Judge Scola sentences Khan to 25 years...

...10 more than the prosecution was asking for. The AP's Curt Anderson has this:

Hafiz Khan, 78, had faced up to 60 years behind bars on four terrorism support-related charges. But U.S. District Judge Robert Scola opted for less than the maximum term, although it is 10 years more than the sentence recommended by federal prosecutors.

The case against Khan, who was imam at a Miami mosque prior to his 2011 arrest, was built on hundreds of FBI recordings of both telephone calls and Khan's face-to-face conversations with an undercover informant. In the calls, Khan discusses details of numerous wire transfers to Pakistan over a three-year period that totaled about $50,000.

Khan also was overheard praising deadly attacks by the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, including a 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. In another call, Khan was heard wishing for the deaths of 50,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

"May Allah utterly destroy them. The destruction . if they do not repent and do not revert to the right path," Khan said on the FBI recording.

Scola said several times Friday that the evidence against Khan was strong.

"I can't think of a case where the evidence would be more overwhelmingly clear," the judge said.

During trial, Khan testified in his own defense that although he sometimes made strongly worded political statements, the money he sent to Pakistan was for family, friends and charity. In particular, Khan said he sent money to a religious school, or madrassa, that he'd founded in Pakistan's Swat Valley. That school was closed for a time by the Pakistani government, which claimed it was a Taliban hideout and training ground.

Khan also claimed in his testimony that he only pretended to support extremist Taliban views — including toppling Pakistan's government in favor of one that would impose strict Islamic law — in order to obtain $1 million promised him by the man who turned out to be the FBI informant. Prosecutors said that was a complete fabrication.

"Terrorists need money. What he did was put lives at risk," said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley. "It put Pakistani lives at risk and it put American lives at risk."

In a lengthy statement to the judge in Pashto through an interpreter, Khan again insisted he was not a terrorism financier and that his sole intent was to help the poor in his native Swat Valley.

"I did not send one dollar to the terrorists or the fighting Taliban," Khan said. "I am absolutely against the terrorists and the violence."

Khan's wife, Fatima, appealed to Scola from her wheelchair, also in Pashto, to allow him to come home. She said his rants against Pakistan and the U.S. on the FBI tapes did not mean he was a proponent of violence.

"He gets angry a lot. He is not speaking from his heart," she said.

CJA rates being cut by $15/hour to $110/hour

That's the decision to save the Defenders from having to make massive layoffs around the country. From the USA Today article:

The federal judiciary for the first time is cutting the fees of court appointed defense lawyers, including those representing death penalty defendants, to deal with the "dire consequences'' of required government budget reductions known as sequestration.

The reductions, outlined in a notice to U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake, chairwoman of the Federal Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, are part of an unprecedented criminal justice cost-cutting effort that also will scale back operations of federal probation services at a time when authorities are planning to rely more heavily on programs like probation to help reduce the rising federal prison population.

The cuts in attorneys' fees will be implemented next month with payments dropping from $125 per hour to $110 in non-death penalty cases and from $179 per hour to $164 in cases where capital punishment is being sought.

The reductions are aimed at saving $50 million during the next 13 months to avoid further cuts into the full-time staff of the federal defenders service. The defender program consists of both full-time public defenders, who have been targeted for furloughs and layoffs, and private court-appointed lawyers who assist in the representation of the indigent.

In addition to the fee cuts, millions of dollars in fees to the outside court-appointed counsels, scheduled for payment in fiscal year 2014 (beginning in October), would be deferred into fiscal year 2015.

In the letter to Blake made public Monday, William Traxler Jr., chairman of the Judicial Conference's Executive Committee, warned that the fee cuts "may impact the delivery of justice, but are necessary to avoid permanent damage to the federal defender program.''

The sequester hasn't affected the U.S. Attorney's office in the same way as it has not had to fire employees or have furlough days.

It also hasn't impacted BOP. In fact, the government is asking for 15 years in prison (a life sentence) for 78-year old Hafiz Khan. Via Curt Anderson:

An elderly Muslim cleric convicted of sending tens of thousands of dollars to finance the Pakistani Taliban terror organization should spend at least 15 years in prison, federal prosecutors recommended Wednesday.

Hafiz Khan, 78, could get as much as 60 years behind bars when he is sentenced Friday because each of the four terrorism supported-related convictions carry maximum 15-year sentences. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley said in court papers that combining all four potential sentences into one would be sufficient punishment.

Sentencing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge Robert Scola.

Shipley said hundreds of FBI recordings of Khan on the telephone and speaking in person with an informant show he supported the Taliban's attacks on Pakistani and U.S. targets and knew his money was going to promote violence. Some calls showed Khan praising attacks such as a deadly 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, and the failed 2010 attempt to detonate a bomb in New York's Times Square.

"We are not contending that Khan's misconduct tops the scale of terrorism offenses," Shipley said. "But his sending money to militants in Pakistan helped the Taliban put Pakistani and American lives in jeopardy and fostered violence, not peace."

Khan's attorney, Khurrum Wahid, filed separate papers Wednesday asking for a more lenient but unspecified sentence, pointing to Khan's advanced age and medical problems. He also cited Khan's testimony in his own defense that he intended the roughly $50,000 he sent over a three-year period to be used for family, friends and charity in his Pakistan homeland. Before his 2011 arrest the imam at a Miami mosque, Khan also founded a religious school, or madrassa, in Pakistan's Swat Valley.

Breaking -- Applicants for the Southern District of Florida District Bench

Your next two federal judges will come from this list (which is in no particular order):

1. Peter Lopez
2. Gary Eason
3. Marina Wood
4. Darrin Gayles
5. Lornette Reynolds
6. Jeffrey Colbath
7. Barry Seltzer
8. Robin Rosenberg
9. Mary Barzee Flores
10. Beth Bloom
11. Dennis J. Murphy
12. Daryl E. Trawick
13. Candance R. Duff
14. Beatrice Butchko
15. Lisa Hu Barquist
16. Marjorie Gadarian Graham
17. Martin J. Bidwill
18. Jack Tuter
19. David Haimes
20. Ricardo J. Bascuas
21. Lourdes A. Rodriguez de Jongh
22. Isabel “Cissy” Boza Skipper
23. Carlos Augusto Rodriguez
24. Meenu Sasser
25. Thomas J. Rebull
26. Migna Sanchez-Llorens
27. Veronica Harrell-James
28. John Thornton

UPDATE -- Although I believe that this list is complete, it is possible that it is not. If you know of other people who have applied, please email me.

Judge Rosemary Barkett is leaving the 11th Circuit

She's headed to the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, which was established in 1981 to resolve claims between the two countries.

Judge Barkett will be missed.  She's been a strong, independent voice on the court for a long time. 

That'll be vacancy #3 on the 11th Circuit.

Speaking of vacancies, applications were due today for the open district seat.  If I can get a hold of the list of applicants, I will post it.

Monday news and notes -- Back to school edition

1.  Judge Huck is trying to tutor young lawyers.  Via the DBR:

Senior U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck said when he got out of law school in 1965, he didn't need to consult a career counselor.
Freshly minted lawyers simply cracked open the Martin-Hubbell Law Directory and figured out where they wanted to start practicing law. Then they started to make phone calls.
"Back then if a law firm was really busy and they needed a lawyer, they needed them right then," said Huck, who after graduating the University of Florida loaded up his Volkswagen Beetle and headed south to an Orlando firm.
Coming off the Great Recession, it's not so easy for new lawyers these days.
So Huck organized two seminars aimed at making it a little easier. Early last month, he again assembled the Federal Court Observer Program, a mainstay for seven years. He also reached out to young lawyers at his alma matter.

2. Go Dore Go.  Dore Louis' creative motion for NSA records started a new trend.  I think it's hilarious that the Miami Herald refers to Dore Louis not as Mr. Louis or Louis, but as Dore:

One of the first phone-records motions in a criminal case came from Marshall Dore Louis, a Miami defense attorney who represents Terrance Brown, implicated in a federal bank truck robbery conspiracy case. Dore may have started a trend.

After Dore filed his motion in June, he received calls and email messages from dozens of attorneys across the country interested in filing similar motions in their cases.

In addition, many more attorneys in drug-trafficking cases nationwide are said to be preparing motions after Reuters revealed on Aug. 5 that the NSA is a partner in a special Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) unit that supplies tips to local law-enforcement authorities. Those tips come from a massive phone-records database that the DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD) taps, Reuters said.

The expected onslaught of demands for NSA records from defense attorneys is an ironic twist for a once-secretive agency whose acronym was often jokingly said to stand for No Such Agency.

3.  Did Steven Steiner learn his lesson.  Judge Williams hands him a 15-year sentence:

Steven Steiner, a former executive for a Fort Lauderdale insurance brokerage business that fleeced hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison.
Steiner, 61, was convicted earlier this year of conspiring to launder the money to support his expensive lifestyle in waterfront homes in Fort Lauderdale and Maine, and a condominium in Manhattan.
His defense lawyer urged U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to show mercy and sentence him to about five years, far less punishment than recommended under federal sentencing guidelines.
“Mr. Steiner is admittedly an imperfect soul,” attorney Joaquin Mendez wrote in an objection to the sentencing guidelines. “However, he requests that the court consider his good deeds and sensibilities, which the sentencing guidelines generally ignore, into account in determining the appropriate sentence.”
Federal prosecutors strongly disagreed, arguing that a 22-year prison term under the sentencing guidelines for Steiner’s offense would not be “unreasonable.”
Williams essentially split the difference in determining the punishment for the former vice president of Mutual Benefits Corp., the business that was shuttered by federal regulators almost a decade ago.
Steiner offered no apology for his wrongdoing, and instead penned a rambling, remorseless note to the judge. He described as “draconian” the indictment against him and his former partner, saying they lost everything in forfeiture to the U.S. government.
“There were clearly no real winners at the end of this trial,” Steiner wrote in his 14-page note, saying he was “no doubt one of America’s biggest losers.”
“I was ultimately punished for the greed and arrogance of others,” he concluded.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/16/3566762/convicted-fort-lauderdale-executive.html#storylink=cpy

Sentences in synthetic marijuana case

Marc Seitles represented the owner, John Shealy, who was sentenced to 18 months.  From the Sun-Sentinel:

Shealey, of Royal Palm Beach, and Harrison, of Lantana, cut deals with federal prosecutors, each agreeing to plead guilty to a count of conspiring to break federal laws. They admitted plotting to distribute an illegal substance and selling a misbranded drug. Both agreed to turn over more than $2 million in assets.
Attorneys for Shealey and Harrison argued Wednesday that their clients had prior attorneys advise them the products they were manufacturing were legal. Whenever the federal government listed a chemical as illegal, Kratom Lab would destroy any products containing it, said Marc Seitles, Shealey's attorney.
The defense attorneys questioned why Shealey and Harrison weren't issued cease-and-desist letters to stop making the products.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Stefin said the two men had to have known what they were doing was highly questionable, if not illegal. They were marketing Mr. Nice Guy as a herbal incense with anyone, including children, able to buy it at gas stations, convenience stores and online.
...With their plea deals, neither man faced more than five years behind bars. Federal prosecutors recommended a 28-month sentence for Harrison and three years in prison for Shealey.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra said he found their cases unusual because of the ambiguities surrounding the laws governing the chemicals.

No bond in "chat room" terror case

No surprise on the bond issue, but the twist here is that the FBI used an undercover agent in a chat room to build this case against people in Saudi Arabia and Kenya.  Curt Anderson has the details:

Two men accused of providing thousands of dollars and recruiting fighters for terrorist organizations overseas pleaded not guilty Tuesday at a hearing where prosecutors revealed the case against them was built largely by an undercover FBI agent posing on the Internet as a terror finance middleman.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ricardo Del Toro said at a bail hearing that the agent, known only as an "Online Covert Employee," actually used brother and sister personas in an Internet chat room to make contact with Gufran Ahmed Kauser Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India who relocated in 2011 to Saudi Arabia. Mohammed was interested in using the FBI undercover agent to help finance al-Qaida and affiliated terror groups in Syria and East Africa, authorities say.
In July 2012, for example, Mohammed told the FBI agent in the chat room that he wanted one of his wire transfers "to fund an al-Qaida terrorist attack on United States citizens or the United Nations," Del Toro said. No specific targets were named.
The other suspect, 25-year-old Mohamed Hussein Said, is a Kenyan involved with al-Shabaab, an African terror organization currently attempting to replace Somalia's government with one that observes strict Islamic law, Del Toro said. Said, who had never travelled to the U.S. until his arrest, identified terrorist fighters for a Syrian offshoot of al-Qaida and received more than $11,000 from Mohammed for the al-Shabaab organization, court documents show.
In one of the online chats, Said in February said he had one recruit "who would be willing to conduct a martyrdom operation within the United States and be like one of the 19," the indictment says. Del Toro said Said was referring to the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The two men never met in person until their arrests earlier this month in Saudi Arabia. Del Toro said the FBI undercover agent posed as Mohammed on the Internet to convince Said to travel from Mombassa, Kenya, to Saudi Arabia. The men were taken into custody by the Saudis, turned over to the FBI and immediately flown to Miami to face the terror support charges.
The undercover online FBI agent worked out of the Miami office and many of Mohammed's wire transfers actually wound up here. All told, Mohammed attempted to send more than $25,000 to fund al-Qaida and the affiliates, according to the indictment.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John J. O'Sullivan ordered both men held without bail until trial. Mohammed's attorney, Vince Farina, said his client had a computer science master's degree from UCLA and had brothers living in both California and Texas, as well as parents in California. Farina did not provide their names.

Tuesday news and notes

1. Eric Holder's speech was quite a doozy and is a breath of fresh air for the draconian sentences that have been doled out over the past 20 years.

Even though law enforcement is complaining that their snitches won't be as motivated under the new policy, the real question is whether the actual policy goes far enough. Unfortunately, the policy is not law and is not binding on prosecutors.  In other words, it leaves the discretion with individual prosecutors as to whether to follow it or not.  (In the recent Brady policy issued to prosecutors, it's become clear that nothing much has changed because prosecutors still say that they are only obligated to turn over what's required by the rule and not by the policy statement of their boss.) Rumpole also raises the real concern (in the comments) about whether the new policy will be ignored when defendants actually decide to fight and go to trial... Let's see how this plays out; It's still a good start, which should be applauded because judges will be free to judge again instead of imposing arbitrary min/man sentences.

UPDATE --the actual policy can be read here.

2.  The ABA has approved a resolution in support of legislation authorizing judgeships.  Via Legal Newsline (HT GS): 

At this year’s meeting, which runs through Tuesday, delegates voted in favor of comprehensive legislation to authorize needed permanent and temporary federal judgeships, with particular focus on the federal districts with identified judicial emergencies “so that affected courts may adjudicate all cases in a fair, just and timely manner.”

The ABA also is urging President Barack Obama to advance nominees for current vacancies for federal judicial positions “promptly” and the U.S. Senate to hear and vote on the nominations “expeditiously.”

The association noted that Congress has not passed comprehensive legislation authorizing additional judgeships since 1990.

Since that time, federal district courts have experienced a 38 percent growth in caseloads but have seen only a 4 percent increase in judgeships.

“Legislation is needed to ensure that the federal judiciary has the judgeships it needs to adjudicate all cases in a prompt, efficient and fair manner,” according to the association’s executive summary of the resolution.

“As of May 16, 2013, there are 85 federal judicial vacancies and 24 nominations pending. Filling these existing judicial vacancies is essential.”

Last month, U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Chris Coons introduced legislation that would create 91 new federal judgeships in two federal circuits and 32 federal districts across 21 states.

Maybe we should confirm the outstanding judges first...