Don't rush to judgment

See, e.g., the Ricin case.  From the NY Times:

Criminal charges were dropped Tuesday against a Mississippi man accused of mailing poisoned letters to President Obama and two other officials

One day after the F.B.I. said it could find no evidence that the man, Paul Kevin Curtis, was behind the plot, a federal judge released him from jail and federal authorities shifted focus to another person of interest in the case.

Lawyers for Mr. Curtis, 45, a celebrity impersonator, said he had been framed by a longtime personal enemy, J. Everett Dutschke, a martial arts instructor from Tupelo, Miss. F.B.I. agents raided Mr. Dutschke’s house but did not immediately bring charges against him. Mr. Dutschke, reached by phone, denied involvement but did not elaborate.

At a news conference after his release, Mr. Curtis said he did not harbor any ill feelings toward prosecutors or the president and was relieved to be free. “I respect President Obama,” he said. “I love my country and would never do anything to pose a threat to him or any other U.S. official.”

Mr. Curtis, a party entertainer who dresses and sings as Elvis, Prince, Johnny Cash, Bon Jovi and others, had been in jail since Wednesday. He said he had never even heard of ricin. “I thought they said rice,” he said. “I said I don’t even eat rice.” 

How was an arrest made without any evidence?  

Is Miriam Conrad now the most hated lawyer in the United States?

Conrad, the well-respected FPD in Boston, now represents the Boston Marathon bomber.  From Business Insider:

The lawyer leading his defense, Miriam Conrad, is a Harvard Law grad who's represented unpopular defendants including "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Conrad — who's been a public defender for two decades — also represented 27-year-old Mulsim-American Rezwan Ferdaus, who got 17 years in prison after admitting he plotted to blow up the Pentagon and the Capitol.
Law professor Tamar R. Birckhead, who was a lawyer in Conrad's office, told the Journal that Conrad was doesn't suffer fools when defending her unpopular clients.
"Miriam is tough," Birckhead said. "She will provide the most rigorous dedicated defense humanly possible."
In an interview with Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly, Conrad gave some insight into why she makes a living representing hated defendants.
"If you scratch the surface, many have had difficult lives, and, as their lawyer, I sort of see them whole — not just as a person charged with a crime," she said in the interview. "No one has ever stood up for them, and that is a very powerful, emotional thing.”
Other lawyers currently on the team are public defenders Timothy Watkins and William Fick, who appeared in court on Tsarnaev's behalf on Monday. Despite the undeniable horror of the Boston Marathon bombing, that team may be able to elicit some sympathy for her 19-year-old defendant.

Rumpole has an interesting post about representing hated defendants. Would you do it?

What's the strangest thing you've ever been offered as a fee?

Paula McMahon has this very entertaining article in the Sun-Sentinel about fees paid to criminal defense lawyers:

Furs, guns, jewelry, a whole lot of boats and fancy cars, a hotel, an army tank, a ranch in Wyoming, a herd of cattle in Venezuela, a tray of lasagna, two Yorkie dogs and a lifetime supply of live bait.
All offered as payment to South Florida lawyers by clients who ran out of cash.
No property to give? Not to worry — there's always the bartering of personal services. Like the accused fraudster who offered to serve as a nanny for her attorney's kids. Or the guy accused of posing as a lawyer who offered to work as a paralegal. And yes, everyone has heard tell of some other lawyer being offered sexual favors or drugs to cover the legal tab.

Fred Haddad has some good stories:

Veteran criminal defense lawyer Fred Haddad said he grew up the son of an old-fashioned doctor who often bartered his services and taught his son to do the same — at least, on occasion.
"I've taken lasagna and meals from clients who run restaurants," Haddad said. "It's hilarious valuing some of this stuff for the tax man."
He said he accepted, and later sold, a ranch in Wyoming about 25 years ago, and he still regrets that he turned down a house on the Hillsboro mile because he didn't want to pay the taxes.
Back in the day, he and his former law partner accepted some airplanes, but Haddad now confesses to having a weakness for boats and nice cars. "I've taken everything from Ferraris on down."
But Haddad said there can be a downside: "A lot of the stuff I've taken wound up costing me. I took a '67 Camaro and I'm into it for $14,000 already, rebuilding the engine."

I wish Paula would have interviewed my dad, Stuart Markus. He has some great bartering stories from over the years including a barely sea-worthy sail boat that he and I tested out before accepting (I was in high-school at the time).  After we had to call Sea-Tow to pick up us, we decided not to keep it....

Thursday news and notes

1.  Victory for Lewis Tein and its lawyer Paul Calli.  No perjury finding by Judge Dresnick.  Bottom line is that people shouldn't rush to judgment.

2.  Tom Goldstein has gotten press creds for reporter Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog.  About time.  When does this blog get press credentials?

3.  Professor Berman examines how Judge Pryor will do on the Sentencing Commission:

Some comments to the prior post direct particular criticism directed toward Judge Pryor, perhaps because he was a controversial figure when appointed to the bench by President Bush.  I submit that, in this context, any assessment of Judge Pryor would be premature unless and until one has read Judge Pryor's own recent account of his history with sentencing and his perspective on the federal sentencing system.  That account appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of my own Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law as William H. Pryor Jr., Federalism and Sentencing Reform in the Post-Blakely/Booker Era, 8 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 515 (2011). I recommend that all sentencing fans read the entire OSJCL article by Judge Pryor. 

4.  The Supreme Court grappled yesterday with the meaning of silence and whether it can be used against a criminal defendant:

"It's a little scary to me that that an unanswered question is evidence of guilt," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, calling it "a radical position."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said under Texas' reasoning, a savvy suspect pleading his Fifth Amendment rights would be protected from having his silence used in court, but someone who simply said nothing would be jeopardized.
"To make a difference between those two people on whether comment can be made on the failure to respond is troublesome," Ginsburg said.
Nevertheless, the state and the federal government argued that Salinas should have invoked his Miranda rights, and because he did not, his speech -- or silence -- was fair game.
Some of the court's conservative justices had less of a problem with that. Because police do not have to read Miranda rights until a suspect is in custody, his words, behavior and even silence have been fair game in court -- at least, until now.
"It would be up to the jury, wouldn't it?" Justice Antonin Scalia asked. "The jury might well agree with Justice Sotomayor that it doesn't prove anything ... The question is whether you can ask the jury to consider that."
But Jeffrey Fisher, Salinas' attorney, had the last words in court, and he used them to make what appeared to be an effective argument -- that silence is a right, not a confession.
"It evokes an inquisitorial system of justice," Fisher said of Texas officials' reasoning. "It effectively shifts the burden of proof onto the defendant, and it demeans individual dignity by conscripting the defendant as a product of his own demise."

Reality Steve cites to the SDFLA Blog

Well, now the blog has officially made it.  Yes, links from Above the Law and How Appealing are nice, but now we've been cited to on Reality Steve:

Let me first confirm two more contestants for you. The first guy was really the only bit of info I’ve tweeted out in the last two weeks. I tweeted him out last Wednesday right before I left for California.
_________________________________________________________

14. Mike Garofola: 31 or 32, Florida, Assistant United States Attorney. I first tweeted him out last Wednesday before I left for California once I was notified this blogger had posted him. So a big thanks to David Oscar Markus on that one. He’s one of the two unidentified guys on the red team during the dodgeball date.

In other news, Hafiz Khan is seeking a new trial based on Curt Anderson's story about the snitch.  Curt Anderson covers the story about his story:

A Muslim cleric convicted of terrorism support charges for sending thousands of dollars to the Pakistani Taliban is seeking a new trial, partly because of an Associated Press interview with the key FBI informant, according to documents filed in federal court.

The attorney for 77-year-old Hafiz Khan said in the motion filed Monday that the informant provided previously undisclosed information in the March 8 interview with the AP. Informant David Mahmood Siddiqui gave the interview describing his work for the FBI a few days after a jury convicted Khan of four terrorism support-related charges.

Khan's attorney, Khurrum Wahid, said in the documents that examples of new material include the length of time Siddiqui worked on the case and details about his perilous fall 2010 undercover trip to Pakistan's Swat Valley to meet people the FBI suspected were Taliban operatives financed by Khan.

"Mr. Khan was unaware of the information that came to light only when the informant Siddiqui spoke to the press after the verdict," Wahid wrote. "This information should have been disclosed."

Obama nominates Judge Bill Pryor to Sentencing Commission

From the Montgomery Advertiser:

President Barack Obama nominated former Alabama attorney general and current U.S. circuit judge Bill Pryor to be a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the White House announced Monday evening.
Pryor, who served as attorney general from 1997 to 2004, serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. President George W. Bush appointed Pryor to the federal bench in 2004.
The sentencing commission, according to its website, is an independent agency within the judicial branch that was set up to establish guidelines and practices for sentencing in federal courts, to assist Congress in developing policy related to crime, and to analyze and research issues related to federal crime and sentencing.
Pryor would serve a term that expires Oct. 31, 2017, and would replace commissioner William B. Carr, whose term has expired.
Obama also intends to nominate Rachel Elise Barkow, the Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy at the New York University School of Law, and U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California to the sentencing commission, according to the White House.

Michael Caruso stepping up

The blog previously covered how sequestration was forcing the federal defenders to be furloughed every Friday for the rest of the year, resulting in a 20% pay cut.  Really horrible.  The Sun-Sentinel has picked up the story and discusses how the bosses at the FPD's office are really stepping up:

They say good bosses never ask employees to do something they wouldn't do themselves – even in a federal budget crisis.
The sequester has forced the Federal Public Defender's Office to close on Fridays because of employee furloughs.
But low-income people still get arrested, so the top boss in the office – the appointed Federal Public Defender Michael Caruso – has been personally handling Friday magistrate court duty in Miami while supervisors Robert Berube and Peter Birch represent inmates in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

Congrats to Chief Judge Moreno

The Notre Dame Law Association has awarded Chief Judge Federico Moreno with its St. Thomas More award:

The Notre Dame Law Association will award the St. Thomas More Award to the Hon. Federico A. Moreno (A.B. ’74) on April 12, 2013.

Judge Moreno was born in 1952 in Venezuela, and received his A.B. from Notre Dame, cum laude, in 1974. After graduation, he worked briefly as a teacher and then attended the University of Miami Law School, from which he received his J.D. in 1978.After law school, Judge Moreno was in private practice, and served indigent clients while employed by the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Miami. In 1986, Judge Moreno was appointed to the Dade County Court bench and then to the Circuit Court a year later. President George H. W. Bush appointed Judge Moreno in 1990 to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. He currently serves as Chief Judge for one of the largest federal courts in the country.

Judge Moreno served on the boards of Legal Services of Greater Miami, the Cuban American Bar Association’s Pro Bono Program, and the United Way. He received the Pro Bono Service Award of the Cuban American Bar Association and the United Way’s “People Helping People” Award. His activities also include the membership in the Notre Dame Club of Miami and the University of Miami Law School Alumni, of which he was a Director.

Federico Moreno has been married for 35 years to his wife, Cris. They have three children: Cristi, who graduated from Notre Dame Law School and is currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney; Ricki, who graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in accounting and received his MBA from Wharton; and Victoria, who is in her senior year at Notre Dame.

The St. Thomas More Award honors graduates of the University of Notre Dame “who have distinguished themselves as jurists or public servants, while exhibiting uncompromising integrity and loyalty to conscience.”

Since instituted by the Notre Dame Law Association in 2000, the award has been presented two other times: to Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., in 2004, and to Dean Patricia A. O’Hara in 2009.

  

Congrats!