A "LION" OF THE FEDERAL BENCH 
Former Southern District Judge Charles Brieant, who The Journal News calls a “lion” of the federal bench, died last Sunday night. Brieant, 85, was appointed to the federal judiciary in 1971 by President Nixon. From 1986 to 1993, he was chief judge of the Southern District of New York. Despite his notoriously irascible personality, “I think some people, especially some lawyers, might be surprised to hear that as a colleague he was the kindest, gentlest man you could know,” said Southern District Judge Stephen Robinson yesterday.

SMALL IN STATURE ONLY 
Newsday breaks down the sex trafficking trial of Consuelo Carreto Valencia. Extradited last year from Mexico, Valencia, 59, and 4 feet 10 inches tall, allegedly supervised her sons, nephews and a daughter-in-law in a trafficking organization that coerced young women from the Mexican town of San Miguel Tenancingo to work in brothels there and in Corona, Queens, for several months. In 2005, Eastern District Judge Frederic Block sentenced Valencia’s sons Josue Flores Carreto and Gerardo Flores Carreto, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges, to 50 years in prison. The sentences are some of the most severe in U.S. history for sex trafficking

A STAY AND PAY 
The New York Law Journal reports that the appeal in Larabee v. Governor, the case in which Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner ordered state Legislators “in good faith to adjust” judges’ salaries in 90 days, will take place on August 18^th before the Appellate Division. After defendants filed a notice of appeal last week triggering a stay of Lehner’s order, the plaintiffs in the case filed a motion in the Appellate Division, First Department, to lift the stay. (The plaintiffs, however, did not ask the Appellate Division for a temporary restraining order lifting the stay while the motion remains pending before the First Department.)

MONEY MATTERS 
An upstate village and town court justice has been censured for neglecting state-set deadlines for depositing fine money in court accounts and for not notifying the Department of Motor Vehicles when motorists did not pay fines. (Judges have 72 hours to deposit funds into court accounts). The Commission of Judicial Conduct found a “substantial discrepancy” between the payment of fines to the Veteran Town Court under Justice Marie Roller and when the money was deposited into court accounts. The commission, however, said that there is no evidence court funds were “misused” and that Roller has taken “steps to insure that funds are now deposited promptly, as required by law.”