Art Teele charged in federal court

According to the Miami Herald, Art Teele was indicted today in federal court with conspiring to defraud Miami-Dade County of millions of dollars in minority contracts at Miami International Airport. Read about it here. His troubles with the law are well documented; he is on state probation for threatening a police officer and he is also awaiting trial in state court for accepting kickbacks from a contractor. With all the state involvement in the case (the case was apparently investigated by the state), one wonders why this was brought to federal court. Thoughts?

UPDATE -- Brian Tannebaum informs me that he just came back from Little Rock, Arkansas, where Teele's lawyer is in the 4th day of a 4 week trial. Anyone know if Teele's lawyer was notified?

FURTHER UPDATE -- Art teele has commited suicide. Read more here.

What would the 11th do?

For our 11th Circuit practitioners who enjoy pounding sand, you may want to challenge the entire AEDPA. The Ninth Circuit is considering just that. SCOTUSblog provides this update about the case and Howard Bashman discusses it here. If anyone raises a similar challenge, please let me know.

Rehnquist Released from Hospital

Read more at CNN.com and at the Supreme Court Nomination Blog.
UPDATE -- And he has silenced rumors about his departure, saying that he will stay as long as he is healthy. The best place to read up on this is the S. Ct. Nomination Blog, which has a number of interesting posts about it, including what it means for the President's nomination strategy. How Appealing always has the latest news.

The Chief is hospitalized

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, ailing with cancer, is in the hospital with a fever, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Read the AP report here and SCOTUSblog's report here.

Strike Three?

Raphael Levy has been to the Eleventh Circuit three times. Each time the court has told him to go away. Most recently, the court told him so even though the Supreme Court told the 11th to reconsider Mr. Levy's claims. How can this be, you wonder? How can the court ignore its superiors? Here's what happened: Before the Supreme Court decided Blakely/Booker -- the cases doing away with the mandatory sentencing guideliens -- Levy filed his initial brief in the 11th circuit. He lost. After Blakely came out, he filed a motion for reconsideration. The 11th said no way, applying a rule that no other court employs -- if you didn't raise the issue in the initial brief, you have forever lost it. But when Levy filed his initial brief, there was no Blakely and such a claimed would have been deemed frivolous. For the 11th circuit, however, that is of no moment; the rule applies rigidly across the board: raise the issue (even frivolous ones) in your initial brief or you're out of luck. Levy appealed this decision to the Supremes and it initially appeared that the Court gave him some relief. It GVRed the case, telling the 11th to reconsider Levy's claim in light of Blakely/Booker. On remand, the 11th maintained that its rule applies and said it need not consider Blakely/Booker because Levy had not raised it in his initial brief. Read the opinion here. Judge Tjoflat has been blasting his brethern for this anomolous rule, in cases like Vanorden. And commentators, like Professor Berman, have written about this strange rule in the 11th Circuit. It looks like the 11th and the Supremes are due for a showdown as Levy is sure to file a new cert petition, asking the Court to fix this. We'll see. One disclosure -- I have a similar cert petition pending in Hogan v. United States.

Shhhhh....

Judge King has now recused himself from all criminal cases twice in the last two months because his secretary (it appears) is the target of a federal investigation. The details can be read here in a Daily Business Review article by Dan Christensen. I'm not sure why this requires his recusal, but that is a matter between the U.S. Attorney's Office, Judge King, and the Chief Judge. It has come to light during this set of recusals that there is an unpusblished and secret local policy manual that only the judges have access to, which apparently trumps the published local rules (available here). We have had other press regarding secret proceedings; remember the stir about secret dockets.

More short lists...

This one comes from the Cuban American Bar Association. Bar Association President Tony Castro wrote a letter to the President suggesting that a Hispanic and a Floridian (the first he points out, perhaps taking a cue from us!) be appointed. On their short list is Raoul Cantero and our own district judges Cecilia Altonaga, Adalberto Jordan, Jose E. Martinez and Federico Moreno.

Judge Moreno makes a short list!

There is, of course, rampant speculation about who the next Supreme Court nominee will be. Many are betting that it will be a Hispanic jurist. The Hispanic National Bar Association has provided a list of eight names to the White House to consider for appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Congratulations to Judge Moreno for making this short list.