The Chief issues a memo

In case you didn't see it, here is Chief Judge Moreno's memo to the bar of the SDFLA:

To: Members of the Southern District of Florida Bar
From: Chief Judge Federico A. Moreno
Re: Call for Assistance -- Pro Bono Panel

I am very pleased to announce that our District is embarking in a new direction that hopefully will result in more unrepresented litigants obtaining counsel than ever before. And we need your help!

You may have heard of the Courts decision last month to discontinue operations of the Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP). In recent times the expenses of operating a program like the VLP simply have become disproportionately high when compared to the number of pro se cases it could service. Because the program was funded from funds collected through a portion of attorney admission fees from members of our Bar and pro hac vice fees, my colleagues and I felt a special responsibility to insure that those monies would be used as wisely as possible.

The decision to disband the VLP was not taken lightly, but rather after exploring vario us alternatives. In the end, our Judges determined that it would be a better use of resources for us to take a more active role in seeking out counsel for pro se litigants. This will permit much of the money used to fund the VLPs efforts to be shifted toward expense reimbursement for volunteer attorneys.

This is where each of you comes in. I urge all members of the Southern District to join us in a renewed commitment to assist the unrepresented in this District. How can you help? There are a number of ways, the easiest of which is to simply take a case! Pro Bono Opportunities can be found at the Courts websitewww.flsd.uscourts.gov and are regularly distributed by way of electronic email blast. In addition, I urge each of you to register via the website to be included in a Pro Bono Panel list of those attorneys have an interest in assisting with worthy cases in the future or who are in a position to help locate other attorneys, such as associates in their law firm, who may take cases. There is no commitment from registering, but rather this will simply help us build a database of first contacts when the need arises.

I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank those who have volunteered in the past through the VLP, and particularly its Director Randy Berg, for their important service to the Court. I am sure that their spirit of public service will carry on as we move forward with this new endeavor. My colleagues and I look forward to seeing each of you in Court.

Federico A. Moreno
Chief United States District Judge

Senate Judiciary Hearing tomorrow at 10am for Bloom & Gayles

Judicial Nominations
Full Committee
Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Time: 10:00 AM
Location: Dirksen 226
Agenda
Beth Bloom, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida
Paul G. Byron, to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida
Darrin P. Gayles, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida
Carlos Eduardo Mendoza, to be United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida

Mutual Benefits Joel Steinger pleads guilty

This was going to be a very long trial with lots of hurdles including a defendant who would have needed lots of medical attention during trial day.  So I'm sure many people are relieved that it's over.  From the DBR:

Joel Steinger, the mastermind behind an $800 million viatical scam run by Fort Lauderdale-based Mutual Benefits Corp., pleaded guilty Friday to fraud conspiracy in two cases pending against him.
Federal prosecutors charged Steinger stole tens of millions of dollars from the company that purchased life insurance policies of seniors and critically ill people. The business plan was to buy discounted policies and make money for investors when the policies matured.
Regulators charged Mutual Benefits faltered when HIV-infected people started living longer because of new medications. Steinger and his brother, Steven Steiner, then turned the enterprise into a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said.
In a factual proffer signed by Steinger on Friday, he said he made false promises about returns and single-handedly made decisions on life expectancy projections for thousands of policies in a fraud that ran from 1994 to 2004.
"Many investors were falsely told that as many as 80 percent of all MBC policies matured on time or early," according to the proffer.
Mutual Benefits was placed in receivership.
Steiner was sentenced in February to 15 years in prison for his role in the fraud. The company's general counsel, Michael J. McNerney, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Anthony Livoti Jr., who served as the trustee for Mutual Benefits, was convicted at trial last year of multiple counts of fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola in Miami.
Steinger once lived in a Fort Lauderdale waterfront mansion but has been held without bond for about 1½ years. He uses a wheelchair because of severe back pain, and prosecutors made arrangements for him to appear at a hearing on his medical condition last week via a video feed from the jail.
Under the plea agreement, the government will drop 24 other fraud counts against Steinger. Prosecutors claimed in the plea agreement filed Friday that there were 250 victims of the fraud.

Is it me or did the first quarter of the year fly by?  Spring break is over and baseball season is here.  It was a pretty quiet 3 months in the District..... Any trials coming up?  Send me your tips, which as always will remain anonymous -- dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Should prosecutors be able to use rap lyrics as evidence?

That's the question posed by the front page of the NY Times today:

No suspects. No sign of the gun used to shoot the men. No witnesses to the shooting outside a house where officers found Mr. Horton sprawled next to a trash can and Mr. Dean on the front porch.

But in 2011, the case was reassigned to a detective who later came across what he considered a compelling piece of evidence: a YouTube video of Antwain Steward, a local rapper with the stage name Twain Gotti, performing his song “Ride Out.”

“But nobody saw when I [expletive] smoked him,” Mr. Steward sang on the video. “Roped him, sharpened up the shank, then I poked him, 357 Smith & Wesson beam scoped him.”

Mr. Steward denies any role in the killings, but the authorities took the lyrics to be a boast that he was responsible and, based largely on the song, charged himlast July with the crimes.

Today, his case is one of more than three dozen prosecutions in the past two years in which rap lyrics have played prominent roles. The proliferation of cases has alarmed many scholars and defense lawyers, who say that independent of a defendant’s guilt or innocence, the lyrics are being unfairly used to prejudice judges and juries who have little understanding that, for all its glorification of violence, gangsta rappers are often people who have assumed over-the-top and fictional personas.

“If you aspire to be a gangsta rapper, by definition your lyrics need to be violent,” said Charis E. Kubrin, an associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.

But prosecutors say the lyrics are an important tool for battling criminals who use an outspoken embrace of violence as a weapon of control. “Just because you put your confession to music doesn’t give you a free pass,” said Alan Jackson, a former senior prosecutor in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

In some of the cases, the police say the lyrics represent confessions. More often, the lyrics are used to paint an unsavory picture of a defendant to help establish motive and intent.

THe whole article is worth a read.  What do you all think?

Sen. Rubio issues blue slip for Judge Gayles

Via the Huffington Post (ht Glenn Sugameli):

WASHINGTON -- Florida judicial nominee Darrin Gayles just inched a little closer to becoming the nation's first black, openly gay man to serve as a federal judge.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has given the green light to the Senate Judiciary Committee to proceed with Gayles' nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a committee aide confirmed to The Huffington Post on Tuesday. Specifically, Rubio has submitted his "blue slip" to the committee, a crucial step in the confirmation process whereby a senator can unilaterally approve or block a judicial nominee from his or her home state.Now that both of Gayles' senators have submitted their blue slips -- Florida Democrat Bill Nelson already turned his in -- that signals to committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to move forward with a hearing. Gayles still has to clear the committee and pass the Senate, but Democrats are expected to carry those votes. By turning in his blue slip, Rubio has removed the biggest obstacle to Gayles' confirmation.

The initial hearing may be as soon as next week.  Congratulations on this big step forward for Judge Gayles.  I assume the blue slip was also issued for Judge Bloom, but I have not yet found any confirmation for that.