There's a new Chief in town

 And her name is Cecilia Altonaga. 

Congrats to Judge Altonaga -- our first woman Chief -- on the new position.  And a big thank you to Judge Moore for leading the Court over the past 7 years and through the pandemic.

Not only is Judge Altonaga the first woman Chief Judge of the Southern District of Florida, I believe this is the first time in this District that a Chief Judge was a law clerk to the former Chief Judge (in this case, Edward B. Davis).  Judge Altonaga is Judge Davis' second favorite law clerk.

I asked Judge Altonaga what her goals were as the new Chief and she said: "My initial goal is to learn to juggle all the new administrative responsibilities with those attendant to being a district court judge.  The next goal is to steer the Court to a safe resumption of jury trials and in-person proceedings.  Beyond that, I simply hope to be a careful listener and wise administrator, in keeping with the Court's fine tradition and reputation."

In one of her first Administrate Orders, Altonaga extended the speedy clock till Labor Day in this order. Interestingly, the order references 703 cases currently awaiting trial.

Congrats again and good luck!  It can't be easy to try and navigate a bunch of federal judges....

Michael Avenatti sentenced to 30 months in prison (UPDATED)

His guidelines were 9 years at the low end.

This is a good example for judges around the country about how the guidelines make no sense.  Many judges would have given him the high end of the guidelines after a trial for a lawyer who, the judge found, abused the trust of his client.  

But the guidelines made no sense.  Even for someone who went to trial.  Even for a lawyer.  Even for someone who had other cases pending.  Even for someone who had a number of the piling-on enhancements (like sophisticated means, abuse of trust, and so on).

The fraud guidelines make absolutely no sense, and the judge in N.Y. (and it wasn't even Judge Rakoff) said so.  Good.

Miami's very own Scott Srebnick handled the sentencing.

Here's an article about it:

Michael Avenatti was sentenced to two and a half years in prison Thursday after being found guilty of an extortion scheme against Nike, just one of the criminal cases against Stormy Daniels's former lawyer and the onetime left-wing media darling.

The Justice Department’s indictment against Avenatti charged him with extortion and wire fraud, saying he tried to extort at least $22.5 million from the sporting apparel company. His three-week trial began in late January 2020, and he was found guilty the next month.

Judge Paul Gardephe of the Southern District of New York, the presiding judge during Avenatti’s 2020 trial, sentenced him to an aggregate sentence of 30 months. The judge said in the New York City courtroom on Thursday, “Mr. Avenatti’s conduct was outrageous. He hijacked his client’s claims, and he used those claims to further his own agenda — which was to extort millions of dollars from Nike to enrich himself.” The George W. Bush appointee added: “Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be. He had become someone who operated as if the laws and rules that apply to everyone else didn’t apply to him.”

UPDATE -- three factors that helped sway the judge to give a below-guidelines sentence were (1) Avenatti's remorse, (2) the failure to charge co-conspirator Mark Geragos (which caused a disparity), and (3) the conditions of his pretrial confinement (during COVID at MCC).  From NBC:

Gardephe said that in the Nike scheme, “Mr. Avenatti’s conduct was outrageous.”  "He hijacked his client’s claims, and he used him to further his own agenda, which was to extort Nike millions of dollars for himself,” said the judge, who also sentenced Avenatti to three years of supervised release for the case, in which Avenatti was convicted at trial last year. “He outright betrayed his client,” Gardephe said....

But Gardephe added that Avenatti deserved a lighter sentence than the range recommended by federal guidelines — from nine years to 11-years and three months — because, the judge said that for the first time in the case, “Mr. Avenatti has expressed what I believe to be severe remorse today.”

The judge also cited the brutal conditions in which Avenatti was kept for several months in a Manhattan federal prison after his 2019 arrest. And Gardephe sharply noted, in justifying the lower-than-recommended sentence, how federal prosecutors did not criminally charge Geragos in spite of what they have said was his active participation with Avenatti in the shakedown.

The judge ordered Avenatti, who remains free on bond, to surrender on Sept. 15 to begin his sentence, which Gardephe recommended be served in at the federal prison camp in Sheridan, Oregon.

Breaking — Sen. Rubio JNC announces interview schedule

 Here’s the list. More to follow shortly. 

Judge Charles Breyer joins For the Defense Podcast for premiere of Season 3

 

FOR THE DEFENSE SEASON 3 LAUNCH U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer We're back! In this third season of For the Defense, I will be speaking with three fascinating and experienced judges who have a lot to say about the criminal justice system.  We launch today with Judge Charles Breyer.  You can access it on Apple, Spotify, or any other platform from our website here. In the first two seasons, we spoke with great criminal defense lawyers around the country about their most fascinating cases, including the late F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, Roy Black, Michael Tigar, Tom Mesereau, Donna Rotunno, and so many others.  Then there was a bonus episode with Judge Jed Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.), which was a big hit.  So I decided to do this mini-season in which I speak to three judges about the criminal justice system from their perspectives.  After Judge Breyer (who hails from San Francisco), next week Robin Rosenbaum joins the show.  She sits on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and lives in South Florida.  And then we'll conclude the mini-season with Chief Judge William Pryor, another 11th Circuit Judge, who resides in Alabama. It's not too late to catch up on Seasons 1 and 2 if you missed them (both of which are approved for CLE credits in Florida).  This mini-season with judges also has been approved for CLE, and I will give out the code at the end of the third episode. Please send me your feedback -- and of course, subscribe, like and comment!  If you have a friend that would like to receive these updates, please have them sign up here.  Thank you! --David   Hosted by David Oscar Markus and produced by rakontur

Happy Birthday to the Southern District of Florida Blog!

Happy 16th (!!) Birthday to the Southern District of Florida Blog!  

Sixteen years ago in 2005, on the July 4 weekend, I started this blog and it's been a fun run of over 4,000 posts and over 5.2 million page views.  

I'm really proud of this project I started all these years ago and am so grateful for all of the connections and friends I've made through the blog.  This is a great legal community and it's really like a family that I am happy to be a part of.

To put the 16 years in perspective, when the blog was started:

The Wilkie Ferguson courthouse was not yet open.

Judge Zloch was Chief Judge of the District.

Mel Martinez was one of our Senators.

Alex Acosta had just been named Acting U.S. Attorney.

The Supreme Court had seven different Justices: Rehnquist, Scalia, Stevens, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and O'Connor.

There was no Twitter.

There was no podcasting.  (I now have one of my own, called For the Defense).

There was no Zoom.

My firm had one lawyer, me (it now has 6).

I had one daughter (I now have 3 and one headed to college!).

We still don't have a Floridian serving on the Supreme Court, which was the very first post! But that may change with Ketanji Brown Jackson as the leading candidate to replace Justice Breyer if he retires.

Thanks again to all of you for reading and for the tips. As Brian Tannebaum pointed out to me, the blog is now old enough to drive! I still very much enjoy keeping tabs on the most interesting and exciting District in the country.

“Bill Cosby is free; Ghislaine Maxwell should be too.”

 That’s the title of an op-ed I just wrote for the New York Daily News in light of the Cosby ruling.  From the conclusion to the piece:

The case against Ghislaine Maxwell is extremely weak — based on 25-year-old, uncorroborated allegations made only after Epstein died. A jury should reject those flimsy and stale charges. But in the event of a conviction, she should get relief on appeal for the same reason Cosby did — prosecutors should have to live up to the deals they make. As that court explained: “A contrary result would be patently untenable. It would violate long-cherished principles of fundamental fairness. It would be antithetical to, and corrosive of, the integrity and functionality of the criminal justice system that we strive to maintain.”

The Cosby case reaffirms that a prosecutor is bound to act with integrity and the public must be able to rely on his word. What a concept.

"Thank God that juries are smarter than judges."

That was criminal defense lawyer Frank Carson after he was charged with murder, went to trial that lasted 17 months, and was acquitted by a jury.  It's an amazing (and very sad) story, covered by the L.A. Times in these three articles, here, here, and here.  

Above is his mug shot, where he wouldn't give the prosecution the satisfaction of looking grim. Carson loved to stick it to the man.  And he believed that was payback after a long career of fighting and winning.  Sadly, he died shortly after winning his own trial, but not before he got to try another case as a lawyer.

This is how the third installment from the L.A. Times starts:

They were a year into the preliminary hearing with no visible end, and Frank Carson was close to despair. He was trapped where so many of his clients had been, alone in a chilly cell in a Stanislaus County jail. He had rebuffed every overture to cut a deal, to plead, to inform on codefendants in exchange for lenience.

But guilt pierced him. He blamed himself for the plight of his wife and stepdaughter, out on bail but charged in the so-called murder plot he had supposedly masterminded. He blamed himself for the continued incarceration of three other codefendants, former highway patrolman Walter Wells and Pop N Cork liquor store owners Baljit “Bobby” Athwal and brother Daljit “Dee” Atwal. All of them had refused to implicate Carson, telling prosecutors they had nothing to say.

“Boys,” Carson said one day, sitting before them in a courthouse holding room.

He had found a solution, he explained. He would take the blame, so they could go free. There seemed no other way out. He was in his 60s, with no kids; they were younger men, and fathers. The D.A. wanted him. What he did not tell them was that he had knotted up a sheet to keep under his pillow, to hang himself before they put him on a bus to prison.

“No, Mr. Carson,” his codefendants said. The brothers were Sikhs from the Punjab region of India. To let Carson take the blame for something he hadn’t done would dishonor the family, they explained — they’d be killed if they returned to their village.

Where is the Biden administration on the CARES Act and prisoners who were released during the pandemic?

 During the Trump administration, about 4,500 at-risk inmates were released during the pandemic.  But in the last few days of his presidency, Trump's DOJ said everyone needed to go back in when the crisis ended. It was a really weird decision.  Many have thought Biden would rescind that order, but he hasn't and has rightfully faced a lot of criticism because of it.  

In the meantime, BOP is doing BOP things... here's an article by the WaPo about a 76-year old grandmother who was released but taken back into custody because she was taking a class on word-processing and didn't immediately answer her phone.  Our system is so messed up... 

In the year she was out of prison, Gwen Levi, 76, was thriving.

After serving 16 years in different federal facilities for dealing heroin, Levi was allowed to leave last June and finish her 24-year sentence in home confinement under the supervision of federal prison officials. She moved in with her 94-year-old mother in Baltimore and volunteered at prisoner advocacy organizations, hoping for a paying job to come along. She was also building her relationships with her sons and grandsons.

But Levi’s season on the outside ended June 12 after she attended a computer word-processing class in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. A Federal Bureau of Prisons incident report said she was out of contact for a few hours with the officials supervising her.

Levi is now at the D.C. jail awaiting transfer to a federal facility, according to her attorney, Sapna Mirchandani, of Maryland’s Office of the Federal Public Defender.

“There’s no question she was in class,” Mirchandani said. “As I was told, because she could have been robbing a bank, they’re going to treat her as if she was robbing a bank.”

Also, your favorite blogger was on 20/20 Friday night.  Here's a short clip from the two hour episode if you are interested.