Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Wilk guilty

blogging from the road....

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Wilk guilty of 7 counts in murder of BSO deputy, wounding of another
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By Paula McMahon
Sun-Sentinel.com

June 5 2007, 4:40 PM EDT

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Jurors in a federal death penalty case convicted Kenneth Wilk on Tuesday of three capital counts in the murder of a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy and the wounding of another deputy almost three years ago.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-65wilk,0,3625341.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Monday, June 04, 2007

Judge Altonaga is busy...

In addition to the 400 plaintiffs to be tried 5 at a time, Judge Altonaga also has the "child camel jockey" case, which was profiled this weekend in the NY Times:

The plaintiffs are thousands of boys from South Asia and Africa who say they were abducted, enslaved and forced to ride racing camels to entertain the rich in the Middle East. The defendants live in the United Arab Emirates.
But the case is pending in Miami, and the jockeys are represented not by human rights groups but by Motley Rice, a leading contingency-fee class-action firm based in South Carolina known for its work in tobacco, asbestos and other domestic injury cases.
The class-action bar is going global. Until recently, international human rights cases in American courts were brought mainly by public interest lawyers more interested in calling attention to abuses and in establishing universal legal standards than in a potential payday.
The prominent plaintiffs’ firms, their critics say, are in it for the money. And the fact that they have started to embrace international human rights law may be a reflection of the relatively limited opportunities left in domestic class-action suits after legislative and judicial efforts to cut them back.

Verdict in the NCL trial

Well, the first five plaintiffs can't be happy they went first in the case involving 400 plaintiffs against NCL for cruising through a big storm. They were zipped. Now what? I've heard that Judge Altonaga plans on using the same jury again in three months for the next five plaintiffs. Do they get to retry liability? Anyone in the know have any insight on what's the next step assuming no settlement.

Friday, June 01, 2007

AP files motion in Padilla case

A tipster tells me that the AP has filed a motion requesting access to the tapes that the government is going to play for the jury in the Jose Padilla case. The government says that the press can have them a day after the jury hears them. More to follow...

More news and notes

1. A former federal prosecutor, Ilona M. Holmes, turned state court judge does *not* like cell phones in her courtroom. ASA Imabel Ocasio gets 10 hours of community service for her phone going off. Ouch. Here's the Sun-Sentinel story.

2. Snitch testimony outside the presence of the jury in the Jose Padilla case. Why is the government calling these types of witnesses? Here's the LA Times on how it went for prosecutors:

In testimony that appeared to backfire for the prosecution, an ex-convict who attended the same mosque as terrorism suspect Jose Padilla testified Thursday that he himself had considered going abroad for training to become an Islamic holy warrior, as Padilla allegedly did.Herbert Atwell, 38, was the second prosecution witness to characterize the alleged actions of Padilla and two codefendants not as terrorism but as acts of altruism in helping Muslims under siege in foreign countries.
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Inarticulate and at times surly under questioning by defense lawyers, Atwell conceded that he offered to testify against Padilla and Hassoun in hopes of getting out of prison. He said he was never promised any special consideration in return for supplying the government with accounts of what occurred at the Sunrise mosque, which he said he attended most evenings in the late 1990s."He was asking for money and for the brothers to be mujahedin fighters," Atwell recalled of Hassoun. "On several occasions he always had mujahedin fighters from all over the world — Chechnya, Palestine."The prosecutors seemed surprised when Atwell, under questioning by Baker, said he had considered becoming a holy warrior."I was thinking about going to be a mujahedin fighter myself," he said. "My wife was pregnant. If she wasn't pregnant, I would probably have gone to be a mujahedin fighter too."Asked whether he had wanted to become a terrorist, Atwell vehemently replied no. He said that the media now portrayed mujahedin as terrorists but that at the time they were simply Muslims coming to the aid of fellow believers.Atwell said Padilla "never talked that much" and that he remembered him mostly because of the Spanish-language Koran he would often read. Padilla is a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent.Atwell will be brought back to testify before the jury Monday.But his credibility as a witness is in question. Judge Cooke noted that Atwell adamantly insisted he saw photos of Padilla and Hassoun on an NBC News broadcast in 2002, when Hassoun was not yet charged with a crime and no connection with Padilla had been made."These two things cannot be allowed to exist together in a truthful universe," she said of the witness' statement after he had left the courtroom. She added that she was curious how the prosecution would "deal with his credibility."Atwell reportedly has five felony convictions, including aggravated assault and battery of his now ex-wife. He contradicted himself repeatedly about what he could recall, depending on whether he was answering a question from the defense or prosecution.

Now I wonder whether the defense should have just waited to cross him in front of the jury. Will the government still call this guy?

3. Some advice for Rumpole: Don't blog about your own cases. See here.