BACK TO WORK

Shooting at LV federal courthouse. One security officer (former police officer) dead. One suspect dead. David Markus working on a blog post as we write this.

BROWARD BLOG UPDATE ON JUDGE HURLEY- CONTEMPT SENTENCE REDUCED TO CTS.

Ooops - by now, everyone's seen The Daily Pulp's piece on Judge Hurley's wedding, which also took the good Judge to task for slamming cocky Defendant Brian Noval with a four month contempt of court sentence. Well, it turns out we could have saved two of our favorite FOB's (friends of the Blog) a bit of embarrassment, if we hadn't been so lazy. If only we'd followed up on the widespread media exposure regarding Noval's chicken flavored comments, we could have told Bob that Hurley had mitigated the sentence down to time served just a few days later, having clearly made his point. Instead, we had to find out Sunday evening, in no uncertain terms, that the kid was released a long time ago, long before The Pulp called about the nuptials. Our apologies to both, since the whole issue could have been avoided, and since we should have known a mitigation was inevitable. Chalk it up to being fat and giddy on an overabundance of free Holiday Continuances ..

After two weeks of miniscule calendars and nothing much going on, it's back to work on Monday. A new year with new resolutions. Some have vowed to try more cases and some have vowed to be a little bit fairer with defendants. As the Captain points out, this is an election year, and at least one Judge (Adrien) has two challengers and counting. Your reap what you sow, eh?

But with all the hope a new year brings, it's business as usual North of the Border where Bob Norman of the Daily Pulp recently reported on Broward Judge Hurley's hissy fit over the Broward Blog's reporting of Hurley's marriage to a courthouse cafeteria worker. (Talk about "marrying up"....Hurley that is.) Hurley called the police (but we doubt he dialed 911) to complain about the Broward Blog's reporting of his impending marriage. This is the same Judge Hurley (recently appointed by Charlie Crist with a ringing endorsement by Scott Rothstein, and a large donation by Rothstein to the State Republican party within days of the appointment) who gave a man 6o days and then another 60 days for contempt of court during a bond hearing. CBS4 of Denver (of all places) has the story here on Hurley's other hissy fit. The Defendant expressed surprise about being held no bond and an increase in charges. Rather than the Judge understanding the natural disappointment of a person being incarcerated without bond, and rather than the Judge showing the experience and temperament we expect of a Circuit Court Judge to deal with a defendant having a bad time in court, the judge came down hard and then twice as hard on the unsuspecting defendant who cursed after being held without bond.

Can you spell J-U-D-I-C-I-A-L- T-E-M-P-E-R-A-M-E-N-T? Neither can Judge Hurley. But you'd better believe he'd love to give us 120 days for having the temerity to speak out about him. First amendment be damned.

Well, we already broke one of our New Year's Resolutions (#5- Give Broward a second chance) so we'd better stop before we break the other 5.

Still out west, but some movement on a plea.