"Worse than Death"

That's the name of this article about solitary confinement by Judge Alex Kozinski.  The intro:

For decades, lawyers and activists have questioned the constitutionality of our criminal justice system’s most severe punishments. Is lethal injection okay?1 What about a firing squad?2 How about life sentences for pirates3 or drug possessors4 or people who pass rubber checks?5 But we hear remarkably little about what may be the most severe punishment of all: solitary confinement. Lurking in the shadows of the conversation about inhumane punishments are some 100,000 souls who spend 23 hours a day alone in a cell the size of a parking space. In a world where making a rap video can earn you three years in the box,6 we should all be asking more questions about how prisoners get into solitary confinement, what “life” is like once they get there, and how they can get out.

The Liman Program’s Time-In-Cell Report begins this important conversation. The Report’s shuddersome findings confirm what I have long suspected: Solitary confinement is just as bad as the death penalty, if not worse.

There is a growing consensus that criminal justice reform is desperately needed.7 The difficult question is how best to allocate the scarce resources of lawyers, activists, and academics. I argue here that society should shift some resources and attention away from the death penalty and towards the problem of solitary confinement. If such a shift is not made, death penalty abolitionists may succeed in their campaign only to discover that they have won a Pyrrhic victory. Sending hardened criminals from death row to solitary confinement is no triumph. It merely swaps one type of death for another.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has a piece about innocent people pleading guilty:

The presumption of innocence helps to combat prejudice and prejudging in the U.S. criminal justice system. But because plea bargains have supplanted trials in our criminal justice system, that presumption does not apply to most cases in the United States.
Prejudice against the accused is quite common. Consider your own experience: If you see that a police car has pulled a driver over to the side of a highway, what do you make of the situation? Most people probably think to themselves, “Hmm, that driver was probably caught speeding.” Similarly, if you heard that one of your neighbors had been arrested, you would likely say to yourself, “I wonder what crime he committed.” It is a common reaction to presume that the authorities had a good reason to detain or arrest someone.
To protect the innocent, however, the law demands that incriminating evidence be presented in court. The Constitution says every person accused of a crime has the right to an impartial jury trial. If the jury is persuaded that a person is guilty, then that person can lose his liberty and be punished. That is a sensible procedure for a just system, and it is why Americans have taken pride in our Bill of Rights.
Unfortunately, the system that is described by our school teachers and that Americans see on television and in the movies is now defunct. Jury trials are now rare events in the United States. In fact, about 95 percent of the cases moving through the system will not go to trial. The overwhelming majority of cases will be resolved by plea bargains.

 While the drumbeat of criminal justice reform is getting louder, many in the GOP are opposing commonsense measures.  

"How about the rest of us? Right-wingin', bitter-clingin', proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religions and our Constitution. Tell us that we're not red enough? Yeah, coming from the establishment."

That was Sarah Palin yesterday endorsing The Donald.  There are so many good quotes.  More here.

Meantime, the Republicans are duking it out over sentencing reform.  Politico covers the story:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faces snowballing pressure to tackle an overhaul of the criminal justice system. But deep dissension within his own party — between pro-reform Republicans and law-and-order types — is threatening one of the few items on the congressional agenda with a real chance of becoming law this year.
Criminal justice legislation is backed by the two top vote-counters of each party in the Senate and a powerful right-left coalition. It was bolstered by a presidential shout-out in the State of the Union last week. Passing a bill would advance McConnell’s favorite narrative — that the Senate is working again.

But loosening some mandatory minimum sentences is still a toxic suggestion among a vocal segment of the GOP, criticism that the presidential primary could amplify. Some backers of the bill fret that Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s vaulted into the top tier in the GOP presidential primary, might seize on the issue ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The Texas Republican has warned that a bill pending in the Senate could release violent criminals into the streets.
Still, backers are pressing ahead. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), McConnell’s top deputy, has lobbied the majority leader to take up the proposal early this year. Backers say the Senate has to move on criminal justice reform quickly, perhaps as soon as next month, for the measure to have any hope of reaching President Barack Obama’s desk.

3-0

That's the defense record in Chinese importation trials. The latest was by AFPDs Sowmya Bharathi and Bunmi Lomax before Judge Seitz. There was also another January not guilty casting shade on Rumpole's "no-trials-in-January" mandate. Bottom line -- we need more trials! 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article54763750.html?ppRandom=0.12800472962753218&pp_u=EpszNZmQZ2sGUh1MEMIQCA#storylink=cpy

Anthony Bosch's sentenced reduced

From the Herald:

Anthony Bosch, the fake doctor who sold illegal muscle-building steroids to Major League Baseball stars including Alex Rodriguez, had the goods on his partners in crime.
Once Bosch’s Coral Gables anti-aging clinic shut down and baseball’s biggest doping scandal erupted in early 2013, it wasn’t long before Bosch began assisting baseball and U.S. authorities to save his neck.
On Thursday, the 52-year-old Bosch received his benefit for snitching when a Miami federal judge reduced his four-year prison sentence by one-third for helping federal prosecutors convict other defendants who participated in his steroid-distribution racket. His sentence was lowered to two years and eight months.
Prosecutors recommended that Bosch, 52, former owner of the anti-aging clinic Biogenesis of America, be given lesser punishment because of his “substantial assistance” in the investigation. His parallel cooperation with baseball authorities resulted in lengthy suspensions of Rodriguez, the New York Yankees star, and 13 other professional ballplayers who purchased banned performance-enhancing drugs from Bosch.
“He provided us with viable information that led to the prosecution of various defendants,” said prosecutor Sharad Motiani, noting that Bosch met with criminal investigators more than a dozen times for lengthy interviews and reviewed hundreds of medical, phone and text records that contributed to the successful prosecutions of at least four other defendants.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article54650210.html#storylink=cpy

CJA hearings in Miami conclude

Celia Ampel for the DBR covers it here:

Lawyers appointed to represent federal defendants who can't afford an attorney sometimes have trouble securing expert witnesses, wading through voluminous e-discovery and persuading judges to approve their expenses, according to testimony at a public hearing Monday and Tuesday in Miami.
The Criminal Justice Act, which provides a system for compensating those attorneys, is under a two-year review by a committee appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The committee's stop at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse was the second of seven hearings in cities from Portland, Oregon, to Philadelphia.
Attorneys and judges from across the Southeastern U.S. testified at the hearing, including the Southern District of Florida's Federal Public Defender Michael Caruso, U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer and U.S. District Judges Robert Scola Jr., Donald Graham and Kathleen Williams.
The committee questioned the witnesses on whether the authority to approve CJA panel attorney compensation should rest with the judiciary, the public defender's office or an independent body. The group also discussed the challenges of e-discovery.

***

But regardless of their independence, CJA panel attorneys have far fewer resources than federal defenders and the U.S. attorney's office, lawyers testified.
That inequality extends to discovery, which in a multidefendant case can amount to three terabytes of data — or 6,000 filing cabinets of documents, Caruso said.
"You can imagine the CJA lawyer who's a solo practitioner trying to make sense of 6,000 filing cabinets," particularly in a trial-heavy and fast-paced district like the Southern District of Florida, he said.

Judge Graham was really strong on this point saying that prosecutors should be required to hand over hot documents to defense lawyers as a matter of proportionality and basic fairness.  Seems like a no-brainer.