Possible Plea: Federal District Judge Larry Burns will decide today if the suspect in the deadly Tucson, Ariz., mass shooting is mentally fit for trial, the Washington Post reports. And if so, Jared Lee Loughner is expected to then plead guilty to at least one charge in the January 2011 shooting at a Tucson supermarket that killed Arizona's chief federal judge, John Roll, and injured then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
'Inspector Clouseau-like' Discovery: Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke sanctioned law firm Greenberg Traurig for "negligently" failing to turn over documents in discovery in a case related to a Ponzi scheme run by a now-disbarred Florida lawyer, Bloomberg reports. Cooke said she found a "pattern of discovery abuses before, during, and after trial." She declined to sanction individual lawyers at Greenberg Traurig whose “handling of this case left much to be desired." "It often times appears that this litigation was conducted in an Inspector Clouseau-like fashion," Cooke wrote. "However, unlike a ‘Pink Panther’ film, there was nothing amusing about this conduct and it did not conclude neatly."
Cruel and Unusual?: Federal District Judge Sandy Mattice ordered a man caught horse "soring" to write a newspaper article about the topic as part of his probation, Chattanoogan.com reports. Mattice directed John Mays to "describe the different types and the immediate and long-term effects it brings on the horses."
'Fighting Sioux' Fight Over: District Judge Ralph Erickson ended a political fight over the University of North Dakota's "Fighting Sioux" nickname, throwing out a lawsuit filed by six American Indian students there, the Associated Press reports.
Symbolic Courthouse: Republican lawmakers holding a field hearing in Florida on Monday called the historic but empty federal courthouse in downtown Miami a costly symbol of the government's sluggishness at selling or finding new purposes for some 14,000 vacant or underused properties nationwide, the Associated Press reports.
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