Monday morning quick hits

1. The DBR does its year in review. Lots of bad eggs in the year -- Rothstein, Freeman, Adorno, Tolz... I don't think Santa will be bringing those guys anything this year.

2. I forgot to post the Obama pardon story from a couple weeks ago. He finally pardoned some humans but the list is really a joke. It includes Ronald Lee Foster of Beaver Falls, Pa., who was sentenced to a year of probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins in 1963. Wow, thank goodness Obama was on top of that one... "The president was moved by the strength of the applicants' post-conviction efforts at atonement, as well as their superior citizenship and individual achievements in the years since their convictions," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin.

3. No more crush videos: President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into law a bill that outlaws the creation and distribution of so-called animal crush videos -- culminating a remarkably quick response to a Supreme Court decision handed down less than eight months ago.

It was April 20 when the Court, in United States v. Stevens, struck down an earlier federal law that banned a more broadly defined category of depictions of animal cruelty. The Court found that law to be "substantially overbroad" and therefore unconstitutional under the First Amendment, because it could apply to hunting and fishing videos and other legitimate depictions.

The new law, passed with bipartisan support after hearings in recent months, focuses more narrowly on "obscene" animal crush videos in which animals are crushed or burned or otherwise mutilated. The definition ties the offense to obscenity -- which is not protected by the First Amendment -- by noting that the videos appeal to a particular sexual fetish.

“California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

That's the opening line of Judge Fletcher's 100 page dissent from en banc review in the 9th Circuit and the opening line of this NY Times op-ed. This makes my blood boil -- if you can't make it through the entire dissent, you should check out the article. It very persuasively sets forth how Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection for supposedly murdering a white family, was framed by police. Forget the horrors of an innocent man having spent the last 20 years on death row, how can the judiciary allow the state to execute him when he is "probably innocent" according to Judge Fletcher and 4 other Ninth Circuit judges. The NY Times has called for Governor Schwarzenegger commute the sentence:

This case is a travesty. It underscores the central pitfall of capital punishment: no system is fail-safe. How can we be about to execute a man when even some of America’s leading judges believe he has been framed?

Lanny Davis, who was the White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, is representing Mr. Cooper pro bono. He laments: “The media and the bar have gone deaf and silent on Kevin Cooper. My simple theory: heinous brutal murder of white family and black convict. Simple as that.”

That’s a disgrace that threatens not only the life of one man, but the honor of our judicial system. Governor Schwarzenegger, are you listening?

That's "a pretty sorry state of affairs with respect to what goes on in the statehouse."

That was Judge Zloch during the change of plea for Alan Mendelsohn.

From the AP:

A politically connected eye doctor and prominent fundraiser pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge, admitting he filed false tax returns, lied to FBI agents and diverted tens of thousands of dollars in contributions for his own use.
During a plea hearing, Dr. Alan Mendelsohn said he got caught up in a Tallahassee pay-to-play system in which politicians reward those who funnel money to the right places and punish people who refuse.
Mendelsohn, who lobbied legislators on various health issues, told U.S. District Judge William Zloch of one instance in which he paid $82,000 to an associate of former state Sen. Mandy Dawson, a Democrat who had demanded repeatedly that Mendelsohn "hire" the aide.
"Otherwise, we had the great fear of being retaliated against legislatively," Mendelsohn told the judge, adding that such practices are common in state government.
Zloch responded that it was "a pretty sorry state of affairs with respect to what goes on in the statehouse."

In other news, Rumpole is covering the very sad story of Judge Robert Pineiro's death. The comments on the blog about him are lovely and I wish his family well during this terrible time.

Judge Cooke's annual holiday party

Judge Cooke has an annual party outside her chambers where she serves lots of delish desserts. Here is Jan Smith partaking in the fun:

Fun with the new SDFLA website

I was looking at the revamped district website (that was discussed here), and there are some neat features it has. For example, you can pull recently filed criminal cases, recently filed civil cases, and recent jury verdicts. You could always do this on CM/ECF, but you had to pay for it. Now it's free. Good stuff.