Legislature's Bill Moving Forward to Eliminate Depositions for Third Degree Felony Prosecutions

Brian Tannenbaum and the BACDL have been out there presenting themselves as an effective lobbying force to help the criminal defense bar as well as their clients.

Trying to adopt the policy utilized to curtail discovery in misdemeanors, some date legislators are proposing a bill to ban depositions for third degree felonies. The measure passed 5-3 in a Florida Legislature a Sub committee. There is reason to be concerned. The federal courts do it. Legislators have a disconcerting precedent.

The defense bar has been organized and pro active in attempting to stop this plan. Good for them. Congratulations to its leaders. Why would the state want to do this? Why would the people elected to protect the rights of citizens want to develop legal processes which inhibit their rights at a time and moment, after an arrest, when they most need to be protected?

There is no good reason to justify the inhibition of discovery in criminal cases. Not money. Not time. Not expedience. Our system is designed to be about justice. It started with misdemeanors; a little bit more understandable. But felonies? When you face mandatory adjudications on a host of crimes? You would have to plead to take a cop’s depo on a battery charge? You are going to create more abuses of discretion and more time consuming motions by having to petition for something which is already routine. Stop the insanity and join with the BACDL in opposing this bill. And kudos to Brian Tannenbaum for covering these updates on his blog.

I think Rumpole’s ‘Justice Building Blog’ in Dade made another interesting case. If you want to eliminate depos in third degree felonies, re-evaluate first whether too many crimes are so classified unnecessarily. Ask whether we as a society, in our unsuccessful attempts to control crime, have not ‘over-felonized’ too many offenses which should be otherwise treated.

I think you can make a strong argument that a host of drug crimes, check charges, and burglaries can be reduced to misdemeanors warranting treatment instead of felonies warranting incarceration. If we are looking for better ideas, it may not be taking away the rights of defense attorneys and their clients. It might be taking away some of the excessive powers invested in prosecutors and law enforcement. Maybe that is why one in one hundred Americans are on felony probation. Not because we are a bad people but we have bad laws.

And as long as I am blogging about depositions, just what is the clerk doing to end the insane practice of naming law enforcement officers as felons for missing depos? I can't believe that the Daily Business Review or the Sun Sentinel has not picked up on this story which represents a clerical abuse worthy of a class action against the clerk's office. It has known about this practice for years. Here is my blog from a few weeks ago about the injustice:

http://browardlawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/breaking-newsadministrative-error-leads.html

Senator Sobel Wants to End Shylocking Shots

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same Means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (3.1)

Senator Eleanor Sobel has a lot of time on her hands.

She wants the word "shylock" struck from Florida statutes. Did not even know it was there. Thought it was stuck in an old Shakespearean play.

Shylock was the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's 16th century play "Merchant of Venice," who sought a pound of flesh for an unpaid loan. The term is often used to define someone who loans money at exorbitant interest rates. Today those people are called credit card companies.

Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, said today the word found in certain provisions of state law is discriminatory and offensive to Jewish people. Florida statutes use the term as a synonym for loan shark and "shylocking" as a synonym for loan sharking, considered ruthless, greedy and dishonest.

Sobel's bill (SB 318) is set for a Senate vote, perhaps as early as next week. The House has a similar proposal (HB 151). That should fix our economy in no time.

Actually, it's a good thing. I don't mean to mock it. But I am thinking there are some other things I would like our legislators to be doing also. How about demanding that some creditors rebate the usurious rates they charge consumers? Or putting a ceiling on them? That would be a start. We could call it the Anti Ex Shylocking Law.

Look, there used to be a canal on the way to the Keys called Jewfish Creek. Ichthyologists decided the name was offensive a couple of years ago. So your big fat bottom feeding Jewfish got renamed Goliath Grouper. And a lot of people were etyologically satisfied. But whenever I stopped off at the Seven Mile Grill and had their fresh fish sandwich, which used to be Jewfish, I would now have to ask for a Goliath Grouper. It just did not comport. You just don't rename a hot dog or hamburger. But good luck to you Eleanor, if the law unnecessarily disparages Jews let's change it. Yeah, let's change it from shylocking to Madoff-ing.

Florida Lawmakers to Outlaw Rubber Ducky

Some things you can't make up. And some things as a blogger you just can't write. You have to defer to the original author. Or steal their ideas outright. In this case, I will defer to Kyle Munzenrieder in New Times today. Besides, if I did not, with a name like his you think he might track you down and kill you. Anyway, Kyle scores many brownie points with this incisive and very real scoop.

"In case you haven't noticed we're in the middle of some serious stuff right now, politically speaking. Oh, you know greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, underfunded schools, a failing health care system, that kind of stuff. Which is why we're just so glad the Florida House spent a lot of time debating the ever pressing topic of novelty lighters. Yes, little lighters that resemble toys. Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, wants to ban them, but Rep. J.C. Planas, R-Miami happens to be quite fond of his hotdog shaped lighter --no seriously-- so he tried to amend the bill to allow for lighters that resemble food, beverages, musical instruments, or guns. Which would still outlaw this. They then spent 45 minutes talking about this stupid, stupid nanny state measure before a three year old innocently playing with a butane lighter resembling a rubber duckie accidentally lit them all on fire. "

This reminded me of the oldest piece of pornography that I acquired as a child, from someone who had gone to Europe. They brought me back a lighter, which showed a large- breasted woman in a shower, but when you tilted the lighter backwards, the shower curtain opened and revealed her breasts. I think in Broward County, State Attorney Mike Satz requires 18 months for possession on that one.