Monday News & Notes

1.  Leaking from SCOTUS could get you in hot water. (NLJ).

2.  That said, Jay Wexler (a former Ginsburg clerk) has this awesome article in Salon.  Here's what he had to say about writing opinions:

Third, the clerks usually write a first draft of the opinions that their justice has been assigned to write. Some people find this shocking, but it really is not that big a deal. At least in Justice Ginsburg’s chambers, the boss would give us a detailed outline to work from and then, once we turned in our drafts, totally rewrite them.  The best you could really hope for as a clerk is to get a little pet phrase or goofy word or other quirky something-or-other into the final opinion. For example, there may or may not be one Ginsburg opinion from our term which, when read backward, will summon the demon Beelzebub from the seventh level of hell to earth where he will horribly murder the entire human race. On a more innocuous note, when Justice Anthony Kennedy was assigned to write an opinion concerning the import tariffs applicable to permanent press pants baked in giant pants ovens in Mexico, my co-clerk Bill and I worked very hard to convince the Kennedy clerk working on the case to get the words “trousers” and “slacks” into the final opinion. “Trousers” made it into the U.S. Reports, but “slacks” is absent, although whether this is because the clerk failed to put it in his draft or because Justice Kennedy took it out we cannot be sure.

3.  Obama is really horrible with filling judicial vacancies. (NY Times).

President Obama is set to end his term with dozens fewer lower-court appointments than both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush achieved in their first four years, and probably with less of a lasting ideological imprint on the judiciary than many liberals had hoped for and conservatives had feared.

Mr. Obama’s record stems in part from a decision at the start of his presidency to make judicial nominations a lower political priority, according to documents and interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials and with court watchers from across the political spectrum. Senate Republicans also played a role, ratcheting up partisan warfare over judges that has been escalating for the past generation by delaying even uncontroversial picks who would have been quickly approved in the past.

But a good portion of Mr. Obama’s judicial record stems from a deliberate strategy. While Mr. Bush quickly nominated a slate of appeals court judges early in his first year — including several outspoken conservatives — Mr. Obama moved more slowly and sought relatively moderate jurists who he hoped would not provoke culture wars that distracted attention from his ambitious legislative agenda.

“The White House in that first year did not want to nominate candidates who would generate rancorous disputes over social issues that would further polarize the Senate,” said Gregory B. Craig, Mr. Obama’s first White House counsel. “We were looking for mainstream, noncontroversial candidates to nominate.”

4.  CBP is protecting us from fake Christian Louboutin high heels. (Article and picture by CNN).

Michael Caruso informally sworn in yesterday as Federal Defender

That's Judge Williams doing the honors.  The formal investiture will be announced sometime soon.  Congratulations to well-deserving Michael Caruso.

The Apple/Samsung trial has Judge Koh.  But we have Judge Turnoff, who had these gems yesterday (via Sun-Sentinel):

In September, the judge found the two men in contempt of court and ordered them to repay every dime of the fees or explain why they couldn't pay. The two ignored the order for months. Roy had to be arrested in New York last month to answer to the judge.
Mayas had claimed he sold the Miramar home but underwent a change of heart or mind after the judge spelled out the consequences of continuing to test his patience.
Then Mayas skipped a court hearing last week, in part he said, because he got sick after undergoing a colonoscopy. But the judge wasn't buying it .
"There's simply no excuse'' for his failure to show up in court last week, Turnoff told Mayas.
When Coulton's lawyer, Paul Petruzzi, told the judge Mayas had not handed over the keys to his vehicle and his Monarch Lakes home, the judge demanded he turn over the keys in court.
As Mayas fumbled with his briefcase and his keyring for what seemed an unnecessarily long time, the judge cracked: "I bet the colonoscopy was easier than this."
With the house keys in hand and a promise the car would be turned over within hours, Petruzzi said it was a small step toward making things right.
But he said Coulton wasn't particularly enjoying watching his two former lawyers put through the legal wringer.
"This will barely make a dent in what they owe to my client," Petruzzi said. "[Coulton] would be a lot happier if he could just go back in time and have hired a proper lawyer from the start."

“First, your honor, I’m not smoking crack. I can promise you that.”

That was Apple lawyer William Lee in response to Judge Koh's comment that "unless you’re smoking crack you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called!”  Yikes.

The dispute arises from the judge's decision to give each side a certain amount of hours to present its case.  Of course, each side wants more now that it has run out.  

From Slashgear:


Today in the ongoing Apple vs Samsung court case Judge Lucy Koh’s patience wore thin as Apple presented a 75-page document highlighting 22 witnesses it would like to call in for rebuttal testimony, provided the court had the time. As those following the case closely know quite well, the case has a set number of hours which are already wearing quite thin. As quoted by The Verge as they sat in the courtroom listening in, Koh wondered aloud why Apple would offer the list “when unless you’re smoking crack you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called!”


Ouch. For the record, Apple lawyer William Lee told Judge Koh that “First, your honor, I’m not smoking crack. I can promise you that.” Crack or no, it seems that Apple will not get the opportunity to bring all of these rebuttal witnesses to the stand, even though Apple’s attorneys offered to shorten the length of the document.

11th Circuit kicks Mathurin case on other grounds

This was the case that Judge Cooke ruled a 300 year mandatory sentence for a juvenile was unconstitutional.  Both sides appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit vacated the conviction on speedy trial grounds, and did not mention the sentencing issue.

The issue presented:

This case requires us to decide the narrow question of whether the time
during which plea negotiations are conducted is automatically excludable from the
Speedy Trial Act’s thirty-day window for filing an information or indictment. For
the reasons that follow, we have concluded that the time during which plea
negotiations are conducted is not automatically excludable.

From the conclusion:

We conclude that the time during which plea negotiations were conducted
was not automatically excludable from Mr. Mathurin’s speedy-indictment clock.
That being the case, the government exceeded the maximum thirty-day delay for
bringing the indictment. Under the Act, this means that the charges in the
superseding indictment, as originally set forth in the juvenile information and later
cited in the government’s motion to transfer, must be dismissed.7 See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3162(a)(1). Mr. Mathurin’s convictions must be vacated. However, “we leave it
to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether dismissal should be
with or without prejudice.” Zedner, 547 U.S. at 509, 126 S. Ct. at 1990.

News & Notes

1.  Judge Turnoff's daughter is the news for doing good.  Wendy Atrokhov seems like a good egg!

2.  Apple rests.  The judge still isn't happy.  One quote: “I want to see papers, I don’t trust what any lawyer tells me in this courtroom.”  Yikes.

3.  DOJ finally agrees to free innocent prisoners.  Brad Heath of USA Today has the scoop:

The department confirmed Monday that it had instructed its lawyers to abandon legal objections that could have blocked — or at least delayed — the inmates from being set free. In a court filing , the department said it had "reconsidered its position," and that it would drop its legal arguments "in the interests of justice."

The shift follows a USA TODAY investigation in June that identified more than 60 people who were imprisoned for something an appeals court later determined was not a federal crime. The investigation found that the Justice Department had done almost nothing to identify those prisoners — many of whom did not know they were innocent — and had argued in court that the men were innocent but should remain imprisoned anyway.

Neither Justice Department lawyers nor defense attorneys would speculate Monday how many innocent prisoners eventually might be released. Some who were convicted of other crimes might receive shorter sentences; others might be tried for different offenses.

Chris Brook, the legal director of the ACLU of North Carolina, called the move "an encouraging first step," but said "much more has to be done for these wrongly incarcerated individuals." He said the department still had not offered to identify prisoners who were sent to prison for something that turned out not to be a federal crime.

4.  Jay Weaver covers "Queenpin":

The media have dubbed her the “Queen of the Pacific,” a rare woman who allegedly reached the top of the male-dominated Colombian-Mexican drug world with her feminine mystique.
She was featured in the famous drug ballad titled “The Queen of the Queens,” sung by a band called Los Tucanes de Tijuana. One line in the narcocorrido captured her essence: “The more beautiful the rose, the sharper the thorns.”
Her name: Sandra Avila Beltrán. The raven-haired 51-year-old — at least that’s what her arrest form says her age is — will appear in Miami federal court Tuesday for her arraignment and bond hearing. She was extradited last week from Mexico, where she had been arrested in 2007, on charges of conspiring to smuggle loads of cocaine into the United States more than a decade ago.
“She is very Cleopatra-ish, like the Queen of the Nile,” said Miami criminal defense attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez, who represented two other defendants in the same case. “She was able to maneuver her way in a man’s world and use the fact that she was a woman to her advantage in more ways than one.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/13/2950459/mexican-queenpin-faces-drug-charges.html#storylink=cpy