Who says there aren't trials?

Judge Darrin Gayles is already in trial, in this interesting case (via the Sun-Sentinel):

The former president of the labor union local representing maritime workers at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale went on trial in federal court Tuesday, accused in a 17-count indictment of using false documents to steal thousands of dollars in union funds.
Darryl Brice "Mike D" Payne, 47, of Sunrise, was president of a union that represents workers who are primarily employed loading and unloading cargo and providing services for the shipping and cruise industries at Port Everglades and elsewhere in Broward County.
Payne used union money to pay for personal travel expenses to Las Vegas, Baltimore, St. Louis and other cities, as well as to buy sports memorabilia, including a signed Miami Heat basketball, according to a 55-page indictment filed in August.
Among the charges are conspiracy to steal union assets, stealing union assets, endeavoring to obstruct justice, mail fraud and making false statements.
The charges carry penalties of between five and 20 years in prison, as well as substantial fines.
Payne, who still works as a crane operator at Port Everglades, was portrayed by his defense attorney Bruce Zimet as a reform-minded labor leader who was targeted by union rivals after he won the presidency of International Longshoremen's Association, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 1526 in 2007.
The local has more than 800 members, according to its website.
"He implemented change to move the union into the 21st century," Zimet said in his opening statement. "Some were unhappy and formed a campaign to undermine that. Right away they're trying to destroy him."
Prosecutor William Shockley began his case by showing jurors several documents in support of the government's contention that Payne submitted false invoices and work records to cover personal expenses and inflate his years of seniority.
One of the first witnesses to testify was Denise Rodgers, former executive director of the Sistrunk Historical Festival in Fort Lauderdale, a civic organization that had honored Payne in 2008 for what she called his "outstanding contribution to the community."
At a silent auction that year, Payne successfully bid on the signed Heat basketball, a football autographed by former NFL star defensive end Michael Strahan, and a spa massage. The total contribution for all three came to $380, Rodgers testified.
Prosecutors alleged in its indictment that Payne used union funds to pay for those purchases by using a false invoice to lump them in with other legitimate expenses paid to the Historical Festival as charitable donations.
The mail-fraud charge relates to an alleged scheme to deceive officials of the union's pension fund by presenting an altered U.S. Department of Labor document that made it appear as if Payne had received workers' compensation for four years.
In fact, however, Payne had received workers' compensation payments for only about four months, prosecutors allege. Payne submitted the altered document, the government alleges, in order to add years to his seniority and thus increase his pension.

 And the Pizzi case is off and running, with opening statements this morning (via The Miami Herald):

In opening statements, prosecutors will argue that Pizzi pocketed bribes from a now-convicted Miami-Dade County lobbyist and undercover agents posing as sleazy businessmen. They persuaded the mayor to support bogus federal grant proposals purportedly to spur job growth in his community and a neighboring town.
They will contend Pizzi intentionally grabbed the money to line his pockets -- a total of $6,750 -- knowing that Miami Lakes and Medley, where he worked as the town attorney, would not be benefiting from any federal grants.
Pizzi’s defense team will counter that he did not receive some of that cash from the lobbyist, Richard Candia, and the FBI undercover agents claiming to be executives of the phony grant-writing business, Sunshine Universal.
His attorneys will also assert that Pizzi did accept some of that money, but it was a legitimate reimbursement for his own political campaign expenses.
And, they will argue that Pizzi always believed that the federal grant proposals would help Miami Lakes and Medley -- and that they were not a scam.

It's supposed to be summer time!

Michael Pizzi trial starts today

Should be lots of fireworks...

Here's the Herald coverage of the opening act:

He is charged with conspiracy and extortion offenses for allegedly accepting $6,750 in mostly cash bribes during an FBI sting operation. In exchange, he supported bogus federal grant proposals purportedly to spur job growth that prosecutors say were only meant to line his pockets.
Pizzi is accused of collaborating with onetime Miami-Dade lobbyist Richard Candia, who flipped for the feds, has pleaded guilty and will testify against him. Two others busted last August on similar charges — former Sweetwater Mayor Manuel Maroño and lobbyist Jorge Forte — have also pleaded guilty and been imprisoned.
Of the four defendants, Pizzi has the most defensible case, and has been the most vocal about his innocence. But for Pizzi to be acquitted, he still must justify to jurors why he accepted alleged cash bribes: $1,000 from Candia at a Starbuck’s cafe; $2,000 from a couple of FBI undercover agents at a billiard hall; and $3,000 from Candia in an office closet at Medley Town Hall, where Pizzi worked as the town attorney.
Pizzi also accepted alleged bribes in the form of $750 check donations for his 2012 reelection campaign from a Miami-Dade lobbyist, Michael Kesti. Kesti, who is not expected to testify at Pizzi’s trial, was paid $114,000 by the FBI, including use of a rented Lexus, to play the role of a government informant in the 2011-13 sting operation.
The biggest question hanging over his trial is whether the voluble Pizzi will take the witness stand in his own defense. “That will be up to my lawyers,” he said.
Pizzi, a Brooklyn native who moved to South Florida in 1988, sees himself as the character Carmine Polito in the Oscar-nominated movie, American Hustle — an over-the-top tale of the FBI’s undercover takedown of a fictional blue-collar New Jersey mayor who lived for his constituents.
“Everyone who has seen American Hustle says that Carmine Polito is Michael Pizzi,” he said. But he leaves out the part that Polito’s character was modeled after an actual 1970s-era Jersey mayor convicted in the FBI’s so-called Abscam sting.

Judge Kopf is thinking about ending his entertaining blog because he is getting heat for telling the Supreme Court to STFU

Here's the post:

In the Hobby Lobby cases, five male Justices of the Supreme Court, who are all members of the Catholic faith and who each were appointed by a President who hailed from the Republican party, decided that a huge corporation, with thousands of employees and gargantuan revenues, was a “person” entitled to assert a religious objection to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate because that corporation was “closely held” by family members. To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse.
To most people, the decision looks stupid ’cause corporations are not persons, all the legal mumbo jumbo notwithstanding. The decision looks misogynistic because the majority were all men. It looks partisan because all were appointed by a Republican. The decision looks religiously motivated because each member of the majority belongs to the Catholic church, and that religious organization is opposed to contraception. While “looks” don’t matter to the logic of the law (and I am not saying the Justices are actually motivated by such things), all of us know from experience that appearances matter to the public’s acceptance of the law.*
The Hobby Lobby cases illustrate why the Court ought to care more about Alexander Bickel’s “passive virtues“–that is, not deciding highly controversial cases (most of the time) if the Court can avoid the dispute.** What would have happened if the Supreme Court simply decided not to take the Hobby Lobby cases?  What harm would have befallen the nation? What harm would have befallen Hobby Lobby family members who would  have been free to express their religious beliefs as real persons? Had the Court sat on the sidelines, I don’t think any significant harm would have occurred. The most likely result is that one or more of the political branches of government would have worked something out. Or not. In any event, out of well over 300 million people, who would have cared if the law in different Circuits was different or the ACA’s contraception mandate was up in the air?
Next term is the time for the Supreme Court to go quiescent–this term and several past terms have proven that the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids say, it is time for the Court to stfu.***
*“Americans continue to take a dim view of the U.S. Supreme Court’s performance, perhaps in part because most still think the justices base their decisions on their own political agenda rather than the law.” Rasmusssen Reports, (Tuesday, June 24, 2014) (Only “26% Rate Supreme Court’s Performance Positively.”).
**Bickel was not trying to protect the Court itself. On the contrary, he realized that there were “hot button” cases that an anti-democratic Court would of necessity be required to resolve. It was for those rare “fate of the nation” cases, where the Court’s legitimacy mattered most to public acceptance of a really important decision, that required the Court to conserve this very scare resource.
***Thanks to June Edwards, one of the smartest lawyers I know, for stimulating this post last evening (July 4, 2014) as we sat on her pleasant patio overlooking a fire works display that illuminated the entire City of Omaha from our perch in the western hills. By the way, Charlie, the dog, was fine because Joan must have fed him 3 or 4 burgers plus all manner of other treats.

And here is the federal district judge now discussing whether he should stop blogging.



What say you:

Should Judge Kopf continue blogging?
	Yes, it's interesting to hear what a federal judge has to say.
	Yes, judges are people too, and if other people don't like it, they don't have to read it.
	No, judges should not be permitted to blog.
	No, his comments bring disrepute on the judiciary.
pollcode.com free polls

Death of the Trial Lawyer?

John Pacenti discusses the downturn in trials (99.7% of cases resolve absent a trial!) here:

The sad truth is that these are hard times for would-be Atticus Finches. The trend has left practitioners pondering where the next great generation of trial attorneys will be forged if not in the courtroom. Arbitration and mediation hearings?
Alternative dispute resolution is just one epitaph that may end up on the American trial's tombstone. Long criminal sentences, skyrocketing costs and even technology can share in its demise, according to trial attorneys.
An updated study due soon by legal scholar Marc Galanter, who has been charting trial declines for years, finds the trend unremitting. He noted only about 1 percent of federal cases go to trial now, and the number of state court trials also have fallen off the cliff.
"There is not much lower for it to go," said Galanter, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. "Whether we are coming to the end of the trial as an institution, that remains to be seen."
Galanter's newest article on the decreasing number of trials will appear in the magazine Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in the summer issue devoted to the topic of courts.
The most reliable data available comes from federal courts, he said.
In 2012, 3,211 civil cases went to trial nationally compared to 5,802 in 1962, a drop of 44 percent, despite increases in case filings."In other words, the ratio of trials to filings in 2012 is only about one-12th what it was 50 years earlier," Galanter wrote.The Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Federal Courthouse in Miami is hardly bustling these days. U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said it's all relative, noting he was in trial at the time.Arbitration has indeed cut down on federal civil trials, and sentencing discretion has contributed to a similar decline on the criminal side, he said."The numbers have gone down since I started," said Moreno, who took the bench in 1990. "We probably had too many trials. The first year I had like 50 jury trials."

Maybe Rumpole should start saying: See you at mediation.

Happy birthday to the Blog!

Nine years ago on July 4 weekend, I started the SDFLA Blog.  Since then, there have been 2595 posts, over 1.6 million views, and a lot of fun.

Here's the very first post from July 2, 2005, arguing that a Floridian should be appointed to the Supreme Court.  The President didn't listen then, and still there has never been a Floridian on the Supreme Court.  Hopefully that will happen soon!

Thanks to everyone for stopping by and supporting the Blog!

--David