Another ACCA case

Here's an interesting introduction by Chief Judge Carnes in U.S. v. Davis:

This is an ACCA “violent felony” issue case. So here we go down the rabbit hole again to a realm where we must close our eyes as judges to what we know as men and women. It is a pretend place in which a crime that the defendant committed violently is transformed into a non-violent one because other defendants at other times may have been convicted, or future defendants could be convicted, of violating the same statute without violence. Curiouser and curiouser it has all become, as the holding we must enter in this case shows. Still we are required to follow the rabbit.

So, who is the rabbit?  The rule of law?

** **BREAKING -- Lauren Louis selected as new magistrate in Miami

** **BREAKING -- Lauren Louis has been selected as the new magistrate in Miami.

And as noted below, Bruce Reinhart is the new mag in West Palm Beach.

**BREAKING -- Bruce Reinhart selected as new magistrate in West Palm Beach(UPDATED)

**BREAKING -- I am being told that Bruce Reinhart has been selected as the new magistrate in West Palm Beach.

I am still waiting to hear who got it in Miami.

UPDATE -- Lauren Louis has been selected as the new magistrate in Miami.

Shanieck Maynard investiture

Congrats to Shanieck Maynard on her investiture as Magistrate Judge in Ft. Pierce. 

The judges will be selecting two new magistrates today for West Palm Beach and Miami from this list:

Miami:

Lynn Kirkpatrick, Lauren Louis, Gera Peoples, Steven Petri, and Erica Zaron

West Palm Beach:

Panayotta Agustin-Birch, Celeste Higgins, Stephanie Moon, Steven Petri, and Bruce Reinhart

Federal Bar Association Dinner

It was a big night at the South Florida Chapter of the Federal Bar Association last night.  Judge Donald Graham received the Ned Award, named after Judge Edward B. Davis.  It's a very prestigious honor and one that Judge Davis would be very proud that it was awarded to Judge Graham.  Also, Russell Koonin was installed as the new president of the organization.  Ben Brodsky is the outgoing president.  Here are some good pictures:

Give me a lawyer dog or Give me a lawyer, Dawg

Did the defendant say: Give me a lawyer dog or Give me a lawyer, Dawg.  According to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, the defendant could have wanted some sort of weird animal called a lawyer dog:

In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog”does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview and does not violate Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct.1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981).

ABSURD!!

The memes from the case have been funny.  Here's one from Slate:

Here come the (conservative) judges...

While everyone is focused on the Manafort indictment, the Senate is about to confirm 4 conservative appellate judges.  From HuffPost:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is finally giving conservative groups what they want: a huge push on judicial confirmations.

McConnell has teed up votes this week on four of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. That’s an incredible amount of activity on judges in one week. For some comparison, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) typically scheduled a vote on one nominee per week, at most.

“I never remember the Democrats ever doing anything comparable,” Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and an expert on judicial nominations, told HuffPost on Monday.

With little fanfare, this week is shaping up to be one of Republicans’ biggest boosts to Trump’s agenda since Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed in April.

All four nominees are young (in their late 40s and early 50s), conservative and up for a lifetime post on a U.S. circuit court ― one level below the Supreme Court. None got a single Democratic vote when they were reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Two were recommended to Trump directly by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, both right-wing think tanks.

The Senate cleared a procedural step on Monday night for the first nominee in the batch, Amy Coney Barrett. She is now on track to be confirmed Tuesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Democrats have raised red flags with Barrett’s past writings on abortion, which include her questioning the precedent of Roe v. Wade and condemning the birth control benefit under the Affordable Care Act as “a grave infringement on religious liberty.” One Democrat, Al Franken (Minn.), called her out for taking a speaking fee from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit that has defended forced sterilization for transgender people and has been dubbed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Trump’s other court picks getting votes include Joan Larsen, a nominee to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals who is opposed by 27 LGBTQ advocacy groups and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Allison Eid, a nominee to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals who is opposed by the AFL-CIO and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; and Stephanos Bibas, a nominee to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

JNC schedules interviews for Federal District Judge

The Federal JNC has scheduled interviews for Federal District Judge as follows:

DAY ONE November 28, 2017

9:00 am           Benjamin Greenberg

9:40 am           Migna Sanchez-Llorens

10:20 am         Rodney Smith

11:00 am         John Thornton

11:40 am         Marina Garcia Wood

12:15 – 1:00 pm          LUNCH

1:00 pm           Angel Cortinas

1:40 pm           John Kastrenakes

2:20 pm           Orlando Prescott

3:00 pm           Melissa Visconti

3:40 pm           Beatrice Butchko

4:20 pm           Raag Singhal

5:00 pm           Antonio Arzola

DAY TWO November 29, 2017

9:00 am           Roy Altman

9:40 am           Thomas Rebull

10:20 am         Michael Sherwin

11:00 am         Dina Keever-Agrama

11:40 am         Daryl Trawick

12:15 – 1:00 pm          LUNCH

1:00 pm           William Roby

1:40 pm           Peter Lopez

2:20 pm           Jeffrey Colbath

3:00 pm           David Haimes

3:40 pm           Rodolfo Ruiz

4:20 pm           Mark Klingensmith

5:00 pm           Meenu Sasser 

The 24 interviews will be narrowed to 10 recommendations to the 2 Florida Senators.  They will then recommend 5 to the White House.

Finalists for the two Magistrate Positions

Finalists for the two Magistrate Positions are:

Miami:

Lynn Kirkpatrick, Lauren Louis, Gera Peoples, Steven Petri, and Erica Zaron

West Palm Beach:

Panayotta Agustin-Birch, Celeste Higgins, Stephanie Moon, Steven Petri, and Bruce Reinhart

Judge William Pryor reviews book on Justice Scalia

11th Circuit Judge and SCOTUS short-lister, William Pryor, wrote this review of "Scalia Speaks" for Law360. Here's a snippet:

Scalia’s famous literary style shines on every page. Consider, for example, his colorful description of his “intense dislike” of legal canards — that is, “oft-repeated statements that he [wa]s condemned to read, again and again, in the reported cases.” Scalia complained, “It gets to be a kind of Chinese water torture: one’s intelligence strapped down helplessly by the bonds of stare decisis that require these cases to be read, and trickled upon, time after time, by certain ritual errors, vapidities, and non sequiturs.”

Or consider his vivid description of the remote injury caused by a package of fireworks to a railroad passenger in a famous legal case: “And when the package landed on the rails, there resulted a rather large pyrotechnic explosion, which caused a set of scales a considerable distance away on the far end of the platform to fall over, and to land on top of poor Mrs. Palsgraf, who was injured.”

The collection even offers advice from the late justice to Scribes: The American Society of Legal Writers about the “time and sweat” necessary to become a good writer: that is, one who has what the justice called “the ability to place oneself in the shoes of one’s audience; to assume only what they assume; to anticipate what they anticipate; to explain what they need explained; to think what they must be thinking; to feel what they must be feeling.” That advice came when the society unsurprisingly honored the justice with a lifetime achievement award.

Scalia’s wit also offers laughs at every turn. To the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in New York City, Scalia explained “the best formula for after-dinner speeches being what one of the Jesuits I had in high school advised was the best advice for kissing among unmarried couples: leviter, breviter.” In a crack about the education of new Catholic priests, Scalia then deadpanned, “For the younger clergy in the audience, that is Latin for ‘lightly and briefly.’” And then after what must have been a pause, he delivered the punch line: “I have reason to believe that that advice has been no more effective for after-dinner speakers than it has been for unmarried couples.”

The next week he spoke to B’nai B’rith in the nation’s capital, where he recalled his speech to the Friendly Sons the week before and said, “Washington is becoming more and more like New York. Just last Wednesday I was at the dinner for the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, and here I am at B’nai B’rith. As Irving Kristol said some years ago, in reference to a Jewish mayor of Dublin, ‘Only in America!’” And then there’s Scalia’s description of one his “most humbling moments” as a turkey hunter: “I took a shot at a gobbler and he went right down — flapped a little and went down. I was so excited, I jumped out of the box stand and hurried to him. I got about five feet away and he lifted his head, looked at me, and ran away.” Scalia then explained, “And I had left my gun back in the box stand.”

Another (fake?) bomb plot uncovered in SDFLA

Another (fake?) bomb plot was uncovered in the Southern District of Florida. The FBI arrested Vincente Solano for attempting to blow up the Dolphin Mall. The FBI was tipped off by a confidential informant and then provided Solano a fake bomb. Solano will make his first appearance in front of Magistrate Judge McAliley today.

Going back to the controversial Liberty City 7 case, the FBI has made a number of these types of arrests. The Miami Herald mentions some of the convictions here:

In recent years, the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami has obtained convictions against Harlem Suarez, a Key West man who plotted to blow up a bomb on a public beach while supporting a foreign terrorist organization, and James Medina, a Hollywood man who tried to bomb a synagogue in Aventura. Suarez, 25, was sentenced to life in prison. Medina, 41, faces a 25-year prison term at his sentencing in November.

First round of Magistrate interviews this week.

The first round of interviews for the two magistrate slots (one in WPB and one in Miami) are this week. After the committee narrows the field, the judges will then conduct their interviews. The process, however, is very secretive. For example, there is no public list of who received interviews. The district court process has been much more open with requests for applicants, etc. It's a time of change in the District -- in the next 6 months, we should have a new U.S. Attorney, two new magistrates, and possibly 5 new judges. If one of those 5 judges is Michael Caruso, we will also need a new Federal Defender. Thanks to everyone for the tips that keep coming in... it's very helpful. It's also important for the public to be able to see how people are chosen for these positions.