Finally...
Roadside Camp for Miami Sex Offenders Leads to Lawsuit
Friday
Saturday
Pick A Number: What does Madoff get?
Thanks to the promptings of my friend Randy, I've been thinking about the Madoff sentencing...
Here's the problem as I see it. The magnitude of his crimes are virtually unprecedented, and his lifespan is quite short, so in truth I think that almost all of these discussions are academic. The question then becomes, if a 13 year sentence is functionally the same as a 150 year sentence, it seems you can basically buy some deterrent value with very little personal cost. Now that said, I think the judge will be sensitive to seeming absurd or seeming to overtly pander, so my guess is he'll impose a sentence consistent with Madoff being a young guy. Say something around 600 months (or 50 years) Maybe a touch more. If there were a betting pool, I'd put my money on 56 years.
The usual things obtain when you're talking about sentencing: Is this really a life we want to waste in prison? The problem is, in his case, with the number of victims and the length of the fraud, there is a very good argument that he's done nothing but carry on a massive criminal enterprise for the bulk of his life. So other than the acceptance of responsibility, I'm not sure I see a lot of argument for anything that would genuinely count as leniency.
So what do you think the Judge sentences Madoff to?
Leave your predictions in the comments...
Here's the problem as I see it. The magnitude of his crimes are virtually unprecedented, and his lifespan is quite short, so in truth I think that almost all of these discussions are academic. The question then becomes, if a 13 year sentence is functionally the same as a 150 year sentence, it seems you can basically buy some deterrent value with very little personal cost. Now that said, I think the judge will be sensitive to seeming absurd or seeming to overtly pander, so my guess is he'll impose a sentence consistent with Madoff being a young guy. Say something around 600 months (or 50 years) Maybe a touch more. If there were a betting pool, I'd put my money on 56 years.
The usual things obtain when you're talking about sentencing: Is this really a life we want to waste in prison? The problem is, in his case, with the number of victims and the length of the fraud, there is a very good argument that he's done nothing but carry on a massive criminal enterprise for the bulk of his life. So other than the acceptance of responsibility, I'm not sure I see a lot of argument for anything that would genuinely count as leniency.
So what do you think the Judge sentences Madoff to?
Leave your predictions in the comments...
Thursday
Monday
We Find the Defendant Not Guilty (if That's O.K. With Everyone) - New York Times
It's kind of funny to look back at this piece as we, in the RTB writer's room begin to ponder our season finale (RTB 215). I suppose it's a nice metric by which to judge one's own show. I wrote this for the New York Times back in January of 2006...
Long strange trip.
We Find the Defendant Not Guilty (if That's O.K. With Everyone)
By DAVID FEIGE
Published: January 1, 2006
FROM the airy second-floor ballroom of a once-grand hotel, David Swain, the preening, pugilistic focus of ABC's new show "In Justice," presides over an organization he calls the National Justice Project. Loosely based on the many "innocence projects" that have sprung up across the country since the advent of DNA testing, the show, in its promotional materials, claims to offer "a completely new take on the procedural drama."
The criminal justice system has always made for good drama, and over the years the political and narrative tides have shifted back and forth between the values of protecting the innocent and nailing the guilty. But 15 years into the reign of "Law & Order" (with no end in sight), "In Justice" makes it clear that even a series about wrongful conviction must tiptoe around the idea of setting the inmates free.
The show's solution is to create a zero-sum world in which for every innocent person who is exonerated and liberated, a sneaky perp must get his or her comeuppance. The problem is not merely that "In Justice" is terribly inaccurate (though it is), but that it shows just how rigid our collective view of the criminal justice system has become, and how unwilling we are to rethink our view of cops and prosecutors as heroes.
Police procedurals have often both reflected and predicted our criminal justice sensibilities. From 1957 to 1966, when "Perry Mason" first graced our televisions, viewers were accustomed to seeing the failures of the system, such as innocent people being accused of crimes they simply didn't commit. And while Perry Mason often identified the real perpetrator, as a zealous defense lawyer he nonetheless embodied the era of the Warren court, and presaged a great expansion in civil liberties. It was, after all, well into the show's run that the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona (the seminal 1966 decision that required police to read suspects their rights before interrogating them), Gideon v. Wainwright (the 1963 decision requiring that poor people be represented by counsel when charged with serious crimes) and Mapp v. Ohio (the 1961 decision banning the use of evidence discovered during illegal searches).
But in the intervening decades, from "Hill Street Blues" through the wildly successful "Law & Order" franchise, police dramas have moved from a presumption of innocence to a certainty about guilt. And as goes television, so goes America.
"Law & Order" had its debut in 1990, at the height of the crack craze and the apotheosis of violent crime. It brilliantly exploited the crook fear of the late 80's and early 90's by recasting the entire criminal justice system - lionizing sharp-featured, street-savvy prosecutors and cops and rendering defense lawyers as ineffective and largely irrelevant. Both on our televisions and in our courthouses, the focus of the criminal justice system became ensuring not the freedom of the innocent but the incarceration of the guilty.
Through more than a decade of falling crime rates, mandatory sentencing minimums and an incarcerated population that nearly tripled, from 739,000 in 1990 to well over two million today, "Law & Order" made more than a billion dollars while adroitly exporting its clever formula to a number of successful progeny. Other than "The Practice," David E. Kelley's darkly rich drama about a scrappy defense firm, there hasn't been a genuine challenge to the "Law & Order" worldview since it took to the airwaves.
But amid resistance to the Patriot Act, revelations of a secret domestic spying program and a growing awareness - even among senators and governors - that the genuinely innocent can in fact be convicted, this would seem to be the time for the pendulum to swing back toward a more nuanced view of the criminal justice system.
"In Justice" is, in fact, that first small step, though it is clearly terrified about abandoning the cop and prosecutor archetypes that "Law & Order" erected. The result is, that unlike "Perry Mason," "In Justice" simply can't seem to play defense lawyers or the National Justice Project straight.
That David Swain omits the word "innocence" from his project's name is no accident. The National Justice Project seeks both to free the innocent and to incarcerate the guilty - thereby blurring the lines between prosecutors and defense lawyers to virtual irrelevance. This isn't just a convenient dramatic device; it also reflects the fear that merely freeing the innocent won't sell. The consequence of that fear is a show that ignores the fundamentally adversarial relationship between prosecutors and defense lawyers, and squanders the narrative tension that might otherwise propel the show toward righteous indignation.
Swain himself (played by Kyle MacLachlan) comes across as a man more motivated by ambition and ego than by compassion; heroic crusading defense lawyers aren't ready for prime time just yet.
While the show does do an outstanding job of vividly portraying the agonies of prison, the dangers of false confessions, the vagaries of eyewitness identification and the pressure on criminal defendants to snitch, at its root it seems more likely to adopt the traditional shibboleth of incompetent defense lawyers than to turn a critical eye toward bad judges or venal prosecutors. And it is in the acceptance of this worldview that the show falls most dramatically short of its promise.
Even in its structure, "In Justice" is familiar. After the view from the jury box and a plea from a desperate defendant or his family, the rest of the hour follows Swain and his team, led by Charles Conti (Jason O'Mara), his chief investigator - an ex-cop who once put away the wrong guy before quitting the force and turning toward righteousness - as they pound the pavement, engage in elaborate expository disquisitions and eventually solve the case. In the end, it takes only a few minutes for the prosecutors to see the light, for the real perpetrator to confess and for the wrongly convicted to walk dramatically out of prison.
At the end of the first episode, a teary-eyed brother embraces his newly freed sister. "Thank you," he murmurs to Swain, "thank you for giving me back my family." Moments later, as Swain turns maudlin, Conti fixes him with a perplexed look.
"You know," Conti says, "I can never tell if you are a cynical man pretending to be sentimental or the other way around."
Swain, cocking his head in the canny fashion of a supermodel on a photo shoot, glances back at his trusty sidekick. "Does it matter?" he asks archly.
It won't be long before there is a show for which the answer to that question is "yes."
David Feige is a public defender in the Bronx and a writer. "Indefensible," his book about the criminal justice system, will be published in June by Little, Brown & Company.
Long strange trip.
We Find the Defendant Not Guilty (if That's O.K. With Everyone)
By DAVID FEIGE
Published: January 1, 2006
FROM the airy second-floor ballroom of a once-grand hotel, David Swain, the preening, pugilistic focus of ABC's new show "In Justice," presides over an organization he calls the National Justice Project. Loosely based on the many "innocence projects" that have sprung up across the country since the advent of DNA testing, the show, in its promotional materials, claims to offer "a completely new take on the procedural drama."
The criminal justice system has always made for good drama, and over the years the political and narrative tides have shifted back and forth between the values of protecting the innocent and nailing the guilty. But 15 years into the reign of "Law & Order" (with no end in sight), "In Justice" makes it clear that even a series about wrongful conviction must tiptoe around the idea of setting the inmates free.
The show's solution is to create a zero-sum world in which for every innocent person who is exonerated and liberated, a sneaky perp must get his or her comeuppance. The problem is not merely that "In Justice" is terribly inaccurate (though it is), but that it shows just how rigid our collective view of the criminal justice system has become, and how unwilling we are to rethink our view of cops and prosecutors as heroes.
Police procedurals have often both reflected and predicted our criminal justice sensibilities. From 1957 to 1966, when "Perry Mason" first graced our televisions, viewers were accustomed to seeing the failures of the system, such as innocent people being accused of crimes they simply didn't commit. And while Perry Mason often identified the real perpetrator, as a zealous defense lawyer he nonetheless embodied the era of the Warren court, and presaged a great expansion in civil liberties. It was, after all, well into the show's run that the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona (the seminal 1966 decision that required police to read suspects their rights before interrogating them), Gideon v. Wainwright (the 1963 decision requiring that poor people be represented by counsel when charged with serious crimes) and Mapp v. Ohio (the 1961 decision banning the use of evidence discovered during illegal searches).
But in the intervening decades, from "Hill Street Blues" through the wildly successful "Law & Order" franchise, police dramas have moved from a presumption of innocence to a certainty about guilt. And as goes television, so goes America.
"Law & Order" had its debut in 1990, at the height of the crack craze and the apotheosis of violent crime. It brilliantly exploited the crook fear of the late 80's and early 90's by recasting the entire criminal justice system - lionizing sharp-featured, street-savvy prosecutors and cops and rendering defense lawyers as ineffective and largely irrelevant. Both on our televisions and in our courthouses, the focus of the criminal justice system became ensuring not the freedom of the innocent but the incarceration of the guilty.
Through more than a decade of falling crime rates, mandatory sentencing minimums and an incarcerated population that nearly tripled, from 739,000 in 1990 to well over two million today, "Law & Order" made more than a billion dollars while adroitly exporting its clever formula to a number of successful progeny. Other than "The Practice," David E. Kelley's darkly rich drama about a scrappy defense firm, there hasn't been a genuine challenge to the "Law & Order" worldview since it took to the airwaves.
But amid resistance to the Patriot Act, revelations of a secret domestic spying program and a growing awareness - even among senators and governors - that the genuinely innocent can in fact be convicted, this would seem to be the time for the pendulum to swing back toward a more nuanced view of the criminal justice system.
"In Justice" is, in fact, that first small step, though it is clearly terrified about abandoning the cop and prosecutor archetypes that "Law & Order" erected. The result is, that unlike "Perry Mason," "In Justice" simply can't seem to play defense lawyers or the National Justice Project straight.
That David Swain omits the word "innocence" from his project's name is no accident. The National Justice Project seeks both to free the innocent and to incarcerate the guilty - thereby blurring the lines between prosecutors and defense lawyers to virtual irrelevance. This isn't just a convenient dramatic device; it also reflects the fear that merely freeing the innocent won't sell. The consequence of that fear is a show that ignores the fundamentally adversarial relationship between prosecutors and defense lawyers, and squanders the narrative tension that might otherwise propel the show toward righteous indignation.
Swain himself (played by Kyle MacLachlan) comes across as a man more motivated by ambition and ego than by compassion; heroic crusading defense lawyers aren't ready for prime time just yet.
While the show does do an outstanding job of vividly portraying the agonies of prison, the dangers of false confessions, the vagaries of eyewitness identification and the pressure on criminal defendants to snitch, at its root it seems more likely to adopt the traditional shibboleth of incompetent defense lawyers than to turn a critical eye toward bad judges or venal prosecutors. And it is in the acceptance of this worldview that the show falls most dramatically short of its promise.
Even in its structure, "In Justice" is familiar. After the view from the jury box and a plea from a desperate defendant or his family, the rest of the hour follows Swain and his team, led by Charles Conti (Jason O'Mara), his chief investigator - an ex-cop who once put away the wrong guy before quitting the force and turning toward righteousness - as they pound the pavement, engage in elaborate expository disquisitions and eventually solve the case. In the end, it takes only a few minutes for the prosecutors to see the light, for the real perpetrator to confess and for the wrongly convicted to walk dramatically out of prison.
At the end of the first episode, a teary-eyed brother embraces his newly freed sister. "Thank you," he murmurs to Swain, "thank you for giving me back my family." Moments later, as Swain turns maudlin, Conti fixes him with a perplexed look.
"You know," Conti says, "I can never tell if you are a cynical man pretending to be sentimental or the other way around."
Swain, cocking his head in the canny fashion of a supermodel on a photo shoot, glances back at his trusty sidekick. "Does it matter?" he asks archly.
It won't be long before there is a show for which the answer to that question is "yes."
David Feige is a public defender in the Bronx and a writer. "Indefensible," his book about the criminal justice system, will be published in June by Little, Brown & Company.
Wednesday
Monday
Jerry Kellerman (jerrykellerman) on Twitter
Just for fun, you can follow .Jerry Kellerman (jerrykellerman) on Twitter
RTB Season Two Premieres Tonight!
Tune in for Season Two of Raising the Bar
10 PM on TNT!
And leave comments below to let me know what you think.
I look forward to any and all of them...
10 PM on TNT!
And leave comments below to let me know what you think.
I look forward to any and all of them...
Wednesday
Thursday
Jail Term Sought in Medical Marijuana Case - NYTimes.com
Government lawyers are expected to ask a federal judge to impose a five-year sentence on the owner of a marijuana dispensary.
H. Marshall Jarrett, the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, on Friday sent a letter to United States Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien of Los Angeles guiding him to seek a five year sentence. Mr. Jarrett was the head of the Justice Department’s ethics office until Mr. Holder replaced him following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the corruption case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
Yep, Change but no change...
H. Marshall Jarrett, the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, on Friday sent a letter to United States Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien of Los Angeles guiding him to seek a five year sentence. Mr. Jarrett was the head of the Justice Department’s ethics office until Mr. Holder replaced him following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the corruption case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
Yep, Change but no change...
Monday
What Music Should Be...
No reason to post this, except that the Counting Crows Rock just totally rock the house...
Thursday
Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah
Hat tip to my friend Mitch who sent me this brilliant bit
Saturday
More Repulsive Tripe from Caitlin Flanagan
In this Op-Ed Caitlin Flanagan (voted one of MSN's 13 Women who make us cringe) is once again cringe-worthy with this absurd argument about Sarah Jane Olsen. As usual she gets it back-asswards cloaking her argument for forcing SJO to serve her parole in California in the rhetoric of racial equality.
But that's probably why this self-styled housewife should stick to writing about domestic issues rather than legal or political ones. If she'd managed to talk to anyone involved in the criminal justice system, including even the one person she quotes in the piece, she'd realize that the problem isn't allowing SJO out of prison nor is the issue that she gets to go home to Minnesota, the problem is others don't get those benefits. And the solution? Not to burn precious space on the TImes Op-Ed page whining about Olsen's crime, but rather to advocate for more liberal parole rules everywhere.
How about a little note about how overcrowded California prisons are already stuffed full of parole violators sent back only on "technical specs"?
How about a nice piece about the dangers of mass incarceration or the absurd sentences meted out to those self same folks who have committed lesser crimes? Flanigan has made a career out of shaming working women and glorifying home-makers.
Time to make some donuts.
But that's probably why this self-styled housewife should stick to writing about domestic issues rather than legal or political ones. If she'd managed to talk to anyone involved in the criminal justice system, including even the one person she quotes in the piece, she'd realize that the problem isn't allowing SJO out of prison nor is the issue that she gets to go home to Minnesota, the problem is others don't get those benefits. And the solution? Not to burn precious space on the TImes Op-Ed page whining about Olsen's crime, but rather to advocate for more liberal parole rules everywhere.
How about a little note about how overcrowded California prisons are already stuffed full of parole violators sent back only on "technical specs"?
How about a nice piece about the dangers of mass incarceration or the absurd sentences meted out to those self same folks who have committed lesser crimes? Flanigan has made a career out of shaming working women and glorifying home-makers.
Time to make some donuts.
Sunday
RTB en Italia...
I came across a listing for "Avvocati a New York" And what it is? Yep, RTB.
Here's the awesome auto translation of the description...
"The series tells the stories of private and professional group of young lawyers of the Big Apple, the court rivals, but friends in private life. Every day have another case to solve that sees them in opposing the classroom, but their relationship of mutual friendship that has lasted since the university is stronger than any rivalry.
Among them is Jerry Kellerman (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, the popular protagonist of Bayside School), a public defender and courageous idealist who is always committed to the maximum for his client. His head is Rosalind Whitman (Gloria Reuben), including but tough, that spurs the most of his team. Together with them, work Woolsley Patrick Richard (Teddy Sears,) and Roberta "Bobbi" Gilar (Natalia Cigliano). In the department of public prosecution, however, there are Ernhardt Michelle (Melissa Sagemiller), Nick Balco (Currie Graham) and Marcus McGrath (J. August Richards), really relentless in putting criminals behind bars. The group is also the Judge Trudy Kessler (Jane Kaczmarek), a former public defender who presides over the court with an iron fist, and his mysterious assistant Charlie Sagansky (Jonathan Scarfi).
Here's the awesome auto translation of the description...
"The series tells the stories of private and professional group of young lawyers of the Big Apple, the court rivals, but friends in private life. Every day have another case to solve that sees them in opposing the classroom, but their relationship of mutual friendship that has lasted since the university is stronger than any rivalry.
Among them is Jerry Kellerman (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, the popular protagonist of Bayside School), a public defender and courageous idealist who is always committed to the maximum for his client. His head is Rosalind Whitman (Gloria Reuben), including but tough, that spurs the most of his team. Together with them, work Woolsley Patrick Richard (Teddy Sears,) and Roberta "Bobbi" Gilar (Natalia Cigliano). In the department of public prosecution, however, there are Ernhardt Michelle (Melissa Sagemiller), Nick Balco (Currie Graham) and Marcus McGrath (J. August Richards), really relentless in putting criminals behind bars. The group is also the Judge Trudy Kessler (Jane Kaczmarek), a former public defender who presides over the court with an iron fist, and his mysterious assistant Charlie Sagansky (Jonathan Scarfi).
Most Immigrants In Detention Do Not Have Criminal Records
"The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years."
Outrageous.
Outrageous.
Tuesday
Saturday
Top Judge in Texas Closes Early to Insure Execution...
Evil judge Keller
And what kind of Judge is she? In 1998, she wrote the opinion rejecting a new trial for Roy Criner, a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA tests after his trial showed that it was not his semen in the victim. “We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent,” she later told the television news program “Frontline.”
Her campaign slogan? "Pro-Prosecution"
Shame on Texas. Conduct like this, she should be off the bench.
Friday
Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Friday
Starve the inmates and get rich...
Amazing piece about this sheriff, finally jailed for essentially starving his inmates. Bear in mind, he spent less than $1.75 per day to feed them.
this is the guy...
this is the guy...
Tuesday
Sunday
Thank you Canada...
So it seems we're getting a very warm reception in the dead of winter north of the border.This, today's nice nod from the Globe and Mail...
CTV Raising the Bar (Jan. 9) Shades of Perry Mason: There are still signs of life in the TV legal drama. First broadcast on the U.S. cable channel TNT last September, this series hails from iconic TV producer Steven Bochco. Revisiting his days of L.A. Law, Bochco romanticizes and idealizes the lives of a handful of capable lawyers working opposite ends of the legal system – the district attorney's office and the public defender's office. Former Saved by the Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, whom Bochco tapped to replace Rick Schroder on NYPD Blue several years back, takes on the central role of Jerry Kellerman, idealistic public defender drawn to hopeless cases. Jerry has an even more earnest boss, Rosalind, played by Canadian Gloria Reuben, and a formidable courtroom opponent in Nick Balco, played by another Canadian, Currie Graham, who succeeded Gosselaar on NYPD Blue (Bochco likes to work with the same people).
Former Malcolm in the Middle mom Jane Kaczmarek is grand as a hardball judge. The show was well-received and highly rated upon its U.S. debut, even with the distraction of Gosselaar's incredibly girly hairstyle.!
Shades of Perry Mason? I'll take that.
Thursday
Wednesday
Behind the Times...
Finally, the New York Times has gotten hip to passive solar homes, publishing, (a few days ago) The Energy Challenge - No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in Innovative ‘Passive Houses.’ The piece is reasonably good, though it sadly, omitted Josef Kiraly, the architect of passive solar homes I pitched four years ago and profiled for Lexus in 2006.
And so while I'm sad they didn't include Josef, who is huge in his field, I'm glad they're giving the technology its due.
Oh, and Happy New Year All...
And so while I'm sad they didn't include Josef, who is huge in his field, I'm glad they're giving the technology its due.
Oh, and Happy New Year All...
The wisdom of pardons -
This first person account highlights both the importance of pardons and the continuing tragedy of Bush's failure to use them.
Tuesday
'Tis the Season to Be Generous
And what a wonderful thing it is to be recognized by a spot on The Nation's year end donation list. A big shout out to Katha, for including the Bronx Freedom Fund (of which I am a board member) in this year's list. We were even #2! How cool is that? And what does she say?
2. Bronx Freedom Fund. This year-old organization posts bail for indigent people awaiting trial on misdemeanor or nonviolent felony charges in New York City's poorest borough. These are men and women who without the fund would languish in jail for perhaps six months for lack of $500, including many who are innocent and would plead guilty just to be free. Of all clients bailed out, 95 percent have returned for every court appearance and half have had their cases dismissed. Bonus: money used to post bail is returned when the cases are over, so a single gift can keep on giving. Address: 860 Courtlandt Ave., Bronx, NY 10451;
To donate, Just go to BronxFreedomFund.org and click the "Donate Now" button.
2. Bronx Freedom Fund. This year-old organization posts bail for indigent people awaiting trial on misdemeanor or nonviolent felony charges in New York City's poorest borough. These are men and women who without the fund would languish in jail for perhaps six months for lack of $500, including many who are innocent and would plead guilty just to be free. Of all clients bailed out, 95 percent have returned for every court appearance and half have had their cases dismissed. Bonus: money used to post bail is returned when the cases are over, so a single gift can keep on giving. Address: 860 Courtlandt Ave., Bronx, NY 10451;
To donate, Just go to BronxFreedomFund.org and click the "Donate Now" button.
Defiance Rocks...
I just watched the screener of DEFIANCE, and it's terrific. Nothing I love more than some bad-assed fighting jews, struggling with moral questions in a forrest during the second world war. Really a must see. And sure Daniel Craig doesn't look jewish, but you know what? I was willing to accept his pretty blue eyes after about 15 minutes. As far as the guys who brought us 30-something? Amazing. Absolutely great stuff.
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my controversial book about a day in my life as Public Defender in the South Bronx is finally available... Click here to order 
