Weekend reading

1. Ben Kuehne. The feds decided to drop the obstruction count, but added a wire fraud count:

Federal prosecutors have added and subtracted charges in the money-laundering indictment brought against prominent Miami attorney Ben Kuehne and two others.
In a superseding indictment filed Friday, the Justice Department added a wire-fraud conspiracy count but dropped an obstruction of justice charge.

2. Trials. in 2007, the SDFLA had 155 trials, more than any other district, followed by SDNY (108), MDFL (108), SDTX(106) and WDTX(105). In fact, we had more trials than the entire 1st Circuit, and almost as many as the 3rd and 10th Circuits.

3. Libery City 7. Vanessa Blum examines why the government is having so much trouble in this case -- perhaps it was because they arrested too early:

The failure of federal prosecutors to convict any members of an alleged South Florida terror cell after two trials highlights the obstacles in a legal strategy of arresting terror suspects before they strike.That approach, known as preemption, has been the Justice Department's mandate since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, drove home the potentially lethal consequences of not acting soon enough to stop terrorism.But moving too quickly may have doomed the so-called Liberty City 7 case by leaving prosecutors without sufficient evidence to back up their sensational allegations that the men wanted to launch a ground war against the U.S. government.Violent rhetoric caught on tape from the group's leader and a grainy video of the defendants swearing an oath of allegiance to al-Qaida have not been enough to convince jurors the men were conspiring to join forces with the terror group and not, as defense lawyers argued, simply playing along in a scheme for money.

4. There is a white collar seminar in the Middle District coming up with some impressive speakers.

Jose Padilla to the Supermax

Jose Padilla was transferred today to Florence, Colorado -- commonly known as the Supermax -- to serve his 17 year sentence.  

Judge Martinez speaks at the Federal Bar Association today

As expected, he was entertaining and the turnout to see him speak was great.

Apparently, the judges have been delayed moving into the new building because GSA forgot to order them the audio-visual equipment. This is not even funny anymore!

The buzz at the luncheon, of course, was whether the feds would retry the Liberty City group.

Liberty City mistrial

The Liberty City jury hung for a second time today. Judge Lenard will have a hearing next Wednesday to find out if the government will proceed a third time and if so, when that trial will be rescheduled. Lots of coverage from all the regulars.

I will re-post my questions from an earlier entry:

Well then SDFLA readers, should the government retry the case for a third time?

Don't two mistrials demonstrate that the government has a proof problem? [edited to get rid of the double negatives referenced in the comments]. When do we reach that point? After 5 hung juries? 10? I think 2 is the number....

What about bond? If there is a mistrial, and the government decides to proceed a third time, certainly the remaining six should receive bond. Pretrial detention for defendants who haven't been convicted after two trials can't be right.

The court appointed lawyers must be sweating. One of these long CJA trials is enough to cripple a practice, but two back-to-back is almost impossible to come back from. If a third trial were to start up right away, I'm not sure how these lawyers could keep their private practices up and running...

I also feel terrible for the prosecutors trying the case. Their lives have been turned upside by the many months in back-to-back trials. And the decision to retry the case isn't theirs. The decision most likely isn't even being made here in Miami. It probably is being made by some lawyer in DC who won't have to endure 3 trials.

My prediction is that despite all of the above, the case will be tried a third time.

Finally, I feel for Judge Lenard. Can you imagine having to sit through the same lengthy trial 3 times. Shoot me now!

Guam drops charges against Greenberg Traurig...

... in exchange for a refund of $324,000.