Judicial Reports: LexPress: Selection Compromise Nearer

By Lily Henning
Posted 01-26-07

The judicial selection reform compromise we told you about last week takes another step forward, a federal judge lets prosecutors have a piece of his mind (and then some), and defense counsel finally returns from Puerto Rico. 

 

SELECTION REFORM COMPROMISE: AN UPDATE 
The New York Law Journal reports that “three major players” are near agreement on the same concept for choosing Supreme Court candidates. And the winner is…the clunkily named “primary bypass.” Essentially a mix between the existing convention system, through which candidates are selected by their political parties, and a primary system. Governor Eliot Spitzer said early this month he’d only support a remedy that included the primary bypass. (This of course all made necessary by the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finding New York’s current method of choosing judicial candidates unconstitutional.) Under the current proposal, candidates who lose out at the convention get a second chance to be on the party’s primary ballot if they manage to wrangle support from more than a quarter of the convention’s delegates. (We’re trying to picture this, and it seems as though it would involve a prohibitive amount of schmoozing.) Additionally, any candidate, even one who avoided the convention, could force a primary by collecting petition signatures. The Fund for Modern Courts shifted its position on the solution after Spitzer backed the primary bypass. The fund had originally hoped to streamline the convention process “to make it more navigable by political outsiders.” Of course, Judicial Reports readers learned about the contours of this compromise last week from our own Jason Boog.

 
ONE OPINIONATED JUDGE
Given the track record of New York juries, there’s more than a good chance the prosecution in the case against Kenneth McGriff isn’t getting what it asks for: the death penalty. But that’s not the story this morning. The big deal is what federal Judge Frederic Block, who sits on the District Court in Brooklyn, said on Wednesday afternoon during a break in closing arguments at the racketeering and murder-for-hire trial of McGriff, a convicted drug trafficker known as Supreme. “Absurd” was one adjective Block used to describe the government’s effort, and also, “a waste of taxpayers’ money.” The story made virtually all of the local papers. A sampling: the New York Sun has a clean (and short) description, the Daily News with an explosive editorial (you can guess some of their brilliant wordplay with Judge Block’s name….) saying that he violated “basic standards of judicial impartiality,” and the New York Times fleshes the story out with background. Block asked the federal prosecutors to change their request – and suggested they go to their superiors: “Will you kindly advise Washington that in this judge’s opinion, there is no chance in the world there would be a death penalty verdict in this case?” the judge said, according to a transcript (it doesn’t appear many – if any –  reporters  were in the courtroom. . . . The NYT acknowledged that the judge’s comments had been made public by chatter among the death penalty defense bar.) Block said he based his view on the intensity with which the jury listened to the defense summation and all the evidence: “If I’m wrong, I will have egg on my face, but I will not be incorrect.” McGriff’s is one of three ongoing or recently concluded death penalty trials in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

 
DEFENDER REPATRIATES (LATE)
She finally showed. Laura Miranda managed to get back from Puerto Rico and appear in Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Carol Berkman’s courtroom. The New York Post won’t let this story go, (which is good, because we’re a little obsessed with it too.) Miranda is the lawyer representing yoga instructor Paul Cortez, who is accused of murdering “beautiful” Catherine Woods (we know this has been asked before but why does the Post insist on calling on that one descriptor for all white, female murder victims?) Miranda told Berkman weeks ago she wasn’t ready for trial, then, as the trial date approached her mother in Puerto Rico “needed medical tests” and she had to be there. Her co-counsel, Dawn Florio, could still not make it to court because she was attending a funeral for her uncle, the husband of Brooklyn Appellate Court Judge Anita Florio. Unsurprisingly, Cortez is “considering hiring another lawyer.” Berkman ordered jury selection to begin yesterday.

Posted by Lily on January 26, 2007 08:18 AM to Judicial Reports