Breaking -- Congressional JNC sets interviews

Below is the list for District Judge.  They also have set interviews for U.S. Attorney.  Good luck to all.

AFPD Andrew Adler in the Supreme Court

Congrats to AFPD Andy Adler for his Supreme Court argument today in Tarahrick Terry v. United States.  From Reuters:

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday seemed skeptical that low-level crack cocaine offenders can benefit under a 2018 federal law that reduced certain prison sentences in part to address racial disparities detrimental to Black defendants.

The nine justices heard their final arguments of the court's nine-month term that began last October in a case involving a Florida man named Tarahrick Terry that tests the scope of the First Step Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump.

The provision in question made retroactive a 2010 law called the Fair Sentencing Act that reduced a disparity that made sentencing for crack cocaine crimes more severe than for powder cocaine crimes.

Black defendants were far more likely to face crack cocaine charges than white defendants, who were more apt to face powder cocaine charges. Terry, scheduled to be released from prison in September, is Black.

***

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer indicated sympathy toward the idea that lower-level offenders should have benefited from the law, but said its language did not appear to support that interpretation.

"I mean I think they were much too high. I understand that," Breyer said of the long sentences. "But I can't get away from this statute."

Federal public defender Andrew Adler, representing Terry, told conservative Chief Justice John Roberts that the law unambiguously applies only to low-level crack offenders, not those convicted of other drug offenses.  

Even though the Government joined Adler's position, the Court appointed amicus to take the other side and sadly seemed inclined to rule against the defendant.  No matter how it comes out, what a cool accomplishment to argue in the High Court.

May the 4th be with you!

 After Festivus, this is my favorite holiday.

Things are starting to open back up with courts around the country.  Here in SDFLA, we will have the pilot trial before Judge Ungaro next week.  It's a short civil case, but it will be a big test to see if we can get going again.  Good luck to Judge Ungaro and the litigants.  

RIP Judge Joseph Hatchett

 What a life.  The first African American to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and the first to serve as a Circuit Judge (the former 5th and then the 11th) in the South.  

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Joseph W. Hatchett died in Tallahassee on Friday, April 30, 2021. Hatchett was 88 and was the first African American appointed to the Court. Read more: https://t.co/4VhgApr0NJ pic.twitter.com/CHxQuPl1VL

— FloridaSupremeCourt (@flcourts) May 1, 2021

From the Miami Herald:

When a young Joseph W. Hatchett took the Florida Bar exam in 1960, he could not stay in the Miami hotel in which the test was given because of Jim Crow regulations.

Within 15 years, Hatchett would become the first African American to serve on the Florida Supreme Court.

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Hatchett died in Tallahassee on Friday, April 30, Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said in a post Saturday morning. Hatchett was 88 and Florida’s 65th justice since statehood was granted in 1845.

Hatchett was appointed to Florida’s highest court by Gov. Reubin Askew in 1975. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter named him to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where, the Florida Supreme Court notes, “he became the first African American to serve in a federal circuit that covered the Deep South at the time.”

Twenty years later, after retiring in 1999, Hatchett took on another challenge when he joined with the NAACP to be lead attorney in the fight to preserve statewide preference programs for minorities and women in Florida.

“This is to continue to ensure that all Floridians have an equal opportunity to succeed, and that’s affirmative action,” Hatchett told the Miami Herald at the time.

That earlier indignity at the Miami hotel during his bar exam endured. Hatchett was determined that other promising young Black law students could one day not only eat lunch in the same dining room as their white counterparts — something he was warned not to do when he took the test — but that they, too, could one day ascend as he had.

“I can remember when I became a young lawyer he pulled me aside and told me, basically, that what other people thought of my dreams were none of my business,” said attorney H.T. Smith, the founding director of the Trial Advocacy Program at Florida International University College of Law.

“His whole philosophy was that group of Black lawyers in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s, we had a responsibility to open the vaults of opportunity for ourselves and for people coming behind us,” Smith said. 

Judge Altman interviews Judge Singhal at Federal Bar Association event

 It was a wonderful interview.  Two great guys just talking.  Relaxed and interesting.  What makes them both great is that they are real people.  We learned lots about Judge Singhal -- his love of trials, comics, Presidents, and the law.  His unbelievable background and parents.  We need more judges like him.  I'm glad so many of you were able to see it as I am told it was the best attended event of the pandemic.