By Joseph Goldstein

Judge Richard Owen of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan gathered a group of lawyers in his courtroom in 2007 to discuss the possible leak of sealed documents in a business case. As the hearing got under way, Owen, then 84, asked for someone to explain this newfangled mode of communication the lawyers kept mentioning — e-mail.

“It pops up in a machine in some administrative office, and is somebody there with a duty to take it around and give it to whoever it’s named to?” he asked.

Some of the lawyers figured that Owen, whose chambers came with a mimeograph machine when he became a judge in 1973, was just behind the times. Others wondered if the judge’s memory was failing him.

After all, the most famous case in his long career — the back-to-back trials of Silicon Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone — had revolved around a single e-mail. Yet he now acted as though this was the first he was hearing about it. “He didn’t understand what was happening in his own courtroom,” said one lawyer present that day.

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By Allan Lengel

WASHINGTON –A USA Today investigation shows that federal prosecutorial misconduct has not only put innocent people in prison, but also set guilty people free, sometimes  by shortening their sentences and allowing them to commit crimes again when they should have been behind bars.

The USA TODAY investigation found 201 cases since 1997 in which federal judges found that prosecutors violated laws or ethics rules.

“Each was so serious that judges overturned convictions, threw out charges or rebuked the prosecutors,” wrote USA Today reporters Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy. “And although the violations tainted no more than a small fraction of the tens of thousands of cases filed in federal courts each year, legal specialists who reviewed the newspaper’s work said misconduct is not always uncovered, so the true extent of the problem might never be known.”

To read full story click here.

Justice Department Response as printed in USA Today:

“Once again, USA TODAY misleads readers by providing a statistically inaccurate representation of the hard work done by federal prosecutors daily in courtrooms across the country by cherry-picking a handful of examples dating back to the 1990s and confusing cases where attorneys made mistakes with cases where actual prosecutorial misconduct was involved.

“An internal review conducted by the department last year found prosecutorial misconduct in a small fraction of the 90,000 cases brought annually. When mistakes occur, the department corrects them as quickly and transparently as possible.

“Attorney General (Eric) Holder has made a priority of preventing mistakes before they occur, instituting a comprehensive training curriculum for all federal prosecutors, and mandating annual discovery training. The Justice Department has taken unprecedented steps to ensure prosecutors, agents and paralegals have the necessary training and resources to properly fulfill their discovery and ethics obligations.”

This has long been one of the unfair disparities in sentencing. No question crack cocaine has plagued urban America and destroyed neighborhoods and lives. But should crack have ever been treated differently than powdered cocaine when it came to sentencing?

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Federal judges are beginning to equalize punishment for crack and powder cocaine crimes, resulting in shorter prison terms for crack dealers and putting pressure on Congress to address a wide disparity in how the legal system handles cocaine-related offenses.

In two recent rulings and interviews, a federal judge in the District and one in Iowa said they had policy differences with Congress and a judicial commission that they said did not go far enough to change the guidelines for crack sentences in 2007.

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OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• Cong. Conyers’ Wife Monica Resigns From Detroit City Council (Detroit News)
• Tulsa U.S. Attorney Exits Post He Waited A Long Time to Get (Tulsa World)
• Defense Attorneys Want Off FBI Shooting Case in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

This may not make civil liberties groups happy, but it’s a big victory for law enforcement.  Of course, this isn’t likely to be the end of the issue.

By Mosheh Oinounou
FOXNews.com
A California federal judge ruled Thursday that mandatory DNA collection for all individuals facing federal felony charges is constitutional, dealing a setback to civil liberties advocates.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory G. Hollows upheld the DNA Fingerprint Act, a 2006 law which allows federal law enforcement officials to collect DNA from individuals “arrested, facing charges, or convicted” of federal offenses.

Previously, states throughout the country had a variety of different laws on the books regarding DNA collection—with most mandating testing only after a suspect had been convicted of a crime.

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In recent months, federal judges have chastised federal prosecutors around the country including in Washington, Miami and Montana. The newly minted Atty. General Eric Holder Jr. has vowed to address this.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr.

Joe Palazzolo
The National Law Journal
WASHINGTON — In his first confab with the nation’s chief federal district judges, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. pledged to raise the bar of professionalism in the U.S. Department of Justice and acknowledged that the current procedure for reviewing complaints against attorneys was too slow and opaque.

Nine chief judges described the April 21 meeting on the condition of anonymity because it was closed to the public. Holder’s words held the promise of reform for the approximately 90 judges who attended the annual meeting at the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building in Washington as discovery abuses and other prosecutorial misconduct, new and old, have come under increased scrutiny in the aftermath of the Ted Stevens case.

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OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• A Closer Look at the Dropped Charges in the Spy Case Involving Israeli Lobbyists (Washington Post)
• South Carolina Man Latest Recession Bank Robber (AP)
• Rep. Murtha’s Nephew Got Millions of $$ in Contracts (Washington Post)
• Dems Want More Interrogation Documents (Washington Post)
• Some Muslims Rethink Close Ties to FBI (AP)
• FBI in Michigan Denies Forcing Arab-Americans to be Informants (Detroit News)
• Chicago Teamsters Convicted in Election Scheme (Chicago Tribune)
• Sen. Schumer Recommends Loretta Lynch For N.Y. U.S. Atty.-Eastern District (N.Y. Times)

Good news for federal judges who put their lives on the line going up against some of the nation’s toughest criminals and angry litigants who can get unhinged. Protection has improved. Not long ago the Marshal Service was under attack for not promptly investigating threats against judges.

Matthew Barakat
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Four years after the husband and mother of a federal judge were murdered in their home by a disgruntled litigant, federal marshals have dramatically increased resources dedicated to judicial security to keep pace with an increased number of threats.

At a ceremony Tuesday, the U.S. Marshals Service highlighted the new efforts to protect federal judges and prosecutors. Since September 2007, the work has been coordinated out of a secure Threat Management Center at its headquarters in Crystal City.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow of Chicago prodded Congress to increase funding for security after her husband and mother were killed in 2005 by an unemployed electrician whose lawsuit had been thrown out. She had also received death threats from a white supremacist.

Judge Lefkow said at the ceremony that judicial security is “so much improved over what it was before. … I can only hope this will prevent another incident such as ours.”

The ceremony formally dedicated the Threat Management Center’s conference room in Judge Lefkow’s name and in memory of her husband, Michael Lefkow, and mother, Donna Humphrey.

The Marshals Service said its judicial security efforts have improved significantly the past few years, thanks in part to millions of dollars in new funding from Congress.
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