Happy Back to the Future Day

Awesomeness

Really funny, especially Larry David as Bernie.

If you want some local news, check out Paula McMahon's article about this courtroom deputy who got 8 years for child pornography.  Or about this guy who didn't have the best flight.

If you are interested in the cell-site data case we are working on, Forbes covers it here.  We are filing our reply in support of cert tomorrow.

"The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta alleges that the Florida Priory of the Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, the Ecumenical Order is infringing its registered service marks in violation of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1114, and Florida law."

Oh they're at it again... This is the latest in the running dispute between these parties. Judge William Pryor reverses again: "On remand, the district court misapplied several factors in its analysis of likely confusion, incorrectly assessed the Florida Priory’s defense of prior use, relied on historical testimony that we previously deemed inadmissible, and misinterpreted our instructions about consulting facts outside the record. Because the district court erred again, we reverse again. But we deny the Sovereign Order’s request to reassign the case to a different district judge."

This makes me happy.

Harvard debate team loses to NY inmates, via the AP:

Months after winning a national title, Harvard's debate team has fallen to a group of New York inmates.

The showdown took place at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club. Last month, they invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year's national debate champions over for a friendly competition.

The Harvard debate team also was crowned world champions in 2014. But the inmates are building a reputation of their own. In the two years since they started a debate club, the prisoners have beaten teams from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the University of Vermont. The competition with West Point, which is now an annual affair, has grown into a rivalry.

At Bard, those who help teach the inmates aren't particularly surprised by their success.

"Students in the prison are held to the exact same standards, levels of rigor and expectation as students on Bard's main campus," said Max Kenner, executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative, which operates in six New York prisons. "Those students are serious. They are not condescended to by their faculty."

Students on the Harvard team weren't immediately available for comment, but shortly after the loss, they posted a comment on a team Facebook page.

"There are few teams we are prouder of having lost a debate to than the phenomenally intelligent and articulate team we faced this weekend," they wrote. "And we are incredibly thankful to Bard and the Eastern New York Correctional Facility for the work they do and for organizing this event."

SCOTUS debates Florida death penalty post Ring

I'm sure it was more interesting than the snoozer of a debate last night in which the Supreme Court didn't come up.

The DP case before the Supreme Court was Hurst v. Florida. SCOTUSBlog has coverage of the interesting oral argument:

The case is about a brutal murder in a fast-food restaurant in Pensacola, but it reaches the Court as a clear-cut test of what the Justices had in mind in the 2002 decision in Ring v. Arizona. That ruling seemingly enhanced the role of the jury in capital punishment cases, assigning them the crucial task of deciding the facts that make a person accused of murder eligible to be put to death.

The Florida Supreme Court has taken the position that the Ring decision does not even apply to its death penalty system — a position that its lawyer — state Solicitor General Allen Winsor — did not repeat on Tuesday, even as he argued that the system fully satisfies that ruling. It would be Winsor who would, before the hearing ended, face the hardest questions about moral responsibility.

Hurst’s lawyer, Washington, D.C., attorney Seth P. Waxman (a former U.S. Solicitor General), left no doubt from the outset that he was aiming to put Winsor on the defensive on the jury question. “Under Florida law,” he began, “Timothy Lee Hurst will go to his death despite the fact that a judge, not a jury, made the factual finding that rendered him eligible for death.”

Under Florida law, no one can be put to death unless there is a finding of one “aggravating factor” — usually, some fact about the crime or the way it was committed that would justify the ultimate penalty. The jury, Waxman noted, only offers an advisory opinion to the judge about such factors, and then suggests either life or death.

Waxman quoted from Florida law, noting that the judge makes the crucial finding of aggravating factors “independently, and, quote, ‘notwithstanding the jury’s recommendation as to sentence.'” For most of his argument, he never strayed far from that point or from his secondary point that Florida is the only state to do it in that way. The Justices, as usual, tried a few hypotheticals to test the way the Florida arrangement actually works, but the sidelining of the jury was almost always a part of Waxman’s answers.

From the moment that Florida’s Winsor took the lectern, arguing at first that his state’s system was constitutional before and after Ring v. Arizona, he was almost constantly bombarded with probing questions about what juries actually did under that system. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was perhaps the most aggressive questioner.

Winsor sought to show that the task given to Florida juries was a serious one, but the questions from the bench continued to suggest that, no matter what the jury did or recommended, it could be overridden by the final choices that are assigned to the judge. At some points, it appeared that the state’s lawyer was making at least some concessions that part of the system would not satisfy the Ring precedent.