Robin Rosenbaum makes it out of Committee

Next step is the Floor vote. Glenn Sugameli tells me that this will likely happen after May 7, but at least we are moving in the right direction... Congrats to Judge Rosenbaum on today's vote.

Who wants some Nutriloaf?

Apparently, this is the junk they are giving to inmates that aren't behaving. It tastes really gross. From Judge Posner's opinion:

On the second and third stays, which lasted a week and 10 days respectively, the jail fed him only “nutriloaf,” pursuant to a new policy the jail had adopted of making nutriloaf the exclusive diet of prisoners who had been in segregation in prison at the time of their transfer to the jail, even if their behavior in the jail was exemplary. Nutriloaf (also spelled “nutraloaf”) is a badtasting food given to prisoners as a form of punishment (it is colloquially known as “prison loaf” or “disciplinary loaf”). On his third stay, after two days on the nutriloaf diet, the plaintiff began vomiting his meals and experiencing stomach pains and constipation. (He had vomited during the second stay as well.) He stopped eating nutriloaf and subsisted for the eight remaining days of his stay on bread and water (it’s unclear how he obtained the bread). He had weighed 168 pounds before his second and third stays at the jail, had lost either 5 or 6 pounds during the second stay, had not regained them, and by the end of the third stay was down to 154 pounds: he had lost 8.3 percent of his weight as a result of the two stays (and he had not been overweight at 168).

The prisoner sued and the district court granted summary judgment. Judge Posner wasn't happy:

The defendants’ response to his suit has been contumacious, and we are surprised that the district judge did not impose sanctions. The defendants ignored the plaintiff’s discovery demands, ignored the judge’s order that they comply with those demands, and continued their defiance even after the judge threatened to impose sanctions. But the judge failed to carry through on his threat, so the threat proved empty. The only evidence the defendants submitted in support of their motion for summary judgment was a preposterous affidavit from a sheriff’s officer who is also an assistant chief of a suburban Wisconsin fire department. The affidavit states only, so far as bears on the appeal, that “Nutraloaf has been determined to be a nutritious substance for regular meals.” The defendants made no effort to qualify him as an expert witness. As a lay witness, he was not authorized to offer hearsay evidence (“has been determined to be . . . nutritious”). No evidence was presented concerning the recipe for or ingredients of the nutriloaf that was served at the county jail during the plaintiff’s sojourns there. “Nutriloaf” isn’t a proprietary food like Hostess Twinkies but, like “meatloaf” or “beef stew,” a term for a composite food the recipe of which can vary from institution to institution, or even from day to day within an institution; nutriloaf could meet requirements for calories and protein one day yet be poisonous the next if, for example, made from leftovers that had spoiled. The recipe was among the items of information that the plaintiff sought in discovery and that the defendants refused to produce. Even an affidavit from an expert stating after a detailed chemical analysis that “nutriloaf meets all dietary requirements” would be worthless unless the expert knew and stated that nutriloaf invariably was made the same way in the institution. The assistant fire chief’s affidavit says no such thing—and he was not an expert. In addition to stonewalling the plaintiff and the district judge, the defendants failed to file a brief in this court and failed to respond to our order to show cause why they hadn’t filed a brief. They seem to think that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over a county jail.

You can tell by now where this is going. Order of summary judgment reversed... One last note from Judge Posner:

We order the defendants to show cause within 14 days of the date of this order why they should not be sanctioned for contumacious conduct in this court. If they ignore this order to show cause like the last one, they will find themselves in deep trouble.

I think the sanctions should be that they eat Nutriloaf for a week.

What should happen to prosecutors who violate Brady? (UPDATED)

That's the question discussed in this WSJ article, which explains that prosecutors are rarely punished:

Federal prosecutors are rarely punished for failing to meet their constitutional obligations to provide defendants with evidence that points toward their innocence, according to available data. A report published early last year by the Federal Judicial Center, an arm of the federal court system, surveyed more than 600 federal judges and found that 30% reported having one or more such disclosure violations by prosecutors in the past five years. Those judges said, according to the study, that they found the prosecutors in contempt less than 1% of the time and only recommended possible discipline by the Justice Department or state bar in a few of the cases. *** The Stevens case report pointed to the 2011 Federal Judicial Center study that found 38 of the nation's 94 federal court districts had issued specific disclosure requirements regarding Brady and other evidence. The report said that if such a specific order had been issued in the Stevens case, some of the prosecutors might have been open to charges of criminal contempt.

UPDATE -- This blog covered the need for Brady reform before and the recent bill introduced by Republican Sen. Murkowski.... I guess I shouldn't be surprised that DOJ is opposing the bill. BLT covers that opposition here. And here is the entire DOJ statement on the matter.

Magistrate Judge Brown's retirement luncheon...

...was today. We wish him the very best. Meantime, Magistrate Judge Rosenbaum's nomination is on the Judiciary Committee's calendar tomorrow..

“NO electronics devices. Note taking only material is allowed in the Courtroom (i.e., pen & pad).”

That was the sign on the door to the Supreme Court his morning, meaning no iPhones, no Blackberrys, no iPads, no Twitter or anything else.  But here's the oral argument and transcripts which were posted after the argument.  Today was the very dry argument about jurisdiction and SCOTUSBlog has all of the analysis, including Lyle Denniston's take here.  From what everyone is saying, the Court will reach the merits of the healthcare debate...

While we are on the Supreme Court, it granted cert in Florida v. Harris today, the dog sniff case. The issue is: Whether an alert by a well-trained narcotics detection dog certified to detect illegal contraband is insufficient to establish probable cause for the search of a vehicle.
In other news, here's Herman Cain's most recent video:


Closer to blog's jurisdiction, below is a 60 Minutes piece from last night showing how prosecutors kept a man in jail for 25 years. It's amazing to me that DOJ is still arguing against Brady reform.