The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Senate Judiciary to Review Mandatory-Minimum Sentencing

The Senate Judiciary Committee this fall will begin its review of legislation that would allow federal judges to impose prison sentences shorter than the mandatory minimums.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the committee and a co-author of the Justice Safety Valve Act, announced Monday he intends to hold a hearing in September to explore the consequences of federal mandatory-minimum sentences, and to look at reforms "to combat injustice in sentencing and the waste of taxpayer dollars."

The federal government "can no longer afford to continue on the course of ever-increasing prison costs," Leahy said in a prepared statement. "As of last week, the federal prison population was over 219,000, with almost half of those men and women imprisoned on drug charges. This year, the Bureau of Prisons budget request was just below $7 billion."

Imprisoned Lawyer in Fraud Case Sues DOJ for Documents

A lawyer serving 23 years in prison for fraud is suing the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies over the rejection of his requests for documents related to his case.

A federal jury in North Carolina found Gregory Bartko, formerly an Atlanta-based securities lawyer, guilty in November 2010 of conspiracy, mail fraud and selling unregistered securities. In April 2012, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. According to his complaint, filed in Washington federal district court on July 26, he's serving time at the Yazoo Federal Correctional Institution in Yazoo City, Miss. An appeal of the verdict is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

In the two years since sentencing, Bartko said he made a series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act for documents about his case from the Justice Department, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Bartko claimed that with the exception of 36 redacted pages, the agencies failed to produce any records.

Top Obama Administration Officials Meeting to Discuss Voting Rights

President Barack Obama is bringing his administration's top civil rights attorneys to a White House meeting today about voting rights enforcement, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last month gutting a key anti-discrimination provision.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who ran the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2009 until his confirmation two weeks ago, will attend the meeting this afternoon with civil rights leaders and local elected officials.

The Roosevelt Room meeting, closed to the media, will be a discussion on "strengthening the Voting Rights Act and safeguarding every eligible American’s right to vote." White House officials declined to discuss details about the meeting, including naming the civil rights leaders and other officials who will attend the discussion.

This Week in The National Law Journal

Revenues Up: The revenue picture for law firms in 2012 was bright for large law firms — and bleak for smaller shops. Leigh Jones has the story.

Patent Enforcement's 'Black Box': Jenna Greene explores the problems parties on both sides of International Trade Commission proceedings face in tangling with customs officials over exclusion orders that are supposed to stop certain products from entering the United States.

Busy Defense Lawyers: The subjects of recent political scandals in D.C. have hired lawyers from the upper echelons of the white-collar defense bar. Zoe Tillman takes a look at the big-name attorneys involved in recent criminal cases and other local controversies.

The Morning Wrap

Give Peace a Chance: Palestine and Israel will resume peace talks this week in Washington. Reuters reports that Secretary of State John Kerry was instrumental in bringing the two parties to the table after a nearly three year hiatus.

Admissible: The $14 billion insider trading case against SAC Capital Advisors LP will include evidence of court-ordered wiretaps, Bloomberg reports.

Crash: A helicopter crashed in northeastern Pennsylvania, killing five people. The AP reports that the crash happened Saturday night, after the pilot informing air traffic controllers that the helicopter was losing altitude.

IP Lawyers Meet in D.C. to Talk 'Patent Troll' Problems

In the wake of President Barack Obama's pledge last month to battle "patent trolls"—also known as patent assertion entities—intellectual property lawyers in Washington, D.C., met Friday to train a spotlight on his targets.

Speaking at a barbecue lunch on Capitol Hill hosted by the Law and Economics Center at the George Mason University School of Law, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission, Johnson & Johnson Services Inc., and Hogan Lovells made it clear that their beef is with non-practicing entities (NPEs) that only exist to acquire and license patents but do not produce anything, not universities and some individual inventors. Philip Johnson, senior vice president and chief IP counsel at Johnson & Johnson Services, said the crosshairs should be on NPEs that threaten to sue the customers of alleged patent infringers and ask for settlements or licensing fees.

"If we do that, then the reasonableness of the remedies that Congress might end up adopting will be much better in their targeting and applied only to those people who deserve to have it so applied," said Johnson, who also represents The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, an alliance of about 50 companies that advocates on patent policy.

D.C. Circuit Upholds Greenhouse Gas Permitting Rules

A coalition of state and industry groups failed in the latest legal bid to derail implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

A divided panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the groups, including the states of Texas and Wyoming, the Utility Air Regulatory Group and National Mining Association, lacked standing to challenge EPA rules related to permitting requirements.

Because the petitioners "failed to establish that the [challenged] Rules caused them ‘injury in fact,’ much less injury that could be redressed by the Rules’ vacatur...’ we must dismiss the petitions for lack of jurisdiction,” wrote Judge Judith Rogers, who was joined by Judge David Tatel. Judge Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

Holder to Russia: Snowden Won’t Face Death Penalty

The U.S. Department of Justice is urging Russia not to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, pledging that the former National Security Agency contractor would not face the death penalty or torture for allegations he leaked government surveillance secrets.

In a July 23 letter to Russian officials, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. assured the Russian Minister of Justice that Snowden's claims that returning to the United States would result in torture and possible death "are entirely without merit."

"First, the United States would not seek the death penalty for Mr. Snowden should he return to the United States," Holder wrote. "The charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes."

McKenna's Lengthy Lateral Pursuit

In the spring of 2012, Nancy Grunberg got a call from a recruiter asking if she would consider talking to attorneys from the Washington office of McKenna Long & Aldridge. Grunberg, then the co-head of Venable's Securities and Exchange Commission and white-collar defense practice, had been with the firm for more than 10 years.

"I didn't know that much about the firm," Grunberg said. "I was open-minded about McKenna. We didn't feel pressure to get out, so we took our time."

And took their time they did. Tami Azorsky, chairwoman of McKenna's litigation department, spent almost 18 months recruiting Grunberg and two of her Venable colleagues, partners Treazure Johnson and George Kostolampros, before they joined McKenna in June.

"We mercilessly pursued them," Azorsky said.

House Leaders: Separation of Powers Bars Rangel Lawsuit

A lawsuit against U.S. House of Representatives leadership over the 2010 censure of U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is shaping up as a test of the court's ability to review congressional actions.

Rangel sued House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other House members involved in the ethics proceedings in April, accusing them of denying him due process during the ethics investigation and seeking a court order reversing the censure vote from 2010.

In a recent motion to dismiss the complaint, Boehner and the other defendants, represented by Kerry Kircher, general counsel for the House of Representatives, called Rangel's lawsuit an "unprecedented and audacious invitation to the Court to disregard fundamental separation of powers principles and immerse itself in policing the most internal of House proceedings."