“They were high-fiving each other at the office.”

That's Allan Kaiser talking about the State Attorney's Office after David Ranck's recent arrest for battery on the pizza girl. Long before his arrest (and subsequent firing), Ranck brought a whistle-blower lawsuit in federal court before Judge Gold. The State, represented by Oscar Marrero, has moved to dismiss, and Judge Gold heard argument last Friday. This case is all drama, drama, drama, no?

From the DBR:

Lawyers representing Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle urged U.S. District Judge Alan Gold today to discard a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by suspended prosecutor David Ranck.

Ranck, who questioned the actions of a Miami-Dade police officer who fatally shot a teen-age burglary suspect in 2004, claims his office retaliated against him.

His lawsuit claims Rundle’s office violated his free-speech rights after taking him off investigations involving police shooting after the shooting, and improperly reprimanded him last year for posting internal memos and e-mail related to the justifiable-force investigation.

Coral Gables lawyer Oscar E. Marrero, who is representing Rundle, countered the office was within its rights to discipline Ranck for his comments to the police.

“There is no First Amendment protection if speech owes its existence to your professional responsibilities,” Marrero told Gold.

Ranck’s Miami lawyer, Allan Kaiser, argued by Marrero’s logic, no whistle-blower claims could ever succeed.

“The chilling effect would be obvious,” he said.

Kaiser argued the state attorney’s office didn’t act against Ranck for weeks after he posted his comments and documents related to the shooting on a blog that has since been shut down. Ranck wrote some of the documents and obtained them from the state attorney’s office through a public records request.

Gold appeared inclined to deny Marrero’s motion for summary judgment. “It’s not an everyday occurrence where an assistant state attorney makes a public records request to an office for a memo he wrote, is it?” Gold asked rhetorically. He said Ranck’s supervisors probably should have realized his intentions when he made the request.

Ranck was suspended last month after he was arrested by Miami Beach police on a misdemeanor battery charge after a confrontation at his condo with a pizza- delivery woman. Kaiser represents Ranck in the battery case as well.

“For all intents and purposes, he’s been fired,” Kaiser said. “What they wanted to do is suspend him in never-never land until they decide they want to fire him.”

After Ranck’s arrest, Kaiser said, “They were high-fiving each other at the office.”

When asked if the alleged assault affected his client’s credibility, Kaiser said, “It has absolutely no relation whatsoever.”

Cert denied in Cuban Spy case

I'm glad Rumpole didn't take me up on the double or nothing bet. Still waiting to get paid...

"Noah Gray, a student journalist at Miami Palmetto Senior High, contributed to this report."

It's all cat killer news right now. The Herald has a lengthy cover story about the case. How psyched is Noah Gray, a student who got billing for helping out with the article. Pretty cool.

No one really has any details about how they actually broke the case. It will be interesting to see how this plays out... (SDFLA tie: Circuit Judge Darryl Trawick -- who put his name in for U.S. Attorney -- signed the arrest warrant for 18-year old Tyler Weiman).

Not interested in news about gutting cats... well, Jose Padilla made some news -- he can proceed with his lawsuit against John Yoo. (Via TalkLeft).

Most of the defense lawyers weren't interested in news at all this weekend. They were at the beach. The CJA lawyers had their annual conference this weekend at the Naples Grande. Judge Rosemary Barkett was the keynote speaker, and she generally critiqued district judges who blindly follow the sentencing guidelines. She explained that lawyers need to do more to explain to the district judges why guideline sentences are in many cases greater than necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing; she also said district judges need to do a better job explaining why they are giving a particular sentence in a case.

Former guest-blogger Rick Bascuas wasn't there. He was probably working on his blog "The Bricks." If you haven't been reading it, you should. It's a lot of fun.

Or if you wanna get depressed about the legal market, check out this post about Cravath.

See you all tomorrow.

Slow blogging

Sorry! We'll hit you back on Monday.

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

Joe Biden on Sotomayor

From ABAnews:

Vice President Joe Biden’s comments yesterday supporting Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s law enforcement credentials has some critics suggesting he went too far.

Speaking yesterday at a White House event to showcase prosecutor and police endorsements for Sotomayor, Biden noted that the Supreme Court nominee has experience as a prosecutor, Politico reports. “As you do your job, know that Judge Sotomayor has your back as well. And throughout this nominating process, I know you’ll have her back,” Biden said.

“She gets it. … She gets what you do every single day, day in and day out. She gets that one drug dealer on a corner, one rapist in a park is one too many and can terrorize and devastate a neighborhood,” Biden said. “And she has a record to prove that she gets it.”

Some conservatives and one legal ethicist are criticizing Biden’s comments, the story says. “I think what Biden said was foolish,” said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers.

“She’s not there to ‘have their back.’ She’s there to interpret the law as she sees fit. … Biden crosses the line when he starts representing to interest groups that she would be voting in their favor.”

Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet disagreed. “The fact that her supporters think she’s more disposed toward law enforcement does not suggest bias. Everybody’s in favor of law enforcement; no one’s opposed to law enforcement,” Lubet told Politico. “This lacks the sort of specificity that would suggest bias.”

Breaking -- applicants for District Judge, U.S. Attorney, and Marshal

The applicants for District Judge are:

Jerald Bagley
Gerald Cope
Mary Barzee Flores
Darrin Gayles
Randee Golder
Judith Korchin
Robert Lee
Robert Levenson
Peter Lopez
Patricia Lowry
Ana Maria Martinez
Caroline Heck Miller
Maria Ortiz
Emmanuel Perez
Robin Rosenbaum
Robert Scola Jr.
Barry Seltzer
Tina Talarchyk
Patrick White
Kathleen Williams

For U.S. Attorney:

David Buckner
Reginald Corlew
Wilfredo Ferrer
Richard Gregorie
Ilona Holmes
Marvelle McIntyre-Hall
Brian Miller
Curtis Miner
Thomas Mulvihill
Lilly Ann Sanchez
Mark Schnapp
William Richard Scruggs
Jeffrey Sloman
James Swaim
Daryl Trawick
Sandra Wiseman

For U.S. Marshal

William "Bill" Berger
David Nieland
Christina Pharo
G. Wayne Tilman
Mark Weimer
Glen Wilner

Will Supremes grant cert for Cuban 5?

That's the question raised by Jay Weaver in today's Herald.
Less than 1% of cert petitions get granted, but Tom Goldstein signed on to this one and there are very interesting legal issues getting lots of pub. I'll go out on a limb and say cert will be granted in this case. (Prior coverage here)

What say you dear readers?

Will the Supreme Court grant cert in the Cuban 5 case?
	Yes
	No
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Loring Spolter does not like Judge Zloch

And he has alleged a conspiracy involving the clerk to have his cases assigned to Zloch. Yikes.

Here is the study that Spolter relies on to say the assignments aren't random. It's been a while since I took statistics, but the sample size here (Spolter has had 15 cases from 2006-2009) does not seem to be all that significant. Only 5 of those cases were assigned to Judge Zloch.

Anyway, from today's DBR:

Two years ago, Fort Lauderdale employment lawyer Loring Spolter accused U.S. District Judge William Zloch of allowing his conservative political and religious views to color his decisions on the bench. Spolter failed to get Zloch to remove himself from a case centering on overtime pay against SunTrust Bank. But this time the attorney is brandishing a new weapon: statistics. Spolter has filed motions for reconsideration in three cases, asking Zloch to recuse himself because evidence shows Spolter’s cases are predestined to end up before the former chief judge. He said he has suspicions the clerk’s office may be funneling his cases to Zloch.

So what's up with the study:

Judges are randomly assigned cases by computer in what is generally referred to as “the wheel.” Spolter hired Florida Atlantic University professor Dragan Radulovic to look at his case assignments in South Florida over the last 15 years and said “with 99.9 percent certainty the mechanism responsible for judges’ distributions was not random blind assignment.” But there appears to be a problem with the study. Spolter insists the 24 sitting judges are assigned at random throughout a district that stretches from Key West to Fort Pierce. But the current chief judge says it is much more complicated. A tiered system is used that gives weight geographically to where the case is filed as well as how heavy a judge’s docket is at the time, said U.S. District Court Judge Federico Moreno, who took over the chief judge position from Zloch in 2007. For instance, a case filed in Fort Lauderdale would circulate at random among the three judges and one senior judge there. If their case load is heavy, the new case would then be directed to either West Palm Beach or Miami. Zloch is one of the judges who sits in Fort Lauderdale, where Spolter filed all of his cases. Senior judges also take a smaller portion of cases available, and there are special provisions for Fort Pierce, Key West and death penalty cases. For instance, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who sits in West Palm Beach, takes a number of Miami cases.

Gotta love the chief:

All in all, the wheel is more akin to a logarithm than a game of roulette. “It’s not like the Wheel of Fortune,” Moreno said.

Pacenti's article goes on about the wheel and how cases are assigned. It's worth a read.