SCOTUS: "Long Conference" on 9/28

The NY Times has an interesting piece this morning on the "long conference" where all of the summer petitions will be considered.  The odds of a grant from the long conference are particularly low.  Can't the Court meet a few times over the summer to consider the filed cert petitions?  Would that be such a burden in addition to the 70-75 cases that they hear a year?

Four weeks from now, on Sept. 28, the Supreme Court justices will gather in private for an annual ritual called the “long conference.” They will consider the roughly 2,000 petitions to hear appeals that have piled up over the summer. And they will reject almost every one.

“The summer list is where petitions go to die,” said Gregory G. Garre, a solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration who is now at Latham & Watkins.

The odds of persuading the Supreme Court to hear a case are always long. At the conferences held on many Fridays during the term, which lasts from October to June, the justices consider perhaps 200 petitions at a time and grant about 1.1 percent of them. At the long conference, the rate is roughly half of that, around 0.6 percent.

That difference is significant. “For the majority of petitioners, the most important moment is trying to get in the door,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford who argues frequently before the court. “Once you’re in, the statistics say, you have a two-thirds chance of winning. So the difference between a grant and a deny is truly the difference for a handful of cases on the summer list between winning and losing.”

Lawyers and scholars have various theories about why the long conference is so inhospitable. One is that the justices, who decide about 70 cases a year, do not want to grant too many petitions right away for fear of having to turn down better ones later on.

“It’s like the beginning of a long buffet,” Professor Fisher said. “You don’t want to fill your plate with too much stuff, lest you not have room for some delicious items at the end of the line.”

Meantime Liptak (the author of the article) and Orin Kerr are fighting about whether Justice Thomas here.  Here is the original NY Times piece that Kerr take on. Who has the better of the debate?  Kerr seems to make valid points about the flimsy statistics cited by Liptak.

Flakka and butt implant deliveries from overseas to be delayed due to Erika

Your 8am death cone:



Paula McMahon covers this big Flakka importation case:

Two men pleaded guilty Thursday to importing more than 24 pounds of the main ingredient in the street drug flakka from China to Broward County.

Federal authorities arrested Michael J. Hernandez, 25, of Orlando, and Jonell Vega-Mercado, 21, of Clermont, in June when they tried to pick up packages from a shipping and mailbox store in Hollywood.
Michael J. Hernandez and Jonell Vega-Mercado

Homeland Security Investigations agents said the packages contained the key ingredient for making the synthetic stimulant, which often causes hallucinations and psychosis.

The packages were addressed to fake names and were intercepted while being shipped to commercial mailboxes in Weston and Hollywood, authorities said.

The men ordered large amounts of the drug to be shipped from labs in China and the conspiracy went on from January to early June, according to the plea agreement. The men paid cash for mailbox services and used fake identities when they picked up the shipments.

Both men pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to import the drug ingredient at a hearing in federal court in West Palm Beach. The charge carries a maximum punishment of 20 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine.

And what's Friday news without Hurricanes, Flakka, and.... Butt Implants:

Peruvian woman who admitted she illegally smuggled a product into South Florida to perform an illegal "buttocks enhancement" procedure was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison on Thursday, court records show.

Teresa Nunez Orrego, 46, was arrested in May during an appointment with an undercover federal agent who posed as a client who wanted a "buttocks enhancement." The arrest was made at the Hallandale Beach apartment of Nunez's South Florida contact who scheduled her appointments.

Teresa Nunez Orrego, 46, was sentencd to 10 months in federal prison after admitting she traveled from Peru to Broward County with silicone, large hypodermic needles and syringes to perform an illegal cosmetic procedure, or "buttocks enhancement." (Handout, Broward Sheriff's Office)

Nunez had promised she would boost the woman's rear end with injections of a top-quality Swiss product for the bargain price of $1,000, according to court records.

Federal authorities said Nunez hid vials of silicone, with fake labels that claimed it was more expensive hyaluronic acid, in her luggage on a flight from Lima, Peru to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Also concealed in her luggage were large hypodermic needles, syringes and vials of lidocaine to help treat reduce the pain involved in the procedure, according to agents from the Food and Drug Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He tried to nail Ben to the wall."

That's Henry Bell discussing Robert Feitel in this Herald article about lawyers and money laundering by Michael Sallah.  More:

Robert Feitel, a veteran lawyer with a long history of prosecutions, charged into court as the Justice Department’s point man to take on a prominent Miami lawyer in a case that came to symbolize the rights of attorneys to accept fees from international drug traffickers.
Feitel accused lawyer Ben Kuehne of fabricating documents to cover up dollars for the Medellin Cartel. He accused him of orchestrating the payments through overseas wires. He even said Kuehne knew much of the money came from the sale of drugs.
Now, years after the case ended, Feitel is cast in a strikingly similar position as the man he once prosecuted.
The Miami Herald found that more than $100,000 in drug money belonging to criminal organizations was sent to Feitel’s law firm by South Florida undercover officers posing as money launderers to infiltrate drug groups.
The undercover police picked up the cash in New York and sent the money to Feitel — now a defense attorney who specializes in drug cases — at the behest of criminal organizations in a series of payments never questioned by the former prosecutor, records and interviews show.
Kuehne, whose case was ultimately dropped by the government in 2009, said he was surprised to learn about payments to the man who once prosecuted him.
“The question is: Why was he getting the money?” said Kuehne, a former member of the Florida Bar’s board of governors who represented Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential recount. “Is he going to get the same knock on the door?”
Contacted by phone, Feitel said he was unaware of the money sent to his office in northwest Washington, where he works mostly as a solo practitioner, adding he was surprised by The Herald’s call. “We’re usually pretty careful” about accepting questionable fees, he said.

Oh... it's the usually we're pretty careful defense! Henry and others were having none of it:

Several defense lawyers from Miami said they were riled that the onetime senior prosecutor was never questioned by law enforcement agents about the money sent to his account — funds picked up off the streets of New York from drug suspects.

“In his role at the DOJ, he prosecuted Ben for the same thing;” Bell said.

In an earlier interview, Feitel said money sent from a U.S. bank like the one used by the task force is more difficult to screen than funds from overseas exchange houses. “How was I supposed to know” the money is tainted? said Feitel. “That would have been difficult.”

One former federal prosecutor said money wired to a law firm from someone who is not a client should have raised basic questions. “What did he think the money was for?” said Joseph DeMaria, a Miami attorney who once served on the DOJ’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. “He’s got to be saying to himself: ‘Why am I getting this money? Especially someone who was a former prosecutor who’s even more heightened on these kinds of issues. He spent his career putting people in jail for money laundering.”

Judge Williams rules that Mosely-Mayorga II will proceed

Well, the opening round of Don King Productions, Inc. v. Shane Mosely was, in Judge Williams's view, pretty much even, which means that the Mosely-promoted Grudge Match between Mosely and Ricardo Mayorga will proceed this Saturday night at The Forum in Inglewood, California as planned.

In a lengthy order denying Don King's promotional company's (DKP) motion for a preliminary injunction, Judge Williams found that sufficient evidence showed that Mayorga had entered into an agreement with DKP for it to exclusively promote Mayorga as a professional boxer. But she also concluded that DKP had failed to show a "substantial likelihood of success on the merits" about whether the agreement was still in effect and whether DKP had waived certain of its provisions. Plus, there was no irreparable harm that money couldn't remedy. So, Judge Williams concluded, the "extraordinary and drastic remedy" of stopping the fight simply wasn't called for.

Here's the order:

DKP v. SSM et al. -- Order Denying Pl.'s Mot. Prelim. Inj.

RIP Douglas Mincher, Clerk of 11th Circuit

The 11th Circuit posted these comments: http://1.usa.gov/1ESfW9J

And Aly Palmer at The Daily Report in Atlanta covers the sad story here:

A longtime metro Atlanta court administrator, Douglas Mincher, has died at the age of 57.

Mincher, who became clerk of court for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit earlier this year, died on Sunday of an apparent heart attack, according to Circuit Executive James Gerstenlauer.

Mincher had been chief deputy clerk for the Northern District of Georgia from 2010 until being hired for the Eleventh Circuit job. He previously had worked for several years for the city of Atlanta, combining and administering its municipal and city courts.

Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge Ed Carnes said the news was a shock, noting that Mincher was a cyclist who exercised regularly to keep fit. "He would tell everybody who would listen that this job was his dream job," said Carnes, adding he had hoped that Mincher would be the clerk through the rest of his term as chief.

Hiring law clerks who have experience: A bad thing?

FIU law professor Howard Wasserman has an interesting post today at PrawfsBlawg about the "unfortunate trend," in his view, of judges' tending to hire law clerks who have some real-world experience, rather than straight out of law school. He notes that this trend seems to be increasing, particularly in the Southern District of Florida.

The internet is awesome

1.  Jeff Ashton (the Casey Anthony prosecutor who has 5 kids and preaches family values) is outed on Ashley Madison.  And then he gave a press conference to discuss.  No joke:

His ideal partner would “know what she wants” and would not be afraid to ask for it. A “big toy collection” would not be all that bad either, he wrote.
“You must be discrete, not looking to change my situation, just want to get excited again.”
He also boasted of his sexual prowess in his profile, the Orlando Post shared.
“I want someone that fantasizes about being brought to a climax by a lover with a skillful tongue and fingers as well as his member,” he added.

 2.  Jeb Bush does not have a black hand.  But this flier!

Trump saw red meat:

A campaign leaflet sent out by a pro-Bush super PAC that shows him with a black left hand, and his body apparently super-imposed on a picture of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“Jeb Bush has a Photoshopped photo for an ad which gives him a black left hand and much different looking body. Jeb just can’t get it right!” the real-estate mogul said of his rival for the 2016 Republican nomination, who he has frequently assailed recently on the campaign trail.
The leaflet’s copy, “Why Jeb?” ended up being co-opted by bemused Twitter users to ask, “Why, Jeb?” as to why his hand had become black. The original campaign leaflet was sent by the Right to Rise USA Super PAC to some 86,000 Iowans, as Bush seeks to raise his game amid lackluster polling in the first-in-the-nation caucuses state.

Oh and welcome back to school... and traffic!
 

Don King and "Sugar" Shane Mosley square off in the S.D. Fla.

Former pound-for-pound best fighter in the world “Sugar” Shane Mosely took to Twitter yesterday to discuss a lawsuit brought by Don King’s promotional company (DKP) against him, fellow boxer Ricardo “El Matador” Mayorga, and others seeking to put a halt to the upcoming “Grudge Match” between Mosely and Mayorga, currently scheduled for August 29. According to court documents, Mosley’s seeking to fight Mayorga in the Grudge Match would tortiously interfere with DKP’s exclusive contractual rights to promote its client Mayorga. A hearing on DKP’s motion for a TRO and preliminary injunction was held yesterday before Judge Williams.

Mosely displayed his promotional skills before the hearing:

Thoughts on the strength of DKP’s case?

Any predictions, Champ?

C’mon, Shane! This is the Southern District of Florida! And you have a great judge.

So how’d it go?

Fair enough. Staying silent is probably best until this all gets resolved.

Hope it works out for all involved. Stay tuned.

***

In other news, the Eleventh Circuit issued a few interesting decisions this week, reminding lower courts that they should essentially never vacate arbitral awards, and discussing the risks of providing your cell-phone number to entities that might text you advertisements.