SFL Spotlight: Meet Allen West's Lawyer!

I know our justice system works only if everyone has access to the courts and the right to adequate counsel -- no matter how despicable, how heinous, or in this case how out there a client might be.

But seriously, what lawyer would willingly represent local oddball/politician Allen West?

Meet P. Christopher Winkelman:

Chris Winkelman is an associate with HoltzmanVogelJosefiak PLLC, providing counsel in the areas of campaign finance and election law, lobbying and ethics compliance, and tax-exempt organizations.

Prior to joining the firm, Chris served as a law clerk to Judge William A. Moorman at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. During his term, he handled appeals brought by veterans who were dissatisfied with the level of benefits awarded by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Previously, Chris served at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida and clerked for a private firm focusing on various litigation matters, including contract disputes and fraud.

Chris attended Rollins College and received his J.D. from Stetson University College of Law where he was a member of the Stetson Law Review and a graduate of the school's Honors Program. He was also a member of the Moot Court Board, earning recognition as the Best Individual Advocate in international competition. Chris is a member of the Florida Bar.

 (*Chris’ practice is limited to matters of federal law.)

Ok, Chris seems plenty qualified to handle West's "voting irregularities" challenge -- and we certainly know there was plenty of that in Florida again this year -- mostly thanks to GOP efforts to strangle and/or suppress the vote.

Ain't irony a bitch?

Chris is also a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, which claims as its mission the advancement of "open, fair and honest elections."

Good to know!

Chris, if you're out there reading this we'd love to interview you about the case and what you see as the challenges to success.

My pal Gerry Richman has already identified a few:

Shortly after the hearing was rescheduled, an attorney for Murphy filed court papers seeking to intervene in the court case. According to Murphy’s attorney, Gerald Richman, the court papers filed by West’s attorneys were riddled with errors, including failing to name a defendant and how West would be “irreparably” harmed if the ballots and machines were not impounded.

So you still need to name a defendant and show irreparable harm nowadays to prevail on an injunction?

Good to know!

This should be a fun hearing at noon today.

(Chris may wish he's back in federal court.)

Election Day Hangover.

Has everyone left for the long weekend already?

Where are my tipsters?

Broward Court -- The New World Model for Justice!

Hi everyone, is there something happening today?

All I know is my phone will be very quiet today as every lawyer in town is working the polls and helping to protect the vote --  that means it's probably a good day to serve a 57.105 letter!

But seriously, it's all in the hands of a few coders from Mongolia now.

Speaking of Mongolia, when you think of a model location in this entire world for the effective and efficient administration of justice, naturally you think "Broward County Circuit Court."

I mean where else can you see a judge have to use her own cell phone and put it on speaker in order to conduct a hearing?

That's why visiting judges from Mongolia traveled all the way across this great green Earth to watch Broward County justice in action.

Note -- this is a real story!

As a result of this important fact-finding mission, the Mongolian judges agreed to make some changes back home.

For one, they have installed an impossible-to-understand elevator system that takes people to different "ninth floors" and forces litigants to go up half-a-floor to find their courtroom.  They also agreed to cover all surfaces in the courthouse with asbestos and mold and to periodically cut off electricity and water at critical moments, particularly during trials.

God it feels good to be emulated!

I Fought the Law.

I'm too depressed to discuss the election right now, but I do want to highlight what for me was a personal tragedy last night:  fervent Florida Bar News letter writer George L. Metcalfe inexplicably failed to persuade Central Florida voters that he deserved to be their next Congressman, drawing only 1.9 percent of the vote!

What the hail is wrong with Florida voters?

But enough with bad news, let's discuss something uplifting and empowering -- the Supreme Court debating government censorship:

The law would impose $1,000 fines on stores that sell violent video games to people under 18. It defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that is “patently offensive,” appeals to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacks “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

“What’s a deviant violent video game?” asked Justice Antonin Scalia, who was the law’s most vocal opponent on Tuesday. “As opposed to what? A normal violent video game?”

“Some of the Grimm’s fairy tales are quite grim,” he added. “Are you going to ban them, too?”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer took the other side. He said common sense should allow the government to help parents protect children from games that include depictions of “gratuitous, painful, excruciating, torturing violence upon small children and women.”

This is pretty remarkable, as it recalls almost exactly the well-intentioned efforts in the 1950s by progressive liberals, led by Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver (Adlai's 1956 running mate), to purge the nation of the "scourge" of horror comics.

Poor William M. Gaines, EC Comics publisher and later the founder of MAD Magazine, got caught up in Kefauver's cross-hairs and delivered an epic demonstration of the difference between law and pure aesthetic expression, attempting to explain what aesthetic "taste" means in the context of a horror comics cover in which a man is shown holding a woman's severed head by the hair in one hand and gripping a bloody ax in the other:  "A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody."  

That pretty much did them in (the comix industry cut a deal and voluntarily regulated horror comics out of existence).

As recounted in Jim Trombetta's excellent The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!,

[T]hese proceedings record how deeply ambivalent the postwar American establishment was about the baby boom.  The good part was "move to the suburbs, have a couple of kids"; the bad part was an "alarming" increase in "juvenile delinquency."  The censorship of comic books now looks like an opening salvo in the cold war against the young, which would soon flare up in the gratuitous suppression of rock and roll, eventually generating the zombielike protractions of Vietnam.

What will censoring "violent" video games look like 50 years from now?

Perhaps Justice Kagan put it best:

“You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute?” she asked Mr. Morazzini. It is, she added, “an iconic game which I am sure half the clerks who work for us spent considerable time in their adolescence playing.”

Mr. Morazzini said the game was “a candidate” for government regulation.

Vote, You Plebes!

What, you have something better to do?

Vote?

(or not)

Samantha Ruiz Cohen and Monica Gordo Receive Rousing Anti-Gay Anti-Endorsement!

I think it was ole Honest Abe who once said "[p]oliteness costs so little."

With that in mind, a tipster passed along this exceedingly polite anti-endorsement for judicial candidates Samantha Ruiz Cohen and Monica Gordo, apparently by the editor of something called El Nuevo PATRIA:

Voter Alert: UNQUALIFIED MIAMI-DADE JUDICIAL CANDIDATES

TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY:

Samantha Ruiz Cohen and Monica Gordo, both candidates for judge in Miami-Dade County, sought and received the endorsement of the extremist homosexualist hate group, "SAVE-Dade."

This is the same anti-Life, anti-Family, anti-God homosexualist group that vehemently opposed the Florida
Marriage Protection Amendment defining civil marriage as the union of one man and one women, and that continues to fanatically attack Florida's Adoption Law that protects abandoned and orphaned children from falling into the hands of admitted homosexuals via adoption.

Both Samantha Ruiz Cohen and Monica Gordo know perfectly well that the homosexualist group in question is an admitted extremist, Liberal hate group and yet they met with them and gladly ACCEPTED their endorsement, i.e., their kiss of death! This speaks volumes about their lack of integrity and judicial temperament!

Furthermore, ANY group calling itself "Conservative" and asking the public to support a homosexualist candidate is perpetrating a FRAUD and SCAM on the public. Do not be misled or deceived!

El Nuevo PATRIA, the oldest Cuban Exile anticommunist and anti-Liberal newspaper in Florida, wants you to know and make an informed decision when you vote next Tuesday, August 24th.

Orphans "falling into the hands of admitted homosexuals" -- I like the imagery!

Also "admitted extremist, Liberal hate group" -- really, is there any other kind?

Vote, Plebes!

I understand there is some kind of election today.

Make your mom proud and go vote, ok?

In other news, the intrepid one reports that the three foreclosure firms targeted by Bill McCollum's office is fighting back, filing motions to quash the subpoenas served upon them.

One of the firms is represented by WPB attorney Gerry Richman:

The subpoena has had a chilling effect on clients and has led to defense lawyers citing the investigation in motions to have the Shapiro firm disqualified from cases. One judge, according to the petition, has said in open court he will deny all summary judgment motions filed by the law firms named by the attorney general based solely on the existence of the investigation.

In an interview, attorney Gerald Richman, who is representing the Shapiro firm, said he did not know who the judge is. He denied the Shapiro firm falsified any documents.

“One of our concerns is the broad brush,” he said. “We are not in the category with David Stern, we are not in the category with any other law firm. Hopefully we will not lose clients. We’re doing whatever we can to fight back.” 

Question -- when doing a media interview regarding that type of allegation, wouldn't it be helpful to have the name of the judge on your desk somewhere in case you are asked about it?

Or maybe my pal Gerry knows but doesn't want to say who it is?

Elected Judges and Campaign Contributions: The Public's Just Not Into You.

Wow, are you all following the case of the West Virginia Supreme Court judge who was elected with $3 million in campaign contributions from a coal mining executive who had a case pending before their Supreme Court? And the judge he helped elect promptly delivered the deciding vote that overturned a $50 million jury verdict against the coal company?

USA Today covered the story on its front page yesterday. And the Supremes decided to take the case for this term (even though they too have struggled with recusal/conflict issues).

But what was interesting to me was the results of this poll cited in the article:

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month found 89% of those surveyed believe the influence of campaign contributions on judges' rulings is a problem, and 52% deem it a "major" problem. More than 90% of the 1,027 adults surveyed said judges should be removed from a case if it involves an individual or group that contributed to the judge's election campaign.

HAHAHAHA. Oh that's rich.

Given those numbers, do you think there is a disconnect between how the public views such contributions, and how judges and lawyers perceive them? Do lawyers and judges even recognize that the public views this issue the way the poll indicates?

Who the hail knows?

Anyways, I look forward to seeing you all at the fundraiser on Thursday.

Keep Your Fingers Crossed, People!

So I understand a few of you lawyer-types will be out and about tomorrow. Let's hope you all did as Carlos Concepcion urged and have agreed to help out, either as poll workers or poll watchers.

I hope to check in, and urge you all to do likewise right here, but either way we have an interesting day ahead of us tomorrow.

Me, I'll be hanging with my buddy Paul Huck, Jr., keeping the polls safe for democracy. If you stumble into Overtown and see a gin-soaked "10"-obsessed windsurfer duking it out over an allegedly mismatched voter signature, just say hey to your friendly neighborhood legal blogger.

See you at the polls!

Early Vote, You Plebes!

Since most of you will be out "pollwatching" on election day anyways:

In Miami-Dade, which has 764 polls, Democratic observers number about 450. They will focus on what key members call ''voter protection'' in minority, elderly and traditionally strong Democratic precincts.

According to a Miami Herald computer analysis of precinct designations, the Democrats are devoting two-thirds of their poll watchers to precincts where less than 25 percent of the voters are black.

Their observers include immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban, lawyer and former Orange Bowl Committee president Albert Dotson Jr. and Miami-Dade prosecutor Abe Laeser.

Some 250 GOP lawyers and other volunteers for McCain's Miami-Dade campaign are designated as poll watchers in exactly the opposite way: They are committing two-thirds of their poll watchers to precincts heavily populated with African Americans, Haitian Americans and other minorities, according to the Miami Herald analysis.

Party officials said they stationed observers in areas where GOP candidates traditionally have not performed as well as Democrats.

Among the Republican observers: Raquel Rodriguez, former general counsel to ex-Gov. Jeb Bush; Paul Huck Jr., former general counsel to Gov. Charlie Crist; and state Rep. J.C. Planas, R-Miami.

Oh the good old days, I remember Chief Justice Rehnquist used to go to the polls back in the 60s.

Wait a minute -- Paul Huck, Jr. is a Republican pollwatcher? For this election? Doesn't he know he's a plaintiff's lawyer now? Lovable Paul is actually gonna spend election day possibly monitoring a African-American or heavily Haitian precinct -- oy.

Oh well, we still love him.

Smart Florida Voter Probably Bought Condo "On Bay."

We've been talking recently about what presumptions, if any, should be applied to the reasonable person in light of some interesting opinions from Judge Seitz and the Florida Supreme Court.

I offer up Florida voter and Barefoot Bay resident Andy Lacasse and his thoughtful idea of a campaign yard sign as Exhibit A. But please, don't try to disturb Andy's well-spelled out think piece:

"If I see anybody touching that sign, I got a club sitting right over there," Lacasse said.

Andy, you accidentally hit yourself in the head a few times with that club, didn't you? Didn't you?

Have a great weekend everybody!

Vote, You Plebs!

Being high-information consumers, and given that there are judges up for election today, I hope you all don't need to be reminded to vote.

But remember to let your employees out early so they can get to the polling precinct, and maybe all you smart lawyers can even become part of the polling process for November to help make sure the election runs as smoothly as possible -- given the reality that the election is ultimately in the hands of Miami-Dade County officials.

On the various judicial candidates, I take the long view. There are always qualified and less-qualified candidates, and as a practitioner it seems change comes in increments, and even then only in spurts, and that all assumes the change is positive. Can you turn a cruise ship on a dime?

To paraphrase my pal Rummy, you go to the polls with the candidates you have, not necessarily the candidate you want. Either way, go to the polls.