The former president and now convicted felon was able to do with a jury what he could not do with the American Public- win a popular vote as all 12 jurors voted that he was a lying, thieving, sniveling coward of a man.
maga indeed.
You like Apples?
Well now he's a felon.
How about dem apples?
NEW YORK LAW UPDATE:
Two quirky things about NY State trial procedure. One, in criminal cases the defense goes first and the People second in closing argument. So the defense never gets a chance to rebut any of the People's arguments. That is plain wrong.
Second, in a Miami circa 1970's -80's move, the jury DOES NOT get the jury instructions. What kind of bullshit is that? Non lawyers are expected to apply the law, hearing it once, and not having a chance to read it? Bizarre. We used to have this fight with judges all the time when we were a young lawyer. And the old judges would look at us like we were crazy and ask "You want the JURORS to have the jury instructions?????" And we would reply "Well, yeah. They are called jury instructions for a reason. They are for the jury."
And the old judges would just shake their head like we were the dumbest person on earth and not do it. And it hurt both sides a lot. And we were astounded to learn NY State, the state of Benjamin Cardozo, does not give the jury the jury instructions. Can anyone defend that? We cannot.
UPDATE: TRUMP JURY WENT OUT AT 11:28 AM Wednesday.
Query: What's your shortest verdict and what's your longest?
For us we are sure we've had some 30 min NGs in misdemeanor cases many years ago. Longest was a fed court case with deliberations lasting about 9 days over two weeks but it was a large multi-defendant case in which the jury hung on several counts for other defendants.
We generally think on the standard 3-4 day trial the sweet spot for a NG is 30 minutes to two hours.
And of course our number one rule- AVOID FRIDAY VERDICTS
Veri= truth; Dicta= to speak.
Will the verdict this week speak the truth?
There will be closing arguments at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan this week in the first of the four criminal trials against the former president.
New York may have many issues, but they were able to bring this case to trial when no other jurisdiction could. The City that never sleeps can also bring a case to trial. Advocating in the Big Apple never looked better.
So, running a blog that has a majority of criminal law practitioners, we should have no shortage of opinions on the prosecution, defense, and the Judge.
You're back from the long weekend. You have a month of work before the summer doldrums.
Have at it.
COURT REPORTER UPDATE:
After spending a night in TGK, she was released this morning and we are being told the transcripts were produced. Gratified to learn this woman did not have to spend a holiday weekend in jail. Thus ends yet another REGJB contretemps. The Judge who incarcerated the reporter was Judge Delancy, one of our best, so we will not second guess her decision without seeing the transcript. Judge Wolfson issued the release order today, but that may be because the transcripts were produced and Judge Delancy might have been unavailable. We do not think Judge Delancy, unlike many of her (DeSantis Drone) colleagues takes incarcerating anyone lightly.
FLY THAT FLAG
Judge Michael Ponsor has been a US District Court judge in Boston for four decades. He wrote this op -ed piece about Justice Alito. It is worth a read. Here are some highlights if the pay wall stops you:
To me, the flag issue is much simpler. The fact is that, regardless of its legality, displaying the flag in that way, at that time, shouldn’t have happened. To put it bluntly, any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb.
Courts work because people trust judges. Taking sides in this way erodes that trust.
...
In four decades as a federal judge, I have known scores, possibly hundreds, of federal trial and appellate judges pretty well. I can’t think of a single one, no matter who appointed her or him, who has engaged or would engage in conduct like that. You just don’t do that sort of thing, whether it may be considered over the line, or just edging up to the margin. Flying those flags was tantamount to sticking a “Stop the Steal” bumper sticker on your car. You just don’t do it.
...
But basic ethical behavior should not rely on laws or regulations. It should be folded into a judge’s DNA. That didn’t happen here. The flag display may or may not have been unlawful, but as far as the public’s perception of the court’s integrity, it certainly was not helpful.
WRONGFUL EXEXCUTION
And finally this. For all of you who champion the American Justice system as the best in the world, we respond, we are far from the best- we murdered a child by a Judge ordered execution simply because the child was black and a white woman was killed. Here is the NY Times Article
On June 8, 1931, Alexander McClay Williams, a 16-year-old Black student, was executed by electric chair, the youngest person to be put to death in Pennsylvania history.
Ms. Robare’s body was found in her apartment, which was on the campus of the Glen Mills School, on Oct. 3, 1930. She had been stabbed 47 times with an ice pick. The body was discovered by her husband, Fred Robare. According to the suit, The Chester Times, a local newspaper, quoted Oliver Smith, a detective investigating the case, as saying that the murder had been committed by “a full-grown and strong man.”
An overturned lamp was the only sign of disruption. Ms. Robare’s keys were missing, according to the lawsuit, but a wristwatch and $15 had been left untouched on a bureau.
Investigators zeroed in on Alexander, one of the 600 students at the school, though it is unclear why. Alexander is described in the suit as having been 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds, contradicting Mr. Smith’s description of the killer. Initially, Alexander denied having anything to do with the murder. But over the course of multiple interrogations, without a lawyer or his parents present, he eventually confessed. There was no physical evidence tying him to the scene. There was, however, a bloody handprint found at the scene, which did not belong to him.
One piece of evidence that was used against Alexander was testimony of a school employee who said that on the day of the murder, Alexander and a classmate were sent to procure shovels, and that Alexander was to deliver the receipts for those shovels to someone else at the school. The employee testified that it took Alexander 20 minutes to return after dropping off the receipt. When he returned, he did not have any blood on him, nor was there anything odd about his demeanor. It was within this 20-minute window that prosecutors contended Alexander committed the murder.
“How can you stab somebody 47 times, break their ribs and just go around the house and not have any blood on you anywhere?” Ms. Carter, who is one of Alexander’s 12 siblings, said in the interview. “That should have told them that this was wrong.”
Investigators did not appear to consider Mr. Robare as a suspect. Nine years earlier, Ms. Robare filed for divorce from her husband, citing “extreme cruelty.”
A judge overturned the conviction in 2022 and granted a motion for a retrial. Jack Stollsteimer, the Delaware County district attorney, moved to dismiss the charges posthumously, acknowledging yet another example of a Black person being wrongfully convicted of a crime they hadn’t committed.
On Friday, Alexander’s family filed a federal lawsuit in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Delaware County, as well as the estates of the detectives and prosecutors on the case, calling their conduct “outrageous, malicious, wanton, willful, reckless and intentionally designed to inflict harm.”
You want to tell us we have the best justice system in the world? Start with this damn case.
Sorry to end with a downer.
Enjoy your holiday weekend and in thinking about Memorial Day spend a moment saying the name of young Alexander McClay Williams and remember all that was taken from him.
THIS IS A BREAKING STORY
An REGJB judge just took a court reporter into custody for failure to deliver transcripts after repeated and numerous requests. Bond was set at $25,000.00 and a request for house arrest was DENIED.
We are getting flurries of emails and will update as we get more information but at this point, while we know the name of the Judge and have confirmed with multiple sources about the reporter being taken into custody, we are holding back more until we get additional confirmation.
In other Blog news people are upset with the SAO and expressing it in the comments. Closing arguments in the Trump case in NYC next week, and there's this story that Jim McGovern, a member of the house of representatives, was censured and silenced for mentioning the numerous criminal charges the former president has. So it has come to this- you can get up on the house floor and trash the numerous crooked and unfair judges and prosecutors assigned to the various Trump cases, but you cannot mention the facts of what that flaming asshole is charged with on the floor of Congress.
Washington Post here (but not Ovalle) and Huff Post here.
Sort of like trying to say "Global Warming" while working for the State of Florida- will get you fired.
On February 21, 1972 President Nixon went to China and met Chairman Mao.
It made some news.
In 2024 your Miami State Attorney Kathy Rundle sat down with the Board of the FACDL to discuss whatever might have been on their mind....(* cough cough*).
You asked for it (in the comments section) and you got it.
The long anticipated UPDATE on the FACDL/ Kathy Rundle meeting.
It may not have been a Marjorie Taylor Greene (Rep- batsh%t crazy)/ AOC Kumbaya meeting; maybe somewhere between Nixon/Mao and Trump/Obama sitting in the Oval. You decide.
And, in case you're wondering, we are posting this WITH permission of FACDL because no troublemakers we.
This may be our singular greatest post ever.
Post a comment if you get it (extra credit if you get it and you wear a black robe at work).
COMING MONDAY- MORE FACDL/MIAMI SAO STUFF....ooooo bet you cannot wait!
It's been a fairly chaotic week or so, culminating with a weird start to Friday.
Which story has your attention?
1) Scott Scheffler, the number one ranked player in the world in golf was arrested in a traffic fracas gone wild- the type of incident we think of as "Only In Miami". Scheffler was on his way this morning to play round two in the PGA Championship tournament- one of four of golf's major tournaments. There was tragically a traffic fatality outside of the course. Scheffler - with his PGA player sign on his car- drove up on a shoulder to go around the traffic. A police officer "lost it" and "attached himself" to Scheffler's car, screamed at him to stop, and then arrested him for a bunch of felonies. Scheffler was arrested, booked, and released and made his Tee Time and birdied the first hole. Clearly a story that should have happened in the Magic City,
2) Sam Alito- Supreme Court Justice- had an upside-down American Flag outside his home two weeks after January 6. The upside-down flag is a MAGA-stop-the steal symbol. So Sammy boy is an election-denier. Kinda makes sense. We already know he doesn't believe in global-warming, so why shouldn't a Supreme Court Justice believe that a dead Venezuelan dictator used a company to hack voting machines? A former mayor of NYC believed it.
As one of our senior-status federal judges is wont to ask: "What say you?"
 |
| Picture from the NY Times identifying the Flag as being flown outside Alito's home on January 17. |
3) The comments are on fire about our recently re-elected State Attorney hiring old-time prosecutors to right the ship in her much-maligned office. Does she need old blood or new blood?
Maybe start with an ethic course.
T/F Prosecutors can get witnesses together to review their discover to coordinate their testimony? If you answered T, there may be a job for around NW 12th street.
We've decided to call the Miami SAO the Miami-Broward SAO. They act the same as Broward, so why not call them that? Like the "victim wants max" and "we know you're client is probably innocent but my supervisor said let the jury decide" crap they peddle now is straight out of the playbook from North of the Border since before we started going to court.
The sad thing is that it didn't used to be that way under the "she who shall not be named" former SAO- Janet Reno. *
They've done everything but rip her picture down from the wall to ruin the office she built.
Shame shame shame.
* There's a bunch of DeSantis drones reading this and saying to themselves "who?"
Young lawyers aspiring to the profession of trial lawyer are taught the "rule of primacy and recency" which holds that you should call your two best witnesses first and last, the theory being the jury will remember those two witnesses because of the order they were called.
🥱 If you like 1970's trial tactics then go right ahead and be predictable.
In a certain business records case winding its way through week three in the Big Apple, the prosecution appears to be closing with the vixen who lured a married man with her batting eyelashes and curvy figure into her (actually his) bed. How she actually got through dinner without throwing up as he ate with her in his silk pajamas, is not something we want to imagine in our mind's eye.
But after the Storm passes, what is left? Choppy waters? A rainbow? Because there is one more shoe to fall in the personage of the defendant's former lawyer- a bag man who tried to calm the Storm of the unseemly assignation with cold, hard, and potentially illegal cash. The bag man comes with a bag of issues, including a lying to Congress rap (and really, who hasn't done that? Lying to Congress is as American as cheating on your taxes or being a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court and assuring the Senate of your respect for precedent), being a turncoat- someone who said he would take a bullet for the defendant, before actually becoming the bullet that may take him down.
So it appears the prosecution may end with a Stormy Bag - a one two punch of sex and slime.
The great pastime for us trial lawyers is Monday-Morning Quarterbacking our colleagues decisions in trial.
Thoughts on this strategy?
BTW- the defense strategy of using a female lawyer to cross Stormy is also so 1970s - a time when a female trial lawyer was a rarity. We say bring your best guns to bear, not just a gun wearing a blouse or skirt.
Not sure if you can get past the firewall but here is a NYTimes video discussing the defendant's unhappiness with his current lead lawyer.
"The Mission of this allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945"
The statement sent by General Dwight David Eisenhower after German Genral Alfred Jodl surrendered Germany to the allied forces at the Ecole Professionelle at Reims.
It wasn't recorded on IG, and there were no Tik Toks posted of the surrender, and General Eisenhower sent a telegram instead of a Tweet, but for all of you who have never known a world without iPhones and Starbucks, there was a time when there was an existential threat to freedom and this country, and everyone pulled together to defeat a common enemy.
Under the current conditions of this country, if WWII was fought a decade ago, a substantial section of a particular party would have preferred the US to lose the war than see President Obama get the credit for winning it.
That is just the reality of 2024.
But it is nice to remember that there was a time in the last century when the man met the moment (and yes, only men were political leaders at the time, sorry) and men like Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Churchill rose to the occasion.
Churchill may well have been right.
That was our finest hour.*
For the coven of our DeSantis drones puzzling over the title, VE= Victory Europe, which was followed by VJ day.
* Yes we know he was talking about England, but still the sentiment applies to the United States. We would venture that the winning of WWII was our finest hour, followed closely by Apollo and the moon landing, and the inclusion of a large fries in a super-sized meal, followed by the Dolphins perfect season, and then Disco.
Your Miami Heat are out of the playoffs, losing to the Celtics 4-1 in the series, with nary a peep from Miami's front running phony fans (FRPF). (What, you thought we were retiring? Soon, but not yet.).
Where are all the Heat fans bemoaning the team that they love and follow religiously?
Nowhere. Because the Heat don't really have any fans (other than the great Judge Colodny, bless her soul, amongst a few others). They just have FRPFs who only show up for game sevens in the playoffs and the finals, paying exorbitant prices for seats on stub-hub, wearing their silly white shirts, and telling anyone who will listen how they go to every home game and watch every away game.
Now Miami's FRPFs can turn their attention to the Dolphins, because lord knows they would not be caught dead at a Marlin's game, considering the Marlin's stink this season. Compare the cavernous and empty Marlin's stadium for home games at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. Everyone knows that the Cubs sold out most of their home games during the 3,500 years they lived in bondage at the bottom of the league until that magical season of 2016 (actually their drought was from 1906 to 2016). Year in, year out, decade in, decade out, the Cubs never won anything. And yet Chicagoans went to Wrigley, sat in the stands during a day game, drank a beer, ate a Chicago dog and cheered on their home team.
Miami PFRFs have not and will not ever be loyal to their hometown teams, especially the Marlins. Oh they showed up for the world series, but that's it. Support them now? Ha! Do not make us laugh. Call them from standing in line trying to get a table at Prime 112 in some future October when the Marlins are competitive again. Then they will run to the stadium and tell everyone about how they never miss a game. They make us sick.
No Game 7- then Nosotras no estamos ahi, or words to that effect.
So your Miami Heat faded away this season. See you next year in April when hopefully their playoff run goes a little deeper.
Feh.