Unstoppable

If I were her age and had suffered the health set backs that she has had, I would not have the energy to be on the speaker circuit.  (I don't have that energy now!).  But RBG is pretty amazing.  From USA Today:

Over her 86½ years on earth, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been lauded as a women's rights pioneer, a Supreme Court justice and a cultural icon. These days, she receives hearty ovations just for staying on the job.

To satisfy some of her liberal allies, she must do that for at least another 16 months.

Fresh off three weeks of radiation treatment for her fourth bout with cancer, the woman fondly known as the "Notorious RBG" is traveling the nation giving speeches, staging conversations and accepting awards and honorary degrees. By demonstrating her vitality before adoring audiences, she hopes to tamp down concerns about her longevity.

"As cancer survivors know, that dread disease is a challenge, and it helps to know that people are rooting for you. Now, it's not universal," she quipped Thursday night at the famed 92nd Street Y in New York City. She vowed to stay on the job "as long as I'm healthy and mentally agile."

The concerns are based on the political calendar. Ginsburg must remain on the nation's highest court at least until January 2021 to avoid giving President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate the opportunity to replace her. Such a doomsday scenario for liberals would give conservatives a 6-3 hold on the high court – solidifying their majority, perhaps for decades to come.

***
Ginsburg resumes her national hopscotching tour Monday at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., where she will appear before about 1,600 fans. The following week, she will be at Amherst College in western Massachusetts.

The court's 2019 term begins Oct. 7, briefly keeping Ginsburg in the nation's capital, where her latest accolade was a two-story mural unveiled Monday on a downtown D.C. building. When two weeks of oral arguments are completed, she is scheduled to travel cross country to California.

"It's a travel schedule that would exhaust the rest of us," says Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal group People for the American Way. “This is a statement that’s she’s making, and she seems to draw energy from it.”

For years, Ginsburg has traveled and spoken publicly more than most of her colleagues. Before Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's death in 2016, the two ideological opposites occasionally made joint appearances that called attention to their longtime friendship. Ginsburg has made more than 170 public appearances in the last five years; only Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has done more.

"When I am active, I am much better than when I am just lying about feeling sorry for myself," Ginsburg said at the Yale Club event. "The necessity to get up and go is stimulating."

No bond for AA employee who sabotaged a plane

From Fox News:

Prosecutors said Alani glued styrofoam inside the nose of the aircraft that disabled a part used to gauge airspeed and other critical flight data. Pilots detected the issue before takeoff, and a subsequent inspection discovered the problem.

Airport surveillance captured Alani, who walks with a limp, working on the plane's nose for about seven minutes. He was identified by co-workers.

After his arrest earlier this month, he told agents he acted “out of my evil side” and “wanted to do something to delay” the plane “to get overtime” for maintenance repairs, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Medetis told the judge Wednesday.

While Alani is not yet charged with a terror-related crime, Medetis said the potential links to the Islamic State give rise to the possibility that his actions had a darker purpose beyond what he insisted was a labor issue.

The judge ultimately denied Alani bail.

Whenever I hear the word “sabotage,” I think of this.

Who was the only Supreme Court Justice ever impeached?

Answer: Samuel Chase. This Washington Post story has the interesting story, which shows that judges shouldn't always just side with prosecutors:

Samuel Chase was a frequent subject of the rumor mill for his entire life. As a young lawyer in Annapolis, Md., in the 1760s, he was expelled from a debating society for “extremely irregular and indecent” behavior. He was also an early critic of the Stamp Act and headed up Anne Arundel County’s chapter of the Sons of Liberty.

His height and broadness added to his gruff and intimidating personality. He also had a reddish-brown complexion, earning him the nickname “Old Bacon Face” — which some might consider its own impeachable offense.

***

President George Washington nominated Chase to the Supreme Court in 1796. At the time, though, the highest court in the land had little to do, so justices still served on lower courts.

And those lower courts are where Chase’s problems arose.

While presiding over the 1800 sedition trial of Thomas Cooper, Chase railed against Cooper during his instructions to the jury, seeming to act more as a prosecutor than a judge.

Before a treason trial in Philadelphia, he showed defense attorneys his opinion before the trial had even taken place. He later sentenced the man to death. (President John Adams pardoned him.)

At a sedition trial in Richmond, he sat a juror who said he had already made up his mind that the defendant was guilty.

And while presiding over a grand jury in Delaware, Chase angrily refused to dismiss a grand jury after it declined to charge a man with sedition.

But all of that is background to why he ended up getting impeached:

Once they had the reins of power, the Democratic Republicans overturned a law that had created lower courts in a bid to limit the power of Federalist judges installed by Adams.

But that didn’t stop Chase. In 1803, before a Baltimore jury, Chase denounced the Democratic Republicans for overturning the law.

When Jefferson found out about it, he sent a letter to a congressman friend strongly suggesting that — cough cough, hint hint — only Congress could do something about Chase.

The next year, the House voted 73-32 to impeach him, charging that he “tend[ed] to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested.”

The Senate trial took place in February 1805. Over 10 days, senators heard from more than 50 witnesses, according to Rehnquist. Chase maintained that he could not be impeached for poor judgment, but only indictable offenses.

Two-thirds majorities were needed to convict on each of the eight articles of impeachment. If the votes had gone strictly down party lines, Democratic Republicans would have had more than enough; at the time, they dominated the Senate 25 to nine, according to the Senate Historical Office.
But that isn’t how the votes went. Though majorities found Chase guilty on three of the eight articles, none passed the two-thirds threshold.

Old Bacon Face had dodged the frying pan.

And a precedent had been set, Rehnquist said, that “a judge’s judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment.”

Felicity Huffman's 14-day sentence is unjust — because it's too high

That’s the title of my latest piece in The Hill, which starts this way:

With as much subtlety and sophistication as a sledgehammer, social media erupted after Felicity Huffman’s 14-day sentence was announced, with commenter after commenter saying her sentence was way too light. A rich, white woman only received two weeks in jail. The system must be corrupt! Well, the system is corrupt, but not because Huffman’s sentence was too light, but because it was too severe.

But wait, you might be saying, she only received a few weeks; how can that be too severe?

Her sentence is wrong for at least four reasons:

Our criminal justice system still has an unjust “jail-first” mentality. The default sentence for a first-time non-violent offender who accepted responsibility where no one suffered any loss should obviously be something other than incarceration. If that type of offender — with no aggravating factors — isn’t getting probation, then who is? The problem is that we are so tied to putting people in jail, even people we know will never do anything similar again, that our default is some prison. That’s wrong. It’s important to keep things in perspective: Huffman didn’t hurt anyone and it’s not altogether clear that paying someone to take a test should even be a federal crime in the first place.

Please take a look and let me know your thoughts.

BREAKING -- Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck to be nominated to the 11th Circuit (UPDATED with President Trump's official release)

Numerous sources have confirmed that Florida Supreme Court Justices Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck are set to be nominated to fill the 11th Circuits seats of Judges Tjoflat and Marcus.  Both are former AUSAs in Miami, former 3rd DCA judges, and current Justices on the Florida Supreme Court.  And both are *excellent.*  A big congrats to them.  Very exciting news.

UPDATE -- shortly after this post, President Trump made it official with this release:

Today, President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate:

Barbara Lagoa of Florida, to serve as Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

Barbara Lagoa currently serves as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Florida. Prior to her appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019, Justice Lagoa was a District Judge on the Florida Third District Court of Appeal. Before taking the bench in 2006, Justice Lagoa was an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and spent 11 years in private practice in Miami, Florida. Justice Lagoa also served as the Chair of the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee from 2015 to 2016. Justice Lagoa earned her B.A., cum laude, from Florida International University and her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she served as Associate Editor of the Columbia Law Review.

Robert J. Luck of Florida, to serve as Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Robert Luck currently serves as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Florida. Prior to his appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019, Justice Luck was a District Judge on the Florida Third District Court of Appeal and a Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. Before taking the bench in 2013, Justice Luck was an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Justice Luck also served as an Adjunct Professor at Alabama State University from 2007 to 2008, where he taught an undergraduate class in business law. Upon graduation from law school, Justice Luck served as a law clerk to Judge Ed Carnes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, to whom he also later served as a Staff Attorney. Justice Luck earned his B.A., with highest honors, from the University of Florida and his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Florida Law Review.

Raag Singhal has committee hearing (Updated with results of Chinese spy trial))

This morning Judge Raag Singhal appeared before the Judiciary Committee, on his way to a full Senate vote.  Judge Singhal is a really excellent choice and should sail through without a problem. Both sides of the aisle would do well to support him.  Here’s Senator Rubio’s statement in support:

Regretfully, due to a scheduling conflict, I am unable to attend today’s nominations hearing to introduce a highly qualified judicial nominee from my home state of Florida – Judge Anuraag “Raag” Singhal. Judge Singhal has been nominated to serve as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida. I commend and support his nomination and the committee’s work toward Senate confirmation of Judge Singhal.
Judge Singhal is a graduate of Rice University and Wake Forest University School of Law, and he has lived and worked in Florida for 30 years. Most recently, Judge Singhal has served as a Circuit Court Judge in Broward County. He has extensive experience in the courtroom as both an attorney and a judge. He is active in Broward County’s legal community and is particularly proud of his ongoing work to mentor young attorneys. He is committed to honoring professionalism, honesty, integrity, and ethics in his work and in the community, and I am confident he will exhibit and exercise those qualities on the federal bench.
I thank the committee for its work on Judge Singhal’s nomination and believe that the committee will find him to be highly qualified to serve in this very important capacity.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement in support of Judge Singhal’s nomination and confirmation.

 UPDATE on Yujing Zhan's case:  She was found guilty today after 4 hours of deliberation.  The closings were interesting (via Courthouse News Service):

In the courtroom Tuesday, prosecutors called a cavalcade of FBI agents and analysts to the stand, but Zhang declined to ask them a single question.
“She’s just not gonna do anything,” prosecutor Rolando Garcia said while closing arguments were being scheduled with U.S. District Judge Roy Altman.
Altman, a Trump appointee who is one of the youngest federal judges in the country, urged Zhang in pretrial hearings to enlist counsel, to no avail.
On Tuesday evening, he denied Zhang’s request for more time to prepare final remarks to the jury.
“You’re going to have to get ready,” Altman told Zhang.
The defendant, who describes herself as a China-based investment consultant, stood up and in a quiet, disjointed voice delivered a less-than-five-minute closing statement. It was one of the only moments throughout the trial where she took steps to defend herself in front of the jury.
“I am a bit nervous,” Zhang said. “I did nothing wrong.”
Zhang reminded the jury of a service contract that, by all accounts, involved her paying $20,000 to a Chinese agent to arrange her trip to a Mar-a-Lago gala.
The March 30 event supposedly would give Zhang and other Chinese attendees an opportunity to rub shoulders with Trump and his family and meet high rollers in the Palm Beach social scene.
“I made contract to go to Mar-a-Lago to go see the president … see his family,” Zhang said in broken English.
According to prosecutors, Zhang was told by the Chinese agent that the event was canceled. But she flew to the United States anyway, went to the posh Palm Beach resort and lied her way in, prosecutors say.
“There was no event. She knew there was no event. … She was bound and determined to get on that property,” Garcia told jurors during his closing argument.
He cited cellphone communications in which the Chinese agent told Zhang, “We can forget about [the Mar-a-Lago event].”

Your next magistrate judge will be...

...one of these 5:

AFPD Sowmya Bharathi
Barbara Junge

Meredith Schultz 

AUSA Steve Petri

AUSA Jared Strauss 

The district judges will interview these candidates and make a decision at their next judges' meeting in October.  Congratulations!

Greatest opening ever?

“Good afternoon, grand jury. What I want to say ... I don’t believe I did anything wrong. And thank you, USA.”

That was Yujing Zhang's entire opening statement this morning before Judge Altman. The post below covers the craziness that happened with her clothing before trial started.

Michael Sherwin, a good guy and smart prosecutor, has the unenviable task of trying a case against a pro se defendant. The Herald covered his opening:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin, one of two prosecutors, told the jury that Zhang had lied multiple times to Secret Service agents and Mar-a-Lago staff in order to gain entry for a charity event, even though she learned the gala had been canceled days earlier.

The prosecutor told the 12-person jury that Zhang gave a variety of misleading explanations to agents and staff before her arrest. Among them: that she had come to the president’s Palm Beach club to use the pool, that she had been invited to a United Nations Chinese-American Association event, and finally that she wished to engage in trade and economic negotiations with Trump and his daughter, Ivanka.

“In no way was this defendant authorized to be there,” Sherwin said. “She lied multiple times.”

The prosecutor said that after Zhang’s arrest. federal agents discovered evidence on her iPhone 7 showing she had received text messages while she was still in China saying the Mar-a-Lago event on March 30 was canceled.

Zhang received the bad news in two “We Chat” messages on March 18 and March 26 from a person she had paid to make the arrangements for her, Sherwin said. Zhang was upset and texted back: “I want a refund.” Despite the cancellation, Zhang left for the United States two days later on March 28.

Even the first witness had a memorable moment:

Prosecutors presented their case chronologically, including testimony by a cab driver who said he took a woman who looked like Zhang to the area around Mar-a-Lago on March 29, the day before her arrest.

Willy Isidore said he picked up the woman at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach and she asked him to give her a ride to Mar-a-Lago.

“She said she didn’t have an invitation,” Isidore testified. “I told her, ‘If you don’t have an invitation, you can’t get in.’ ”

Instead, he drove her to the neighborhood around Trump’s private club. He said the woman was talking on her cell phone and taking pictures the whole time.

When he brought her back to the Colony Hotel, Isidore said the woman asked for a receipt and he gave her his business card.

“She told me her name was Veronica,” Isidore testified.

But when asked if he could recognize the woman by Assistant U.S. Attorney Rolando Garcia, Isidore flubbed the question.

“Maybe,” he said, sitting less than 10 feet away from Zhang in the courtroom. “I’m not sure.”

Zhang did not cross-examine Isidore, missing an opportunity to challenge his credibility.

The Herald says that she missed the opportunity to challenge his credibility, but she actually did the right thing here. If she gets up and crosses the guy, he might then recognize her. Sometimes "no questions" is the right move.