The quest for health care reform continues. According to Roll Call the White House has developed its own version of a merged House-Senate health care reform package and plans to have it online for public review by Monday in advance of a bipartisan health care summit scheduled for Feb. 25. As reported, the White House has taken what it considers the best of the House and Senate bills and come up with their own proposal.
ABA Journal Newsletter. February 19, 2010.
Top Ten Stories for Week Ending February 19, 2010.
Family Law Law Student Charged with Contempt for Exposing Daughter to Christianity
Feb 17, 2010, 06:46 am CST
New York Profiles: Governor David Paterson, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman
From the New York Times February 17-18, 2010.
The following are two very informative profiles from the New York Times:
The first profile contains both information about Hon. Jonathan Lippman and emphasizes the impact he has had during his first year as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals:
A Mediocre Criminal But An Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer
A Mediocre Criminal, but an Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer
By ADAM LIPTAK Published: New York Times February 9, 2010
EXCER[TS FROM ARTICLE:
Findlaw Case Summaries: Constitutional Law 31
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries arU.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, February 03, 2010 Janosky v. St. Amand, No. 09-1012 District court’s denial of defendant’s petition for habeas relief in a case arising out of an armed robbery gone awry is affirmed where: 1) defendant is barred from litigating his procedurally defaulted jury instruction claim; 2) defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel is rejected; and 3) defendant did not present his Sixth Amendment claim regarding a scrap of paper seized from a vehicle fairly and recognizably to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. .
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, February 03, 2010 Abrante v. St. Amand, No. 09-1020 Denial of defendant’s petition for habeas relief following conviction of armed robbery and related crimes is affirmed where: 1) defendant has not offered clear and convincing evidence that the state established agency relationships with inmate informants who then elicited admissions from him without the presence of counsel in violation of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights; 2) defendant’s due process claim fails; 3) defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim is rejected; and 4) the issues defendant raises do not present the court with opportunity to consider his constitutional challenge to the AEDPA. .
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, February 04, 2010 Estrada v. State of Rhode Island, No. 09-1149 In plaintiffs’ action challenging the constitutionality of the actions of a police officer during a traffic stop, summary judgment in favor of defendant is affirmed where: 1) the officer is entitled to federal and state qualified immunity for any possible constitutional violations that he may have committed in asking the van’s passengers questions about their immigration status and in contacting ICE; 2) the officer is entitled to qualified immunity for alleged violations of state or federal laws surrounding the seizure of plaintiffs and their subsequent escort to ICE office; 3) officer is entitled to qualified immunity for both pat down searches under federal and state law; and 4) the officer is entitled to qualified immunity for all of the challenged actions with respect to the Rhode Island Racial Profiling Prevention Act e produced by Findlaw Continue reading
Findlaw Case Summaries: Criminal Law and Procedure 34
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
U.S. Supreme Court, January 25, 2010 Hemi Group, LLC v. City of N.Y., No. 08–969 In an action by New York City against an online cigarette seller under the civil enforcement provision of RICO, alleging that defendant’s failure to file Jenkins Act reports with New York State constituted mail and wire fraud, the court of appeals’ judgment reversing the dismissal of the complaint is reversed where plaintiff failed to satisfy RICO’s proximate cause requirement because defendant’s obligation was to file Jenkins Act reports with the state, not the city, and the city’s harm of lost tax revenue was directly caused by cigarette customers, not defendant.
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, January 25, 2010 US v. Alfonso-Reyes, No. 06-1484
Convictions of defendants for defrauding the Farm Service Agency (FSA) of emergency loans and incentives to qualified farmers following the damage inflicted on the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico by a hurricane is affirmed where: 1) evidence is sufficient to support defendants’ convictions; 2) district court did not abuse its discretion by instructing the jury on sentencing enhancements; 3) district court did not abuse its discretion in its pre-trial disqualification of a defendant’s attorney; 4) district court’s imposition of a 27-month sentence defendant is not unreasonable; and 5) district court did not err in awarding a four-point leadership role enhancement on the other defendant.
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, January 25, 2010 Gray v. Brady, No. 08-2548 District court’s denial of defendant’s request for habeas relief, convicted of distributing cocaine and for doing so in a public park, is affirmed where: 1) defendant’s arguments that the trial court mistakenly believed that defendant, because he is not Hispanic, could not object to the exclusion of an Hispanic juror is without merit; 2) defendant’s argument that the state courts wrongly ignored the evidence of discriminatory animus toward the African-American jurors in finding no discriminatory animus against the Hispanic juror is without merit; and 3) defendant’s argument that the state courts erred in evaluating the challenges to the Hispanic juror and the African-American jurors separately, as opposed to challenges directed at “minority jurors” as a class is without merit, as defendant has provided no evidence or authority for the proposition that “minorities” constitute a cognizable group for Batson purposes.
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ABA Journal Newsletter. February 5, 2010.
Top Ten Stories for Week Ending February 5, 2010:
Banking Law Lawyer Sues Sallie Mae Over ‘Unrelenting’ Student Loan Robocalls Feb 3, 2010, 06:53 am CST
Legal Marketing & Consulting
Abstract: The New Platforms of Westlaw LexisNexis and Booomberg Law
Prepared by Michael Chernicoff
Despite coming out with new platforms of their own, the perceived‐legal research monopoly of “Wexis” – WestLaw and LexisNexis – is facing pressure from a newly rejuvenated Bloomberg platform. Benefits of the updated Westlaw platform includes the use of a powerful natural language search in the newly‐named WestlawNext, and in the case of Lexis Nexis an intuitive display of results in their product, NewLexis.
Court Reporters and Electronic Recording: An Exchange of Thoughts
We are not court reporters and normally do not become involved in discussions related to that field. Nevertheless we recently came accross an interesting exchange of e-mails which helps to identify and highlight the challenges and sometimes emotial reactions regarding how stenographic reporting and electronic recording relate to one another within the court reporting process.
The first e-mail, which we refer to as a comment, presented here in exerpted form, raises concerns about the impact of increased digitization of the process and a percieved lack of planning and resources to deal with these impacts.
The second e-mail is a response to the first. It defends some of the issues criticized in the first e-mail and presents an altervative perspective regarding the roles of stenographic reporting and electronic recording in the court reporting process.
James Lynch Receives Nomination to Head Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics
BY: Michael Chernicoff
President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has promsed to make its statistical body free from political manipulation. In making an independent statistical body, James Lynch may hope to reverse that likelihood that the BJS and its official are, “inappropriately treated in the future.”
In 2009, James Lynch was a member of the Panel to Review the Programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), which provided recommendations to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on ways to improve the quality, creditability, and relevance of U.S. justice statistics. In that report, the Panel recommended that “BJS be moved out of OJP (Office of Justice Programs),” and further suggested, “that the position of BJS director be made a fixed-term presidential appointment with Senate confirmation.” (A full-text copy of this report behttp://www.nap.edu/catalog/12671.html).