When you see something that is not right, not fair, find a way to get in the way and cause trouble.
Congressman John Lewis
JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG
WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL RICHARD E GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG. THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO JUSTICE BUILDING RUMOR, HUMOR, AND A DISCUSSION ABOUT AND BETWEEN THE JUDGES, LAWYERS AND THE DEDICATED SUPPORT STAFF, CLERKS, COURT REPORTERS, AND CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS WHO LABOR IN THE WORLD OF MIAMI'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE. POST YOUR COMMENTS, OR SEND RUMPOLE A PRIVATE EMAIL AT HOWARDROARK21@GMAIL.COM. Winner of the prestigious Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award.
Need a job? It's apparently sign and go this Friday, so long as you can pass a simple test.
Can you say "victim wants max" ?
Can you say "state is withdrawing all plea offers because the defendant filed a motion to dismiss or suppress." ?
Can you say "I need to speak to my supervisor about that" ?
Can you say "the state is offering probation but after trial will be seeking five years and this is not a trial tax" ?
If you can say and believe in those four simple statements then an exciting career as a bureaucratic automaton robot Assistant State Attorney in the Magic City of Miami awaits you.
The US Marshal's service was hit with what it calls "a major cyber-attack" on February 17, 2023. The DOJ says the data was compromised.
As such, the Marshal's may have lost current data on people they are seeking.
So now they are going back to square one.
Ever helpful, we post a wanted poster they have circulated as the recollect their data.
So if you've seen this guy, maybe hanging around a bar or cafeteria in Hialeah, let the Marshals know.
BTW DOM has a bonus podcast up with Douglas Brooks, the Boston lawyer who walked Harvard fencing coach Peter Brand in one of the few Varsity Blues cases that went to trial.
Season five of the podcast including a REGJB judge who used to be a criminal defense attorney who worked with Mr. Markus for a short time. Wonder who that could be?
But in case you're wondering, they haven't bagged their biggest get...a certain legal blogger read world wide.
Baseball means many things, and debate is one of them. Nothing better than sipping a cold hard seltzer (which somehow, we have started to enjoy) on a hot summer day and debating the top ten in baseball. Not including pitchers, and in semi- order of our ranking, here are our current top ten:
Aaron Judge RF Yankees: Current home run king. Almost had the triple crown last year- 62 HR, .311 average and 131 RBIs. Shows up on defense. Averages 49 HRs and .292 over his career. Rookie of the Year 2017 and AL MVP last year.
Mike Trout CF Calif Angels: All around skill, talent, stats. Won an AL MVP in 2014, 2017 AND 2019. Does everything but win. And how much of that is his fault and not managements? Averages 40 HR, 23 stolen bases, and .303 for his 12-year career. Those are HOF stats. He just needs to get into the postseason.
Yordan Alvarez DH/LF Astros- MVP in of ALCS where he hit .522 and was unstoppable. Won a WS. Shows up in big situations (hit the homer against Rodney Ray to set Houston up in the post season) adequate fielder. Dynamic and exciting baseball player. Rookie of the Year 2019.
Mookie Betts RF LA Dodgers: Speed and daring on the bases. Solid fielding. A career .293 hitter. Smacked 35 HRs last year and shows up in the post season- hit .429 in the wild card series last year. A winner and a guy you want on your team. AL MVP 2018.
Shohei Ohtani P/DH Calif Angels: Unique. Hits 260 and is a DH, but throws 140-150 innings a year and wins 10-15 games a year on a lousy team. Perhaps the worst hitter of the top ten. But because he's a pitcher and hitter, he makes the list.
Jose Ramirez 3B- Cleveland - Only guy on a lousy team that can hit. No one in the lineup protects him, and yet he gets the job done. Hit .280 and 29 HRs last year which is his average for his nine year career.
Bryce Harper RF Phillies: Hits big pitching. Won 2 MVPS. Won the pennant for his team last year. .280 career hitter. Averages 165 hits and 33 HRs a year. The kind of player than can anchor a World Series team. Rookie of the year 2012; NL MVP 2015 and 2021.
Freddie Freeman 1B LA Dodgers: NL MVP for the Braves in 2020. Hit 25 HR and .325 for the Dodgers last year. Quietly does the job. Dependable.
Rafael Devers 3B Boston: Hits big pitching. A few great years. 165 hits in 2021. 164 hits in 2022. Consistent. 65 HRs in two years and .280 hitter.
Autin Riley 3B Braves: Hits 35+ HRs a year. Hit .303 in 2021 and .273 in 2022. Great on defense.
Manny Machado 3B Padres - Plays every day. Good defensive 3rd baseman. 25-30 HRs a year- hit 32 HRs last year while batting .298. Potential to change any game at any time.
As the wave of covid19-continued-cases crests and washes upon the shores of the overworked, understaffed and highly caffeinated denizens of our beloved REGJB, we witnessed a judicial rant of sorts the other day about the age of a case. It occurred to us that that old standby in criminal defense cases- resorting to quoting Vladimir Llyich Lenin was in order:
"There are years where nothing happens in a case, and weeks where years happen."
For those federalist society judges who are now fretting that Sharia law is going to overtake our courthouse, relax. Lenin was before the time when our judiciary was obsessed with Sharia law. He was the boogeyman well before you were worried that the Ayatollah would be sitting in judgment of your decisions (which, by the way, given the results of many federalist society judges' decisions, the Ayatollah would probably approve of most of them).
Of course what Lenin actually said was
Lenin was playing for the long ball. He just didn't comprehend that his stadium (communist statism) was warped beyond repair.
Which brings us to the question on everyone's mind: when will Judge Rebull be replaced at the REGJB? Or was he so good, that in honor of him, no one is being assigned to his division? Sort of like no ballplayer can wear 42 in honor of Jackie Roosevelt Robinson.
Speaking of which, it's allegedly springtime (but not in Maine today) and pitchers and catchers are reporting and soon the sounds of a ball thwacking into a catcher's mitt or a crack of the bat will be echoing across the land, letting us know, much like the return of the Monarch butterflies 🦋, and a spring Robin and Bluejay, that all is right with the world.
We came across the below video on the Miami Dade Courts Instagram page- one of our first forays into or on to Instagram, which the regulars call IG.
A few thoughts. This clearly applies to only to state court cases. Because of this little snippet "The judge and attorneys ask questions to see if you can be fair to both sides..." Ummm...not often in court that bear the great seal of the United States. But then we did a little research and found that the video was produced by NCSC which is the National Center for State Courts.
So what would the fictional National Center for Federal Courts video say?
"You will be summoned to federal court to serve on a jury. Woe to those of you who do not show up. No matter how complicated and complex the case, the judge will ask some very basic questions about whether you have heard of the case, what you do for a living, and whether, in finding the defendant guilty, you can promise to do so in a fair and impartial manner."
Anyway, IG is a weird place, and who knew the Miami Dade Courts had their own IG page?
Maybe they can get Kim Kardashian to do a post.
Before you get back to work, or in the case of certain wearers of black robes, get back to Wordle, check out DOM's blog post on death in prison during the pandemic.
It's whispered in hushed tones in the backways of the REGJB. "It was tonight, wasn't it? Around 10:30 p.m if I recall correctly. in 1972 right?"
We are talking about the seminal shift in US foreign policy when President Richard M. Nixon arrived in the People's Republic of China, the first US president to visit the country.
What made Nixon's opening to China so startling- is that he was an American President who built his reputation as one of the staunchest anti-communist politicians in the country. Which in turn made the phrase "Only Nixon could have gone to China" a powerful philosophical statement of a politician being able to achieve a breakthrough by doing the one thing he or she would seemingly be the unlikeliest to do.
Prior to the visit, the U.S. had refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Chinese communist government and instead recognized the government of Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of China.
Nixon built his political career on anti-communism starting with the Alger Hiss case.
Senator Nixon accused Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, of being a Communist spy in 1948. The accusations were made during a highly publicized trial, which centered on Hiss's alleged involvement in passing classified documents to the Soviet Union. Nixon played a key role in bringing the case to the attention of the public, and his pursuit of the case helped to establish him as a rising political star.
When Nixon first ran for the senate - as any 30 something federalist society scholar-judge can tell you- it was against incumbent Helen Gahagan Douglas, who Nixon dubbed "the pink lady" accusing her of communist ties and "being pink right down to her underwear."
The possibility of Nixon going to China is like asking the most conservative judge to sentence someone leniently; or asking the 3rd DCA to throw out evidence of drugs after a bad stop based on the police officers not being believable; or getting an ASA to say "although the victim want's the Max, we are going to offer a reasonable plea commensurate with the crime and the lack of priors so as to fulfill our duty to seek justice and not just be a mouthpiece for victims who are understandably emotional about the loss of their heirloom rake and bag of cut grass."
Our point is that there is a lesson in reaching beyond your boundaries- doing things that you are not used to doing, or which are against long held beliefs. Winston Spencer Churchill said "those who don't change their minds don't change anything" and what Nixon did changed the world (plus he created the EPA but that's another story).
So perhaps the next time one of our learned federalist judges is contemplating just calling balls and strikes, maybe a more in-depth and nuanced analysis might be helpful. Or when one of our rabid defense colleagues contemplates engaging in a Rumpolian tirade against a lying police officer, pausing and seeing the issue from the officer's point of view might be helpful in resolving the case.
In any event, like the most important things in life, like the solution to the Kobayashi Maru simulation, Star Trek provides most of the answers:
Eighty-one years ago today (Sunday) President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which incarcerated in concentration camps nearly 120,000 Americans simply because of their race (Asian/Japanese).
A Japanese Child holding the barbed wire in an American Concentration camp
Don't ever think it cannot occur here again.
Freedom requires unyielding vigilance.
A Jewish Child in a German concentration camp from the movie the Boy In The Stripped Pajamas.
James Earl Carter, the 39th President of the United States has elected to receive hospice care at home rather than continue to receive care from the short hospitalizations he has recently endured.
Query: Who is the best one term president?
Speaking of one term presidents, what do you think are the odds that the last one term president will be charged with a crime in 2023?
Without football to bet on, we are looking for distractions to occupy our time.
We put the odds at 7:5 that you know who will be indicted at least once this year.
Second query: If a former president is indicted, convicted and sentenced to jail, does he still receive secret service protection?
Legendary Miami Juvenile Court Judge Tom Petersen passed away Friday. He was 80 years old.
They do not make them like Tom Petersen anymore. He was the type of judge, the type of man, that did not let bureaucrats, or legal niceties stand in the way of helping and protecting the children of Miami. He was not the type of judge to shrug his shoulders at an injustice and say that he just calls balls and strikes. He was the type of judge who saw a wrong and righted it. He was the type of judge who would take off his robe, roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty.
Judge Petersen would not just read reports on how a child was doing; he would get in his car and visit the home. As the Miami Herald reported, he once took a child to a Marlin's game as a reward for completing his assigned community service. He would dress up as Santa for Christmas and deliver toys to children. He was a judge, but he was so much more. A humanitarian; a ceaseless advocate for juvenile justice and the rights of children.
Judge Petersen, both a former public defender and a former prosecutor, used the grand jury process to investigate wrongs and help right them. One of the first pre-trial diversion programs in the US? Tom Petersen developed the program and saw it instituted in Miami. Have a client whose case was dismissed after PTI? Thank Tom Petersen. That program alone benefited -- a hundred thousand Miamians? Maybe more.
What people who knew Tom Petersen closest will tell you is that he used the law and courts to make society a better place. And he did it exceptionally well. Judge Petersen comes from a time when Judges worked to make a difference in the world we all live in. From a time when Judges carried the ball of desegregation over the goal line; a time long gone, replaced by judges who believe that they are empowered to do little, and solve less. Judge Petersen was the antithesis of a conservative judicial philosophy. He lived his life believing he was empowered to try and make the world a better place. As we said, they don't make judges like Tom Petersen anymore, and unfortunately that is by design.
Miami owes a debt of thanks to Tom Petersen that will never be fully recognized or repaid. We are all better for the life he lived.
A sad ending on the horizon to the troubled legal career of former Miami Dade County Judge Mike Mirabal. Judge Dan Casey of Broward has filed a report with the Florida Supreme Court recommending the D word- Disbarment.
The Bar proceedings have a tortured history, starting with complaints that became JQC complaints when Mirabal was elected a Judge. Those complaints increased exponentially when the "Mirabal Style of Campaign Financing and Reporting" was both uncovered and disapproved as rank fraud.
The "Mirabal Amendment" ((c) 2018) finance scheme went something like this- raise $20,000.00 in donations or personal funding during a quarter; report $20,000.00 in money raised; then file an amended report for $21,500.00; then ... total up your initial report and the amended report and VOILA! the 20 thousand looks to all the world (and potential candidates) as 41,500.00 raised.
Insidious; petty; and fraudulent.
There is more to the order and findings, including a long list of things the former judge "FORGOT" to add to his JNC application to be appointed as a judge, including small matters like a federal lawsuit for fraud that he lost, and cooperation in a federal fraud investigation. Various defaults on mortgages and accompanying lawsuits. Small stuff like that.
Overall, the episode speaks very poorly to an election system that mostly selects judicial candidates by name.
Oh, did we mention he and his attorney "THREATENED" and "DISPARAGED THE REPUTATION" the Miami Judge who filed the Bar complaint? Judge Casey found those allegations to be proven.
One small area of support has emerged.
NY Representative George Santos has opined that the opinion is a "rush to judgement"; "a witch hunt"; and expressed confidence that it will be overturned on appeal. Santos did this, BTW, during a press release in which he expressed gratification for being named the Super Bowl MVP on Sunday night.
SB UPDATE- The refs just gave the game (again) to the Chiefs with that ticky-tacky holding call on 3rd down. That being said, the Eagles had a horrible game plan. To many QB runs. No good plan on defense. No sacks. No turnovers for the Eagles D. What a very disappointing performance by the best team in the NFL this year.
ET UPDATE- SEE OUR PRIOR POST TODAY: WE ARE NOT MAKING THIS QUOTE UP FROM A NEWS ARTICLE TONIGHT:
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, said he was certain that the initial episode, the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon off the U.S. East Coast on Feb. 4, “was clearly a balloon. These are objects. I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft.” The general also declined to rule out any possibility, including whether the objects were extraterrestrial in origin.
Is it us, and our age, or was the WORST halftime SB show since "Up With People" in the old Orange Bowl? It could not have been any worse. To us, it was someone lip-syncing nonsense with some people wiggling around a bit.
OUR PROPS:
ONLY THIS BLOG GAVE YOU THE FIELD GOAL DOINK BET YESTERDAY AND IT HIT!!
OVER 1:59 ON NATIONAL ANTHEM- WIN
COIN TOSS- SHOCKING LOSS
OVER 11 ON PLAYER NUMBER TO SCORE TD- INITIALLY A WIN THEN OVER TURNED ON REVIEW AND NOW A LOSS
FIRST SCORE BY EAGLES WILL BE A TD- WIN
FIRST SCORE WILL BE A TD- WIN
The coin flip will be.....based on dew point, humidity, moon gravitational pull, and other factors....HEADS!
The Eagles will win their second super bowl in five years. It should not be close.
The Eagles have a superior defense. 44 sacks and 9 INTs.
The Eagles have a superior offensive line.
The Eagles dominated their opponents this year. Most games were not close. The stat making the rounds that Jalen Hurts threw 24 passes all year with the Eagles behind, is meaningless. When you have the kind of support the Eagles have given their QB, then there is a reason they were rarely behind- they are so much better than the rest of the NFL.
The Chiefs barely beat a better Bengals team, and only did so by getting questionable penalties called on Cincy that moved them into FG range at the end of the game.
When the best argument you can make for KC is that their QB has been here before, well ask Fran Tarkenton or Jim Kelly how much that is really worth (Tark lost 3 and Kelly lost 4 in a row!). And while you're at it, what was KC Coach Andy Reid's record in NFC playoff games when he coached the Eagles? 1-4! And he lost the SB he took the Eagles to. Reid is NOT a money coach in big games, so we discount the supposed "experience edge" the Chiefs have.
This is very simply a bet on an overall better team against a very good QB who is coming off an injury. And don't discount that his receivers were all banged up. Players coming off an injury are more susceptible to getting injured in a game. Would you even think of betting on the Chiefs if Mahomes was injured, or JuJu or Kelsey were out? No.
We do not think it will be close, so give the 1.5 points and take the Eagles and the over 50.5.
A few more prop bets:
+1850 Philly WR AJ Brown to be MVP.
+500 any FG or extra point to doink a cross bar or upright of the goal post.
Eagles first half -.05- our biggest bet of the day. The Eagles come out strong.
Rumpole's SB menu:
Seafood stuffed mushroom caps;
2018 Caymus Cabernet.
Joes grilled tomatoes with cheese and spinach.
Soy and garlic marinated chicken wings air fried.
Intercept Chardonnay.
Ginos Philly Cheese Steak hogies.
Buffalo spiced air fried cauliflower bits with Rogue River Blue cheese crumbles.
Wyke Farms cheddar cheese on crackers.
2016 Quilceda Creek Cabernet
Bison sliders with pickle relish.
Nathan's Hot dogs with chili-cheese and onion relish.
Fireman Derek's Red Velvet Cake
2017 Palmiz Louise Riesling.
Before we get to the much-anticipated Super Super-Bowl post, our last football related post until perhaps the NFL draft and then pre-season when every young PD and ASA is sure they can win our world-famous Survivor Pool, and hushed conversations are overheard in chambers about where to draft Tua in a fantasy football league; we have some serious news/thoughts for you consider.
If you wanted to get the attention of the beer-swilling, wing-eating world, what better event to announce your presence and/or intentions than the Super Bowl? It's not like you are going to get much attention if you show up at the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum, which has been called "the blockbuster exhibit of the century". Because let's face it, most federalist society judges reading this post will quickly Google Vermeer and Rijksmuseum to figure out what we are talking about (a liberal art exhibition, in case you're wondering. The kind of thing Federalist Society lawyers sue the NEA to prevent government money being spent on exhibiting Girl With a Pearl Earring in the US).
So if you want to get the attention of Hank and Harriert as they return from the Piggly Wiggly, not to mention Sam Alito, George Santos, Vlad Putin, Marjorie Taylor Moron Greene, and Ron DeSantis, then perhaps the Super Bowl is your best venue.
Are we talking about a terrorist attack? Nope and hopefully that is not part of the story today.
Abortion vs. Right to Lifers? Nah.
Rihanna groupies? No, but don't bet that she leads with Diamonds 💠at the half-time show. If Rumpole knows a song she sings, and we only know one, then it must be a mega-hit which means she will close with it.
Hialeah Property lawyers protesting the new law removing their ability to get attorneys' fees for plaintiffs? Not even close.
Watch this description by Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand- scroll to 1 minute in:
"A small cylindrical object..." which is not a Chinese Balloon 🎈. Hmmm.... can you say "INDEPENDENCE DAY?"
ET PHONE HOME?
AREA 51?
Yes dear readers, let us be the first to go on the record as saying we are deeply suspicious that this is the opening chess moves by an Alien Race, visiting earth, preparing to make contact TODAY during the Super Bowl.
Imagine their conversation as they decelerate from warp drive and approach Earth orbit:
Klatu: Gort, who should we contact first?
Gort: That's an excellent question. There aren't really any men or women of intelligence who are in charge.
Klatu: Yes, Earth abandoned leaders with intelligence around the time Adalai Stevenson lost for president in 52 and 56.
Gort: Well, Jimmy Carter was smart.
Klatu: And look what happened to him.
Gort: This would have gone better if we could have got here when Obama was president.
Klatu: Then next time I remind you to recharge the Di-lithium crystals before we leave, please listen to me.
Gort: Well, who had to stop at Starbucks and get two dozen lattes for the trip, Mr. I need my caffeine every morning?
Klatu: Moving on, how about Trump or Netanyahu?
Gort: One's indicted, one's about to be.
Klatu: Emmanul Macron or Fumio Kishida?
Gort: Too flashy, and no one knows who the other guy is.
Klatu: Stephen King or J.K. Rowling?
Gort: Fiction writers. No one will believe them.
Klatu: Fox News?
Gort: Ditto.
Klatu; Then it's down to plan NK I guess.
Gort. Yup. The only world leader than everyone listens to and studies. The one person who can grab the attention of the world and lead a peaceful collection of leaders to meet with us so we can discuss how our technology can help them reverse global warming and a cure all vaccine for the upcoming Covid 24.
Klatu: Just remember, 49% of Americans and 99.8% of Republicans and 100% of Federalist Society judges in the US do not believe in science in general and global warming in particular.
Gort: Then it's the one leader who believes in science and has the gravitas to bring the rest of the world on board while helping stop the inevitable panic our appearance will create.
Klatu: Yes, but first, can we wait just until after the game ends? I have the over parlayed with the Eagles at DraftKings Sportsbook and I'd like to collect. Start my earth experience with some real money. I'm dying to try some NYC pizza.
Gort: Of course. So you have his cell phone number?
Klatu: Hang on...ok, right here, to contact.... we need to call, let it ring once, hang up, call, let it ring twice, hang up and then call a third time.
Gort: And then Kim Jong-Un will pick up.
Klatu: It's a plan.
Gort: Like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
The fun of the Super Bowl if you are NY Jets or Texans or Cleveland Browns fan is that you can place proposition bets on just about anything. Which celebrity will be shown first on television; the color of the Gatorade bath on the winning coach; the first play of the game being a run or a pass; how many yards will Mahomes throw; and who will be the MVP are some of the prop bets. Here are our favorites and Rumpole's picks:
Remember that everything is based on a $100 bet. For a + bet, you bet a 100 and win the number. So +2500 means you bet a 100 to win 2500. In a minus bet, you lay the number to win a 100. So -245 you bet 245 to win 100. Have fun.
FOOBALL PROPS
KC WR Sky Moore to return a kick or punt for a TD +2000. Moore is a rookie with speed. We don't think this will happen, but we like the odds and if anyone is returning a kick, it's Moore.
Final score Eagles 37- Chiefs 34. +5000. This is close to our final score prediction, so we are letting it rip for 200 here.
Jalen Hurts over 350 yards passing and over 2 TDs (meaning 3) +2000.
Parlay of Eagles -1.5 and over 49.5 +250.
Number of the player jersey who scores the first TD- Over 11.5 =+130. This is a lock.This was initially a win but then the TD was overturned, and it became a loss.
Eagles first score will be a TD +285 WIN
First score is an Eagles TD +200. Both teams have a tendency to go for it on fourth and short, so this is worth a play.
Will either team score a safety? Yes +1500. SB trivia- who scored the first safety in SB history. The team, the city where it occurred and the player?
NON-FOOTBALL PROPS
We will post our never-fail, dead-lock guaranteed winner of the coin toss before the coin toss. Certain atmospheric conditions, the dew point in the Arizona desert, whether the person tossing the coin is left handed or right handed, the drag coefficient of this coin along with the weight, the gravitational pull of the moon at the time of the coin toss, the humidity, as well as a slight but not insignificant .0001% incline from the 50 yard line to the south goal line must all be considered and entered into our simulation program for us to arrive at our decision. By the time we post our call, our sim program will have run the coin toss well over ten million times and a noticeable bias will be revealed.
But here is our best bet. Take it to the bank that the national anthem, sung by country singer Chris Stapelton will be OVER 1;59, Book it!
Gatorade bath for the winning coach- yellow/green +225 (for $10 to win $22.25).
Will the announcers mention Tua at any point during the game? NO -1000.
A Chinese Spy Balloon will be shot down over the stadium during the game? Yes -600. If yes then an F-22 will shoot the balloon down +800 or an F-35 will shoot down the balloon -220. No- +1800.
Not recently, but in the past, we recall Miami Judges voluntarily leaving the bench for career purposes. It is a rare occurrence in Miami. The last District Court federal judge that we can recall leaving the bench voluntarily (who was NOT on senior status like Judge Ungaro) was Judge Tom Scott, a legendary and prodigious hard worker. Janet Reno, no slouch in the hard working department (she was known to bring a sleeping bag to work on Fridays and sleep in the REGJB) once told us that the hardest working judge she ever saw was Tom Scott, who longtime denizens of the REGJB will recall was also a Circuit Court Judge- and, under the truth is stranger than fiction category, did a little state court appointed death penalty defense work in the interregnum between leaving Circuit court and before his District court appointment. He also brought his dog to chambers, but that's another story.
Which brings us to the center of the legal universe: The SDNY.
I was at the point where I had children who were approaching college, with a husband becoming an ex-husband who was just getting his feet on the ground at a law firm so he had not yet started to earn Big Law money. I frankly did not believe I could continue to perform as a judge because of the money.
Katherine Forrest who left the bench of the prestigious Southern District of New York, quoted in an interview given to the National Law Journal (Motto: "We read Rumpole, we just don't admit it"). Forrest had served as a judge for seven years before she joined Cravath in 2018. She recently made a lateral partner move to Paul Weiss.
Not to be outdone by Alabamah Judges, our own Miamah Judge has issued an order with this footnote about the expert witness who testified:
Mr. Collier is also a Chicago Cubs fan. Tr. 8. Standing alone, that may not qualify him
as an expert witness; but it does demonstrate loyalty, the ability to weather suffering, and an
unquenchable hope. In the words of columnist George Will, “Cubs fans are 90 percent scar
tissue.” See https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1388745. Surely these good qualities must count
for something.
Now who wrote that order with that footnote? No peaking at the order.
Based on the sheer statistical number, you should guess one of the thirty-something federalist society judges in our courthouse, because they populate the REGJB bench like boll weevils in a cotton field. And being members of the federalist society, they surely spend their time off the bench pondering deep issues like the emerging philosophical arguments over whether substantive due process should even exist. And of course they make frequent use of Ayn Rand's books like Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, because they know the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of the federalist society are based, in part, on Rand's writings, about which they can speak at length about. Right?
Is our sarcasm seeping through? Just like when Bruce Springsteen (who is playing tonight at Hard Rock) would introduce Clarence Clemons at concerts during Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, by shouting "Do I have to speak his name?", we do not have to speak the name of our resident Cubs fan on the bench.
And should there be ANY doubt, the use of the word "tintinnabulation" in granting the motion to exclude the prosecution's expert witness is surely a historical first in the annals of REGJB orders, especially in current day, when "after carefully reviewing the evidence the defense motion is denied" passes for scholarly dissertations and thoughtful analysis of legal issues in our Boll Weevile infested courthouse.
Longtime and careful readers of the blog know that the two things we like the least in the law is civil law and those who sit several feet above the rest of humanity wearing black and perpetually scowling.
Thus an alert and longtime reader sent us the order below from a judge whom we will say is not just good, but great. R. David Proctor, US District Court Judge for the Northern District of Alabama, southern division (y'all).
The issue: the filing of a responsive pleading at 5:15 pm when the party was ordered to file by 5pm. Which, this being civil law, of which there is nothing civil about it, caused opposing counsel to file a motion to strike because the pleading was 15 minutes late. Now we know some judges, whom we shall not name, who would have promptly issued an order striking the pleading. And if per chance, the party who filed late was representing some individual plaintiff who had been squashed like a bug on a windshield by a large corporation, why we would hazard a guess that the 11th circuit would have ruled in favor of the big corporation, because as you know, rules are rules, and if litigants can get away with missing a deadline by fifteen minutes, then we are half way to applying Sharia law.
Read the order and let us know if you recognize, as our reader did, "our schtick".
Welcome to the second month of 2023 when our shopping carts have ten-dollar gallons of orange juice and Chinese balloons are over Montana and Ashville, North Carolina, which as we here all know, is mostly populated with retired attorneys, judges, and cops from Miami.
Kiev, Ukraine has Russian missiles and Iranian drones. We have Chinese balloons. Things could be worse.
If you see one of these call NORAD or the Pentagon or Rep George Santos immediately!
The best way to retaliate? IOHO send over the Miami Dade County Youth Fair. A few servings of fried Oreos and the People's Army couldn't storm Paris much less Taiwan.
A BIG FRIDAY NG
The blog and our email was flooded yesterday alerting us to a shocking Not Guilty in a first-degree murder case before Judge De La O (on a Friday of all days to boot). PDs Annmarie Harris and Yanelis Zamora notched the win for a client whose trial apparently swirled with mysterious rumors of santeria and black magic. Two experienced prosecutors took the loss which was not expected in a case in which there was a videotaped confession.
This is your first weekend without NFL football since late August. How are you holding up?
In 1974 a newspaper reporter named Robert Caro finished his first book- The Power Broker, about Robert Moses, the man who developed and built most of the public projects and bridges in New York for half a century. It was edited by an up-and-coming editor named Robert Gotlieb, and after publication, the massive tome won the Pulitzer Prize. Caro had a contract to next write a biography on mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, which coincidentally would have an airport named LaGuardia several years later.
Caro felt the book on LaGuardia would cover the same material as he explored in the Power Broker. Caro wanted to explore the larger issue of the acquisition and use of power in American Politics. He thought Lyndon Johnson would be a better subject and he could write the biography in five years. He went to meet with Gotlieb, who also had some ideas on what Caro's next book should be- and decided- on his own- Caro should write about Lyndon Johnson.
Fifty years later- with Caro in his late 80's and Gotlieb 90 years old, the men have published four volumes on Johnson and Caro is busy working on volume five.
Caro (L) and Gotlieb (R) in 1974 holding something that many of our readers under 40 might have trouble recognizing- it's called A BOOK.
Turn Every Page is the wonderful documentary on the fifty- year working relationship between these two remarkable men. It is a quintessential NYC writing story, and you know how much we love those.
Gotlieb, besides editing Caro, had edited all of Toni Morrison's books, and well over a hundred other best sellers including Catch-22, which Gotlieb explains in the movie was originally titled Catch-18 until a problem arose with that title and Gotlieb slept on the matter and awoke thinking 22 was a funnier number.
This being Miami- where culture passes for 35 something federalist society judges streaming to their local Megaplex on Saturday night to swill gallons of Diet Coke and binge on bottomless popcorn tubs while watching a movie with cars exploding on bridges that are collapsing and heroes and heroines saving the day at the last moment from evil Democratic politicians being controlled by Muslim terrorists who want to install Sharia law in the US, - Turn Every Page appears to be playing at only the small arts/independent theater in Coral Gables opposite Books and Books.
Do yourself a favor and go watch it. It's a remarkable movie on how two men devoted their lives to the craft of writing and editing.
