Thursday News & Notes

1.  Judge Lenard denied Juan Caro's bid for a new trial, rejecting his request for a hearing to find out when the government knew about Nevin Shapiro's bad acts.  From the Herald:

Lenard rejected a new bid by defense attorney Arturo Hernandez to hold an evidentiary hearing to explore whether a Justice Department lawyer who teamed up with a Miami prosecutor in the La Bamba trial knew about the FBI’s investigation of Shapiro in New Jersey months before he took the stand.
Hernandez filed documents such as government emails in hopes of challenging the Miami prosecution team’s timeline.
The Miami prosecutors first informed Hernandez of the Shapiro criminal probe when Shapiro was charged in April 2010.
Hernandez argued that had he been told about the Shapiro probe, he would have asked him about his investment scam on the witness stand. Hernandez said he was “disappointed” with the judge’s ruling.

2.  The Justice Department found lots of bad Miami police shootings.  From the NY Times:

Federal officials have found that the Miami Police Department engaged in a pattern of excessive force that led to a high number of shootings by officers, among them episodes that resulted in the deaths of seven young black men over an eight-month period in 2011.
The findings, released on Tuesday, came after a two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and they identified “troubling” practices, including delays in completing investigations of officer-involved shootings, questionable police tactics and a lack of adequate supervision. From 2008 to 2011, officers intentionally fired their weapons at people 33 times, the investigation found.       

In a summary addressed to Tomas P. Regalado, Miami’s mayor, and Manuel Orosa, the police chief, the Justice Department noted that its own investigation would have been completed sooner if not for the Police Department’s “frequent inability to produce necessary documents in a timely fashion.”

 Here's the letter to the Mayor.

3.  Young guns can see who the best closer is at this upcoming competition.  My advice -- don't start with a knock knock joke.

4.  Judge Kozinski is so good.  Footnote 1 from a 1992 opinion of his that was recently emailed to me:

We do not (except in the caption) follow the appellant's counsel's interesting practice of writing the names of the people involved in CAPITAL LETTERS. Neither do we follow the appellee's counsel's practice of writing appellant's name in BOLD-FACED CAPITAL LETTERS. Nor do we intend to write all numbers both as text and numerals, as in "eleven (11) loose teeth, two (2) of which were shattered[;] [m]oreover, her jaw was broken in three (3) places." Appellee's Brief at 7. Finally, we will also not "set off important text" by putting it on "separate lines" and enclosing it in "quotation marks."
See id. at 10. While we realize counsel had only our welfare in mind in engaging in these creative practices, we assure them that we would have paid no less attention to their briefs had they been more conventionally written.

AUSA Michael Garofola doesn't get a rose

This was Michael G.'s last episode (prior blog coverage about the federal prosecutor on the Bachelorette here).  He had a good run on the show, making it to the final five. 

 
 


Gossip Cop has the recap of the show.  Some highlights:

Next up was Michael G, getting to have a 1-on-1 with Hartsock for the first time.
After going tobogganing, the federal prosecutor opened up about his estrangement with his father, his battle with Type I diabetes, and finding out his live-in girlfriend was cheating on him.
“The silver lining to all this is that — I mean this from the bottom of my heart — is I’m feeling these feelings again,” he told Hartsock, adding to the camera later that he’s “falling in love.”
For her part, the reality star told the camera that “Michael is one of the greatest guys I ever met.”
***
At the rose ceremony, Hartsock ultimately gave roses to everyone except Michael.
She explained to the shell-shocked contestant her other relationships were “growing differently.
“I’m heartbroken,” he confessed as Hartsock went on to praise their “friendship,” before wishing each other “the best.”

Did you know we had a secret court, operated by similar thinking judges on an ex parte basis?

The New York Times had a front page piece on the FISA Court this weekend.  The whole thing is worth a close look.  From the article:

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
***
Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court.

Closer to home, visa-fraud prosecutions are up.  According to the Herald:

A report released in April by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) showed that visa fraud criminal prosecutions now rank third among the top 10 immigration law prosecutions in the country.
Also, a Government Accountability Office report issued in September said the State Department screens visa applicants for fraud.
But GAO auditors found that consulates do not systematically employ methods to prevent fraud.
“State has a variety of technological tools and resources to assist consular officers in combating fraud, but does not have a policy for their systematic use,” the GAO report said.
In response, the State Department said it generally agreed with GAO findings and would implement recommendations to improve fraud tracking .
The GAO report said the top 10 countries where visa fraud occurs are China, Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Brazil, Ghana, Cambodia, Jamaica, Peru and Ukraine.

Your Friday moment of Zen

Gotta love technology.  Here's Rachel Maddow on the Zimmerman trial getting Skype Bombed:

And here's the actual raw footage of the whole thing:

 

Happy Birthday to the Blog!

Yesterday, the blog turned 8 years old.  Pretty neat.

This was the original post, asking the President to appoint a Floridian to the Supreme Court.  We are still waiting 8 years later....

Since then, your first local legal blog has had 2,361 posts and almost 2 million page views. 

The most popular post this year was breaking the story that AUSA Mike Garofola was going to be a contestant on the Bachelorette.  Second, was Dore Louis' NSA motion.

After the United States, the blog's readership is as follows:

Entry	Pageviews
United States	918641
Russia	12746
Germany	12597
United Kingdom	11530
Canada	10289
France	8799
Norway	7695
Netherlands	3722
Ukraine	3142
Malaysia	1532

The blog has broken a number of stories this year, including your newest magistrate judges and the nomination of Will Thomas to the federal bench (he needs to get confirmed already!).  Speaking of magistrates, Alicia Valle was officially named to the bench yesterday.  Congrats to her!

It's been really fun for me to post over the last 8 years, and I hope you have enjoyed the blog as much as I have had doing it.

Happy Fourth of July!

--David

What was Chief Judge Roberts' favorite case of the Term?

A.  DOMA

B.  Voting Rights
C.  Affirmative Action
D.   DNA
E.  Fane Lozman's house boat case

Yup, you got it -- E.  The Chief Justice loved the case from the Southern District of Florida about whether the floating structure was a house or a boat.  From Forbes:

Turns out the Chief Justice felt the same way. In this interview on C-SPAN, John Roberts called the lawsuit over whether a floating house was a boat one of his favorites from the last term.It’s surprising to hear this, given the momentous cases that were also before the court: The Voting Rights Act, gay rights, affirmative action, human gene patents — nearly all of them had broader implications for society at large than Fane Lozman’s Quixotic battle with the authorities of a coastal city in Florida over whether they had the power to haul his home away.“There are going to be  half-dozen cases people are going to be talking about,” Roberts said in the interview with Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III.“The littler ones can be quite fascinating,” he said, however. “My favorite from last term was a case called Lozman."“The way cases develop in the law, you have something that seems to fit not comfortably on either category,” Roberts said. “Depending on which side you were on, it was either a floating home or a house boat.”In Lozman’s case, it was a seedy-looking house on a floating platform, connected to shore with a garden hose and an extension cord. Lozman had towed it hundreds of miles around the Florida peninsula, but the house didn’t have any power to move itself. City officials argued it was a boat for purposes of obtaining a maritime lien and impounding it. The court decided otherwise, in a decision with implications for much more significant structures like floating casinos.“We had a lot of fun with it …looking at the different characteristics and posing a lot of interesting hypotheticals at the argument,” Roberts said. At one point, the justices seemed to be toying with the lawyer for Riviera Beach, trying to back him into ridiculous definitions of a boat.Roberts asked if an inner tube qualified. After all, it could support a human and move him from place to place. Then Justice Stephen Breyer chimed in: “This cup. what about the cup?” Justice Sonia Sotomayorasked, “what about a garage door?” And Elena Kagan followed up with: Take the inner tube, and you know, paste a couple of pennies on the inner tube. Now it carries things.”

On a separate note, I haven't been watching the Bachelorette, but I'm told that local AUSA Michael Garofola has made the top 5....  And that he is very against other contestants cursing on the show.  

So you wanna be a federal judge?

The Federal JNC is reconstituted and its finally taking applications for Judge Seitz's open seat.  Applications are due July 31, and interviews will take place on August 21.

The Florida Bar website listing the JNC members was wrong, and so my prior post had the wrong list of JNC members.  The correct list is:

Kendall Coffee

Alex Acosta

Georgina Angones

Reginald Clyne

Vivian de las Cuevas-Diaz

Albert Dotson

Phil Freidin

Carey Goodman

Cynthia Johnson-Stacks

Manny Kadre

Ira Leesfield

Dexter Lehtinen

Richard Lydecker

Thomas Panza

David Prather

Dennis Alan Richard

Jon Sale

Stephen Zack

Marilyn Holifield

Harley Tropin

Danny Ponce

You can grab the application here if you are interested.

Meantime, Holly Skolnick's memorial service was Sunday, and it was an amazing outpouring of love and support.  Really nice memories of her from her family and friends...  What a big loss for the community. Holly is survived by her husband Richard Strafer,* their daughter, and her parents. 

*As an aside, Richard is working on the Kaley case (along with Howard Srebnick), headed to the Supreme Court next Term, which Curt Anderson covered yesterday:

When Kerri and Brian Kaley came under federal investigation for allegedly stealing medical devices, they took out a $500,000 line of credit on their New York house to hire lawyers. Yet after their indictment in 2007, prosecutors sought to prevent the Kaleys from using the money because the government intended to seize the house.

The Kaleys insisted they were legally reselling the medical items. At the very least, they wanted a hearing to determine whether the government's case was strong enough to justify freezing most of their assets and denying them the right to hire the attorney of their choice.

It's an issue federal courts around the country are deeply divided over. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to settle the matter after agreeing earlier this year to hear the Kaleys' appeal.

Snitching ain't easy

Paula McMahon from the Sun-Sentinel has been covering an interesting "pill-mill" prosecution before Judge Marra. There have been a series of articles (here, here, and here) covering one cooperating witness in particular -- a Christopher George. Apparently, Mr. George discussed some of the prior testimony with his father, which was recorded on a jail phone:

Christopher George is hoping to get his prison term reduced, provided that federal prosecutors think his anticipated testimony against two South Florida doctors is worth a reward. But a recorded call the 32-year-old inmate made to his father from the Palm Beach County Jail may have put a kink in his plans.
Despite a message that plays at the start of every jail inmate call warning all parties that they are being recorded, the two men had a phone conversation that went on for about 15 minutes last week — with dad John George giving a play-by-play of how another witness testified in court and coaching his son on what questions might come up and what might sound good on the witness stand.
***
On the recorded call, George, his father and a woman who accompanied the dad to court last week, were heard hashing out the details of the first trial witness's testimony and what appeared to be playing well to the jury and what wasn't working.
"We took a lot of notes …. we took pages of notes," John George, 62, told his son during the call, explaining that it didn't look good when a witness downplayed any benefit he might receive for his testimony. "The defense attorneys … jump on that. They will say, 'How much time to do you expect to get off.'"
After detailing the highlights of the defense's strategy and line of questioning, John George threw in a critique of attorney Michael D. Weinstein's cross-examination of the witness: "This guy … really can slice things up … He was pretty good."

Although the defense moved to exclude George's testimony entirely based on these recordings, he has been permitted to testify.  Sounds like the stuff of movies:

The businesses brought in so much cash that his staff quickly stopped using cash registers because they filled up too quickly, he said. They tried cash drawers for a while but George said that slowed down business too much and eventually they settled on dropping the cash into two-gallon trash bins by their desks.
Hassled by police and reporters, George said he moved from the first clinic to locations on Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale, then Boca Raton and Palm Beach County.
As the business evolved, he realized that a prior criminal conviction for illegally importing and selling steroids was bringing more unwanted attention and he put the clinics in a friend's name, though he still ran them.
George testified he saved some money, stashing $5 million in safes in his mom's attic and bedroom, but he also blew a lot of it. He bought three homes, some boats and so many luxury cars that he struggled to recall the details.
"I went through a lot, I don't remember all of them," George testified, listing off Range Rovers, BMWs, a Mercedes, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, and a freightliner truck that cost more than $200,000.

Some great in-depth coverage by Ms. McMahon. 

-- Meantime, another court is fed up with discovery/Brady violations.  This time the 6th Circuit.

-- Finally, a big congrats to Robert Luck, who was named Circuit Court Judge by Governor Scott.  Luck is a good guy, and smart.  A nice addition to the bench.