More judgeships in the SDFLA?

The U.S. Courts Judicial Conference is recommending 3 more judgeships in our District.  From the press release:

In other action, today the Conference adopted the results of the biennial judgeship survey conducted by its Judicial Resources Committee, which identified the need for five new appellate and 68 district judgeships. The Judicial Conference has provided the Director of the Administrative Office with the authority to seek separate legislation for Conference-approved judgeships in selected districts, providing the Judiciary with more flexibility in pursuing new judgeships in courts with the greatest needs.
Since the last comprehensive judgeship bill was enacted nearly 25 years ago, the number of cases filed in the U.S. courts of appeals increased by 28 percent and the number of cases filed in the district courts increased by 41 percent – civil filings grew by 40 percent and criminal filings by 43 percent.
The 26-member Judicial Conference is the policy-making body for the federal court system. By statute the Chief Justice serves as its presiding officer and its members are the chief judges of the 13 courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade. The Conference meets twice a year to consider administrative and policy issues affecting the court system, and to make recommendations to Congress concerning legislation involving the Judicial Branch.

H/T Glenn Sugameli

What will happen to Judge Fuller?

We may find out this week.  From the LA Times:

Federal District Judge Mark E. Fuller was controversial even before he was arrested on allegations of beating his wife last year.
The Alabama judge was criticized for sitting on cases brought by the government even as his aviation company was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded business. Appointed by a Republican, he was denounced for putting a former Democratic governor in manacles after a corruption conviction.
He was the talk of the courthouse for having an extramarital affair with his courtroom assistant, and for his messy public divorce.
Fuller, 56, is now battling bipartisan calls to resign over a fight he had seven months ago with the same former courtroom assistant, whom he'd married. The argument started after she accused Fuller of cheating on her with his law clerk.
Adding to Fuller's problems was that a few weeks after he was arrested, video was released of NFL star running back Ray Rice knocking his fiancee unconscious, putting a national spotlight on spousal abuse. The Baltimore Ravens dropped Rice.
"If an NFL player can lose his job because of domestic violence, then a federal judge should definitely not be allowed to keep his lifetime appointment to the federal bench," said Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.).
Sewell and both of Alabama's Republican senators, along with other members of the state's congressional delegation, have called on Fuller to step down.
Fuller's judicial career now rests largely with a five-judge review panel that has investigated his behavior and is expected to release its findings this month. A House of Representatives committee is gearing up for possible impeachment hearings against Fuller, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002.
Retired Alabama federal Judge U.W. Clemon, who as chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Birmingham dealt with similar ethical issues, said that Fuller's constitutional appointment may not be enough to save his job.
When a judge's behavior results in him "being thrown in jail like a common criminal, that's not within the conduct that is condoned by the Constitution," Clemon said.
Kelli Fuller, the former court assistant who was divorced from Fuller after the incident, has not spoken in public about what happened at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlanta last August. But her version is amply represented in police files.
"He's beating on me! Please help me," Kelli Fuller pleaded to a police dispatcher, who called for an ambulance and could be heard telling a co-worker, "I can hear him hitting her now."

If an NFL player can lose his job because of domestic violence, then a federal judge should definitely not be allowed to keep his lifetime appointment to the federal bench. - Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.)

The policeman who entered the hotel room found her with "visible lacerations to her mouth and forehead" and said the room smelled of alcohol.
"Mrs. Fuller stated when she confronted him about their issues, he pulled her hair and threw her to the ground and kicked her," the police report said. "Mrs. Fuller also stated she was dragged around the room and Mr. Fuller hit her in the mouth several times with his hands."
Judge Fuller was taken to jail, where he spent the night on a charge of misdemeanor battery. But he avoided a criminal record by agreeing to a pretrial diversion program, including a drug and alcohol evaluation and 24 sessions of domestic violence counseling.
Nebraska federal court Judge Richard Kopf, who writes a blog about judicial issues, called it "a sweet deal."

Hope everyone enjoyed Pi day this weekend.  Get ready for March Madness this week.  (And yes, the Canes were robbed.)

Briefer briefs?

From the front page of the WSJ:

Before the current limit was established in the 1990s, briefs were capped at 50 pages, a rule dating back to when attorneys used typewriters. According to a 2,600-word “short history” of the last rule change prepared by a University of Pennsylvania law professor, lawyers were skirting the page limit by squeezing the space between lines, letters and words. So they decided a word limit would better discourage verbiage.
A judicial advisory committee made up of judges, lawyers and law professors selected by Chief Justice John Roberts now says that page-to-word conversion miscalculated how many words were in an average 50-page brief. The committee conducted a study finding that a typical page runs about 250 words. It did a new calculation—250 multiplied by 50—to come up with the 12,500 limit.
Lawyers say they’re skeptical of that logic. “Identifying a purported mathematical error that occurred 15 years ago does not provide a sound basis to change current policy,” wrote the Council of Appellate Lawyers, a nationwide group affiliated with the American Bar Association.
Michael Gans, clerk of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, who oversaw the word-count study, says the process couldn’t have been more painstaking. It was carried out by a high-school graduate who interned at his office and spent a recent summer in a cubicle counting every single word of 200 printed-out briefs that served as the sample.
“I felt sorry for her, but that’s what she did all summer,” Mr. Gans said. “She still wants to go to law school.”
“It is harder to write a short opinion than a long opinion,” said Judge Silberman. “Perhaps that explains why some lawyers object. I think the computer is a bit problematic. It’s too easy to write too much.”

Justice Sotomayor spoke yesterday at Davidson:

She told a basketball court of seated students that she’d spoken at “countless” colleges and universities, and Davidson was the first school to seat students “front and center.”
Pointing to alumni and townspeople in the bleachers, she said: “Generally those guys are down here.”
The students cheered.
Sotomayor, the court’s third woman and first Hispanic justice, spoke honestly about her life and how her experiences have affected her nearly 25 years as a judge.
She was raised in public housing projects in New York’s South Bronx, primarily by her mother when her father suddenly died when she was 9.
After high school, she earned a scholarship to Princeton University, where “when I arrived, I thought I was an alien – not in a different land, but in a different world.”
“The people there had a better education than I did then,” she said. “They were taking spring breaks and flying places and they were traveling to Europe. Europe was a place I thought I’d never see.”
***
She said the current court could use more diversity of experiences. All its justices went to Ivy League schools, most are from the Northeast and none were defense lawyers before they took the bench. Few were small firm practitioners and many were academic lawyers. None, except for Sotomayor, had state government experience.
“That’s a bad thing,” she said. “We’re being asked to make decisions that affect every aspect of life. We’re reviewing state criminal law convictions every single day. It’s valuable to have someone there who can explain some of that.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article13844528.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article13844528.html#storylink=cpy

 Oh yeah, and two terror brothers pleaded yesterday before Beth Bloom.  From Paula McMahon:

Two brothers from Oakland Park pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges Thursday, admitting they plotted a terrorist attack on landmarks in New York City and later assaulted two deputy U.S. Marshals while in custody.
Raees Alam Qazi, 22, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 32, both pleaded guilty in federal court in Miami to one count of conspiring to provide support to terrorists and conspiring to assault two federal employees. The younger brother pleaded guilty to an additional charge of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida.

Sheheryar Alam Qazi and brother Raees Alam Qazi, of Oakland Park, are accused of planning a terrorist attack in New York City and assaulting two deputy U.S. Marshals while in custody. They are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass... (Photos courtesy of the Broward Sheriff's Office)

The Qazi brothers, who wore beige prison scrubs and were handcuffed, shackled and under tight security in court, both said "Guilty" when asked how they wanted to plead. They said little more than "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" in response to the judge's questions. Both men have thick beards, Sheheryar Qazi's hair was closely shaved and the younger brother's hair is about the same length as when he was arrested.

Chief Judge K. Michael Moore speaks to Federal Bar Association

It was a big turnout to see the new Chief in his first FBA talk, which went through the numbers of the district.  There were even graphs:

Supreme Court to review Florida death penalty

The Supreme Court granted cert on the following issue:

HURST, TIMOTHY L. V. FLORIDA: The motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to the following question: Whether Florida's death sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment or the Eighth Amendment in light of this Court's decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002).

Judge Martinez may be vindicated after all.

Weekend News and Notes

1. The biggest news this weekend is that charges are likely coming against Senator Menendez. Via the Miami Herald:

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s longtime friendship with a wealthy Palm Beach County eye doctor may soon come back to haunt the powerful Democrat from New Jersey.

The Department of Justice plans to file corruption charges against Menendez in the coming weeks, capping a two-year probe of his relationship with ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, CNN and several major news outlets reported on Friday. And Melgen — a generous donor of trips and campaign money to Menendez — is under a separate investigation himself by a federal grand jury in West Palm Beach on allegations that his practice over-billed Medicare by millions of dollars.

Prosecutors and the FBI have been focusing on Menendez’s efforts on behalf of his political benefactor, including personally trying to resolve the physician’s high-stakes billing dispute with the taxpayer-funded Medicare program. During the period the senator sought to help the doctor, Menendez went on several trips with Melgen to the Dominican Republic on the physician’s private plane and stayed at his resort-area home in 2010 — all without reporting the gifts.

As the controversy about their relationship escalated two years ago, the senator quietly wrote a personal check to reimburse Melgen for the unreported trips, but that didn’t end several on-going federal probes.

On Friday evening, Menendez insisted during a news conference in his home state that he has done nothing wrong.

“Let me be very clear, I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law,” he said. “Every action that I and my office have taken for the last 23 years that I have been privileged to be in the United States Congress has been based on pursuing the best policies for the people of New Jersey and this entire country.”

2. A businessman who helped smuggle Yasiel Puig to the U.S. was sentenced to 1 month by Judge Scola. From Curt Anderson:

A businessman who helped Los Angeles Dodgers star Yasiel Puig get out of Cuba to sign a rich American baseball contract was sentenced Friday to a month in prison and five months' house arrest for violating U.S. immigration laws.

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola on Friday gave Gilberto Suarez, 41, less than the one-year maximum partly because his main role in the 2012 smuggling venture was having Puig driven in a taxi from Mexico City to the Texas border. Other conspirators, including boat captains and members of Mexico's violent Zetas drug gang, were involved in other stages of the trip.

Scola also said he was showing Suarez some leniency because Puig and others in the smuggling trip were threatened by the Zetas and possibly by corrupt Mexican police.

"I think the safety of the player and the other aliens was also paramount in his mind," the judge said.

Defense attorney Bijan Parwaresch said Suarez initially sought only to assist Puig in signing a Major League Baseball contract. Cuban players who defect often establish residency in a third country, such as Mexico, so they can sign lucrative free agent deals rather than smaller contracts if they come directly to the U.S. and are subjected to baseball's draft.

Where Suarez went wrong, he added, was deciding to take Puig to the U.S. border without immigration papers. Under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, Cubans who reach U.S. territory are usually permitted to stay, even if their arrival is violates the law.

"It didn't start out with a criminal intent," Parwaresch said at a hearing. "It ended up as a criminal action."

3. Lazer Collazo to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, Jay Weaver reports:

Prominent Miami-Dade County baseball coach Lazaro “Lazer” Collazo plans to plead guilty to newly filed misdemeanor charges of possessing unlawful steroids, according to his defense attorney.

Collazo was among eight defendants who were originally charged in federal court with conspiring to distribute steroids through a Coral Gables anti-aging clinic, which was at the center of a Major League Baseball scandal.

Collazo, 51, was accused of distributing them to high school athletes, while the other seven were charged with supplying them to MLB players — including New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, a onetime Miami-Dade high school standout.

Collazo’s defense attorney, Frank Quintero, confirmed Friday to the Miami Herald that his client has agreed to the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. attorney’s office that would recommend two years of probation. His change of plea hearing is scheduled for March 16.

4. SCOTUSblog got a day pass to the press box last week. Volokh has the story on the interesting work around:

A little wrinkle in the long-running quest of the renowned SCOTUSblog to secure credentials for its coverage of the Supreme Court: Today SCOTUSblog correspondent Amy Howe sat in the court’s press section by virtue of a day pass that the court has begun issuing to the blog. It’s the second such pass that SCOTUSblog has used, according to Publisher Tom Goldstein — with the first instance being Monday’s oral arguments on Arizona’s approach to redistricting.

“They have really tried to accommodate us,” says SCOTUSblog’s Goldstein. “They’re not trying to get in our way.”

SCOTUSblog has expended a grueling effort for credentials in the Supreme Court chamber, a process complicated by Goldstein himself: He’s both the publisher of the blog as well as a frequent Supreme Court practitioner as a partner in Goldstein & Russell, P.C. Just last month, the high court issued a new policy on press credentials that officially stiff-arms SCOTUSblog on getting its own credential but should make room for its veteran correspondent, Lyle Denniston, to continue covering proceedings with what’s known as a “hard pass.”

Denniston, a 57-year veteran of high court reporting, has long held his hard pass pursuant to his association with Boston NPR station WBUR. He’s now applying for a new pass under the auspices of his independent blog, “Lyle Denniston Law News.”

Here’s how the workaround operates: Denniston’s posts appear first on his eponymous blog, unedited. Then SCOTUSblog staff picks them up, edits them and posts a version on SCOTUSblog. Not all of the content on Denniston’s blog makes this migration. The arrangement allows the court to ensure that Denniston is acting as an independent journalist for his own outlet and not as an agent of Goldstein’s firm through SCOTUSblog, says Goldstein.

The day passes also help. Today, SCOTUSblog correspondent Howe used it to take in the entire oral argument in King v. Burwell, the much-watched case that threatens federal subsidies in 30-odd states that declined to set up their own health-care exchanges. Howe teamed up with a well-coordinated SCOTUSblog team, as Denniston also reported from the press section and two other SCOTUSbloggers took in the proceedings via piped-in audio in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge.

See you Monday

Sorry for the slow blogging the last few weeks. Lots of travel and work. But will be back to normal on Monday. Please email me any tips/stories/trial updates!

Cooperating witness killed in Haiti

Jacqueline Charles has the sad story here:

Oriel Jean — the former security chief of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and whose testimony in U.S. courts a decade ago helped take down key figures in Haiti’s drug trafficking underworld — was shot to death Monday in Port-au-Prince.
Haiti National Police Spokesman Gary Desrosiers confirmed Jean’s murder between the Delmas 29 and 30 neighborhoods not far from the international airport. Desrosiers said he was shot twice by three men on a motorcycle. News of Jean’s death and photos of his bullet-riddled body lying face down in a pool of blood on the street quickly spread through social media.
A friend of Jean’s who declined to be named for fear of reprisals told the Miami Herald that Jean was riding with a Dominican co-worker when the vehicle was struck from behind by a motorcycle. Jean was gunned down after he stepped out of the vehicle to check the damage.
“Nothing happened to the Dominican guy. [Jean] was the main target,” the friend said.
In 2005, Jean was sentenced to three years in prison in a money-laundering plea deal after helping the U.S. Attorney’s Office convict several Haitians and Colombians of moving tons of Colombian cocaine through Haiti to the United States. Among those convicted were Haitian former top police officers — some of whom are back in Haiti after serving their sentences — and a powerful drug kingpin, Serge Edouard.
Edouard received a life sentence after Jean testified that the drug trafficker gave him and other law-enforcement officials hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect his cocaine shipments to the United States.
At Jean’s November 2005 sentencing, U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez complimented him for his “good work.” In his court testimony, Jean indirectly implicated Aristide and also testified against him before the grand jury. Aristide was never charged and the statue of limitations ran out before U.S. law-enforcement officials could prove that he collected kickbacks from traffickers.