Federal Judicial Roundup - AP - Jane Kelly's PD experience rare on US appeals court | BLT - Senate Judiciary Approves Sri Srinivasan for D.C. Circuit | BLT - Federal Courts Ask for Emergency Funding
Steve Hall
This e-mail contains news articles from:
AP - Jane Kelly's experience rare on US appeals court
Law.com/The BLT - Senate Judiciary Approves Sri Srinivasan for D.C. Circuit
Law.com/The BLT - Federal Courts Ask for Emergency Funding
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From Eric Freedman:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JANE_KELLY_PROFILE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
May 16, 2013 1:18 PM EDT
Jane Kelly's experience rare on US appeals court
By RYAN J. FOLEY | Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Jane Kelly will become a federal appeals court judge Friday with an unusual background that supporters say makes her a perfect fit for the job and a potential U.S. Supreme Court candidate someday.
The 48-year-old attorney has spent her career as a public defender representing low-income criminal defendants, a rarity in the ranks of appeals court judges who are often former prosecutors and trial judges. She'll become just the second woman in the 122-year history of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles cases in seven states from Arkansas to the Dakotas.
Kelly, who's worked at the federal public defender's office in Cedar Rapids since 1994, graduated from Harvard Law School in the same 1991 class as President Barack Obama. But her appointment was far from patronage. She had so much support that her confirmation received a 96-0 vote in the Senate less than three months after she was appointed, speedier than any other circuit judge nominated by Obama. She also is the survivor of a 2004 beating on a popular jogging trail that left her hospitalized for weeks and shook Cedar Rapids.
Associates say she is a smart legal thinker who has zealously defended the rights of even the most publicly despised clients, including a notorious mailbox bombing suspect and the biggest white-collar criminal in Iowa history. Even prosecutors who disagreed with her in court praise Kelly, who will take the oath of office privately.
"Her story is compelling all the way around," said Debra Fitzpatrick of the University of Minnesota-based Infinity Project, which advocates for more women on the 8th Circuit. "Her credentials and her background and her career sort of set her up to be the right candidate at the right time."
If a Supreme Court justice retires during Obama's second term, Kelly could get mentioned as a potential nominee. Her supporters say they expect her to shine on the circuit, which has 11 active judges and hears 3,500 appeals a year. The lifetime appointment pays $184,500 annually.
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, recommended Kelly to Obama to replace retiring Judge Michael Melloy after she rose above an "outstanding" pool. He said she would be the first career public defender on the circuit, bringing "a critically important perspective."
Iowa's other senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, ranking member on the judiciary committee, helped convince colleagues to move Kelly's confirmation quickly. Grassley said he supported Kelly because she received a glowing endorsement from respected retired judge David Hansen of Iowa, appointed to the circuit by President George H.W. Bush.
Kelly, Hansen's clerk from 1992 to 1993, was a persuasive writer and debater who often argued opposing viewpoints to help him flesh out cases, Hansen said.
"She's a delight to be around, and I predict a very bright future for her in the federal judiciary," Hansen said. "She isn't going to have any trouble intellectually with the work because she has a brilliant legal mind."
Kelly, who did not respond to an interview request, received friendly questions and praise at her confirmation hearing. She said her background gives her a "broader view" of the challenges facing defendants but that she'd need to get up to speed on civil matters. She introduced her partner, Tom Lidd, who has credited Kelly with helping inspire and edit his book about Iowa football legend Nile Kinnick.
A long-distance runner, Kelly's life almost ended when she went for a morning jog on the Cedar River Trail in June 2004. She was tackled and beaten by a male stranger, then dragged to a creek and left for dead. Passersby found Kelly in a pool of blood, in and out of consciousness and struggling to call for help. Speculation swirled that the attack was linked to Kelly's legal work, but no one ever was arrested.
Kelly quickly returned to representing criminal defendants after spending months in recovery. Her colleagues gave her the John Adams Award, which recognizes an Iowa lawyer's commitment to the constitutional right to criminal defense. And hundreds gathered one year later for a "Take Back the Trail" event, where Kelly jogged there again for the first time.
Kelly grew up in Newcastle, Ind., and graduated from Duke University in 1987. She earned a Fulbright scholarship to study in New Zealand before enrolling at Harvard, where she and Obama were acquaintances but not friends. She clerked for U.S. District Judge Donald Porter in South Dakota and then for Hansen.
She taught one year at University of Illinois law school before returning to Iowa as one of the first hires for the new public defender's office. She's been a fixture ever since, often representing "not the most popular person in the room," as she put it in her confirmation hearing, including drug dealers, pornographers and con artists.
One of her clients was Luke Helder, a college student accused of terrorizing the nation in 2002 by placing pipe bombs in mailboxes in five states. Kelly helped get Helder declared unfit for trial because of mental illness, and he's been committed for treatment but never prosecuted.
On the day Obama announced her appointment, Kelly was seeking leniency for Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf, who had pleaded guilty to embezzling $200 million from the brokerage's clients over 20 years. The prosecution was a slam-dunk: Wasendorf had confessed in detail after a botched suicide attempt.
Yet Kelly convinced one judge to order Wasendorf's release before sentencing - a decision that stunned Wasendorf and was later overturned. And Kelly shocked observers when she called former U.S. congressman David Nagle to praise Wasendorf's positive contributions to society.
Wasendorf received the maximum 50-year prison term but left satisfied with his representation, said his pastor, Linda Livingston.
"I am just delighted that a woman, not only of her education and experience but of her compassion," Livingston said, "is going to be in that position."
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© 2013 The Associated Press.
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May 16, 2013 @ 3:51 p.m. | The BLT -Blog of Legal Times
Senate Judiciary Approves Sri Srinivasan for D.C. Circuit
by Matthew Huisman
The Senate Judiciary Committee gave unanimous approval to Sri Srinivasan to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, clearing the way for him to be the first new judge on the panel since 2006.
Srinivasan’s nomination now heads to the Senate for a full vote. Srinivasan, if he’s confirmed, would fill one of four vacancies on the D.C. Circuit. Despite the 18-0 vote of the committee, Republicans have signaled they’re not interested in adding any more judges to the appeals court.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced legislation in April that would eliminate three spots on the D.C. Circuit. Other Republicans, including Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), have signed onto the legislation. The D.C. Circuit would lose three judge positions under the plan.
In his prepared opening statement during Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Grassley called upon Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) to hold hearings to examine the caseload of the D.C. Circuit.
"I would hope that effort would be underway before we move on any further D.C. Circuit nominations, beyond that of the current nominee," Grassley said.
In a statement, Leahy did not signal any support for Grassley's request to examine the caseload of the D.C. Circuit and the necessity of additional seats.
"I am glad we are moving forward with this fine nominee in a bipartisan way," Leahy said in a written statement. "But the D.C. Circuit has three additional vacancies, and I look forward to filling those as well."
Earlier this year, Republicans rejected the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Circuit. President Barack Obama has yet to successfully place a judge on the court, often considered the second most important court in the country below the Supreme Court.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, in a written statement, tried to dispel the Republican notion that the open seats should be eliminated.
"The D.C. Circuit is often considered the nation’s second-highest court, but it has twice as many vacancies as any other court of appeals, and its workload has increased by over 20 percent since 2005," Carney said. "Srinivasan’s confirmation will be an important first step to filling this court’s four vacancies, and the full Senate should act without unnecessary delay."
Judith Schaeffer, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, applauded the news of Srinivasan's unanimous confirmation but said that despite the recent break in partisan bickering, she did not expect it to last.
"Given a proposal by Senator Grassley to eliminate three seats on the D.C. Circuit – effectively a mass filibuster of President Obama’s future nominees – the comity exhibited by Senate Republicans this morning is not likely to last very long."
Srinivasan is the principal deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department. He’s a former O’Melveny & Myers partner, where he focused on appellate and Supreme Court litigation.
In other action, the committee approved with a voice vote the nomination of Raymond Chen to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If confirmed, Chen, the deputy general counsel for intellectual property law and solicitor for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since 2008, would be the first Asian American to serve on the Federal Circuit in more than 25 years.
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Todd Ruger contributed to this report.
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From Eric Freedman:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/05/federal-courts-ask-for-emergency-funding.html#more
May 15, 2013 @1:21 p.m. | The BLT - Blog of Legal Times
Federal Courts Ask for Emergency Funding
by Todd Ruger
Federal courts officials have asked Congress for emergency funding, saying the judiciary does not have the budget flexibility to absorb the large mandatory budget cuts that have caused furloughs in the nation's federal public defender and court offices.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Judicial Conference said the courts need an emergency appropriation of $73 million—$41 million for federal public defenders and $32 million for court operations. The money would save 550 jobs in public defender and clerk offices, and prevent 24,000 furlough days for 5,000 employees, the letter states.
The judicial conference request also connected the emergency funding to the Boston Marathon bombing, saying $5 million for projected representation costs "for high-threat trials, including high-threat cases in New York and Boston" that federal public defenders would have been able to absorb had the sequester not happened.
The courts want to replace part of the $350 million overall cut to the federal courts budget as part of sequestration earlier this year, according to the letter from U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Gibbons, the chair of the judicial conference, and former U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
"The judiciary is confronting an unprecedented financial crisis that could seriously compromise the Constitutional mission of the United States courts," the letter states. "We believe our supplemental request meets the threshold for receiving an emergency designation."
The federal courts, the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies have been sounding the alarm about the impact of sequestration cuts since last year. Since the cuts went into effect, federal public defenders offices and clerk of courts have announced furloughs for employees.
Congress has so far restored funding cuts that affected air travel, and allowed the Justice Department to transfer funds to avoid furloughs for the prison officers, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, prosecutors and other officials. So far, the courts have gotten no such consideration.
"Unlike some executive branch entities, the judiciary has little flexibility to move funds between appropriation accounts to lessen the effect of sequestration," the letter states.
The judicial conference says $13 million of the funding would go directly to restoring public safety, because it will bring back half of the sequestration cuts for drug testing, substance abuse and mental health treatment of federal defendants and offenders. The request includes $28 million to avoid deferring for three weeks payments to private attorneys representing indigent defendants.
In an April 17 statement, Chief Judge William Traxler, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, chairman of the judicial conference’s executive committee, said the judiciary is committed to doing its part to reduce the fiscal deficit our country faces. But the budget cuts impact the court’s responsibilities under the Constitution, he said.
"This happens when we cannot afford to fulfill the Sixth Amendment right to representation for indigents charged with crimes," Traxler said. "The predictable result is that criminal prosecutions will slow and our legal system will not operate as efficiently. This will cost us all in many different ways."
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