Federal prosecutors say that U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf — who rescinded killer Gary Lee Sampson’s 2003 death verdict after learning a juror lied about her family’s criminal history — entertained a defense witness on Martha’s Vineyard last summer even after noting in an order that Dr. James F. Gilligan’s psychiatric report was part of the Sampson defense. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office has asked for evidence in the matter from Wolf before deciding whether to ask Wolf to recuse himself from Sampson’s penalty phase retrial, due to start this fall.Carmen Ortiz... a familiar name. I'll have to publish this post to click on the tag and refresh my memory.
Wolf disclosed Friday that he and Gilligan were co-panelists last July at a Martha’s Vineyard Film Society screening of a documentary on prison guard brutality titled, “The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest.” Wolf admitted in court yesterday he invited Gilligan and attorney Alan Dershowitz to his vacation home for lobster rolls before the event.
ADDED: Ah, yes, Ortiz is the prosecutor who went after Aaron Swartz.
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Is it a conflict of interest to allow an expert witness who is friendly with the judge? I can think of reasons both why it might be and why it's not.
Man of the people.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf — who rescinded killer Gary Lee Sampson’s 2003 death verdict after learning a juror lied about her family’s criminal history —
A mistrial was just declared in the Vanderbilt rape case because a juror did not report being a victim of sexual assault during jury selection (he claimed it was a consensual relationship and thus didn't think of it at the time).
Consider all the rules to enforce a "fair" system. Is it really correct to assume a victim of a crime is so tainted they cannot be trusted to be fair in a completely different case? That seems a leap to me. Some people have proven themselves unable to move on sure, but a blanket ban seems extreme. So why did we allow it? Are we just erring on the side of caution because we believed even if the benefit was small there was no cost? If so we found it.
"A reasonable person could not question my impartiality"
A reasonable person could question anyone's impartiality.
Rick, I agree. We are entitled to a jury of our peers, which should mean basically 12 random people. Key to the jury system is that the government does not decide who is on our jury (they are the last line of protection against tyranny).
Virtually the entire process of jury selection is a violation of the rights of the accused as well as the rights of the American people.
That news article is not well-written. I found it very hard to wade through.
Near as I can make out, the only point to the lobster roll is to demonstrate to others that you can eat it gracefully while keeping the contents from spilling out all over the place.
MadMan- oh, thank goodness. I thought my reading comprehension skills had taken a serious nosedive.
Cozy
The headline's a pretty good crash blossom, though.
Remember that judge who went nuts last month and started throwing benches at people? He just got mugged by a lobster!
Hahahahaha, Paul Z!
Not how my lobster rolls, anyway.
"...to ask Wolf to recuse himself..."
Are you shitting me? The man should be fired and disbarred.
Well, let's see...
The circuit judge vacates the sentence by inventing a new category of bias ("inferable"). US appeals and the CA rightly disposes of the nonsense of the new construct, but decides that the juror dishonesty is sufficient without the trial judge's straining. The circuit judge has now decided that there are IAC issues from the original penalty phase trial that he presided over but somehow missed the rampant unconstitutionality at the time. In the meantime, he decides to join a defense expert witness, a well-known DP opponent, in a film screening jury of a film about prison brutality. Then the judge invited the defense witness over the dinner at his place. The relationship between judge and US Attorney's Office is becoming contentious, with a new AUSA taking the case, the judge getting testy over continuances, etc. Even at the original 2003 sentencing, the judge went out of his way to list all the ways a DP was pretty useless. Oh, and the judge has mentioned on the record that he felt the defendant may have been mentally ill and that the jury got it wrong, in a throwaway line somewhere.
And the judge seems a little...disengenuous, let us say, when he claims he didn't know the defense expert was, you know, a defense expert at the time they smoozed over lobster and anti-prison films, just because the defense expert's name had been all over motions and discovery for months. And the case never came up. Naw. No reason for the prosecutors to feel somewhat disadvantaged.
Oh, please.
BTW, this is the same judge who ordered sex change surgery for a state prison inmate as a Federal right.
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