The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Murder Caught on Tape

A fatal drug-turf battle, which was recorded by a condominium complex's security videotape, triggered a first-degree murder conviction Monday for 33-year-old D.C. resident Lamont Michael Brown after a jury trial, announced Prince George's County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey, who said "violent turf wars over drug territories will not be tolerated."
On Jan. 29, 2006, Brown opened fire on 29-year-old rival Andre Williams outside the Lynn Hill Condominiums in Temple Hills, Md., in an argument over drug territory in the area. Brown fired eight shots, hitting Williams in the chest and legs who died at the scene. After the shooting, Brown ran into the condominium complex and jumped from a fourth-floor unit to avoid pursuing police officers. He was captured eight days later in Milwaukee, Wis., after he was arrested on an unrelated disorderly conduct charge. Brown faces up to life in prison without parole at his sentencing next month.

Twist of Feet

At age 68, Justice Stephen Breyer is pretty spry, and by no means the oldest justice (John Paul Stevens takes that honor, at age 86.) So why was Breyer spotted walking with a cane Tuesday as he left the bench? A "flareup of tendonitis in his left ankle" is how Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg explained it. But the injury was not suffered on the squash court or the bike trails of Cambridge. As we hear it, one recent day, as Breyer was walking down the hall in the Court building, he twisted his right foot as he turned to speak to someone. That caused him to put too much weight on his left foot, causing the flareup and necessitating the cane, which will be a temporary accessory. In the meantime, don't expect any major shifts to the left or right from Breyer.

But Everybody Does It

Hillary had problems with them. So did Bill Frist. So don't be too tough on poor Lester. That in essence is what defense attorney Barbara Van Gelder argued today in D.C .'s federal court, asking Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson to have mercy on former Food & Drug Commissioner Lester Crawford. Crawford, who resigned in fall 2005 just two months after being confirmed as commissioner, pleaded guilty in October to two misdemeanor charges of withholding financial information and a conflict of interest over his ownership of stock in companies including Pepsico Inc. and Sysco Corp. and the drug company Embrex Inc.

Today he faced his punishment. Jail was never on the table, so Van Gelder was merely trying to have her client avoid the strenuous task of having to regularly call into probation officials. "This court should not be blind to the fact that so many people are tripping over these forms," Van Gelder said.

Indeed, Crawford told the judge, "I have only one regret and that is that I was not more careful with these disclosure forms." Robinson sentenced him to three years of supervised probation and fined him $89,000—almost $40,000 more than the government requested. He also has to finish 50 hours of community service in the first year.

Legal Tender: A Better Retirement

It looks like today may turn out to be an ugly one in the stock markets. But to avoid panic, it helps to keep some perspective about your long-term investing goals.

By chance, The Legal Intelligencer, an ALM publication in Pennsylvania, published a useful article today on ways investors can improve their savings for retirement. The author, William Suplee IV of Structured Asset Management, summarized findings from Dalbar, a Boston-based research firm that did a quantitative analysis of investor behavior.

Among the reported findings:

Because of timing and trading errors, the average investor over the study's time period trailed the returns of the S&P 500 index by 8 percent.

Buying and holding an S&P 500 index fund would have provided returns better than those of the vast majority of investors.

Over a simulated 20 year-period, an investor who used dollar-cost averaging (that is, investing a predetermined amount of money at regular intervals) would have ending balances 50 percent higher than someone with the behavior of the average investor.

Cheating and Repeating

Sukhbir Singh Bedi may not have been prepared to be an attorney in the District, but you have to give him marks for being persistent. After failing the D.C. Bar test 12 times, Bedi finally passed in 1999, but the D.C. Court of Appeals slapped him down again last week, ruling he was unfit to be admitted as an attorney because he cheated on a 1996 exam. During that test, exam proctors caught him in the bathroom reading from notes, which he cut up and flushed down the toilet. For more on Bedi's saga,
check out a Legal Times item on the case.

Happy at Work?

Last Friday, The Conference Board reported on its new study of job satisfaction in America. (I don't see the full report on its Web site, but a press release giving more detail is available here.) Among the study's findings: Slightly less than half of workers surveyed were satisfied with their jobs overall, and only 36 percent were satisfied with their wages.

Interestingly, worker satisfaction increased with hours worked per week -- at least from a workweek of 40 hours through one of 59 hours. Job satisfaction began to drop at a workweek of 60 or more hours, though.

Do these statistics fit Legal Times readers? Are you satisfied with your job overall? Associates: With the new raises, are you satisfied with your wages? Everyone: Does your job satisfaction really increase if you work more than 40 hours a week?

Blue Rondo à la Turk

California Democrat Henry Waxman, who chairs the potentially powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform — has a new senior staffer to head up one of his most important subcommittees.

Dave Turk, who handled national security legal issues on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff of Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), is now the new staff director of the National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the House Oversight Panel.

The subcommittee, headed by six-term Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), is the largest of the committee’s five subcommitteees and arguably its most important. It opens the post President’s Day legislative season with a Washington Post-induced hearing on the treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital.

Turk spent three years as a counsel for Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), and the past three years on Biden’s staff. A University of Virginia law school graduate, he clerked for then Chief Judge Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Courthouse Closing

Although D.C. Courts' phones and e-mails are down, Legal Times caught up with court spokesperson Leah Gurowitz to get the skinny on the closing. Here's the deal: The court first lost a power line sometime on Saturday but was able to keep running with the two other power lines to the courthouse. But at 3 p.m. yesterday another line went down — leaving two-thirds of the Indiana Street complex in the dark.

Pepco told court officials that it might be several hours before full power was restored so employees, lawyers and jurors  went home early yesterday. Before dawn this morning, Pepco officials told the court they had located the problem and sent in a repair crew to fix it. Gurowitz says the courthouse expects to have power back by the end of today and reopen the building tomorrow. Until then, arraignments will take place in courtroom 202 of the Moultrie Courthouse and new referrals for juvenile cases (the equivalent of arraignments) will take place at the Youth Services Center.

You Don't Even Need the Snow

When the impending Valentine's Day storm shut down the federal government hours before the first flakes fell to the ground, DC Courts were one of the few wings of government that remained open for business. But today — with sunny 40-something degree weather — D.C. Courts will close because of a power outage in the main courthouse, according to an e-mail obtained by Legal Times. Phones at the courthouse appear off the hook and the Superior Court's website is also down. According to the message sent at 6:28 am, arraignment hearings will still go on at a location TBA. But jurors are off duty. That doesn't, however, apply to the Libby jury, which is still expected to convene across the street at the federal courthouse.

The Morning Wrap

Suicide Bombing. Dick Cheney was the target of a Taliban suicide bomber during his visit to Afghanistan. Cheney was not hurt, though the bombing killed and wounded American soldiers and Afghan and Pakistani citizens.

Genocide. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor named two suspects in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ahmed Muhammed Harun, the former innterior minister responsible for Darfur and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a janjaweed militia leader are accused of helping recruit militias responsible for murders, rapes and torture. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in Darfur since fighting began in February, 2003.

Uh-oh. Hillary and Bill Clinton neglected to list a charity on annual Senate financial disclosure reports. Since 2001, the couple has skipped reporting the charity five times, which has allowed the Clintons to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income.

Guilty. The former chief of staff to then-Rep. Robert Ney (Oh.-R), William Heaton, pled guilty to corruption charges stemming from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff that have already landed his boss in jail.

Da Vinci Code 2.0. Somewhere, Mel Gibson is furiously writing a new screenplay: James Cameron is claiming that he's discovered the burial cave that held Jesus in a documentary that will debut on the Discovery Channel. Oh, and that Jesus had a son with Mary Magdelene.

Disaster. The Small Business Administration, which might be taking a cue from Spike Lee’s HBO documentary, is looking into accusations that it made thousands of improper loans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Money quote: “The rush to disburse loans put everyone at risk: the taxpayer, the agency and especially the borrowers.”