The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

DOJ Report Urges Prison Reform for Compassionate Release

A comprehensive review of the federal prison system’s compassionate release program revealed a lack of standards for the evaluation of whether an inmate qualifies for a reduction in sentence, according to a U.S. Justice Department report published today.

The department's Office of the Inspector General found Bureau of Prisons staff had "varied and inconsistent understandings of circumstances that warranted consideration of compassionate release." Prison officials, the report also concluded, don't have effective procedures in place to inform inmates about the potential for compassionate release.

Under the program, the bureau can ask a federal judge to end a sentence based on "extraordinary and compelling" circumstances that were not present at the time the defendant was sentenced. In the six-year review period ending in 2011, the report said 142 inmates were approved for, and received, compassionate release. Click here for a copy of the report.

The DOJ report cited "multiple failures" in the implementation of compassionate release. The report found, among other things, disparate criteria for eligibility. For instance: at some prisons, only inmates with a life expectancy of six months or less were eligible. At others, inmates with a life expectancy of under a year were deemed eligible.

D.C. Chief Judges Celebrate Law Day on Twitter

Summing up courthouse policy and practices in 140 characters isn't easy, but the chief judges of Washington's local courts gave it a try this morning as part of this year's Law Day festivities.

Replying to tweets with the hashtag #AskTheCJs, Chief Judge Lee Satterfield of the D.C. Superior Court and Chief Judge Eric Washington of the D.C. Court of Appeals spent an hour collaborating on responses via Twitter. A photo posted by the court showed the two judges seated with tablets in front of a large television screen displaying the Twitter feed.

The judges fielded two questions about jury duty, tweeting that the court was making efforts to tailor the number of people summoned to meet courthouse needs. They engaged in creative abbreviating to stay within the 140-character limit.

Law Firms Raise $3.6 Million for D.C. Civil Legal Services

Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made an impassioned plea yesterday for law firms to take more responsibility for the welfare of civil legal services groups, lamenting the small percentage of the legal industry's billion-dollar revenues that go to financially-strapped providers.

Tatel spoke at an event honoring 36 law firms that contributed $3.6 million last year to local civil legal services through the D.C. Access to Justice Commission's second annual Raising the Bar in D.C. Campaign. Firms were honored based on the percentage of annual D.C. office revenues donated to legal services; the number of participating firms in 2012 was up from the 23 that participated in 2011.

Tatel praised the private bar's efforts to assist their colleagues in civil legal services, but warned the challenges facing individuals who can't afford a lawyer "is only getting worse." In the District of Columbia, for instance, he noted that more than 90 percent of litigants are unrepresented in certain types of civil cases.

DOJ Asks Judge to End Suit Over Afghan War Memoir

The Justice Department has renewed its effort to shut down a lawsuit in Washington over the scope of information a former U.S. defense intelligence officer can publish in a memoir about service in the war in Afghanistan.

DOJ lawyers said in court papers filed April 26 that the government has determined that some of the details in the book, Operation Dark Heart, written by Anthony Shaffer, are classified and cannot be publicly disclosed. "[T]here is no First Amendment right to publish classified information," Scott Risner of the DOJ civil division's federal programs branch wrote.

Shaffer's book, DOJ lawyers said, reveals "intelligence activities, sources and methods, as well as information about military plans and the foreign activities of the United States that, if disclosed, could reasonably be expected to cause serious identifiable damage to our national security." The dispute centers on information in 233 passages. The redactions include single words and whole sentences.

Obama Vows Closure of Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp

President Barack Obama said he will again press to close the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, calling it "not something that's in the best interest of the American people."

"I'm going to go back at this," Obama said at a White House press conference Tuesday morning, in response to a question about prisoners staging an on-going hunger strike over being held without trial.

"The idea we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, it's contrary to who we are. It's contrary to our interests and it's got to stop," Obama said. "All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this?"

The Morning Wrap

Given Probation: U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp scolded a Justice Department trial attorney for the government "not using a little more discretion" in prosecuting a 79-year-old widow, telling the defendant to appeal to the President for a pardon, Bloomberg reports.

The A-Team: A criminal trial of the suspected Boston Marathon bomber would pit "veteran defenders of a veritable rogue's gallery of criminal A-listers" that could make it "one of the most spectacular on American soil in decades," The Atlantic reports.

Return to Hanging Chads: As the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 presidential election revisits the twists and turns of the 36-day legal standoff between George W. Bush and Al Gore and their respective phalanxes of attorneys in Inside Bush v. Gore, to be published Tuesday by University Press of Florida, Am Law Daily reports.

The Am Law 100: Washington's Financial Report Card

Updated 5:15 p.m.

Washington law firms generally maintained their ranking on the this year’s Am Law 100, our sibling publication's annual financial report card. Of 12 Washington firms, nine saw an increase in gross revenue, the main metric of the survey. Washington firms remained fairly consistent with their national counterparts of which 76 percent saw an increase in gross revenue.

Arnold & Porter saw its gross revenue grow to $731 million, an increase of 14.3 percent over 2012. The firm had the biggest gross revenue gain among the Washington firms. Arnold & Porter climbed seven spots on the ranking to 37^th overall.

Arnold & Porter chairman Thomas Milch attributed part of the bump in gross revenue to its merger with San Francisco-based Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin in January 2012. He said that despite the firm's positive numbers, the legal market would continue to be a challenge.

"We think that the marketplace will stay challenging not just for firms that grew up in D.C., but a lot of the firms in the top 100," Milch said in an interview Monday.

D.C. Court of Appeals Chief Unopposed for Third Term

In 2012, the median time for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to resolve cases was 352 days. It was the first time in a decade that number dropped below the one-year line, and as Chief Judge Eric Washington prepares for what will likely be another tem as chief, he says he wants to do better.

Washington is unopposed in his bid for a third four-year term leading the city's highest local court. He is widely credited with making the court more efficient, but complaints about case backlogs have persisted. In his application materials, Washington wrote that "fair and timely resolution" of cases remains a top priority.

According to court statistics, the median number of days it took the court to resolve cases dropped from 10-year highs of 505 days in 2002 and 2007 to 352 days last year. The average time it took to resolve cases remained higher—a sign that certain cases are still taking much longer—although the court also reached a 10-year low of 427 days last year.

DOJ Watching for Boston Bombing Retaliation

The U.S. Department of Justice is focusing not only on the prosecution of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, but also protecting Muslims and other cultural groups from retaliation in the wake of such attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said Monday.

In a speech to the Anti-Defamation League in Washington, Holder stopped short of saying he would pursue the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, saying only that he would hold the 19-year-old defendant, charged in Boston federal district court, accountable "to the fullest extent of the law."

"But I also want to make clear that—just as we will pursue relentlessly anyone who would target our people or attempt to terrorize our cities—the Justice Department is firmly committed to protecting innocent people against misguided acts of retaliation," Holder said.

The Morning Wrap

Ricin Arrest: A Mississippi martial arts instructor is in police custody as part of a probe into ricin-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and two other public officials, Reuters reports. Everett Dutschke, 41, faces maximum possible penalties of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

'Goodbye': Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said she isn't sure the court should have taken Bush v. Gore, which ended the Florida recount and decided the 2000 presidential election, the Chicago Tribune reports. "It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"

Transportation Nomination: President Barack Obama intends to nominate Charlotte, N.C., mayor Anthony Foxx to serve as the next transportation secretary, The New York Times reports.