What's the appropriate sentence for a 22-year old austic man who stalked and taunted the families of the Parkland victims?

This is a tough one.

The sentencing guidelines were 57-71 months.  The statutory maximum for each of the 4 counts of conviction was 5 years (60 months).  The defense asked for a downward variance and a residential program to address his mental issues.  The prosecutor asked for an upward variance to 20 years! (The stat max for each count stacked on top of each other). Of course we all feel for the victims, but 20 years is more than many rapists, murderers, and terrorists get.

After a lengthy sentencing, Judge Ruiz issued a guideline sentence of 66 months.

A summary from the New York Times:

A 22-year-old California man was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison on Monday after cyberstalking and threatening to kidnap relatives of those killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., federal prosecutors said.

The man, Brandon Michael Fleury, impersonated the confessed gunman on social media for three weeks to threaten and taunt survivors of the shooting and victims’ loved ones. He was found guilty in October of three counts of cyberstalking and one count of transmitting a kidnapping threat.

Sabrina Puglisi, Mr. Fleury’s lawyer, said she was disappointed that the judge did not place Mr. Fleury in a residential treatment program, given that he has autism spectrum disorder. However, she said, she was pleased the judge’s sentence was much lower than the maximum 20 years that Mr. Fleury had faced.

“The judge made a strong argument that this type of trolling behavior on the internet is not OK, not acceptable and it won’t stand,” Ms. Puglisi said in an interview on Monday. “He wanted to send a message to deter people from doing the same.”

What will happen when FDC or other federal prisons get coronavirus?

Will the corrections officers (who are already short staffed) show up to work?
Will prisoners be locked in their rooms 24-7?
Are the feds ready?

The virus is already in Chinese prisons.  From the LA Times:

Prisons are an ideal environment for viral transmission, according to medical experts. Doctors recommend keeping a distance of at least 6 feet from any sick person to avoid contagion from respiratory droplets when they cough or sneeze. Confirmed cases should remain in complete isolation, with the door closed.
“You aren’t going to see bottles of Purell. You’re going to see people existing very close together, which aids transmission,” said Brandon Brown, an epidemiologist at UC Riverside.
Perhaps the closest comparison to the prison scenario would be cruise ships, he said, where large populations living in close quarters have illustrated the virus’ explosive spread. Scientists have another concern: feces. In addition to the virus surviving for hours on surfaces — handrails, elevator buttons and even exchanged business cards — researchers suspect major contagion occurs in shared bathroom settings.

"They want me to lie. They’re yelling at me.”

That was Rick Singer, the ringleader and main snitch in the Varsity Blues case describing what the case agents wanted him to do.  That should make your blood boil of course.  But the cover-up by prosecutors is just as bad, not disclosing this obvious Brady material until after twenty of the defendants have already pleaded guilty and served their time. It's just outrageous.

From the NY Times:

Since the mastermind of the college admissions scandal, William Singer, pleaded guilty last March to racketeering and other charges, he has been mostly offstage, paddleboarding and enjoying the California sun while many of his former clients head off to prison.

But this week, Mr. Singer, who admitted to organizing a scheme to cheat on tests and bribe college coaches to get students into elite schools, was again the center of attention. Lawyers for the actress Lori Loughlin and other parents said that notes Mr. Singer had taken while cooperating with federal investigators showed that they pushed him to lie to incriminate his clients.

They said that Mr. Singer’s own words suggested that parents did not knowingly engage in a conspiracy to bribe coaches, as prosecutors have argued, and they accused prosecutors of sitting on the evidence for months in violation of their legal obligations.

“Loud and abrasive call with agents,” Mr. Singer wrote on Oct. 2, 2018, in a note with several typos and misspellings. “They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where there money was going - to the program not the coach and that it was a donation and they want it to be a payment.”

He added that the agents were essentially “asking me to bend the truth.”

In a hearing on Thursday, a federal judge called the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct “very serious” but did not rule on the issue, directing the parties to submit further motions.

Ms. Loughlin’s lawyers had written in a court filing on Wednesday that the evidence in Mr. Singer’s notes was “devastating to the Government’s case and demonstrates that the Government has been improperly withholding core exculpatory information, employing a ‘win at all costs’ effort rather than following their obligation to do justice.”

I previously wrote about how prosecutors were trying to bully Aunt Becky into pleading guilty.  Turns out they were doing much worse!

So what will happen now? The judge took various motions under advisement.  But the sad truth is that the likelihood that anything will happen to the prosecutors or agents who engaged in this misconduct -- or to the case itself -- is very low.  The right result would be to issue severe sanctions, including dismissal.  That's the only way that we are going to stop prosecutorial misconduct, which is a real problem for the criminal justice system.

The judiciary exists to act as a check on the executive branch.  But unfortunately we don't see much of that at all when it comes to misconduct. Instead, we hear: don't do that again; it wasn't intentional; there was no prejudice; it was harmless; and so on. So prosecutors and agents keep doing it.

At sentencings every day in every courtroom around the country, we hear about deterrence and why severe sentences are needed.  Let's be consistent with prosecutorial wrongdoing.

Roy Altman speaks for new judges at SCOTUS

Very cool honor for Judge Altman who spoke to and on behalf of the new judges (class of '19).  Justice Thomas spoke for the Court, and Justices Sotomayor, Alito, and Kavanaugh attended. Here are some pictures:

Elections matter...

...especially for the Supreme Court.

This week, in a 5-4 opinion, the Court found that a Border Patrol Agent cannot be sued for shooting a teenager from Mexico in the face.

Immune.

Insane.

Inhumane.

And of course it’s Alito writing the opinion. Totally on brand.

The opinion is Hernandez v. Mesa, available here.

The holding in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents does not extend to claims based on a cross-border shooting.

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch say in a concurrence that they would do away with Bivens altogether!

Alito really is the most partisan Justice we have.

And it’s not even close.

Don’t @ me.

Thank goodness for Justice Ginsburg who writes the dissent and explains that allowing the suit to go forward would not impact national security or any other “concern” that the majority has.