Robaina tax trial heating up

The blog hasn't really covered this tax trial involving the former mayor and his wife before Judge Ungaro, but it looks like there have been quite a number of interesting moments -- like the couple's previous criminal defense lawyer testifying.  And yesterday, the mayor's wife testified.  From the Herald:

The wife of former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina stood by her man Wednesday, taking the witness stand in the couple’s federal tax-evasion trial to say they did not cheat on their tax returns by hiding $2 million in income from the U.S. government.
Raiza Robaina, 40, said she was responsible for her family’s household finances and tax returns, including interacting with a certified public accountant who did their joint tax returns. She said that she and her husband relied on their accountant, Pelayo Vigil, for filing correct and accurate returns from 2005 to 2010 — the period covered in the couple’s conspiracy indictment.
The Robainas’ defense attorney, David Garvin, asked her whether there were mistakes on the couple’s tax returns.
“Yes, but they were just that — mistakes,” she testified.
Who made the mistakes? Garvin asked.
“The accountant that we trusted to give us the correct information,” she responded.
She then blurted out that the whole ordeal has been “upsetting” because when others make mistakes, nothing happens. “But when we make mistakes, we get indicted.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/23/4076606/robainas-wife-testifies-the-couple.html#storylink=cpy

RIP Myles Malman (UPDATE)

He was a good guy, who most recently tried the B-Girls case in Miami before Judge Scola.

I didn't realize he played baseball at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  From their webpage:

Malman graduated from FDU in 1967 and played baseball for three years. He was very active in the baseball alumni program. In 2010, Malman was presented The Pinnacle, the highest award the University bestows upon its alumni. Pinnacle recipients are chosen on the basis of success or distinction in their chosen fields; significant contributions to society and humanity through public or humanitarian service; and outstanding service to the University, or reflection of the unique character of Fairleigh Dickinson in their lives.

In presenting the award, his longtime friend and colleague Robert H. Silbering said, "You have been a dear friend to FDU over the years. As a former member of FDU's baseball team, you generously support a scholarship established in honor of the late baseball coach Harvey Woods. You also give back your time and energy through lectures and mentoring.

Malman was the managing director of Malman, Malman & Rosenthal in Hollywood, Fla. He specialized in criminal and civil litigation, and maintained an extensive national white-collar criminal practice including securities and health-care fraud.

Malman served as Deputy First Assistant and Special Counsel to the United States Attorney of the Southern District of Florida during his lengthy career as a federal prosecutor, managing a 200-lawyer office. He was co-lead counsel in the successful prosecution of Gen. Manuel Noriega on drug and money-laundering charges. In 1992, he received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in recognition of his litigation skills. Malman handled the only successful federal Civil Rights Act prosecution in the Southern District of Florida and is the recipient of six Department of Justice Superior Achievement Awards for Outstanding Performance.

Over the years, he led and participated in high-profile civil cases, including class-action litigations against manufacturers of silicone breast implants, tobacco, General Motors pickup trucks and others. He also represented and negotiated contracts and business deals for professional players in the National Hockey League and the National Football League.

Malman served on the faculty of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy at Hofstra University Law School and taught in the Intensive Trial Advocacy Program at Widener University Law School. He lectured in criminal and civil trial practice and Florida criminal procedure for the WestBar Review Course. Malman also appeared on national television as an expert in legal matters, consulted on major Hollywood motion picture projects and testified before
Congress on criminal justice matters.

Malman was born in New York City and served as an Assistant District Attorney for 10 years as well as Senior Trial Counsel and adviser to longtime Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau. In the 1960s, he served in the U.S Army Military Police Corps in Vietnam.

Malman is survived by his wife, Jill, and their two children, Parker and Mallory.

UPDATE -- The Miami Herald has this obit:

Myles Malman may not have been a marathon man, but he sure lived like one.
As an attorney, he tried months-long cases, most notably the drug-trafficking prosecution of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in Miami. For clients, he traveled to New York, Russia and Israel. And as an older father, he stayed in shape on the tennis court to keep up with his young son and daughter.
Malman, a New York native who worked for the city's legendary district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, before moving to South Florida in the 1980s to become a federal prosecutor, died of brain cancer on Sunday at his home in Hollywood.
Before his death at age 67, Malman had lived long enough to see a movie in which he appeared — American Hustle — nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. He got a nonspeaking part after he gave some advice to director David O. Russell, who conferred with Malman about a scene filmed on location in the Boston area.
But it was in the courtroom where Malman made his mark, gaining a reputation as a formidable but fair attorney.
Veteran Miami lawyer Norman Moscowitz praised Malman as an “effective and tenacious advocate” as both a prosecutor and defense attorney.
“He was a decent and honorable person and that always came across in court, which is why jurors liked him so much,” said Moscowitz, who worked with him in the U.S. attorney’s office and later on defense cases.

Justice Scalia issues dissent for a DUI criminal defendant

Yes, Rumpole... Justice Scalia is on the right side again. The case is Navarette v. California.

Here's the syllabus of Justice Thomas' opinion:

A California Highway Patrol officer stopped the pickup truck occupied by petitioners because it matched the description of a vehicle that a 911 caller had recently reported as having run her off the road. As he and a second officer approached the truck, they smelled marijuana.They searched the truck’s bed, found 30 pounds of marijuana, and arrested petitioners. Petitioners moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the traffic stop violated the Fourth Amendment. Their motion was denied, and they pleaded guilty to transporting marijuana. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, concluding that the officer had reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop.
Held: The traffic stop complied with the Fourth Amendment because,under the totality of the circumstances, the officer had reasonable suspicion that the truck’s driver was intoxicated.

From Justice Scalia's dissent, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan (Note that Breyer is again ruling in favor of the government):

The Court’s opinion serves up a freedom-destroying cocktail consisting of two parts patent falsity: (1) tha tanonymous 911 reports of traffic violations are reliable so long as they correctly identify a car and its location, and
(2) that a single instance of careless or reckless driving necessarily supports a reasonable suspicion of drunkenness. All the malevolent 911 caller need do is assert a traffic violation, and the targeted car will be stopped, forcibly if necessary, by the police. If the driver turns out not to be drunk (which will almost always be the case), the caller need fear no consequences, even if 911 knows his identity. After all, he never alleged drunkenness, but merely called in a traffic violation—and on that point hisword is as good as his victim’s.
Drunken driving is a serious matter, but so is the loss ofour freedom to come and go as we please without police interference. To prevent and detect murder we do notallow searches without probable cause or targeted Terry stops without reasonable suspicion. We should not do so for drunken driving either. After today’s opinion all of us on the road, and not just drug dealers, are at risk of having our freedom of movement curtailed on suspicion of drunkenness, based upon a phone tip, true or false, of a single instance of careless driving. I respectfully dissent.

Supreme Court rejects Gov. Scott's cert petition

This was in the drug testing case that Judge Ungaro had. From Curt Anderson:

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal by Florida Gov. Rick Scott on his 2011 executive order that would have required random drug tests for as many as 85,000 state workers.

The ruling lets stand an appeals court decision that Scott's order was too broad. That decision also directed a Miami federal judge to oversee ongoing negotiations between the state and an employee union over which positions could be subjected to random drug tests.

The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the appeal follows a similar decision in late December by a federal judge in Orlando who struck down a Florida law requiring applicants for welfare benefits to undergo mandatory drug testing. Scott, a Republican, is also appealing that case.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which challenged both drug-testing plans as unconstitutional, said federal courts have clearly rejected blanket mandatory drug testing by the state.

"The question of whether the state has the power to compel all employees to submit to suspicionless searches without good reason is settled and the answer is no," said Shalini Goel Agarwal, the lead ACLU attorney in the state employees case.

Judge Hoeveler set to retire

It's been a good run.

John Pacenti covers the details:

Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler said after more than three decades on the bench that he planned "to continue to work until they carry me out."
It may not come to that. Chief U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno in Miami sent a short memo last month reassigning Hoeveler's 21 cases effective April 1 "pending retirement later this year."
Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in April 1977, the World War II veteran quickly gained a reputation as a legal scholar. The 92-year-old judge oversaw landmark litigation on Everglades pollution, and he presided at the nine-month drug-trafficking and racketeering trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Hoeveler also oversaw some of the 2000 hearings on whether 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his homeland. A year earlier, he presided over a Port of Miami public corruption trial.
"The truth is he has left his fingerprints all across the district, not just on the Everglades, but on criminal, civil and environmental law," said former interim U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, now a partner at Lewis Tein in Miami. "When the chips are down, Judge Hoeveler is the guy who comes through."
Compared to Lincoln
How well-regarded is Hoeveler among members of the Bar in South Florida? Several lawyers compared him to President Abraham Lincoln.
"He acted like Abe Lincoln," said attorney Aaron Podhurst, a partner at Podhurst Orseck in Miami. "He never raised his voice, and he was a fabulous lawyer, and he was a great trial judge."

Thursday's news and notes

1. The dude who disrupted the Supreme Court got time served. From the AP:

A demonstrator who interrupted arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in February and whose group posted video of the protest online, a first for the court, has been sentenced to time served.

Noah Kai Newkirk of Los Angeles pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with the Feb. 26 disruption, after which he served a night in jail. After Tuesday's hearing, a Supreme Court policeman gave Newkirk a piece of paper that notified him he is also barred from the court grounds for a year.

After video of his protest was posted online, the Supreme Court, which forbids cameras and all other electronic devices, tightened its security screening. Newkirk declined Tuesday to say how the video of his protest was shot.

Newkirk, a member of the group 99Rise, told a D.C. Superior Court judge overseeing his case that he spoke out to protest the "unprecedented amount of money" corporations are spending on elections. He said the Supreme Court played a role in "deepening that corruption."
...
Newkirk's attorney, Jeffrey L. Light, told the judge Newkirk has no intention of returning to the Supreme Court. But Newkirk said outside the hearing that "it's a hypothetical possibility there may be others."

2. While keeping the Court closed to cameras and punishing those who disrupt the Court, Justice Scalia told a student that he should consider revolting:. From the WSJ:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, after delivering prepared remarks before a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Tennessee College of Law on Tuesday, was asked by a student about the constitutionality of the income tax.

Justice Scalia, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, replied that the government has the right to take his money. “But if reaches certain point, perhaps you should revolt,” he reportedly told the young man.

The justice, who was invited by the law school to present its annual “Rose Lecture,” delivered what he described as his “stump speech.”

He talked about the time he joined with the majority in 1989 in declaring that flag-burning was constitutionally protected speech.

“You’re entitled to criticize the government, and you can use words, you can use symbols, you can use telegraph, you can use Morse code, you can burn a flag,” he said, according to the News Sentinel.

Justice Scalia also said that he and his colleagues on the bench don’t care which party controls the White House, saying the clash of opinions among the justices isn’t partisan.

And he, naturally, offered a defense of his theory of originalism, the belief in a Constitution that’s fixed and unchangeable.

“The Constitution is not a living organism for Pete’s sake,” the justice said, according to the report. “It’s a law. It means what it meant when it was adopted.”

3. Another Rothstein indictment. This time it's Irene Stay. From the Sun-Sentinel:

Federal prosecutors filed a criminal charge Wednesday against Scott Rothstein's former bookkeeper, who became the chief financial officer of his law firm, court records show.

Irene Stay, now Irene Shannon, 50, of Miami, was charged with a lone count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud. Prosecutors said she is the 18th Rothstein accomplice to be held accountable.

Shannon played a vital role in Rothstein's $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme, which he operated from 2005 to 2009, according to investigators.
Her job involved overseeing all of the law firm's accounting work from the secured inner sanctum that Rothstein had built in his Las Olas office, according to investigators from the IRS and FBI.

Some of Rothstein's investors alleged in a civil lawsuit that when Rothstein's law partners confronted Shannon after he fled to Morocco in late October 2009, she began crying and repeating the phrase, "I don't want to go to jail."

Fort Lauderdale jeweler Patrick Daoud gets house

Another Judge Marra/Fred Haddad matchup. From Paula McMahon:

Well-known Fort Lauderdale jeweler Patrick Daoud was sentenced to ten months of house arrest and two years of probation on Friday for helping to hide a huge 12.08 carat yellow diamond that Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein's wife was attempting to conceal from federal authorities.

Daoud, 55,the owner of Daoud's Fine Jewelry in Fort Lauderdale, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice last year.
***
His crime, prosecutors said, was lying about the diamond under oath when he was summoned to a deposition in federal bankruptcy proceedings in November 2011. He testified that he never received or kept the diamond and later, in June 2012, returned it to Weisman.

"He had the opportunity to do the right thing and chose not to," Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence LaVecchio said in court.

Daoud's lawyer, Fred Haddad, said that Daoud was "deliberately kept in the dark" and knew nothing of Rothstein's attempt to hide jewelry and other assets to try to keep her financially afloat after her husband's $1.4 billion investment fraud scheme was exposed in October 2009.

Daoud panicked when he figured out what was going on and got involved in a "misguided attempt to protect" Weisman – who he knew from attending charitable events – and his investment, Haddad said.

"Aside from losing a large sum of money in purchasing the ring, the embarrassment in a community where he is so well-known, [Daoud] has also been branded a felon, with a resultant loss of business," Haddad wrote.

When U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra asked Daoud if he wanted to say anything before he was sentenced, Daoud hesitantly replied: "I'd rather not."

Judge Pryor says judicial branch disrepected by AG Holder

Some fireworks from the Sentencing Commission last week when 11th Circuit Judge Pryor said that AG Holder disrespected the judicial branch by not opposing the proposed two level decrease in the drug guidelines. More from NLJ:

The United States Sentencing Commission Thursday unanimously approved an amendment to revise sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders, but not before one commissioner accused Attorney General Eric Holder of having “disrespected” the judicial branch’s role in sentencing reform.

“I regret that, before we voted on the amendment, the Attorney General instructed Assistant United States Attorneys across the Nation not to object to defense requests to apply the proposed amendment in sentencing proceedings going forward,” Judge William Pryor, Jr. said at a public hearing in Washington. “That unprecedented instruction disrespected our statutory role, ‘as an independent commission in the judicial branch,’ to establish sentencing policies and practices under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”

Nevertheless, Pryor voted with the seven other Republican and Democratic judges to reduce sentencing guidelines involving drug offenders.

In August, Holder revealed his “Smart on Crime” initiative, which includes recommendations for reduced sentencing, without consulting with the Sentencing Commission—an independent agency within the judicial branch tasked with setting such policies. Although the sentencing reforms themselves were not controversial, Holder’s cavalier approach to separation of powers, including a March memo in which he “instructed the Assistant United States Attorneys across the Nation not to object to defense requests to apply the proposed amendment in sentencing proceedings going forward,” irritated commissioners and alarmed supporters of constitutional separation of powers.

The amendment approved Thursday, aims to reduce federal prison overcrowding by reducing non-violent drug trafficking offenders’ sentences by 17 percent.

Holder did not attend the meeting. Instead, Commissioner Jonathan Wroblewski responded to what he called Pryor’s “very, very, very serious charge.” Wroblewski insisted that what the Attorney General did was “not only lawful, but in the greatest respect of the Justice Department,”

Chief Judge Ricardo Hinojosa stated that he was “surprised” by Wroblewski’s statement. He concurred with Pryor that Holder is setting a “dangerous precedent,” noting that two years ago, the Justice Department testified that it was not ready for reductions in sentencing, but that “all of a sudden, because the Attorney General says so” the DOJ has changed its course.

The meeting concluded with Chief Judge Patti Saris applauding the commission for its unanimous vote. But observers joined Pryor and Hinojosa in condemning Holder’s high-handed approach to constitutional boundaries.

“For those committed to the rule of law, the question now goes beyond whether reducing sentences for dealers in dangerous drugs is wise. It’s whether the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, is committed to following the law as it exists, or, instead, as he wants and speculates it might become,” William G. Otis a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said in a statement. “One way to consider this question is to ask whether, if the Attorney General ordered prosecutors to seek increased sentences that were, at the time, only preliminary, those applauding Mr. Holder’s actions would be as enthusiastic as they are today.”

I'm not sure I see the disrespect or the separation of powers issues. The Attorney General can tell his prosecutors what sentences to seek; in fact, he can even go so far as to pick and choose what cases to prosecute. I see the judges' role as a check on the prosecution power in seeking sentences that are too high, not too low. This is an adversary system, so if the executive branch says that a particular sentence is too high, I'm not sure how that is disrespecting the judicial branch. As an aside, the guidelines aren't even based on any empirical data; they are simply made up numbers -- and the Commission voted unanimously to reduce those made up numbers. Had Holder not told his prosecutors to stop seeking the higher sentences, we'd see a flood of 2255s, along with appeals, and I'm sure the judicial branch wouldn't be happy about that.

Judge Marra's sentencing of Christopher George last week demonstrated how the judiciary rightly checks the government. The prosecution asked for a third off of George's sentence for cooperation and the defense asked for way more. Judge Marra correctly said no and gave much less -- about 20%. From Paula McMahon the Sun-Sentinel:

Christopher George, whose highly successful pill mills in Broward and Palm Beach counties made about $40 million, was hoping Friday that his cooperation with prosecutors would earn him a big break on the prison term he is serving.

Though the inmate wasn't in court to witness it, prosecutors formally recommended that he should get close to six years shaved off his 17 1/2 year federal prison sentence and told the judge that they wouldn't object to him getting as much as a 50 percent sentence reduction.

But U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra was not going for anything even close to that.

"I'm not sure that I want him back out on the streets as quickly as everyone here seems to want — he's a dangerous person," Marra said.

Recalling George's boastful testimony last summer in the trial of two doctors he hired to prescribe massive amounts of painkillers to addicts and other drug, the judge said the former Wellington twin was "proud of being a criminal."

"He was proud of what he did. He was just upset that he got caught," Marra said.

The judge, who has granted sentence reductions for several other co-defendants who helped the prosecution, reminded prosecutors and defense attorney Fred Haddad that he could refuse to reduce George's sentence by even one day.

But mindful that prosecutors investigating tough cases often need the help of cooperating criminals — who will only do the right thing if they know they will receive some kind of reward — Marra said it would be "unwise and damaging to the criminal justice system" to give George no credit at all.

After a long silence, Marra ruled that it was appropriate to take 3 1/2 years off George's prison term – which cuts his punishment to 14 years. Federal inmates usually serve about 85 percent of their sentences, with time off for good behavior.