Judge Huck's Federal Court Observer Program

It's become a big hit -- a capacity crowd on Friday for interns, law clerks, and young associates.  Here's a picture from the panel of judges (Huck, Jordan,Scola & Valle):

You should get on over to SCOTUSBlog for new opinions this morning.  The Term is just about over....

After that, you should grab a drink at lunch today.  That's what Justice Stevens (age 95) says to do!  From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Over the next 35 years, Stevens rendered more than 1,400 opinions in a career that defies summation, at least here.  He was liberal and, as such, his beliefs could actually mature and change. Williams highlighted the evolution of Stevens’ thought regarding death penalty, from finding it constitutional in Gregg V. Georgia in 1976, to  deeming it “cruel and unusual” — and thus banned by the Constitution — for people with mental handicaps in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, to finding it morally wrong altogether in Baze v. Rees in 2008.

“The penalty really does not fit in our society anymore,’ Stevens said.

His advice to young lawyers ranged from the value of studying poetry — which he found “extremely valuable” on the bench because “it helped me in my work as a judge” — to the best way to counteract a bad day: “drink at lunch” (advice he couldn’t have taken too often, or he wouldn’t have made it to 95).

I'll certainly need one after that Game of Thrones last night.  

So you wanna be a judge?

Well, there are three openings -- two in the Middle District and one in the Northern District.  This notice went up today on the court's website, seeking applications for judge (due August 3). 

There is also a new slate of JNC members (see here).

And new JNC rules.

Melgen still being held

Apparently he can't get a letter from the Dominican Republic that they will extradite him to the U.S.  This all seems over the top to me.  A judge in New Jersey let him bond out without such a letter.  He knew about the investigation for many years and traveled back and for to the DR and always came back. What are we doing here?

In other news, a few judges had a smooth hearing with the judiciary committee yesterday.  It's very slow going... Hopefully Mary Barzee Flores will be up soon.

Still waiting on the Supreme Court to finish up the Term.  Linda Greenhouse talks about it.

American Pharoah’s stretch run in the Belmont Stakes was a beauty to behold. The Supreme Court’s stretch run in the closing weeks of its term? Not so much.

I can’t remember a second week in June during which the justices delivered only one opinion. This was Monday’s decision upholding the president’s prerogative in the Jerusalem passport case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry, issued more than seven months after the argument. At that pace, it would be Thanksgiving before the court issued its decision in the same-sex marriage cases that it heard at the end of April. But that won’t happen; one way or another, with 20 cases left to decide, the court will wrap up its term before the Fourth of July.

The justices’ silence doesn’t mean indolence, of course; a great deal is happening below the surface and behind closed doors. For example, it’s obvious that there is a struggle going on over whether the court should revisit Fisher v. University of Texas, which affirmative-action opponents have dragged back onto the court’s docket for another try at using this thoroughly moot case as a battering ram against considering race as a factor in college admissions. On Thursday the case goes to the justices’ closed-door conference for a fourth week. If the justices eventually deny the appeal, or even if they decide to hear it, we may never know what arguments were on the table during those weeks.

So we can thank Justice Clarence Thomas for pulling back the curtain a bit this week when he issued a public dissent from the court’s refusal to hear a challenge to a San Francisco gun control ordinance. This case, Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco, went to conference six times before the court issued an order on Monday denying review. Even without Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion, which only Justice Antonin Scalia joined, it would have been obvious that something was afoot, but we wouldn’t have known exactly what.

And the 11th Circuit just granted a state habeas for a potential Miranda violation.  Enjoy the read.

Tuesday news and notes

1.  More on House Srebnick and the cert grant, from the DBR:

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide in a Miami case whether federal prosecutors can freeze untainted assets a criminal defendant needs to retain an attorney.
Miami attorneys and brothers Scott and Howard Srebnick filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the case of Sila Luis. Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Huck in Miami froze Luis' assets after she was indicted in a Medicare fraud scheme.
The defense attorneys believe the government violated Luis' Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to due process and to counsel of her choice.
"Our view is that she's not yet been convicted, she's not yet had a trial, and under our Constitution she has the right to use her own legitimate assets to pay for defense," said Howard Srebnick of Black, Srebnick, Kornspan & Stumpf.

2.    Justice Scalia gives a funny graduation speech on platitudes.  From the Washington Post:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia delivered an off-the-bench opinion on graduation addresses Thursday, drawing laughter and applause as he criticized cliches that don’t work during a commencement speech at an all-girls Catholic school.
“My problem with these platitudes is not that they are old and hackneyed, but that a lot of them are wrong,” Scalia said, standing before 79 graduates and hundreds of relatives and friends in the main gymnasium at Bethesda’s Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.
***
As they and others listened, Scalia parsed a litany of stock phrases, melding them with his own advice. He first took issue with the oft-expressed sentiment that “we face unprecedented challenges.”
“Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented,” he said. “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”
Scalia — dressed in a suit and tie — took on other bits of advice, too, including, “To thine own self be true.”
“Now this can be very good or very bad advice, depending on who you think you are,” he said, as laughter rippled through the crowd.
He also turned some age-old sayings on their head.
“Never compromise your principles,” Scalia said, “unless of course your principles are Adolf Hitler’s, in which case you would be well advised to compromise them as much as you can.”

 3.  When does counsel need to raise suspicions about jurors?  The Second Circuit issued an interesting opinion about juror misconduct but didn't address the question head on.  Here's Alison Frankel:

The 2nd U.S Circuit Court of Appeals undid an injustice Monday when it ordered a new trial for David Parse, a one-time Deutsche Bank broker who was convicted in 2011 for his alleged participation in a tax shelter scheme supposedly masterminded by the now-defunct law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist. In an opinion by Judge Amalya Kearse, the appeals court said Parse’s conviction was tainted by a biased juror who admitted after trial that she had told a series of breathtaking lies during voir dire. Even though Parse’s former lawyers at Brune & Richard had turned up Internet evidence before and during trial that raised suspicions about the juror, the 2nd Circuit said, Parse had not waived his right to an impartial jury.

But the appeals panel refused to define exactly when lawyers are obliged to inform judges that prospective jurors might be lying in order to preserve their clients’ constitutional rights. Parse’s counsel, Alexandra Shapiro of Shapiro Arato, and the New York Council of Defense Lawyers, in an amicus brief, had asked the 2nd Circuit to establish a bright-line rule that defense counsel need not report concerns unless they are sure of jurors have done something wrong. Judge Kearse and the other members of the 2nd Circuit panel, Judges Richard Wesley and Chester Straub, said they doubted “that such a sweeping and absolute rule is appropriate,” and that, in any event, they didn’t need to devise a broad rule to resolve Parse’s appeal.

That’s a missed opportunity to clarify the implications of juror research that has become commonplace in white-collar cases. The Parse opinion seems to imply that judges should not construe defense counsel’s failure to alert the court of their suspicions as a waiver of their client’s Sixth Amendment right to an unbiased jury. I doubt, however, that any lawyers want their clients to go through Parse’s ordeal of four years of post-trial and appellate proceedings before securing a new trial. Defense lawyers in the 2nd Circuit will probably have to err on the side of disclosure if their investigation of prospective jurors turns up anything untoward: Tattling to judges may invade jurors’ privacy and annoy the court, but that’s preferable to risking a defendant’s constitutional rights.

Salomon Melgen granted bail on appeal by Judge Marra (and breaking news re a cert grant from the SDFLA)

New judge, new lawyers, new bond hearing.  Judge Marra did the right thing here and reversed the detention order by the magistrate judge.  From the Palm Beach Post:

North Palm Beach ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen will be allowed to post bond and leave jail pending his trial on charges that he bilked Medicare out of $105 million, a federal judge decided Friday.
But the wealthy 61-year-old physician won’t be released before a hearing Monday for U.S. Magistrate James Hopkins to set the size of the bond. U.S. prosecutors are asking that he be required to pay $20 million to secure his release from the federal detention center in Miami.
While leaving that task up to Hopkins, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra said Friday he was putting conditions in place to help reduce prosecutors’ fears that Melgen would flee to his native Dominican Republic or seek refuge elsewhere on the globe.
Melgen, who has been held in custody without bond since his April arrest on charges that he falsely diagnosed and treated hundreds of patients for macular degeneration to illegally inflate his Medicare billings, will be held on house arrest with electronic monitoring once he has posted bond, Marra ruled. But, he said, Melgen won’t be staying at his $2.3 million waterfront home in Captain’s Key near Juno Beach.
“Defendant shall not reside at a location adjacent to or with access to a waterway,” he said in the four-page ruling. Melgen will also will be stripped of any ability to use his boat or private jet.
Marra also ordered the doctor to provide a written declaration from Dominican government leaders, pledging that they won’t block his extradition should he seek safe harbor in his homeland.
...“The court concludes that nature and notoriety of the charges (Melgen) is facing in New Jersey, and the fact that he is a co-defendant with a United States Senator, makes it unlikely that any attempt to flee would be successful,” he wrote. “Great diplomatic and political pressure would be brought to bear on any country that might consider shielding (Melgen) from extradition.”
In addition, he said, Melgen’s wife, son and daughter will be required to pledge their assets to guarantee his return. The possibility that he would leave his family “financially devastated” should curb any desire to escape prosecution, Marra wrote.
Melgen, he said, has had months, if not years, to flee. For at least two years, he has been under investigation for health-care fraud and for his relationship with Menendez. Weeks before he was alerted by prosecutors in New Jersey that his indictment there was imminent, he traveled to the Dominican Republic for a wedding and returned, Menchel said.
“Certainly,” Marra wrote, “if (Melgen) intended to flee, he had his chances.”

I'm not sure I understand sending it back for a determination by the magistrate judge to set the actual bond amount, but I am sure that the new defense team is thrilled that their client is getting out.

Meantime, check out this article in the Washington Post about sentencing.  What has happened to our system?

And in breaking news, the Supreme Court this morning granted cert in Sila Luis v. United States, Howard Srebnick's follow up case to Kaley. This time he paired up with brother Scott Srebnick.  Here is the 11th Circuit unpublished opinion, which affirmed Judge Huck.  The question will address whether the pretrial restraint of forfeitable substitute assets needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Fifth or Sixth Amendment. 

Early coverage from the AP:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the government can put a hold on untainted money and property that a criminal defendant needs to hire a lawyer.

The justices said that they will review the case of Sila Luis of Miami-Dade County, Florida, who has been indicted on fraud charges involving $45 million in allegedly improper Medicare payments. On the same day Luis was indicted in 2012, federal prosecutors froze her assets.

Luis said the freeze includes money with no ties to the charges against her and that she has a constitutional right to use the funds to hire a lawyer to mount a defense. Lower courts ruled against her.

...The new case goes to whether untainted money can be frozen when the defendant needs it to hire a lawyer. The Justice Department said the assets can be frozen even if they are untainted. In this case, the government said it sought to freeze substitute assets that would be forfeited after a conviction because Luis already has spent the ill-gotten gains on luxury items and travel.