Wednesday News & Notes -- judicial nomination edition

1.  Lots of media coverage about the White House leaving Will Thomas' name off of the list of renominated judges.  Here's the HuffPost:

The White House has thrown in the towel in trying to confirm William Thomas to a federal court seat in Florida, signaling an end to a puzzling case of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blocking his own judicial nominee.
In a pile of about 200 nominees President Barack Obama resubmitted to the Senate at the start of the year, Thomas was noticeably absent. An administration official confirmed Tuesday that his resubmission isn't coming.
"The nomination of Judge William Thomas was returned by the Senate and Senator Rubio has made his objection clear, so the President chose not to renominate him," the official told The Huffington Post.
Thomas would have made history, if confirmed, as the first openly gay black man to serve as a federal judge.
Rubio has been single-handedly blocking Thomas for months, despite recommending him to Obama in 2012 as a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Rubio indicated in September he would not submit his "blue slip" to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- a courtesy, but not a hard rule, honored in the committee that allows a home-state senator to advance or hold up a nominee. Florida's other senator, Bill Nelson (D), submitted his blue slip months ago.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has hinted in the past that he would revisit the blue slip process if Republicans abuse it. Asked for his thoughts on the White House sinking Thomas' nomination after Rubio used the blue slip rule to block him, Leahy said only, "Let me find out about that one."
There's a particular urgency to filling this Florida judgeship, which has been vacant for more than 20 months. The court backlog is so bad that the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts has deemed it a “judicial emergency."
Rubio spokeswoman Brooke Sammon said Tuesday she had nothing new to say regarding why Rubio became so adamant about blocking Thomas. She pointed to a past comment on the senator's concerns with the nominee.
"The nomination of Judge Thomas has also been thoroughly reviewed, and Senator Rubio has determined that Thomas’s record on the state court raises serious concerns about his fitness for a lifetime federal appointment. Those concerns include questions about his judicial temperament and his willingness to impose appropriate criminal sentences, particularly in the two high-profile cases of Michele Traverso and Joel Lebron last year. After reviewing Thomas’s record, Senator Rubio cannot support moving forward with the nomination," Sammon said.
HuffPost previously reviewed materials provided by Rubio's office that outlined the senator's justification for sinking Thomas' nomination, and nothing egregious stood out in either of the two cases. Instead, Rubio appears to be critical of Thomas for being too lenient in one case and too emotional in the other.
Florida Democratic lawmakers say Rubio's opposition is political as he tries to win back support from tea party members after angering them by advocating comprehensive immigration reform in 2012. Rubio's name has also been floated as a potential 2016 presidential contender.
"Judge Thomas is a well-qualified jurist," Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told HuffPost in the fall. "There is a serious underrepresentation of minorities on the bench and partisan obstructionism isn’t making it any better."

I'm not sure how the process works now.  Will the JNC reopen the interview process for that slot or will it send up the names it sent previously?

2.  Meantime, the Dems are not too happy with the President about the nominees in Georgia:

U.S. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, has asked to testify against President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees for Georgia, another twist in a public dispute that pits Georgia’s Democratic members of Congress and civil rights community against the first black president’s White House.
Scott wrote a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on Friday to request an appearance at a yet-to-be scheduled hearing on a slate of six Georgia nominees.
Democrats have complained of being shut out of negotiations between White House officials and Georgia’s Republican senators, who have the power to block committee consideration for home-state judicial nominees by “blue slip” custom enforced by Leahy. Democrats are upset that only one of the six nominees is a minority, that Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs voted to keep the 1956 version state flag – with its Confederate battle emblem -- when he was in the state Senate and that attorney Mark Cohen defended the state’s voter ID law (even though he did so on behalf of then Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a Democrat).
Wrote Scott:

“If confirmed, the federal bench in Georgia will not reflect the current demographics of the state for at least another generation.  There will soon be only one active African-American district court judge in Georgia.  In addition, the views of some of these nominees reflect the regressive politics of the past.  I want to share some very important and critical background information with the Committee before these nominations are considered.
“It is an abomination that these nominees for lifetime appointment were drafted in secret, not vetted by any legal groups among the President’s supporters, and announced on a holiday weekend. We must not allow lifetime appointed judges to be rammed through the hearing process without sufficient input from the people who will be affected by their future judicial actions.”

 3.  There's also an opening in Alabama:

Civil rights advocates are encouraging President Barack Obama to nominate an African-American to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which would be a first from Alabama.
The high-level court, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court, has had only two black judges in its history, both from Florida.
The latest opening — created when Judge Joel Dubina of Montgomery took semi-retirement in October — will be the first chance a Democratic president has had to appoint someone from Alabama to the 11th Circuit, which was created in 1981.
Race is a significant issue for the Deep South circuit, which has a combined black population of about 7.2 million. The 11th Circuit hears appeals from Florida, Georgia and Alabama, and is a source of many high-profile discrimination cases involving voting, employment and redistricting.
Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, is the lone black member of Alabama’s congressional delegation and said diversity should be a priority.
“I think now is not the time to falter on the president’s commitment to diversifying the bench, and that is especially true on the 11th Circuit,” Sewell said Tuesday. “Alabama has some very talented African-American lawyers who should be considered.”
And U.W. Clemon, Alabama’s first black federal judge who is now in private practice in Birmingham, is also hoping for a black nominee.
“It would be historic,” Clemon said.
The Alabama Democratic Party and an advisory committee to Sewell have interviewed several black candidates for the 11th Circuit job, and many of their names have been forwarded to the White House for consideration.

The President has resubmitted 64 judicial nominees to the Senate...

...including Robin Rosenbaum and Jill Pryor.  

Notably, William Thomas was left off of the list.  This really is too bad as he never got his chance for an up or down vote with the Senate.  The federal judiciary's loss is the state court's gain.  

"At the cost of being blunt, permit me to resort to scatological commentary to tell you Joel that you're about the most untrustworthy, double-dealing sack of s--t I've met I can't remember how long."

That's your quote of the day from a bankruptcy court filing by Sandy Rosen, a retired attorney and bridge player, in a letter to Joel Tabas.  John Pacenti covers the story here.

Oh, and FYI:

sca·tol·o·gy  (sk-tl-j, sk-)n. pl. sca·tol·o·gies

1. The study of fecal excrement, as in medicine, paleontology, or biology.

Great New York Times articles this weekend

The first is Adam Liptak's look at how two different jurisdictions are trying new approaches to make sure Gideon's promise is upheld:

Their proposed solutions reflect competing schools of legal thought. The approach in Washington State is a top-down exercise of federal power, pushing lawyers to make sure they meet with their clients, tell them their rights, investigate their cases and represent them zealously in plea negotiations and at trial.

The one in Comal County, Tex., is a bottom-up appeal to the marketplace. Defendants there will soon be able to use government money to choose their lawyers in much the same way that parents in some parts of the country use government vouchers to pay for grade school.

The county calls it “client choice.” Another name: Gideon vouchers.

In Washington, Judge Robert S. Lasnik drew on Supreme Court decisions involving school busing and prison overcrowding to impose a federal monitor on two Washington cities that had, he found, failed to provide meaningful representation to poor criminal defendants.

Judge Lasnik, of the Federal District Court in Seattle, found that the cities of Mount Vernon and Burlington had effectively instituted a “meet and plead” system in which lawyers handling 500 cases at a time would “often meet their clients for the first time in the courtroom, sometimes with a plea offer already in hand.”

“The system is broken to such an extent,” he wrote, “that confidential attorney-client communications are rare, the individual defendant is not represented in any meaningful way, and actual innocence could conceivably go unnoticed and unchampioned.”

The second is an editorial about how bad prosecutorial misconduct has become and urging something to be done about it:

Yet far too often, state and federal prosecutors fail to fulfill that constitutional duty, and far too rarely do courts hold them accountable. Last month, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, issued the most stinging indictment of this systemic failure in recent memory. “There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land,” Judge Kozinski wrote in dissent from a ruling against a man who argued that prosecutors had withheld crucial evidence in his case. “Only judges can put a stop to it.”       

***

 Judge Kozinski was right to castigate the majority for letting the prosecution refuse to turn over evidence “so long as it’s possible the defendant would’ve been convicted anyway,” as the judge wrote. This creates a “serious moral hazard,” he added, particularly since prosecutors are virtually never punished for misconduct. According to the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, multiple studies over the past 50 years show that courts punished prosecutorial misconduct in less than 2 percent of cases where it occurred. And that rarely amounted to more than a slap on the wrist, such as making the prosecutor pay for the cost of the disciplinary hearing.       

Brady violations are, by their nature, hard to detect, but Judge Kozinski had no trouble coming up with more than two dozen examples from federal and state courts just in the last few years, and those are surely the tip of the iceberg. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 43 percent of wrongful convictions are the result of official misconduct.

The Brady problem is in many ways structural. Prosecutors have the task of deciding when a piece of evidence would be helpful to the defense. But since it is their job to believe in the defendant’s guilt, they have little incentive to turn over, say, a single piece of exculpatory evidence when they are sitting on what they see as a mountain of evidence proving guilt. The lack of professional consequences for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence only makes the breach of duty more likely. As Judge Kozinski wrote, “Some prosecutors don’t care about Brady because courts don’t make them care.”

Courts should heed Judge Kozinski’s call, but it will take more than judges to fix the problem. Prosecutors’ offices should adopt a standard “open file” policy, which would involve turning over all exculpatory evidence as a rule, thus reducing the potential for error.

Fighting prosecutorial misconduct is not only about protecting the innocent. It is, as Judge Kozinski wrote, about preserving “the public’s trust in our justice system,” and the foundation of the rule of law.

I have been calling for open file reform for a long time and have never heard a good response about why we shouldn't have open files from the government.  If any current prosecutor would like to debate this issue, I will set it up with one of the local organizations.

Time to pay your dues

Just in case you didn't get the e-blast today from the Clerk's office:

Pursuant to Administrative Order 2012-4, all members of the Bar of the USDC-SDFL, are required to pay a renewal fee of $25.00 starting in 2012, and every other year thereafter. The Court will begin accepting fees for the 2014 renewal cycle on or aboutJanuary 6, 2014. Failure to pay the 2014 renewal fee before the deadline of April 14, 2014, will result in a $50 late fee and deactivation of the attorneys CM/ECF account. If 2012 renewal and late fees are not paid by April 14, 2014, the attorney will no longer be a member of the USDC-SDFL Bar and must reapply for membership. Please visit our website [www.flsd.uscourts.gov] for information

New beginnings

The courthouse is open, but it's going to be a very quiet Thursday and Friday.  For those of you working, you can check out the Chief Justice's report on the judiciary here.  Here's a fun and depressing snippet:

The year’s end brings predictable constants, including the revival of favorite phantoms —Scrooge’s ghosts and George Bailey’s guardian angel — who step out from the shadows for their annual appearance and then fade away.  Who doesn’t welcome the familiarity of the seasonal cycles, or retelling classic stories that, at their core, contain important truths? There are, however, some cycles from which we would all wish a break.  At the top of my list is a year-end report that must once again dwell on the need to provide adequate funding for the Judiciary.

I would like to choose a fresher topic, but duty calls.  The budget remains the single most important issue facing the courts.  This year, however, let’s take a page from Dickens and Capra.  Let’s look at what has made our federal court system work in the past, what we are doing in the present to preserve it in an era of fiscal constraint, and what the future holds if the Judiciary does not receive the funding it needs....

After rising four percent in 2012, filings in the regional courts of appeals dropped two percent to 56,475 in 2013.  Appeals involving pro se litigants, which amounted to 51 percent of filings, fell one percent.  Criminal appeals decreased 13 percent....

Filings for criminal defendants (including those transferred from other districts) decreased three percent to 91,266.  Excluding transfers, fewer defendants were reported for most types of major offenses, including drug crimes.  Filings for defendants charged with immigration violations dropped five percent.  The southwestern border districts accounted for 75 percent of the nation’s immigration defendant filings.  Defendants prosecuted for sex offenses rose 10 percent.  There also were increases in defendants charged with violent crimes and regulatory offenses....

The 131,869 persons under post-conviction supervision on September 30, 2013, was less than one percent below the total one year earlier. Persons serving terms of supervised release after leaving correctional institutions increased one percent to 109,379 and constituted 83 percent of all persons under supervision. Cases opened in the pretrial services system in 2013, including pretrial diversion cases, declined six percent to 103,003.

Or maybe you want to read this 11th Circuit unpublished per curium opinion.  Below is the intro, and I bet you can guess who wrote it (thanks to my tipster for sending this along):

The defendants in this case participated in a multi-state prostitution
enterprise involving spas where the masseuses offered to provide clients with “happy endings” in exchange for cash. The scheme, however, did not end happily for the five defendants who brought this appeal. A jury ultimately convicted all five of them –– Alexandr Postica, Aleksandra Liubina, Natalia Federova, Alina Priadko, and Saida Babaeva –– of aiding and abetting a violation of the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a), and of conspiring to violate the Travel Act. Postica was also convicted of conspiring to violate three additional statutes: 8 U.S.C. § 1328, 8 U.S.C. § 1324a(a)(1)(A), (a)(2), and 18 U.S.C. § 2421. The other four defendants in this appeal were not charged with conspiring to violate those three other statutes. The district court sentenced Postica to concurrent terms of 15 months imprisonment while the other four defendants were sentenced to time served. They now appeal their convictions on various grounds. The defendants challenge their convictions, not their sentences.

 Judge Kopf has ended his excellent blog, which is a shame.  Here's the last post, and sone of his concluding remarks:

Before I conclude this last post, I wish to make several points:

• I am not quitting because of ethics concerns. Such problems are real, but vastly overblown. A thoughtful judge has about the same chance of violating the Code of Conduct when writing a book, giving a speech, authoring a law review article or writing a blog post.

• Conspiracy buffs need not fret and anti-judge nuts need not cheer. No one has given me the slightest trouble about expressing myself here. I am quitting voluntarily and without a nudge from anyone.

• Although I am truly worn out, I am OK. I am not quitting because of health reasons.

• This is a powerful medium for, among other things, making federal trial judging transparent and for trying to wrap one’s arms around the conundrum of judicial role.. I hope some other federal trial judge takes up that hard but enormously satisfying labor.

• I look forward to commenting on other blogs now that I am out of the biz.

• To my astonishment, I have made several, perhaps many, friends along the way. I will maintain the e-mail address for the site, and I welcome hearing from these kind, smart (Oxford comma coming but just for fun), and thoughtful people. But, I don’t promise to respond as quickly as before. The foregoing said, you and each of you have my sincere thanks. Readers have taught me many valuable lessons about how to become a better judge and human being.

• I will keep the blog “alive” for archival purposes, but nothing more. I will shut down the comment section in a week or so.

Happy New Year SDFLA!

Justice Sotomayor was asked to participate in the festivities in New York. From the LA Times:

New York City is going to kick in the new year with one of its own: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a native of the Bronx, has been tapped to lead the Times Square countdown on New Year's Eve on Tuesday.

The announcement was made Sunday by the organizers of America's highest-profile New Year's Eve event, which typically features star performances and always concludes with the dropping of a ball to mark the stroke of midnight.

Sotomayor -- who grew up in the Bronx housing projects and became the first Latina on the nation's highest court in 2009 -- will push the button to start the dropping of the ball, and will lead the final 60-second countdown to the new year, organizers said.

“Justice Sotomayor is an inspiration to many, and it is a privilege to welcome her to our celebration to ring in 2014,” Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said in a statement. “Who better to join us in the Crossroads of the World than one of New York’s own?”

Sotomayor won't be the only Latina to play a high-profile role at the ceremony, with musical artists El Dasa and Jencarlos Canela among the musicians giving performances in the closing hours of 2013.

Rap duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Miley Cyrus were also scheduled to perform. 

Best posts of 2013

By far the post with the most hits this year was "Local AUSA Mike Garofola to be on The Bachelorette," (with over 20,000 hits) followed by "Go, Dore, Go" (which was about his novel motion to compel NSA records, with almost 15,000).  Make your own conclusions about the readership... 

But before you do, know that other top hit posts were mostly the scoops regarding JNC lists, judges, and magistrates --  including Robin Rosenbaum being vetted for the 11th Circuit seat and the Rubio/Thomas blue slip controversy.  With these posts in particular (of the almost 2,500 in total), the blog was able to fulfill its mission of getting District news out quickly and accurately to the local federal court family.