How to treat defendants as people

From last week's DBR (via South Florida Lawyers):

Sara San Martin, 39, also known as Sara Echeverria, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of bank fraud for allegedly writing checks from the personal accounts of the late Miami maritime attorney William Huggett.
***
In court Tuesday, San Martin tearfully answered questions posed to her by U.S. District Judge Judge Adalberto Jordan, who at one point sent a box of tissues over to her.

Will Jenne get his pension?

Mike Mayo examines the issue on his blog here.

''I think he could have been governor one day.''

That was Judge Dimitrouleas at Ken Jenne's sentencing today. Judge D ordered Jenne to surrender on the spot for his year and a day sentence (the extra day is added so that Jenne will get good time credit -- the sentence has to be more than a year). Jenne will end up serving about 10 months.

Although the parties had agreed that the advisory guidelines were 18-24 months, the probation office recommended a guideline range of 12-18 months. The government lawyers were requesting a high-end sentence of 24 months. Even though the defense was asking for probation, this was a pretty big win for Jenne. U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta came out and criticized the sentence as too light.*

Here's the initial coverage by the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel.

SDFLA blog question of the day: 10 months in jail -- appropriate sentence? too high? too low?

*I thought the U.S. Attorney's office maintains that guideline sentences are always reasonable, so I'm not sure why this guideline sentence -- after a plea and acceptance of responsibility -- isn't reasonable.

Jenne

I'm out of the office, but I'm told Ken Jenne was sentenced to a year and a day, half of what the government requested. More to follow when I'm at a computer.

--David Oscar Markus
www.markuslaw.com
305-379-6667

Do letters at sentencing matter?

Former Sheriff Ken Jenne is being sentenced tomorrow (by Judge Dimitrouleas).

He has submitted a bunch of letters (here) for the judge to consider in imposing a reasonable sentence.

SDFLA blog question of the day -- do these letters make a difference with our judges?

Here's the Herald coverage of the letters and here is the Sun-Sentinel coverage.

And if you are interested in prison condition's for Jenne, here's the Herald's take.

See,

Justice O'Connor agrees with me.

Federal Bar Association luncheon

Eleventh Circuit Judges Barkett and Marcus spoke today at the Federal Bar luncheon. It was a really fun, engaging talk. They spoke openly about a variety of issues, including the size of the court, cameras in federal court, the value of oral argument and other.

I'll post more about it soon, but I will note that I asked both of them if they read blogs. Judge Marcus said he read "precious little" on the blogosphere, and Judge Barkett said she did read blogs (although she didn't say which ones).

Here are some pictures:

Judge Davis and Judge Marcus discussing issues of the day and Judge Barkett and Judge Marcus answering questions at the podium.

HMO settlement before Judge Moreno

For coverage of these proceedings, go check out SouthFloridaLawyers -- they're all over it.