately appealed no matter which way he comes down. The case is widely expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, which means a final legal decision could take years.
Other than the timing and allowing the arguments on the merits of the case to be heard, Vinson has not said much about the nonjury proceeding. But Ben Gordon, a Fort Walton Beach lawyer who clerked for him from 2000-02, said Vinson will likely keep the lawyers from both sides on their toes.
``He will be a very intelligent judge who does a lot of his own work,'' Gordon said, which made clerking for Vinson ``interesting because he wouldn't just rely on what I and other clerks told him.''
``He'll educate himself and have read all the key cases,'' Gordon said. ``I anticipate he'll ask probing questions on both sides. It'll be interesting to watch. I believe he will have some questions the lawyers might not anticipate. He'll be that engaged in this.''
Vinson, 70, is no stranger to cases involving issues at the center of national debates. In 1985, Vinson sentenced two men, Matt Goldsby and James Simmons, to 10 years in prison for their role in bombing an abortion clinic, though he made them eligible for early parole and gave Goldsby's fiancée and Simmons' wife, who were convicted of conspiracy, to five years probation. Nobody died in the bombing.
Vinson also presided over the federal trial of Paul Hill, who was convicted and later executed for the 1994 murders of a Pensacola abortion provider and a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic. Hill was sentenced to death in state court, but Vinson sentenced him to two additional life terms for violating the federal clinic access law. Hill was executed in 2003.

In other news, confessions don't work.

Supreme Court Justices aren't on the JV team -- they're varsity.

SFL beat me in week one Fantasy. It's a long season....

Football Sunday

Let's go Fins.

Some weekend news:

Interestingly, Justice Kagan has recused in 21 out of the 40 cases in which the Court has granted cert. Wow, that seems like a huge number to me.

Another huge number -- almost 2000 Justice employees owe more than $14 million in 2009 taxes. Here's the WaPo article.