Joe Cool mystery

Vanessa Blum details here the mystery surrounding the Joe Cool boat and its missing passengers and the arrest of two men pulled from a lifeboat near the abandoned boat:

On Tuesday, Kirby Archer, 35, and Guillermo Zarabozo, 19, were charged, respectively, with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and making a false statement to a federal agent, according to FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela. The men had been questioned by agents since they were plucked from a life raft Monday morning.

Here's the AP article, which details some of the criminal complaint:

According to an FBI affidavit, Zarabozo initially claimed to his Coast Guard rescuers that "unknown subjects" had hijacked the boat, shot and killed the four crew members and then ordered Zarabozo to throw the bodies into the sea. Zarabozo later told the FBI he had never been on the "Joe Cool," even though his state identification card was found on the boat.
The affidavit also says that a substance appearing to be blood was found on the stern of the boat, along with six marijuana cigarettes, a laptop computer, luggage, clothes and a cell phone.
Archer, the affidavit said, admitted that he was a fugitive and knew that he could not travel by air.
Both men were being held without bail at a federal detention center in Miami.

And the Herald article here.

Sorry about my rant the other day...

... about the comments on the blog.

But if you thought I was bad, check this out:

National news

Some interesting stuff in the papers:

1. John Paul Stevens is interviewed. (NY Times; Hat tip Rumpole). This is a fantastic article. One quote from the Justice who spends a ton of time in this District: “I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all. I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” He also explained this funny story:

Stevens also distinguished himself as the only justice to spend a substantial part of each Supreme Court term away from Washington. He and his wife have a condominium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and they spend two weeks a month there from November through April. ...“I do much more work in Florida than I do here,” Stevens told me, looking contented. He sometimes reads briefs on the beach. “One of my favorite memories is the time I was sitting” on the Supreme Court bench in Washington just after returning from Florida, he recalled. “I shook the sand out of the brief!”


2 . The job market isn't so great for law grads (WSJ; Hat tip WSJ blog)

3. District Judge Paul Cassell has resigned. (Sentencing Law & Policy)

West Palm movers

Julie Kay highlights this morning lots of movers and shakers in WPB. Notably Rolando Garcia has been named head of the West Palm Beach office of the u.S. attorney's office, where the numbers of cases is way up.

Blog change

I started this blog as a fun way to cover the Southern District of Florida, a court that I love.

During the past week, a number of comments (on this blog and others) and posts on other blogs have made it not so fun. I can't control other blogs and their comments, although I have tried to get the offending blogger to delete his inappropriate post. I even deleted the post about which he was commenting, but he now is linking to the cached page from Google, which I cannot control.

But I can control this blog's comments. I have changed the blog so that you cannot post anonymously anymore. I will delete any mean comment or any comment which I feel is inappropriate.

Anyway, sorry for this post -- but I feel strongly that the blog shouldn't be used to make people feel bad.

Friday afternoon fun

Some funny stories reported around the blogosphere today:

1. James Muirhead, a federal magistrate in New Hampshire, wrote a very funny order today based on Green Eggs and Ham after an inmate filed a lawsuit based on the food he was being served and attached an actual egg to the pleading. Here's part:

“I do not like eggs in the file. I do not like them in any style. I will not take them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled Despite an argument well-rambled.” Thre rest of the order here.

2. Judge Posner, from the 7th Circuit, wrote an order about horse meat in which the court upheld an Illinois law making it unlawful to “slaughter a horse if that person knows or should know that any of the horse meat will be used for human consumption.” Here's the initial paragraph:

Horse meat was until recently an accepted part of the American diet—the Harvard Faculty Club served horse-meat steaks until the 1970s. No longer is horse meat eaten by Americans . . . though it is eaten by people in a number of other countries, including countries in Europe; in some countries it is a delicacy. Meat from American horses is especially prized because our ample grazing land enables them to eat natural grasses, which enhances the flavor of their meat.

Here's the opinion.

Check out page 11 -- which includes a picture of a lion eating a horse meat cake. No kidding. Here it is:

hat tips -- Wall Street Journal Blog and Above the Law.

District news

1. The Robles plea was accepted. Lots of news stories everywhere about it. There is a 15 year cap, instead of the 10 year cap previously agreed to by the parties. It will be interesting to see whether the government argues that a 10 year sentence is reasonable, notwithstanding the guidelines which I suspect will be a lot higher.

2. The Liberty City 7 case is underway. Again, lots of news stories about the jury selection and the start of the trial. Props to Judge Lenard for conducting a thorough voir dire. It looks like it will take a couple weeks to pick the jury in this case. That is appropriate considering the type of case it is and the press that has come with the case.

3. Last night Milton Hirsch had a constitution day party at his office. Here's the Joan Fleischman column about it. The office was packed with lawyers and judges. Federal judge sighting -- Judge Ungaro read the 15th Amendment, which states:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

I read the Fourth Amendment. Does anyone remember that one?

UPDATED -- Here's a picture of Judge Ungaro, Judge Alex, his daughter, and psychologist Merry Haber:

One down, one to go...

Even though it looks like the District is about to lose the high-profile Louis Robles trial, we still have one other huge one starting this week -- "the Miami 7" trial. Here's Vanessa Blum's article outlining the start of the case. And here's Jay Weaver's, and the AP.

This is the trial involving seven guys from Liberty City who spoke to undercover officers about blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago and other buildings in Miami. The government has described that group as "more aspirational than operational." Will their words and actions in this case be enough for conviction? How will the Jose Padilla trial sit in jurors' minds? Stay tuned -- same bat time, same bat channel.