"How would you feel if your 10-year prison sentence depended on a dangling modifier?"

That's the question asked by Professor Noah Feldman in this piece:

That's the situation for Avondale Lockhart, whose case was heard Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lockhart was caught in a federal sting and pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography. He had a previous state conviction for attempted rape, a form of sexual abuse.

According to federal law, Lockhart gets a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence for the child pornography if he had a prior state conviction “relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor.” The crucial words here are “involving a minor.” Lockhart says they apply to the whole sentence. Because his prior conviction was for attempted rape of a woman, not a minor, the law doesn't apply to him. The government says “involving a minor” just refers to the last part of the sentence, “abusive sexual conduct,” not to what came before. It thinks Lockhart should get the 10 years.

The conclusion:

The upshot is that language is fuzzy and imperfect -- and we need a common-sense solution to that problem, not abstract rules. The court may spend a lot of time talking canons, but it shouldn’t. Statutory purpose is the best way to resolve difficult statutory questions. Lockhart shouldn't get the enhancement under the law -- no matter how much you detest his crimes.

Baby steps

The Tampa Tribune has this nice piece about some of the relief people are getting from Obama's new drug laws.  Here's one story:

Isabelita Duran, 57, knows exactly how much time she spent in federal prison for drug trafficking.
“Twenty years, one month and seven days,” she says.
In that time, her oldest brother died of cancer. Other family members also died.
“I had three aunts die of a heart attack while I was in prison,” she says. “My cousin died.”
Her biggest fear was not getting out in time to be with her elderly, ailing mother.
“When my mother was sick in the hospital,” she said, “I couldn’t do nothing for her.”
Thanks to the retroactive changes in federal drug sentences, Duran is now with her mother. She is on home confinement at her mother’s house in Zephyrhills, wearing an ankle monitor until Feb. 3, when she will be released on probation.
“God answered our prayers,” she said. She says she’s profoundly grateful to be released well before the end of her original 35-year sentence.
She has learned her lesson, she says. “You never should take the easy way out,” she says. “If I see somebody in my ex-life (selling drugs), I would tell them don’t do it. In the long run, it’s not going to pay. You’re going to end up in prison, and that fast money is going to go like water. Nothing is worth it. Nothing is worth losing your family for all those years.”
The sentencing change took 10 years off her term for drug trafficking. The rest of the reduction came from good time behind bars and a year off for completing a drug treatment program.
She was originally arrested in 1995 and prosecuted as part of a ring that trafficked large amounts of heroin and cocaine from Puerto Rico to the Orlando area.
“It was a conspiracy to do drugs,” she says. “It was my first time. There was no violence.”
She says people higher up in the organization received much lesser sentences by pleading guilty and cooperating with the prosecution. “I chose not to cooperate with the government,” she says. “I chose to take my rights and go to trial.”
She says she’s not sure what she thinks her sentence should have been, except it shouldn’t have been more than 10 years. “If you don’t learn in 10 years, you will never learn,” she says. “Prison isn’t going to change you.” That has to come from within yourself, she says.
“I learned my lesson. I know I did wrong and I repented of it and I asked forgiveness to the Lord, you know, and I know I did wrong. I know I didn’t deserve so many years.”
She says she did her time in prisons around the country, frequently applying for transfers so she could take advantage of different programs. In a federal medical center in Texas, for example, she had an apprenticeship as a nurse’s assistant. She participated in a drug program in Connecticut.
She also attended a program on changing her ways and had a quality control apprenticeship in an inmate factory that made military cables and radio mounts. She said she obtained her GED degree and took business classes, too.
“I tried to make it a positive, but prison is never good for nobody,” she said. “But I kept thinking positive. I just worked, went to church — God kept me with a sound mind, sound spirit — did exercise.”
She was released Oct. 7 to a halfway house, but they needed her bed, so she was put on home confinement on Oct. 21. She leaves the house to attend mandated programs, such as a life skills class, and to report to her case manager.
After 20 years behind bars, she has trouble with sensory overload. Crossing the street or taking a bus are overwhelming experiences, and she doesn’t know how to use a smartphone.
One of the first things she wanted to do when she got out was eat some traditional Puerto Rican food — roasted pork and arroz con gandules, or rice with pigeon peas.
She said she loved the nurse assistant training, which gave her skills she is using now to care for her mother. She hopes to find employment along those lines when she is able.
How did she get involved in drug trafficking?
“I’m not going to blame anyone because I had a choice,” she says. “I met this man and he introduced me to it. It wasn’t his fault because I should have known better. I grew up in a Christian home with my mom. ... He showed me that kind of life, and just greed.”
Duran stresses she is not blaming the man who introduced her to drug trafficking.
“I needed money, and I got blind and I said, oh well, and I just did it. But I was young and I had a child. I needed to pay rent. I should have known because I have family that had done everything the right way. They got everything the honest way. I learned my lesson and I paid my time.”

How do we stop racial discrimination in jury selection?

The Batson process certainly doesn't work...  SCOTUS will take up the issue this morning.  From USA Today:

The original jury pool for Timothy Foster's 1987 murder trial in Rome, Ga., included 10 blacks among 95 potential jurors. During the selection process, prosecutors highlighted their names, circled the word "black" on their questionnaires and added handy notations such as "B#1" and "B#2."

After more than half the pool was excused for specific reasons, each side was allowed to make a set number of additional strikes — as long as it wasn't because of race or gender. On a sheet they labeled "definite NO's," prosecutors listed the five remaining black prospects on top, and they ranked them in case "it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors."

Foster, who is black, was swiftly convicted of murdering an elderly white woman. At sentencing, the prosecutor urged the all-white jury to impose death in order to "deter other people out there in the projects" — where 90% of the residents were black.

In a case that would appear to have multiple smoking guns, Foster's conviction and death sentence will go on trial Monday at the Supreme Court — and so, too, the process by which judges consider claims of racial discrimination in jury selection.

The case is important on two levels. If the justices find that Foster's constitutional rights were violated and instruct that he be given a new trial, the ruling could impact the way prosecutors, defense attorneys and trial judges handle jury selection in the future. And because Foster received a death sentence, it could fuel concerns previously voiced by two justices that the death penalty itself may be unconstitutional — in this case because of racial bias.

And for all of you UM haters out there, I give you this to enjoy this Monday morning:

Marco crushes Jeb

I love watching these debates and seeing what advocacy works and what doesn't.  Watch Marco crush Jeb with this counter-punch:



Would a more effective attack be about judicial nominations?  Rubio won't give the blue-slip on his own judicial nominee:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) keeps taking heat for skipping out on his Senate duties while he's out on the presidential campaign trail. But he's still effective at one thing in the upper chamber: blocking his own judicial nominee.
Rubio is withholding his so-called "blue slip" from the Judiciary Committee to prevent Florida district judge nominee Mary Flores from advancing. The committee won't let any nominee move forward until it has blue slips -- they're literally blue pieces of paper that reflect a senator's support -- from both of a nominee's home-state senators. Florida's other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, turned in his blue slip eight months ago. But nothing from Rubio.
The weird part is that Rubio supports Flores. He and Nelson recommended her to President Barack Obama, and the president formally nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in February. She's now been waiting for a hearing for 242 days, but can't move without Rubio's sign-off. She would fill a seat that's been empty for 532 days, and that court is so overloaded with work that it's considered a judicial emergency.
Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos said the senator "takes very seriously" his role in confirming judges to the federal bench.
"The Senate Judiciary Committee is still conducting a full review of the nominee’s background and record," Burgos said. "After that review is complete, Senator Rubio will make his own determination based on the committee’s review and his own further review."
It's a curious argument given that Rubio himself recommended Flores. It's also a self-defeating one: Turning in a blue slip has no effect on a committee's review of a nominee. A spokeswoman for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee chairman, said Flores' nomination isn't moving because of Rubio's outstanding blue slip and because a committee review is underway.
Republicans have been slow-walking Obama's judicial picks all year, and prolonged "committee reviews" is one way they can keep doing it. The GOP calculation is that Obama will be gone after 2016, at which point a Republican could be in the White House. If they can hold out until then, they can give GOP-picked judges lifetime jobs on the federal bench.

HT Glenn Sugameli

Michael Szafranski sentenced to 2 1/2 years

Judge Dimitrouleas issued the sentence in this Rothstein-related case. From the Sun-Sentinel:

Michael Szafranski told a crowded courtroom Monday that he betrayed his family and friends, lied, sinned and violated both U.S. law and the strict religious rules he was raised to follow.
"I come before you ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated by my actions," Szafranski told U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas before being sentenced for helping Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein rip off millions of dollars from investors, including members of his synagogue. "To say I am remorseful is an understatement."
Szafranski, 37, of Surfside, was sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison after the judge agreed to follow a recommendation from the prosecution and defense. He pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy in July.
He sobbed as he hugged his wife goodbye and was taken into custody in the Fort Lauderdale courtroom.

Szafranski said greed drove him to become a "despicable person" and that he has done everything he can think of to try to atone for what he did.
Szafranski "made full restitution" to victims five years ago when he paid more than $6.5 million to the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm bankruptcy trustee, his attorney wrote in court records. That amount represented more than 90 percent of his family's assets, the defense said.

Coaches matter (so do lawyers).

See, e.g., UM and the Dolphins.

Monday notes:

1.  Don't laugh during sentencing or your sentence can be doubled.

2.  Finally some relief for the crazy expensive prison calls.

3.  Judge Emmet Sullivan says give drug defendants a break (like corporations get).  Here's his opinion: "Drug conspiracy defendants are no less deserving of a second chance than bribery conspiracy defendants. And society is harmed at least as much by the devastating effect that felony convictions have on the lives of its citizens as it is by the effect of criminal convictions on corporations."

Judge Ungaro published in U.M. Law Review

The intro from, Hon. Ursula Ungaro, Foreword: The Evolution of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals: A New Era of Diversity on the Bench, 69 U. Miami L. Rev. 929 (2015):

From a historical perspective, 2014 was a pivotal year for the youngest circuit court in the nation. Within a four-month period, three new judges were confirmed and sworn in to serve on the Eleventh Circuit—all having clerked for distinguished Eleventh Circuit judges and all of them women. Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum, a former U.S. District Judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge, and Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, was elevated to the seat left vacant by Judge Rosemary Barkett. Judge Julie E. Carnes, a former U.S. District Judge and Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia, assumed the seat vacated by now Senior Judge James Edmondson. And Judge Jill A. Pryor, formerly a litigation partner at the Atlanta-based law firm of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, holds the seat left vacant by Judge Stanley Birch. This dramatic turnover of a quarter of the court’s authorized judgeships transformed the Eleventh Circuit into one of the most gender-balanced federal appellate courts in the country, with five active female judges to the court’s six active male judges.
There is no doubt that the new judges will enjoy long careers in which they will have ample opportunity to influence the development of the law of the circuit. More immediately, however, their confirmations provide the court with much needed relief. Traditionally, the Eleventh Circuit has been among the busiest circuits, annually shouldering over 500 appeals per judgeship. By December 2013, however, the court had four judicial vacancies and found itself unable to staff its panels with at least two Eleventh Circuit judges. This compelled Chief Judge Carnes to declare a judicial emergency under 28 U.S.C. § 46(b). On October 17, 2014, following the confirmations of the new judges, Chief Judge
Carnes issued General Order 42, vacating the emergency designation. With the confirmation of the new judges, there are now eleven active judges. But the Eleventh Circuit actually has twelve authorized judgeships, the same number as when it was first created. While twelve is a small number in relation to the population now served, and the judges theoretically could request additional judgeships under the judiciary’s own guidelines, Congress has declined to authorize any additional appellate judgeships since 1990. Even if it were inclined to do so, the Eleventh Circuit judges likely would not seek additional positions; they have consistently voiced their opposition to expansion of the court, citing the efficiency, collegiality, coherence, and predictability in the development of law that come with a smaller court.
In 2014, the merit of those values was evident. Incredibly, in 2014, 6,087 appeals were filed and 6,239 appeals were terminated. Though hindered by four judicial vacancies for the greater part of the year, the court terminated 3,796 appeals on the merits and 356 through written decisions, more than any other circuit on both an absolute and per judgeship basis. Further, despite terminating more appeals per judgeship than any other circuit, the court was able to maintain the speedy administration of justice, ranking fifth among the twelve circuits in median case turnover. This productivity, notable in and of itself in light of the judicial vacancies, is more impressive considering the breadth and importance of the issues considered.
As one might imagine, the court considered an array of substantive and procedural issues in 2014. While the court did not issue any blockbuster opinion matching the likes of Bush v. Gore or that striking down the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional, it did consider a range of issues of first impression, including the scope of medical malpractice liability on the high seas and the constitutionality of enforcing “no loitering” signs posted by private individuals. Moreover, the addition of the three female judges has ushered in a new era of diversity on the court, which is likely to impact how the court approaches the issues presented to it, particularly social issues.

HT Glenn Sugameli

Questions of the day

1. Will the Supreme Court dump the death penalty?  (Scalia wouldn't be surprised).

2.  Should judges be allowed to force defendants to give blood or go to jail?  (Judge Marvin Wiggins so ordered).

3.  Will the feds investigate the Corey Jones shooting?  (The national media is here to examine what happened).

4.  Is duct tape the best thing to use to smuggle in cocaine?  (Well, this guy got caught).  Photo from the Sun-Sentinel: