Category Archives: Miami

Welcome Home

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

We are back in Miami. The return journey was notable for its length, and especially for the ineptitude of baggage handling at MIA on our flight from Chicago. I'm used to the idea that you never get a bag off a plane in less than 29 minutes — the airport boasts that 95% of flights get their first bag within 30 minutes — but 50 minutes? For a domestic flight? On a weekday evening?

Someone did manage to get three or four bags off our flight about 35 minutes after we landed — and I bet they log it as within 30 minutes — but the fact is that not one more bag came off until about 50 minutes after the flight landed, so pretty much the entire plane's passengers were there (mostly tourists from the look of them) getting more and more steamed in the hot, crowded, low ceilinged baggage claim area around carousel 24.

MIA is festooned with signs bragging that it was selected as the 'airport of the year' last year.

About the 45 minute mark I went to the nearby baggage handling desk to ask if they had a complaint form. The man looked at me as if I was insane, or speaking a language he never heard of. Once that failed to drive me off, he started tapping on his computer screen. No, they don't have complaint forms, but there's a long-distance number you can call 24/7 or a PO Box you can write to. The lady behind me in the line said she was there for the same reason – to find out what they'd done with our flight's bags.

I was afraid I might know what was going on: could it be that the ramp rats were back? (In the past MIA has been plagued with a baggage theft ring.)

Then again, maybe it was the MIA TSA. They won an award too.

In the end, the bags appeared, and we dragged ourselves home.

Posted in Miami | 14 Comments

South Florida’s Quality Process Will Pick a Good US Attorney (This Time)

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Southern District of Florida Blog has a good round-up on The US Attorney Interviews. We have a great panel and it is reassuring to read that it seems to be faced with a choice of several high quality candidates.

I just want to emphasize one large and one small point. The large one is the elephant in the room that the author of the blog post is too polite to mention: both the panel's questions and most of the answers are an at least implicit indictment of the tenure of the former US Attorney, now a law school Dean (apparently without tenure?) somewhere in this area.

The small point is that I was pleased but not surprised to read of the good questioning by panel member Justin Sayfie. Mr. Safyfie, now a big player in state GOP circles, was one of the best students I ever had. There are a lot of other very fine people on that panel, not least Georgie Angones from the UM law school administration, but it's especially nice to see former students not only doing well but also doing good.

Posted in Miami | Comments Off on South Florida’s Quality Process Will Pick a Good US Attorney (This Time)

SD Fla US Attorney’s Office Circumventing Court Order

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

David O. Marcus writes in Southern District of Florida Blog: U.S. Attorney's Office still keeping cooperation secret from public,

Although Chief Judge Moreno and the rest of the SDFLA court have made plea agreements public again by allowing them to be accessed by PACER, the government is still attempting to keep cooperation agreements secret and off-line.

A number of AUSAs and AFPDs have emailed me the new government policy when a defendant is cooperating: Just delete those sections* from the plea agreement and include them in a letter agreement, NOT FILED WITH THE COURT. This new policy certainly circumvents the spirit of making deals open to the public. From what I understand, the prosecutors ask the court to go over the cooperation letter agreement with the defendant, but then ask for the letter not to be filed in the court record. I suspect that most judges will not abide by this request, especially because technically the letter is a matter of public record if reviewed in open court — so why not file it…

I might add that the proprietor of the shop engaged in this behavior is about to become the Dean of a law school. I wonder if this is what they will teach in their Legal Profession course?

Posted in Law: Criminal Law, Miami | 1 Comment

FIU Makes a High-Stakes Bet on Alex Acosta

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Controversial Alexander Acosta has been named Dean at neighboring FIU Law. See the AP story and the FIU statement. He'll be stepping down as US Attorney in a few days, and starts soon after.

FIU President Modesto A. Maidique said, “His connections at the national and local level and his proven leadership here at home will inspire the next generation of law students at FIU.''

I've never met Mr. Acosta, but I hear from those who have that he's a genuinely impressive human; smart, confident, very articulate. These are good qualities for a Dean. He'll need all those qualities, because jumping into academe is much harder than it looks. There have been some fine practitioner law Deans, but they are in the minority (cf. Why A Practitioner Dean Sounds Like A Better Idea Than It Usually Is). One thing to look forward to: a visit by Justice Alito, for whom Mr. Acosta clerked while he was on the Court of Appeals.

In addition to his extensive local ties, Mr. Acosta also has a sterling c.v., including praisworthy work on language-access issues, but there are also some question marks. Before becoming the local US Attorney, Mr. Acosta served in a leadership role in the Bush Justice Department as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. That means he was responsible for among other things:

By some accounts Mr. Acosta did much better at the US Attorney's office than I would have predicted from his resume, or from his initial statement that his chief law enforcement priority would be porn rather than terrorism, narcotics trafficking or, say, public corruption. But there are also reasons to doubt whether things were as great as some local lawyers have liked to suggest: his office tried the Liberty City Six (Seven, Five, whatever) three times, at the cost of millions that surely could have been better spent. It was on Mr. Acosta's watch that prosecutors in the US Attorney's office made recordings of defense lawyer (and blogger) David O. Markus in violation of internal policies of the U.S. Attorney's Office and federal evidentiary rules. This lead U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold, only a few weeks ago, to issue a strongly worded, 50-page opinion, reprimanding prosecutors from the US Attorney's office, and requiring the government to pay $600,000 in sanctions for Mr. Acosta's subordinates' misdeeds.

Although the gracious Prof. Wasserman says at Prawfsblog that the public nature of the FIU Dean search did not affect the outcome, one can't help wondering. Once a local reporter mistakenly identified Mr. Acosta as a leading candidate (when he was in fact at the top of a very long alphabetical list), that made it much more difficult for him not to be shortlisted. The faculty may or may not have wanted him. Then again, we don't know whether the other top candidates kept their hats in the ring, or whether this is something FIU law faculty member and irascible columnist Stanley Fish lobbied for, or FIU President Mitch Maidique just wanted.

I hope FIU Law prospers under Dean Acosta — their students and faculty deserve it, and it's certainly good for us intellectually to have another thriving faculty so near by.

Meanwhile, I'm happy about our new Dean. (See Patricia D. White to Be Dean of University of Miami School of Law.)

Posted in Law School, Miami | 7 Comments

Studies in Comparative Stress Reduction

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Blenderlaw catches something at fighting stress in the uk and in miami:

The BBC and the Miami Herald both addressed the issue of how to fight stress this week. The proposed solutions aren’t exactly the same. Top of the BBC’s list are lightboxes – which we don’t need in Miami!

The BBC’s list:

  • lightboxes,
  • get out in the garden,
  • get yourself out of breath,
  • cook a meal from scratch,
  • stroke a cat,
  • pat yourself on the back,
  • take up a lifetime hobby,
  • do something for someone else…for free,
  • seek intimacy and
  • good things take time.

The Miami Herald:

  • exercise,
  • positive thinking,
  • hypnosis,
  • massage,
  • tai chi,
  • yoga,
  • laughter,
  • music,
  • meditation,
  • biofeedback,
  • make a friend,
  • acupuncture and
  • get going.

Blenderlaw again:

There are some similarities here: both lists suggest exercise and positive thinking, for example. But whereas the Miami list is largely focused on what the stressed out person can do for herself, the BBC’s list encourages more looking outwards. Even stroking a cat is presented as being a good thing partly because it involves giving: “in a way we reward ourselves by being nice”. Nowhere does the Miami list suggest that being nice to others or volunteering can help you fight stress.

She's right. But if I were making the Miami stressbusters list, suggestion #1 would be, “Don't drive.”

Posted in Miami, UK | 2 Comments

Minimal Human Decency Abridged

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Fred Grim in the Miami Herald, Florida sex offender policy puts inhumane nightmare under bridge:

No, you think. That can't be. Not after two years. Makes no sense.

But they're still there, a bedraggled colony of outcasts, consigned to the bowels of the Julia Tuttle Causeway — as a matter of public policy.

No, you think. That's impossible. Last winter, state officials promised they'd solve the legal conundrum and international embarrassment that forced 19 sex offenders to live like rats under the concrete support beams of a causeway bridge. The camp's still there. Only the Tuttle bridge population has since grown to 48 men, crammed together in a nether existence of the Kafka kind.

Officially, of course, the state of Florida would never compel ex-offenders to live in unsanitary conditions in the dank underbelly of a freeway bridge, in tents, shacks, cars and two rusting campers. Yet parole officers have made it clear to ex-sex offenders who've served their prison sentences that they have no other options.

City and county laws have created so many overlapping forbidden zones — 2,000 or 2,500 feet from schools, day cares, parks, playgrounds, school bus stops — that the middle of Biscayne Bay has become an ex-offender's only allowable address.

“They check us here every evening. We've got to be here or we go back to prison,” said M.C., 48, who was banished to the bridge after his release from prison two years ago.

How can this be allowed to continue?

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Posted in Miami | 25 Comments