Get ready for traffic and t-storms...

...spring break is over.

Bummer.

Any trials starting up in Federal Court this week?

In the meantime, here you go...

The NY Times has this funny piece by Scott Shane. Maybe the other DM and I should do a post.

TAKE a glance at who wrote this article and you’ll understand the problem. Who’s who?

Two people with the same name can get mixed up — in both senses. Throw in the Internet, which can make geography irrelevant, and the possibility for confusion rivals that of a Shakespeare comedy, without the happy ending.

Just ask us.

For more than two decades, Scott Shane the business-school professor and Scott Shane the journalist have been mistaken for each other by co-authors, collection agencies, Google, a journalism school, public relations firms, an ex-congressman, a book distributor — and, yes, this newspaper. Being Internet doppelgängers has never been more than a persistent nuisance. But it reflects an era in which a person is not just flesh and blood but also an electronic composite, patched together from words, numbers and images, accessible at a click.

Dave Ovalle does this nice obit on Red from the state courthouse:

Outside Miami’s criminal courthouse, he was known to many only as “Red” the panhandler, a distinctive character woven into the colorful fabric of the justice community, as much a fixture as attorneys, hot-dog carts and TV news trucks.

On the Internet, his wild, woolly and wall-eyed mugshot made him a briefly viral meme to be mocked or, oddly enough, the face of an online ad hawking a dubious blood-pressure cure.

In real life, he was a 34-year-old named Brett Heinzinger, a man whose only luck seemed bad. He was born to heroin addicts, heard his grandfather murdered as a child, got addicted to drugs as a young man and wound up in South Florida chasing his next cocaine score and living under an overpass.

He died here, too — run down by a motorist on a dark rainy January night on Northwest 12th Avenue, under the Dolphin Expressway, next to the courthouse. The car never stopped. Next to him, Miami detectives found the foam cup he used to panhandle, seven pennies inside.

Will 4th Circuit split with 11th on cell site tracking?

The entire 4th Circuit considered whether the police need a warrant before getting your location data when your cell phone connects to cell towers.  The en banc 11th Circuit said no in US v. Davis and the Supreme Court denied cert, but the Florida Supreme Court said yes in Tracey.

The Washington Post covered the oral argument here:

Almost immediately Wednesday, questions from the bench centered on whether location information from cellphones is any different than records of banking transactions or landline phone calls.

Defense attorney Meghan S. Skelton said the government had essentially tracked the defendants’ every move, equating cellphone location data to “dragnet surveillance.” Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein countered that the information gleaned from cell towers was imprecise, unobtrusive and created by the wireless provider — not the government.

A divided three-judge panel of the court ruled in August that accessing the location information without a warrant for an “extended period” is unconstitutional because it allows law enforcement to trace a person’s daily travels and activities across public and private spaces.

Can you get a fair trial in an identity theft case if one of the jurors is paranoid and thinks you are "al Qaeda" and needs to be in the "jury protection program"?

According to the 11th Circuit, the answer is yes:

The district court did not clearly err in finding that Juror 9 could be fair and impartial. After hearing her answers to its questions, the district court “believe[d] her when she said that she would be fair.” ... Furthermore, the district court took measures to allay Juror 9’s fears by explaining that the case had nothing to do with terrorism and that her life was not in any danger. It reasonably found that this discussion “quelled” her concerns, especially because her concerns did not appear to be that serious to begin with. As soon as the district court started questioning her, Juror 9 confessed that she is “just paranoid.” 

Well, I guess if the juror was just paranoid, then we have nothing to worry about with the verdict of the "Arab, Muslim" defendant charged in a run of the mill identity theft case that had nothing to do with al Qaeda or terrorism.

Never give up!

I keep watching the last minute of this Texas A&M game.  Down double digits with under a minute to go... And they pull it off.  It's just a sick sick finish and shows: 1) anything is possible, and 2) how great March Madness is.  I love it.

It's Spring Break, so posting will be light this week.  If anything is going on, please email it to me and I will post it.  Or if you'd like to do a guest post, shoot one over!

Go Dore Go!

Dore Louis, along with his trusty trial partner Ricardo Martinez-Cid, scored a JOA yesterday before Judge Graham in a CJA "mere presence" case.  Interestingly, the judge granted the judgment of acquittal after the government closing (but before Dore closed).  Kudos to Judge Graham for continuing to call it like he sees it and not just letting cases go to the jury when they shouldn't be brought in the first place.