We're saddened to learn that former federal judge Harry Claiborne has died.

Harry Claiborne, an impeached federal judge who returned to prominence as a defense attorney and refused to allow bitterness over his downfall to cloud his colorful life and career, died Monday. He was 86. Claiborne, a shrewd defense attorney who long battled cancer and a heart condition, committed suicide, his family confirmed today.

"My road through life has indeed been a rocky one, but, my God, it has been exciting -- I'm the lucky one," Claiborne said in his folksy Arkansas drawl for an Oct. 3, 1996, Sun story.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who as an attorney represented Claiborne during his two criminal trials and his impeachment proceedings in Congress, said Claiborne should be remembered as a man who "put his clients before anything else. "From the time I was a young lawyer coming into town, he was the first criminal defense lawyer I met," Goodman said. "He was a master of the profession. He was unparalleled as far as his ability to marshal the facts of the case and ... present them in a clear and concise way to the jury."

"He was enchanting as far as his work was concerned. I can't think of anybody I miss more in the legal community than Harry Claiborne."

R.I.P., Judge Claiborne.

Britney Spears' divorce attorney is esteemed Las Vegas criminal defense attorney David Chesnoff. Before becoming Mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman and David were law partners. What a formidible pair. As good as it gets. We just saw David on tv, denying that Britney was drunk when she got married. He said she didn't understand what she was doing. Sounds like a prank gone too far, to us--if she didn't understand the consequences, she didn't understand the nature of her actions. Or something like that. We're glad the Judge annulled it. Nice job, David.

Update: Smoking Gun, of course, has the annulment papers. The grounds:

Plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage because before entering the marriage the plaintiff and defendant did not know each others likes and dislikes, each other's desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to state of residency. Upon learning of each other's desires, they are so incompatible that there was a want of understanding of each other's actions in entering this marriage. Additionally, there was no meeting of the minds in entering into this marriage contract and in a court of equity there is cause for declaring the contract void.

These are the statutes at issue:NRS 125350 and 125330. Write them down, you'll never know when you may need one.

Update: The bridegroom speaks.

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From the New York Lawyer:

The International Legal Foundation is looking for lawyers to volunteer service with the Afghanistan public defender's office in Kabul, the New York Law Journal reports. Applicants with a minimum five years' criminal law experience should expect to serve at least eight weeks in Kabul, beginning March 1.

Interviews will be conducted in New York between Jan. 26 and Feb. 6. Résumés may be sent to Executive Director Natalie Rea at NRea@TheILF.org.

Here's more. [hat tip to Hesiod at Counterspin]

By T. Chris

According to a recent study, the percentage of federal criminal prosecutions resolved by trial has declined from 15 percent in 1962 to less than 5 percent last year. Although the number of federal prosecutions has doubled in the last four decades, the number of trials has fallen.

The impact of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which reward most guilty pleas with an automatic reduction of the sentencing range a defendant would have faced if convicted at trial, explains the shrinking numbers.

On the criminal side, there is almost no dispute that the falling number of trials in the federal courts is because of the revisions in sentencing laws. Defendants who insist on a trial can face much longer sentences than those who accept a plea bargain.

From the government's perspective, the guidelines reward a defendant who accepts responsibility by pleading guilty. From the defense perspective, however, the guidelines penalize a defendant who unsuccessfully exercises his or her right to a jury trial. Defendants who face the certainty of a longer sentence if found guilty at trial are often understandably discouraged from leaving their fate to a jury.

Utah U.S. District Court Judge David Sam in tossing the charges in the Olympics bribery trial:

"Several times during the history of this case I have heard counsel for the United States represent themselves as the protectors of our moral values here in the state of Utah and protectors of the sacred standards of the Olympic charter. How commendable and noteworthy. But when considered in the light of the government's evidence in this case, how misplaced," he said from the bench.

We all know that lawyers are not allowed to put their client on the stand to tell a lie. The issue becomes murky, however, as to deciding if the lawyer really knows that what the client intends to say is untrue. Two articles in the current issue of Ethics and Lawyering address the issue.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has defined the lawyer's obligaton:

In State v. McDowell, 2003 WI App 168 (Wis. Ct. App. July 22, 2003), the court set out what the lawyer's obligation is when the lawyer merely believes the witness will testify falsely, but the witness does not admit to the lawyer that he will testify falsely.

Governor Jeb Bush has signed an order directing feeding tubes to be reinserted into brain-damaged Terri Schiavo.

Invoking a law rushed through the Legislature earlier in the day, Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday ordered a feeding tube reinserted into a brain-damaged woman at the center of one of the nation's longest and most bitter right-to-die battles. The Senate voted 23-15 for the legislation, and the House passed the final version 73-24 only minutes later. Bush signed it into law and issued the order just more than an hour later.

....The bill sent to Bush was designed to be as narrow as possible. It is limited to cases in which the patient left no living will, is in a persistent vegetative state, has had nutrition and hydration tubes removed and where a family member has challenged the removal.

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Sentencing guru Carmen Hernandez has just sent out the following with respect to the recent federal sentencing guideline amendments. Carmen is the director of the Defender Services Division Training Branch and a board member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL):

The United States Sentencing Commission on October 8, 2003 voted to adopt a number of amendments to implement the directive to the Commission in section 401(m) of the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, Pub. L. 108–21 (the "PROTECT Act"). The amendments go into effect, subject to technical and conforming changes, on October 27, 2003. These new amendments apply to all cases; more restrictive rules for downward departures in child-related cases went into effect April 30, 2003.

All changes that make the sentence more onerous for the defendant are subject to the prohibition against retroactive application in the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution, Art. 1, § 9, cl. 3. For a thorough discussion of this issue, see "The Feeney Amendment: Effective Date and Ex Post Facto Issues," by Peter Goldberger & Felicia Sarner (July 2003 Champion).

Carmen's summary follows:

Lawyers beware....we now have less First Amendment protections in our personal lives than other citizens.

According to this Connecticut ruling, we're officers of the Court even when we're off-duty!

An attorney's poison-pen letter to former West Hartford Probate Judge John A. Berman is not protected free speech, a Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled late last month, upholding a reprimand lodged against Joseph Notopoulos.

The West Hartford, Conn., lawyer had argued that he wrote and sent the letter in his capacity as a private citizen, not a member of the bar, and therefore shouldn't be disciplined under ethics rules prohibiting attorneys from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice or making statements intended to disrupt a tribunal.

Not so said the Court:

What are the pros and cons of asking the court to allow the jury to take a field trip to the scene of the crime? This new ABA article, View to a Kill, discusses both sides.

Does this take the cake, or what? We've been reading for months about the music industry's intent to sue music downloaders. We assumed they were going to go after the worst abusers. They settled on suing 241 people. We expected these would be users who would be reselling the music for profit.

Not quite. Turns out sued a 12 year old. Not only that, they accepted a $2,000.00 settlement from the girl's mother.

We're sorry the mother settled. This would have been a public relations disaster for the music industry:

The family lives in a city housing project on New York's Upper West Side, and they said they mistakenly believed they were entitled to download music over the Internet because they had paid $29.99 for software that gives them access to online file-sharing services.

If you are worried about liability (this rash of suits is just the first wave), they are offering amnesty if you 'fess up before getting sued and promise never to be bad again.

In an effort to soften the legal attack, the record industry group is also offering amnesty for file sharers who turn themselves in before legal action is taken against them. Under the "clean slate" program unveiled by the industry yesterday, people seeking amnesty must destroy files that they have downloaded illegally and sign a notarized form pledging never to trade copyrighted works again.

Yesterday we explained what was at stake in the debate over loosening ethical rules for lawyers in a manner that would allow them to disclose certain client confidences. We were against the change. The ABA House of Delegates approved the change today, by a vote of 218 to 201.

An interesting footnote. The incoming ABA President, Dennis Archer, supported the change. But the new President Elect, Robert Grey Jr, opposed them.

Opponents said the ABA was knuckling under out of fear that government regulators might step in to require more cooperation from lawyers if lawyers failed to change they way they do business.

"This is not the proper time to bow to threats by others who seek to regulate us," argued ABA President-elect Robert Grey Jr., who will succeed Archer in 2004.

"It is not a time to take the position that the core values of the profession are subject to compromise."

Update: Elaine Cassel has more on what she terms the Bush Administration's war against you--the client--as well as attorneys: