Lolita the whale to face 11th Circuit today

David Ovalle has the story:

A federal appeals court will entertain arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging the captivity of Lolita, the killer whale who has performed at the Miami Seaquarium for decades.Animal-rights activists have long argued that Lolita, captured in the Pacific Northwest decades ago, lives in a tank far smaller than those holding other captive killer whales. The Animal Legal Defense Fund and others sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture but lost.Their appeal will be heard Tuesday morning in Miami by judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 11th [Circuit]. Last month, federal authorities added the aging whale – who has been in captivity for more than 40 years – to the endangered species list, a protection given her wild family nearly a decade ago.

“Cattywampus, onomatopoeia and antidisestablishmentarianism. Now, backto your question”

That was Wisconsin Badger Nigel Hayes having some fun with a stenographer at a press conference after the game:

When asked about his unexpected words, Hayes explained his fascination with the stenographer’s job. “She does an amazing job of typing words, sometimes if words are not in her dictionary, maybe if I say soliloquy right now, she may have to work a little bit harder to type that word,” Hayes said, “or quandary, zephyr, Xylophone, things like that, that make her job really interesting.”

I thought our court reporters would get a kick out of that.

Meantime, it's spring break, so the traffic is supposed to be good this week.  But not so much (via the Herald):

A major shift in traffic on the Dolphin Expressway will disrupt driving routines as construction enters a new phase at one of South Florida’s busiest highway interchanges.Starting early Sunday, traffic going west on State Road 836, which now stays to the right, will be shifted to the left lanes. And traffic headed to State Road 826, the Palmetto Expressway, West Flagler Street or Northwest 87th Avenue/NW 12th Street will be shifted to the right lanes.The shift is only the latest major milestone in the $560 million project to overhaul the massive interchange linking 836 with 826, partly funded by federal stimulus money. The construction project, which began in 2009, is expected to be finished in the first three months of 2016.The change on Sunday, when traffic is lighter, could cause confusion, congestion and delays among the commuting crowd during Monday’s rush hour and beyond.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article15083315.html#storylink=cpy

And for those stuck in traffic, here's the question of the day -- should you be able to have a specialty license plate with a confederate flag.  The Supreme Court is hearing argument this morning.  From the AP:

The Supreme Court is weighing a free-speech challenge to Texas' refusal to issue a license plate bearing the Confederate battle flag.Specialty plates are big business in Texas, where drivers spent $17.6 million last year to choose from among more than 350 messages the state allows. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles says nearly 877,000 vehicles among more than 19 million cars, pickup trucks and motorcycles registered in Texas carry a specialty plate.But a state motor vehicle board turned down a request by the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for a license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy, as well as Maryland.The justices are hearing arguments Monday over whether the state violated the group's First Amendment rights.

 

Judge Hoeveler event

I think Judge Hoeveler has now broken the record for awards/events in a judge's honor!  Here's a picture from the St. Thomas event this week (by Melissa Visconti):

New Clerk of the 11th Circuit

I missed this announcement back in February:

Chief Judge Ed Carnes has announced that Douglas J. Mincher will succeed John P. Ley as the Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Mr. Mincher has served as chief deputy clerk of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia since 2010. He holds a BA degree in political science and history from Youngstown State University and earned his MS degree in Judicial Administration from the University of Denver, College of Law. Mr. Mincher has nearly 25 years of experience as a court administrator in federal, state, and municipal courts. He is married to Diana Mincher, and they are the parents of three adult children.

Why she's NOTORIOUS RBG

Gotta love her expression in Pelosi's selfie:

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.