Role Reversal: Zimmerman closing arguments

Interesting dynamic in the Zimmerman closings so far.

The prosecutor's closing yesterday seemed very much like a defense closing -- passionate and poking holes in Zimmerman's story. He seemed to be arguing that there is a reasonable doubt about Zimmerman's version of events.

This morning, O'Mara started his closing by accepting the burden of proof and arguing that Zimmerman is "100% innocent." He is also very low key, walking them through the facts and the elements of self-defense.

I thought the prosecution crushed the defense in opening statements, but it seems just the opposite so far in closings. The prosecutor was screaming and yelling way too much.

Anyway, Rumpole hates when juries go out on Friday afternoon... But I don't think there will be a verdict today.

UPDATE -- the rebuttal was much better, but than the opening summation. Intense, but not screaming at the jury. Predictions on when the verdict will come back and what it will be?

Thursday News & Notes

1.  Judge Lenard denied Juan Caro's bid for a new trial, rejecting his request for a hearing to find out when the government knew about Nevin Shapiro's bad acts.  From the Herald:

Lenard rejected a new bid by defense attorney Arturo Hernandez to hold an evidentiary hearing to explore whether a Justice Department lawyer who teamed up with a Miami prosecutor in the La Bamba trial knew about the FBI’s investigation of Shapiro in New Jersey months before he took the stand.
Hernandez filed documents such as government emails in hopes of challenging the Miami prosecution team’s timeline.
The Miami prosecutors first informed Hernandez of the Shapiro criminal probe when Shapiro was charged in April 2010.
Hernandez argued that had he been told about the Shapiro probe, he would have asked him about his investment scam on the witness stand. Hernandez said he was “disappointed” with the judge’s ruling.

2.  The Justice Department found lots of bad Miami police shootings.  From the NY Times:

Federal officials have found that the Miami Police Department engaged in a pattern of excessive force that led to a high number of shootings by officers, among them episodes that resulted in the deaths of seven young black men over an eight-month period in 2011.
The findings, released on Tuesday, came after a two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and they identified “troubling” practices, including delays in completing investigations of officer-involved shootings, questionable police tactics and a lack of adequate supervision. From 2008 to 2011, officers intentionally fired their weapons at people 33 times, the investigation found.       

In a summary addressed to Tomas P. Regalado, Miami’s mayor, and Manuel Orosa, the police chief, the Justice Department noted that its own investigation would have been completed sooner if not for the Police Department’s “frequent inability to produce necessary documents in a timely fashion.”

 Here's the letter to the Mayor.

3.  Young guns can see who the best closer is at this upcoming competition.  My advice -- don't start with a knock knock joke.

4.  Judge Kozinski is so good.  Footnote 1 from a 1992 opinion of his that was recently emailed to me:

We do not (except in the caption) follow the appellant's counsel's interesting practice of writing the names of the people involved in CAPITAL LETTERS. Neither do we follow the appellee's counsel's practice of writing appellant's name in BOLD-FACED CAPITAL LETTERS. Nor do we intend to write all numbers both as text and numerals, as in "eleven (11) loose teeth, two (2) of which were shattered[;] [m]oreover, her jaw was broken in three (3) places." Appellee's Brief at 7. Finally, we will also not "set off important text" by putting it on "separate lines" and enclosing it in "quotation marks."
See id. at 10. While we realize counsel had only our welfare in mind in engaging in these creative practices, we assure them that we would have paid no less attention to their briefs had they been more conventionally written.

AUSA Michael Garofola doesn't get a rose

This was Michael G.'s last episode (prior blog coverage about the federal prosecutor on the Bachelorette here).  He had a good run on the show, making it to the final five. 

 
 


Gossip Cop has the recap of the show.  Some highlights:

Next up was Michael G, getting to have a 1-on-1 with Hartsock for the first time.
After going tobogganing, the federal prosecutor opened up about his estrangement with his father, his battle with Type I diabetes, and finding out his live-in girlfriend was cheating on him.
“The silver lining to all this is that — I mean this from the bottom of my heart — is I’m feeling these feelings again,” he told Hartsock, adding to the camera later that he’s “falling in love.”
For her part, the reality star told the camera that “Michael is one of the greatest guys I ever met.”
***
At the rose ceremony, Hartsock ultimately gave roses to everyone except Michael.
She explained to the shell-shocked contestant her other relationships were “growing differently.
“I’m heartbroken,” he confessed as Hartsock went on to praise their “friendship,” before wishing each other “the best.”

Did you know we had a secret court, operated by similar thinking judges on an ex parte basis?

The New York Times had a front page piece on the FISA Court this weekend.  The whole thing is worth a close look.  From the article:

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
***
Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court.

Closer to home, visa-fraud prosecutions are up.  According to the Herald:

A report released in April by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) showed that visa fraud criminal prosecutions now rank third among the top 10 immigration law prosecutions in the country.
Also, a Government Accountability Office report issued in September said the State Department screens visa applicants for fraud.
But GAO auditors found that consulates do not systematically employ methods to prevent fraud.
“State has a variety of technological tools and resources to assist consular officers in combating fraud, but does not have a policy for their systematic use,” the GAO report said.
In response, the State Department said it generally agreed with GAO findings and would implement recommendations to improve fraud tracking .
The GAO report said the top 10 countries where visa fraud occurs are China, Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Brazil, Ghana, Cambodia, Jamaica, Peru and Ukraine.

Your Friday moment of Zen

Gotta love technology.  Here's Rachel Maddow on the Zimmerman trial getting Skype Bombed:

And here's the actual raw footage of the whole thing: