Happy Birthday to the Southern District of Florida Blog!

Happy 16th (!!) Birthday to the Southern District of Florida Blog!  

Sixteen years ago in 2005, on the July 4 weekend, I started this blog and it's been a fun run of over 4,000 posts and over 5.2 million page views.  

I'm really proud of this project I started all these years ago and am so grateful for all of the connections and friends I've made through the blog.  This is a great legal community and it's really like a family that I am happy to be a part of.

To put the 16 years in perspective, when the blog was started:

The Wilkie Ferguson courthouse was not yet open.

Judge Zloch was Chief Judge of the District.

Mel Martinez was one of our Senators.

Alex Acosta had just been named Acting U.S. Attorney.

The Supreme Court had seven different Justices: Rehnquist, Scalia, Stevens, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and O'Connor.

There was no Twitter.

There was no podcasting.  (I now have one of my own, called For the Defense).

There was no Zoom.

My firm had one lawyer, me (it now has 6).

I had one daughter (I now have 3 and one headed to college!).

We still don't have a Floridian serving on the Supreme Court, which was the very first post! But that may change with Ketanji Brown Jackson as the leading candidate to replace Justice Breyer if he retires.

Thanks again to all of you for reading and for the tips. As Brian Tannebaum pointed out to me, the blog is now old enough to drive! I still very much enjoy keeping tabs on the most interesting and exciting District in the country.

“Bill Cosby is free; Ghislaine Maxwell should be too.”

 That’s the title of an op-ed I just wrote for the New York Daily News in light of the Cosby ruling.  From the conclusion to the piece:

The case against Ghislaine Maxwell is extremely weak — based on 25-year-old, uncorroborated allegations made only after Epstein died. A jury should reject those flimsy and stale charges. But in the event of a conviction, she should get relief on appeal for the same reason Cosby did — prosecutors should have to live up to the deals they make. As that court explained: “A contrary result would be patently untenable. It would violate long-cherished principles of fundamental fairness. It would be antithetical to, and corrosive of, the integrity and functionality of the criminal justice system that we strive to maintain.”

The Cosby case reaffirms that a prosecutor is bound to act with integrity and the public must be able to rely on his word. What a concept.

"Thank God that juries are smarter than judges."

That was criminal defense lawyer Frank Carson after he was charged with murder, went to trial that lasted 17 months, and was acquitted by a jury.  It's an amazing (and very sad) story, covered by the L.A. Times in these three articles, here, here, and here.  

Above is his mug shot, where he wouldn't give the prosecution the satisfaction of looking grim. Carson loved to stick it to the man.  And he believed that was payback after a long career of fighting and winning.  Sadly, he died shortly after winning his own trial, but not before he got to try another case as a lawyer.

This is how the third installment from the L.A. Times starts:

They were a year into the preliminary hearing with no visible end, and Frank Carson was close to despair. He was trapped where so many of his clients had been, alone in a chilly cell in a Stanislaus County jail. He had rebuffed every overture to cut a deal, to plead, to inform on codefendants in exchange for lenience.

But guilt pierced him. He blamed himself for the plight of his wife and stepdaughter, out on bail but charged in the so-called murder plot he had supposedly masterminded. He blamed himself for the continued incarceration of three other codefendants, former highway patrolman Walter Wells and Pop N Cork liquor store owners Baljit “Bobby” Athwal and brother Daljit “Dee” Atwal. All of them had refused to implicate Carson, telling prosecutors they had nothing to say.

“Boys,” Carson said one day, sitting before them in a courthouse holding room.

He had found a solution, he explained. He would take the blame, so they could go free. There seemed no other way out. He was in his 60s, with no kids; they were younger men, and fathers. The D.A. wanted him. What he did not tell them was that he had knotted up a sheet to keep under his pillow, to hang himself before they put him on a bus to prison.

“No, Mr. Carson,” his codefendants said. The brothers were Sikhs from the Punjab region of India. To let Carson take the blame for something he hadn’t done would dishonor the family, they explained — they’d be killed if they returned to their village.

Where is the Biden administration on the CARES Act and prisoners who were released during the pandemic?

 During the Trump administration, about 4,500 at-risk inmates were released during the pandemic.  But in the last few days of his presidency, Trump's DOJ said everyone needed to go back in when the crisis ended. It was a really weird decision.  Many have thought Biden would rescind that order, but he hasn't and has rightfully faced a lot of criticism because of it.  

In the meantime, BOP is doing BOP things... here's an article by the WaPo about a 76-year old grandmother who was released but taken back into custody because she was taking a class on word-processing and didn't immediately answer her phone.  Our system is so messed up... 

In the year she was out of prison, Gwen Levi, 76, was thriving.

After serving 16 years in different federal facilities for dealing heroin, Levi was allowed to leave last June and finish her 24-year sentence in home confinement under the supervision of federal prison officials. She moved in with her 94-year-old mother in Baltimore and volunteered at prisoner advocacy organizations, hoping for a paying job to come along. She was also building her relationships with her sons and grandsons.

But Levi’s season on the outside ended June 12 after she attended a computer word-processing class in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. A Federal Bureau of Prisons incident report said she was out of contact for a few hours with the officials supervising her.

Levi is now at the D.C. jail awaiting transfer to a federal facility, according to her attorney, Sapna Mirchandani, of Maryland’s Office of the Federal Public Defender.

“There’s no question she was in class,” Mirchandani said. “As I was told, because she could have been robbing a bank, they’re going to treat her as if she was robbing a bank.”

Also, your favorite blogger was on 20/20 Friday night.  Here's a short clip from the two hour episode if you are interested. 

Fane Lozman to take on Department of Justice...

 ... and my money is on Fane Lozman.  The guy has gone to the Supreme Court twice and won twice.  It's pretty amazing.  This time, DOJ is hounding him about a floating home on his property.  Here's the letter he received:

Here is the home at issue:

I spoke to Mr. Lozman and he told me that he was going to respond to the DOJ with a letter that basically says "F*** off."  And that he did just that.  Here's the intro to his response:

Dear Brandon

Your letter, attached below, is a sloppy attempt to intimidate me.  Let's start with my answer to your settlement offer, that would require me to remove my floating residential structure from my homesteaded, private property in ten days. 

I am never moving my floating home off of my private property!

Your request is Un-American.  What country do you represent?

My floating home is not fill, which is usually rock and sand that is placed in submerged lands to create dry land.  Instead my floating home is the legal equivalent of a residential house built on land, as recognized by the State of Florida with my homestead designation, and the U.S. Supreme Court in its opinion, Lozman v. Riviera Beach. 568 U.S. 115 (2013). Both of my cases were argued at Georgetown's Supreme Court Moot Court program.  Did you really graduate from Georgetown law school, because that is hard to believe given the multiple grammatical errors in your letter and lack of comprehension as to what is Supreme Court precedent.  

And it concludes this way:

So go for it, criminally charge me along with pursuing a civil enforcement case, that you can set for trial.  Both the district judge and jury will think that you and Sydney are bullies and have wasted their time with your nonsensical pleadings. By the way, does Attorney General Merrick Garland know that you threatened me with your bullshit letter? Your flippant attitude for SCOTUS precedent, and lack of comprehension as to the limitations of 33 U.S.C.§ 403, reflects poorly on the Department of Justice.  I and others will make sure that it is formally addressed with Attorney General Garland and those in your direct chain of command.

All the best,

Fane Lozman