11th Circuit Judge Dubina has taken senior status

It became official on his birthday October 26.  (h/t Glenn Sugameli).

President Obama now has another seat to fill in the 11th.  Robin Rosenbaum is being vetted for the recently vacated seat by Judge Barkett.

The Court has a number of open seats on the 11th right now and has a chance to really reshape the Court.  Let's see what happens.

"Homesick Hijacker"

This guy has been on the lam for 30 years but is planning to argue that he has served his time because he did 13 years in a Cuban prison.  From Curt Anderson:

An American who hijacked an airliner to Cuba nearly 30 years ago as a self-described revolutionary flew back home Wednesday to face U.S. justice.

FBI agents took William Potts, 56, into custody shortly after his charter flight from Havana landed at Miami International Airport, said FBI spokesman Mike Leverock. Potts faces a 1985 federal indictment charging him with air piracy for hijacking a Piedmont Airlines flight in 1984.

In interviews prior to leaving Cuba, Potts said he was seeking “closure” and hoped to convince U.S. prosecutors to give him credit for the 13-plus years he spent in Cuban prison for hijacking the flight. The U.S. charge carries a sentence of between 20 years and life in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

“My position is I am a free man. I have served my time,” Potts said. “But they seem to have another concept. They are going to take control of me. I will be under their authority.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the U.S. attorney’s office would proceed and exactly when Potts would make his first court appearance. He was taken from the airport to the FBI’s Miami field office.

 

I think this case may be pre-guidelines, so the judge will have quite a bit of leeway at sentencing.  Any predictions?

Fascinating argument in the Supreme Court about the federalization of all crime

The case, Bond v. United States, raised the issue of whether the feds could charge a woman who poisoned her husband under the country's treaty power.  Bond was represented by Paul Clement and the government by U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

SCOTUSblog has a nice summary of the intense questioning on both sides:

But Verrilli seemed to be tested more rigorously in trying to persuade the Court not to start drawing lines to limit treaty power or treaty implementation, as the more conservative Justices — sometimes using sarcasm — challenged his core argument.  The conservatives were joined in their challenges by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who often is a strong defender of national government power.
But it was Breyer who seemed to irritate Verrilli the most, when the Justice discussed how open-ended the weapons treaty was — so much so that it might even reach disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs — and pressed Verrilli to say what limits, if any, there were on the treaty’s reach.  “Hypotheticals are just hypotheticals; they are not real cases,” Verrilli shot back.
Verrilli, though, also had to face some tart responses.  Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., said that the hypotheticals the Justices were reciting were not real cases “because you haven’t prosecuted them.”  Alito went on to test the government position by noting that, a few days ago, he and his wife had passed out “chemical weapons” to children — that is, Halloween chocolate.  He noted that “chocolate is poisonous to dogs,” and the treaty bans the use of any chemical harmful to animals as well as humans.
When Justice Breyer commented lightly that “there was chocolate all over the place,” Verrilli bluntly commented: “This is serious business.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., repeatedly questioned the Solicitor General about whether there is any constitutional limit on Congress’s power to enter treaties or implement them, and whether a treaty could give Congress the authority to claim ”national police powers.”   Verrilli answered that it would be ”unimaginable that the Senate would ratify” such a treaty.
But that answer prompted Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to say: “It seems unimaginable that you did bring this prosecution (of Carol Bond).”
Justice Antonin Scalia even brought into the argument the current controversy over same-sex marriage, suggesting that the government’s argument was so sweeping that the U.S. could join in a treaty approving same-sex marriage, and requiring Congress to pass a law making that binding nationally, on all of the states.  Verrilli, Scalia suggested, was trying to “drag Congress into areas where it has never been before.”  The Solicitor General answered that the Constitution’s structure, with checks and balances, put limits on treaty-making and treaty-implementation.
Verrilli argued that there was no dispute over whether the chemical weapons treaty was valid, so the implementing law should be, too, because “there is no daylight” between what each covered.  But Justice Scalia directly disputed the point, saying the implementing law went considerably further.

All of the pundits are concluding that the Court will rule for Bond, which would be fantastic. It's time to start reigning in the federal prosecution of local crime. We'll see.

Round 1 to the IRS over Colley Billie

Yesterday, Judge Williams ordered him to sit for a deposition, saying that he could not just assert a blanket 5th Amendment right to silence. Instead, he would have to assert it question by question, document by document in response to IRS questioning.

Then the parties can come back before the court to determine whether those assertions were valid or not.

What's the over/under on how many times in the depo he asserts the 5th?  I'm putting the line at 50.

Is bond jumping a real problem?

The Miami Herald ran a big story this weekend on Medicare fraud defendants jumping bail, even including a "gallery of rogues."  The article is worth a read and the numbers at first blush seem alarming:

Gonzalez and some 30 other defendants have been captured over the last half-dozen years, with the pace of arrests beginning to pick up this year. There are still another 150 fugitives from outstanding Medicare fraud cases in South Florida, most of them Cuban-born immigrants who fled to Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and other Spanish-speaking countries to evade federal trials.

My problem with the article though is that there is no discussion about how many defendants actually appear for court after being released on bond.  In fact, the statistics kept by the Bureau of Justice show that the overwhelming majority of criminal defendants released on bond show up for all court appearances at much less cost to the taxpayer than housing them at the Federal Detention Center.

And what about the 150 Medicare defendants that are still on the run?  Well, later in the article, it is revealed that 90 of those 150 are not out on bond and do not even know that they are charged:

The FBI has maintained a list of at least 90 South Florida Medicare fraud fugitives identified by name, compiled by Special Agent Bryan Piper. The bureau, assisted by Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, also has a list of an additional 90 defendants who have been charged by sealed indictment, but also are suspected of having fled the region. As a result, they are unaware they are wanted in Miami, and agents don’t want to tip them off.

Finally, most fugitives get caught:

So far, about 30 fugitives have been busted. Culp said that most South Florida fugitives typically get caught while they are on the lam in foreign nations, or when they return to this country through Miami International Airport.

So I hope that the article does not dissuade judges from granting bond.  In the overwhelming number of cases, bond is appropriate, and it works.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/02/v-fullstory/3728532/fbi-tracking-down-medicare-fraud.html#storylink=cpyT

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/02/v-fullstory/3728532/fbi-tracking-down-medicare-fraud.html#storylink=cpy