"We Found Love In a Hopeless Place"

Not sure Rihanna had this in mind when she wrote that song:

He was one of the most notorious criminals in New York’s recent history, whose execution-style murder of two undercover police officers led a jury to issue the first federal death sentence in the city in more than a half century. 

 Ronell Wilson, right, in 2003, after appearing in court to face charges in the shooting of two undercover police detectives. She was a lonely correction officer, assigned to guard the cell block at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he was being held. 

 Inside the federal jail, Ronell Wilson, the convicted killer, and Nancy Gonzalez, his nighttime guard, would talk for hours, according to other inmates. They would disappear together for minutes at a time, behind closed doors. Several times, they were seen kissing, confirming suspicions of an illicit romance. 

 Ms. Gonzalez later admitted that the two had sex repeatedly, with the goal of having a child together. She was aware, she said, of the many possible complications, from the prospect of facing jail herself to the difficulty of telling her child the truth about his father. She explained her motivations to another inmate: “Why not give him a child, as far as giving him some kind of hope?” 

 On Tuesday, Ms. Gonzalez, 29, displaying the full contours of a pregnancy now in its eighth month, was arraigned in federal court on charges of sexual abuse of a person in custody, because an inmate cannot legally consent to sex. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. She stood before the judge in a black overcoat and sweat pants, softly answering procedural questions while dabbing her eyes with a tissue. 

The press surged around Ms. Gonzalez the instant she stepped out of the courthouse, and she put her head on the shoulder of her lawyer, Anthony L. Ricco. “She’s had a very tragic life and as this case proceeds, you’ll learn more about it and how these affected her judgment,” Mr. Ricco said. He added, “People find love in the strangest places.” 

"[Senior status] is not a done deal until you tell the president."

That's Chief Judge Joel Dubina, saying he may not take senior status after all:

But on Monday, Dubina told the Daily Report that the Administrative Office may have acted too soon. He said he had notified Chief Justice John Roberts that he would relinquish the title of chief judge on Aug. 1 and planned to take senior status that day. He said Roberts needed to know because the chief judge chairs the U.S. Judicial Conference, on which circuit court chief judges serve.
But Dubina said taking senior status “is not a done deal until you tell the president,” an action he has not made yet because of the delay in filling the two Georgia-based seats on the Eleventh Circuit.
President Obama has twice nominated Atlanta litigator Jill Pryor to fill the seat vacated by the retirement of Judge Stanley Birch in August 2010, but she has been blocked by Georgia’s senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. Another seat was vacated last summer by Judge J.L. Edmondson, who took senior status.
Dubina, who was appointed in 1990 and whose seat is based in Alabama, said he didn’t want to leave his colleagues “in the lurch” with only nine active judges.
He recalled early in his appellate career when the court had several vacancies and only nine judges—with about half the caseload of today. “Nine judges is extremely difficult,” he said, noting that the court suspended its rules requiring two Eleventh Circuit judges on each three-judge panel. Instead the court allowed only one Eleventh Circuit judge on a panel, joined by two visiting judges—a solution that risked the consistency of the court’s precedents, he said.

Speaking of filling vacancies, President Obama is doing so with lots of former federal prosecutors:

President Obama's liberal supporters have been dismayed by some of his judicial appointments, and now they can cite statistics: Obama has nominated former prosecutors more often than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.
In Reagan's two terms, 40.8 percent of the judges he appointed had once been prosecutors. Bush, who like Reagan sought to move the judiciary in a more conservative direction, chose ex-prosecutors for 44.7 percent of his judicial appointments. The figures were 37.3 percent for Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, and 40.7 percent for Bill Clinton.
Obama, who began his second term Jan. 21, has appointed or nominated 219 federal judges, of whom 100 - 45.7 percent - were former prosecutors, according to statistics compiled by the Alliance for Justice.
By contrast, 33 nominees, all but three of them at the trial court level, had been public defenders. Even fewer had worked as poverty or civil rights lawyers.

Judge Turnoff lays down the law

This contempt of court order is worth a read (prior coverage here):

Judge Turnoff issues contempt order

A call to the judiciary

There was an article in the NY Times this weekend about why cops lie.  It's a nice piece, but nothing really new.  Professor Dershowitz has been writing about lying police officers for a long time, and here are some of his rules of the "justice game" from The Best Defense:

IV. ALMOST ALL POLICE LIE ABOUT WHETHER THEY VIOLATED THE CONSTITUTION IN ORDER TO CONVICT GUILTY DFEENDANTS.

V. ALL PROSECUTORS, JUDGES AND DEFENSE ATTORNEYS ARE AWARE OF RULE IV. 

Those are interesting concepts, but the following 4 statements will encourage more discussion:

VI. MANY PROSECUTORS IMPLICITLY ENCOURAGE POLICE TO LIE ABOUT WHETHER THEY VIOLATED THE CONSTITUTION IN ORDER TO CONVICT GUILTY DEFENDANTS.

VII. ALL JUDGES ARE AWARE OF RULE VI.

VIII. MOST TRIAL JUDGES PRETEND TO BELIEVE POLICE OFFICERS WHO THEY KNOW ARE LYING

IX. ALL APPELLATE JUDGES ARE AWARE OF RULE VIII, YET MANY PRETEND TO BELIEVE THE TRIAL JUDGES WHO PRETEND TO BELIEVE THE POLICE OFFICERS.

So what is to be done about lying police officers?  We need to change rules 8 and 9.  Judges need to start calling them on it.  And of course, lying officers aren't the only problem with the criminal justice system that people have been writing about for years. 

There has been a lot said about prosecutors overcharging, the trial tax, and the Sentencing Guidelines just to name a few of the problems.

What can be done?  Article III judges, with life-time appointments, need to start speaking up and checking the executive branch with more vigor. 

--Dismiss more cases.  (See, e.g., Judge Scola in the "Pakistan terror" case by granting a judgment of acquittal; Judge Cooke in Ben Kuehne's case).   

--Grant more and longer variances. Judges are starting to grant more and more variances, but they are of the 6-12 month variety.  There are too many people in jail for too long because of the Sentencing Guidelines.  A federal conviction ruins people's lives.  Not every case necessitates lengthy sentences and many don't require jail at all.  The Guidelines are made up numbers without any real data to back them up.  I trust judges more than I do the grid. 

--Don't punish defendants for going to trial.  There are too few trials, mostly because the consequences of going to trial versus pleading are way too severe.  Going to trial doesn't mean that every enhancement applies or that variances are off the table.      

--Grant some pretrial motions and require prosecutors to turn over evidence.  I know that judges hate dealing with pretrial motions, especially those dealing with discovery.  But instead of denying them all, it's time to hold prosecutors' feet to the fire a little more.  The feeling out there right now is that each prosecutor decides for him or herself what to turn over and when and that judges aren't going to get involved.  It's also OK to throw out counts (yes, prosecutors overcharge) or to sever a case or to give teeth to any of the other Rules of Criminal Procedure.

--Grant motions to suppress when the officer is lying.  This goes to the NY Times article and Dershowitz's rules.

A big part of all of this goes to the court of appeals.  The 11th Circuit rules for the government even more than the district court does.  This has been the culture for a long time.  (When is the last time the court reversed a sentence within or above the guidelines?) But there is new blood on the 11th.  And three new open spots (two now, and one more this summer) will really change the court.

See what happens when there is a blackout during the Super Bowl.  The game is now back on, so I'll get off the soapbox. 

Kim Rothstein vs. Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Kim Rothstein pleaded guilty yesterday while Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke at the University of Miami campus.  Who got more press in South Florida?  Sadly, Rothstein by a ton.  From Jon Burtstein's story:

Five years ago this week, she was a bride who had just gotten married at South Beach's Versace Mansion to a rich, charismatic attorney who had Fort Lauderdale abuzz.

Three years ago, she was in seclusion after watching her husband, Scott Rothstein, go before a federal judge to plead guilty to the largest financial fraud in South Florida history.

On Friday, Kim Rothstein was back at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. This time, it was to admit that she too is a criminal.

Rothstein, 38, pleaded guilty to a plot to hide more than $1 million in jewelry from federal authorities as they were seizing her husband's assets to reimburse victims of his swindle. She admitted conspiring with her then-attorney and a friend to secretly sell the jewels, including a 12-carat diamond ring, and to persuade her imprisoned husband to lie under oath about the ring's whereabouts.

She faces up to five years in prison when sentenced April 19 by U.S. District Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum.

Dressed in a dark pantsuit, Rothstein answered Rosenbaum's questions in a clear, steady voice as she pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruct justice and tamper with a witness.

"Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?" Rosenbaum asked.

"Yes, your honor," Rothstein responded.

She left the courthouse flanked by her defense attorneys, David Tucker and David Kotler. She did not acknowledge the reporters and cameramen outside as she got into a sports utility vehicle waiting for her.

From the Herald story on the Supreme Court Justice visit:

From her days as a young girl in the Bronx being raised by her mother after the death of her father to becoming the first Hispanic on the highest judicial body in the country, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the story of her journey before a captivated audience at the University of Miami on Friday night.


Sotomayor spoke with University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala at the BankUnited Center to University of Miami students, Coral Gables residents and perhaps a future Supreme Court justice about the inspiration behind her recently published memoir My Beloved World.

“Love and passion, that is the only way you do something well,” Sotomayor said. “Do a few things, but do them well.”

Sotomayor, 58, spoke of the many things that inspired her to share her story with the world, one of which was in responses to questions she hadn’t expected during her confirmation process, such as how children cope when a parent dies, especially if they don’t have a mother like hers.

“I began to understand that I couldn’t talk to every child in the country,” Sotomayor said. “I could give them the answers in a book.”

Is there a federal judicial clerkship crisis?

Apparently there is because federal judges won't follow the (voluntary) rules about timing of interviews and hiring.  So clerks are getting interviewed and hired earlier and earlier, which is really messing up the process.  What's the solution?  Aaron Zelinsky says take the voluntary out of the rules:

Congress has the power of the purse. It allocates funds for building courthouses, keeping the lights on, and employing staff. For instance, law clerks are employed under 28 U.S.C. 752 (for district courts) and 28 U.S.C. 712 (for circuit courts). If the judiciary really wants to fix the hiring plan, then judges should request that Congress condition salaries for law clerks upon them being hired in compliance with the judicial hiring plan. In other words, if you don't play by the rules, you don't have law clerks.


But wait, isn't that unconstitutional? Nope. The Constitution prevents Congress from lowering the salaries of federal judges, but says nothing about their staff (anyways, such a law could be written to apply only to those hired in the future, not those already employed). And Congress isn't infringing on the judicial power in any way - this law does not effect how judges make use of their clerks, just the timing of how they hire them. And it would leave the actual formation of the plan up to the judiciary.

Federal judges could ask Congress to make the hiring plan mandatory via a proposal from a special judicial working group, or even in Chief Justice Roberts's year end report to Congress. And they should. A new, mandatory plan would be fairer for less-advantaged law students and late-bloomers, more efficient for federal judges, and maybe even better for you.

Good luck with that one...

Meantime, over at his blog, Rumpole asks whether you'd rather be on the Third DCA or on the SDFLA district bench.  Or a Florida Supreme Court Justice or on the 11th Circuit.  Seems to me that the federal positions are much more sought after and are thought of in the legal community as more prestigious.  And speaking of clerks, the feds get the cream of the crop.  I imagine that the district court clerks have better resumes than the clerks on the Florida Supreme Court.  Is that right?

Can we clone Judge Gleeson?

District Judge John Gleeson is doing more good work in the Eastern District of New York.  The latest is this sentencing order about the guidelines in drug cases.  The reasoning applies also in white collar cases and just about every other guideline calculation.  Judge Gleeson is no bleeding heart -- he is a former (very tough) federal prosecutor who put John Gotti away. We need more Judge Gleesons. From his order (via Professor Berman's site):

Last year in United States v. Dossie, I wrote about how the mandatory minimum sentences in drug trafficking cases distort the sentencing process and mandate unjust sentences. This case illustrates a separate but related defect in our federal sentencing regime....
Diaz will be sentenced in a few weeks, and when that happens I will carefully consider all the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) except one — the length of imprisonment recommended by the United States Sentencing Commission’s Guidelines Manual. Though I will not ignore Diaz’s Guidelines range, I will place almost no weight on it because of my fundamental policy disagreement with the offense guideline that produces it. In fairness to the government, I write here to explain my belief that the offense guideline for heroin, cocaine, and crack offenses (“drug trafficking offenses”) is deeply and structurally flawed. As a result, it produces ranges that are excessively severe across a broad range of cases, including this one.
The flaw is simply stated: the Guidelines ranges for drug trafficking offenses are not based on empirical data, Commission expertise, or the actual culpability of defendants. If they were, they would be much less severe, and judges would respect them more. Instead, they are driven by drug type and quantity, which are poor proxies for culpability.

...

If the Commission wants greater adherence to the Guidelines, as it should, it needs to get better at fixing broken offense guidelines.  The drug trafficking offense guideline was born broken.  Many judges will not respect it because as long as the sentences it produces are linked to the ADAA’s mandatory minimums, they will be too severe.  Indeed, as discussed further below, for almost two decades the nation’s judges have been telling the Commission to de-link the drug trafficking offense guideline from those harsh mandatory minimums and to reduce the sentencing ranges.  The Commission should listen and act.  It should use its resources, knowledge, and expertise to fashion fair sentencing ranges for drug trafficking offenses.  That process will take time.  In the meantime, because real people, families, and communities are harmed by the current ranges, it should immediately lower them by a third....
Let those who advocate for longer prison terms, and even a return to the dark days of mandatory Guidelines, go ahead and make their case.  The debate is good for the health of our federal criminal justice system.  But the suggestion that federal sentences should become more severe in the name of racial equality is preposterous.  That case has emphatically not been made, and the Commission’s repeated suggestion that it has insults the entire judiciary and demeans the Commission itself.  If it does nothing else, the Commission should take affirmative steps to remove the race issue, which it unwisely inserted into the discussion of federal sentencing policy, from the debate....
The Commission should use its resources, knowledge, and expertise to fashion fair sentencing ranges for drug trafficking offenses.  If it does, those ranges will be substantially lower than the ranges produced by the current offense guideline.  The deep, easily traceable structural flaw in the current drug trafficking offense guideline produces advisory ranges that are greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of sentencing.  We must never lose sight of the fact that real people are at the receiving end of these sentences.  Incarceration is often necessary, but the unnecessarily punitive extra months and years the drug trafficking offense guideline advises us to dish out matter: children grow up; loved ones drift away; employment opportunities fade; parents die.

Closer to home, Judge Scola is beaming in testimony from Pakistan.  Curt Anderson has the details:

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola approved the unusual testimony in the case of 77-year-old imam Hafiz Khan. The first five witnesses will be questioned beginning Feb. 11 at an Islamabad hotel, and jurors will watch on courtroom TV screens. Scola said Tuesday the arrangement is costing taxpayers about $130,000.
Khan is on trial for allegedly funneling at least $50,000 to the Pakistani Taliban, listed by the U.S. as a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. Khan insists the money was for innocent purposes, and the Pakistani witnesses are expected to back that up. If convicted, Khan faces up to 15 years in prison on each of four counts.
At a hearing Tuesday, Khan attorney Khurrum Wahid asked Scola to allow six additional witnesses to testify from Pakistan, over prosecutors' objections. The judge did not immediately rule but seemed inclined to approve the request, noting that an appeals court might toss out any convictions if the trial appears unfair to Khan.
"I don't want to have a second trial. I want to have one fair trial," Scola said.

Is the Constitution a living document or is it "dead, dead, dead"?

Justice Scalia said the latter in a speech in Dallas, via the Dallas Morning News:

“The judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge,” he told an audience Monday evening at Southern Methodist University.


He and SMU law professor Bryan A. Garner shared the stage at McFarlin Auditorium for a lecture on their second book together, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Text.
Garner said that though he and Scalia differ politically, they agree on staying true to the law and on separating politics from legal interpretation.

“I will tell you that my political beliefs are different from those of Justice Scalia,” he said.
Garner supports gay marriage and favors stricter gun control laws.
But Scalia, who is regarded as one of the most conservative justices on the high court, declined to contrast his opinions on such matters.
“I haven’t expressed my views of either of those,” Scalia interjected. “You’re a bleeding heart.”