Zoom hearings... so much fun.

NEW PODCAST SERIES “FOR THE DEFENSE,” CHRONICLING FAMOUS DEFENSE ATTORNEYS AND THEIR MOST FASCINATING TRIALS, DEBUTS TODAY

 I am very excited to announce my new podcast, For the Defense, which is being produced by rakontur.  Here's the release.  Please let me know what you think:

NEW PODCAST SERIES “FOR THE DEFENSE,” 
CHRONICLING FAMOUS DEFENSE ATTORNEYS 
AND THEIR MOST FASCINATING TRIALS, DEBUTS TODAY


Hosted by David Oscar Markus and produced by rakontur

OCTOBER 27, 2020 -- David Oscar Markus, a Miami trial attorney who has been called “a reincarnation of the old school criminal defense lawyer” and has represented clients from the head of the Cali Cartel to Fortune 500 companies and their CEOs, has partnered with rakontur, the lauded storytellers behind Cocaine Cowboys, The U and 537 Votes, to launch a new podcast series called For the Defense. 

The podcast focuses on the work of the least-respected but perhaps the most important profession in America: the criminal defense attorney.  In each episode, Markus will interview a top criminal defense lawyer about one of their most gripping trials.

Sadly, the criminal defense trial lawyer is a dying breed. The Feds have manipulated the system -- which was founded on the idea of trial by jury -- to force almost everyone (occasionally including the innocent) into pleading guilty to avoid trial. If you dare to go to trial, you risk going to prison for decades longer than had you surrendered and pleaded guilty. The system has shifted from valuing and encouraging trials to punishing those who dare exercise their constitutional right to have a jury decide their guilt.  In the 1980s, over 20% of cases went to trial -- now less than 3% do so.

Having tried cases all over the United States, Markus is well-positioned to speak to other leading criminal defense lawyers in the country and explore with them the decision they made in a high-profile case to proceed to trial, including their trial strategy, the risks involved, and the clients themselves.  

In the premiere episode, available now on all podcast platforms including Apple, Spotify and Google, Markus discusses the Harvey Weinstein case with his lawyer Donna Rotunno and what it was like for her to represent the most hated man in America against an entire movement.

New episodes will be available on Tuesdays. Among the highlights of Season One:

• How did Roy Black flip the prosecution witnesses in his favor during the trial of a police officer charged with killing a black man during an altercation in an arcade?
   
• Why did Tom Messereau initially want to call Michael Jackson to the stand but ultimately decide against it? 
   
• What was going through Marty Weinberg’s head when his client, a lawyer, decided he wanted to give part of the closing argument? 
   
• How did H.T. Smith deal with a judge who was wearing handcuffs as his tie-tack?
   
• How did F. Lee Bailey, just a year out of law school, land the most followed trial of the day, Sam Sheppard (the defendant who ended up being the inspiration for The Fugitive)?  

CONTACT: info@rakontur.com, DMarkus@markuslaw.com

RIP Alvin Entin

 Heard some really sad news this morning... Alvin Entin passed away yesterday.  He was recovering from COVID-19 and had a stroke.  He was such a good guy.  I had the good fortune of having tried a couple of cases with him.  I'll never forget one closing he did -- he started out by saying: I'm so sorry ladies and gentlemen... that closing by the prosecution was such a snoozer!  It nearly put me to sleep. Well, I'm here to wake you up with the truth -- Mr. X is not guilty!

The jury loved it and loved him.

He was also a theater guy, performing in lots of shows and on the board of a theater company in Broward.  Folks on his FB page on talking more about his theater career and his love of theater than the law, which is how we all know him.

Alvin's brother passed away a few weeks ago... what an awful time for their family.  He was married to Lois for almost 50 years.  They have 6 children.  RIP Alvin.

ACB to be confirmed Monday

 The WaPo has the story here:

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination broke through one more hurdle ahead of her all-but-assured installation to the Supreme Court as the coronavirus pandemic — which has inextricably been intertwined with the story of her nomination — once again intersected with her confirmation fight.

Senators voted around 1:30 p.m. in a rare Sunday session, 51 to 48, to advance her nomination to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The final confirmation vote for Barrett is expected Monday night, putting her in position for a first full day as a justice as early as Tuesday and as the court continues to hear election-related legal challenges ahead of Nov. 3.

“We made an important contribution to the future of this country,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday, praising Barrett as a “stellar nominee” in every respect. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

That last quote is interesting...

Meantime, ACB was asked about the Supreme Court's "shadow docket." If you are interested, you should read this entire post from SCOTUSblog.  Here's the intro:

Near the end of two meandering days of questions at last week’s Senate hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked a question that probably has never been asked at any other Supreme Court nomination hearing.

“Are you aware of the Supreme Court’s – as it’s called – shadow docket?” he asked.

Barrett, who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, said she was. “The shadow docket has become a hot topic in the last couple of years,” she added.

Barrett is right. In fact, in just the last few months, the court has issued emergency rulings on coronavirus policies, immigration restrictions, capital punishment, access to abortion, the U.S. census and procedures for the upcoming election. All of those rulings have been part of the court’s shadow docket.

The court itself would never use that term. Law professor William Baude coined it in 2015 to refer unofficially to the body of orders issued by the Supreme Court outside the formal opinions in the 70 or so cases in which it hears oral argument each term. Some of those orders are peripheral and procedural. But others resolve, at least temporarily, contentious policy disputes or matters of life and death. And this year, the shadow docket is taking on more significance – and getting more attention – than it ever has before.

Concerns about the shadow docket relate primarily to a special system that allows litigants to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court in the middle of ongoing litigation. Under normal procedures, a case reaches the justices only after full consideration and final decisions by a trial court and an appeals court – a process that usually takes months, if not years. But the shadow docket gives litigants a potential shortcut: When a lower court issues a ruling (even a preliminary ruling that does not decide the full case), the losing side can ask the Supreme Court to order an emergency “stay” of that ruling. A stay, if the justices issue one, freezes the lower court’s ruling, stripping it of force while the litigation proceeds. By preserving the status quo as it existed before the lower court’s ruling, emergency stays can favor litigants who hope to run out the clock.

Traditionally, litigants must satisfy a high legal standard to earn an emergency stay. Among other things, they must show that they would suffer “irreparable harm” if the lower court’s ruling were left in place. That onerous standard is meant to reserve this form of relief for circumstances in which the court’s immediate intervention is needed to prevent extraordinary consequences. Emergency stays, everyone agrees, should not be a way to short-circuit the normal appeals process. But as the number of these requests has grown in recent years (including a flurry of such requests from the Trump administration), Justice Sonia Sotomayor has argued that the court itself has tacitly lowered the bar for litigants to receive emergency stays on the shadow docket.

News & Notes

1.    Another debate tonight.  This time with a mute button.  Fun times.

2.     Obama goes after Trump.

3.    ACB takes next step to confirmation.

4.    Wear a mask, even Chris Christie says so.

5.    Jury trials are off till April, but we're making grand juries come in starting in mid-November. Instead of 11 GJs, there will be 2.  And they will meet two days a week.  

 6.    Transitions is holding its annual fundraiser today, virtually.  They are a good group who needs your help.

 

Attorney Aaron Honaker arrested for bank robbery

Another Miami story.

Here's the Herald:

A Coral Gables attorney was called a “serial bank robber” by the FBI, which believes he robbed five banks since Sept. 30 before his Tuesday night arrest.

The agency said Miami resident Aaron Honaker, 41, was headed into a bank when Coral Gables police arrested him. Honaker’s first appearance in Miami federal court is set for Wednesday afternoon.

***

Honaker’s Florida Bar entry says he’s with the firm of Martinez Morales and has no Bar discipline cases in the last 10 years. Court documents say he previously worked at Greenberg Traurig. He joined the Bar in 2008, two years after graduating from Duke University School of Law.

Court packing

 There's been a lot of debate about packing the Supreme Court.  Most Americans are against it, and according to a recent poll, 51% of Americans want ACB confirmed. That said, here's an interesting essay from Charles Fried about why Biden should do it if SCOTUS goes too far.  It ends this way:

But before going forth on any enlargement plan, a Biden administration would do well to see if the Supreme Court might not heed the lesson of history. Consider the well-known episode indelibly judged as President Franklin Roosevelt’s “failed” court packing plan. Mr. Roosevelt waited to propose his “Judicial Procedures Reform” legislation until 1937, after his first four years in office during which the reactionary Supreme Court majority relentlessly obstructed desperately needed experiments to combat the Great Depression.

President Roosevelt’s move is viewed as a rare failure by a master politician. But was it? Immediately after his proposal was unveiled, the court ruled 5 to 4 that the Wagner Act, restructuring American labor law and relations, was constitutional, and a spate of pro-New Deal decisions followed. The very threat of court packing and the passage of time made this “nuclear option” unnecessary.

Let’s see whether the current Supreme Court majority overplays its hand. If it does, then Mr. Biden’s nuclear option might not only be necessary but it will be seen to be necessary.

In local news, if you are looking for Chief Judge Moore's Order postponing jury trials until April 2021, here ya go.

Who is left on SCOTUS from Bush v. Gore?

Billy Corben's and Alfred Spellman's new documentary 537 Votes has me thinking Bush v. Gore...

Only Justices Thomas and Breyer remain on the Court from that time.  But two current Justices (Roberts and Kavanaugh) and one soon to be Justice (Barrett) all worked for the Bush team.  From CNN on ACB:

Barrett wrote on the questionnaire she submitted to the Senate for her Supreme Court confirmation review, "One significant case on which I provided research and briefing assistance was Bush v. Gore." She said the law firm where she was working at the time represented Bush and that she had gone down to Florida "for about a week at the outset of the litigation" when the dispute was in the Florida courts. She said she had not continued on the case after she returned to Washington.

During her hearings this week, she told senators she could not recall specifics of her involvement.

"I did work on Bush v. Gore," she said on Wednesday. "I did work on behalf of the Republican side. To be totally honest, I can't remember exactly what piece of the case it was. There were a number of challenges."