The American Bar Association has announced the winners of its 2010 Silver Gavel Awards, which honor pieces of journalism “that have been exemplary in helping to foster the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.” I would urge you to read the series that won in the newspaper category.

“Presumed Guilty,” from the Lincoln Journal Star, tells the story of how six people–count ‘em, six–were imprisoned, some for almost two decades, in connection with a rape and murder they didn’t commit. In 2008, DNA evidence excluded two of them from DNA left at the crime scene, and after that the whole case fell apart. Authorities concluded that a seventh person, unrelated to the original six, was solely responsible for the crime. Remarkably, the prosecutor who won the convictions and the police investigator who pieced together the faulty case still insist large parts of it were true.

This is an excellent piece of journalism, and I’d highly recommend it.

Incidentally, the winner in the magazine category is “Trial by Fire” from The New Yorker, another story involving a (purported) wrongful conviction. Unlike in the Nebraska case, though, no officials in the case profiled by The New Yorker have stated that the convicted–and executed–man was innocent.

Take it easy during final exams, law students. According to a New York Times story from 1900, linked to by blogger Josh Blackman, a Harvard Law School student died “of an abscess on the brain caused by overstudy.”

Thornton was one of the hardest working students in the Law School, and as this was his last year he had been applying himself with unusual vigor. A few days ago he was taking the examination in Constitutional law when suddenly in the midst of the examination he became insane, and waving his hands wildly, cried out a number of unintelligible sentences. His condition became rapidly worse, and he died this afternoon.

Something about this just doesn’t ring true to me. Wait, is it the absolutely ridiculous-sounding diagnosis that this poor man died of thinking too hard? Well, maybe that’s part of it. But that’s not what’s really bugging me about this scenario. No, I know what it is: the idea of a 3L busting his butt for final exams.

HT: Volokh Conspiracy.

Charles County Circuit Judge Robert C. Nalley’s deflation of the tire of someone who parked in his reserved courthouse spot last summer is not — in the parlance of his profession — without precedent.

It happened 17 years ago in California. The judge was James M. Slater of the Santa Barbara County Superior Court.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance described Slater’s offense in a Sept. 13, 1993, letter of “public reproval” of the judge.

On April 21, 1993, Judge Slater returned to the Santa Barbara courthouse parking lot after the lunch hour to find a van parked in his reserved parking space. Judge Slater parked in a space reserved for someone else and went into the courthouse, where he contacted the court administrator and said that he wanted the van towed. Judge Slater then returned to the parking lot, where he deflated the right front tire of the van. The van in question belonged to a handicapped person.

Nalley’s case is now before the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities. The panel will decide if Nalley violated judicial canons and, if so, what the punishment should be.

The commission’s investigator, Steven P. Lemmey (who discovered the Slater case), and William C. Brennan Jr., Nalley’s attorney, have mentioned “public reprimand” as an appropriate penalty — the same punishment Slater received.

The facts of the two cases, though similar, have two notable differences:

In contrast to Slater’s case, Nalley’s victim, Jean Washington, was not disabled.

Also, unlike Slater, Nalley pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor offense of vehicle tampering; he was sentenced to probation before judgment, fined $500 and ordered to write a letter of apology to his victim.

In Slater’s case, the Santa Barbara County district attorney declined to prosecute the judge, despite concluding in a report that he had engaged in unjustified vehicle tampering. Slater apologized to the van’s owner and met with a disability-rights group to discuss improving access to public buildings and the sensitivity of government employees to the disabled, the California commission stated in its letter.

There’s research, and then there’s what Montgomery Kosma did. Kosma, co-founder of The Green Bag, reviewed more than 24,000 opinions written by the first 99 U.S. Supreme Court justices and the 1.2 million citations of the opinions that appeared in later Supreme Court and appeals court cases. His findings, according to his interesting guest column in Sunday’s Washington Post:

I found that Supreme Court decisions are highly durable — half the instances in which an opinion is cited occur more than 14 years after the opinion was written. Since the average justice’s tenure is well over a decade, a president should expect that his nominee will probably influence the law for more than 25 years.

Kosma’s point is that the net influence of a justice is no different whether he or she is nominated at 50 or 60. It’s just more concentrated coming from an older justice.  Which is why Kosma argues President Obama should nominate an older candidate as opposed to a younger one.

“The question isn’t if Garland and Wood are too old,” Kosma concludes. “Rather, is Kagan old enough?”

I bet a lot of firms would love to have the kind of growth in profits per equity partner that Saul Ewing had last year. According to the Legal Intelligencer, the firm saw a jump of 14.5 percent in this key indicator of law firm financial health even as the economy tanked.

This seems in sync with what the firm itself and others in the legal community were saying about its prospects in the down economy: because of its lean size and comparatively low rates, it would continue to pull in business as larger, more bloated firms suffered.

But Saul’s growth in PPP came at a price. The firm cut a few associates and lateral hires and more than a few staffers, although its lawyer headcount remained stable because of new laterals. Retreats and sponsorships were culled. The firm deferred first-year associates who were supposed to start in fall 2009 indefinitely; so far, only three of the nine have been brought on. Saul also canceled its 2010 program entirely and instituted merit-based salaries for associates past their second year.

Is such an impressive gain in PPP worth these deep cuts?

HT: The AmLaw Daily.

Merry Monday! Some legal news links to ease the afternoon drag:

• The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a case out of California about whether kids should have access to violent video games. Is it funny to anyone else that the petitioner in the case, Schwarzenegger v. Video Software Dealers Association, made his name by playing ultra-violent characters in blockbuster movies millions of kids saw in the 1980s and 1990s?
• Apparently Hurricane Katrina – and the threat of a repeat disaster – was enough to convince the U.S. Department of Justice to take the Gulfport Municipal Court paperless. (Hat tip: The Legal Technology Blog)
• We know that cross-racial identification can be unreliable, but what about when a white bank robber wears a pricey “Hollywood-quality” mask to disguise his race? (Hat tip: Legal Juice)
• Speaking of (alleged) trickery, Wall Street pillar Goldman Sachs, already under SEC scrutiny for its bets against the housing market, is now the defendant in a shareholder class-action.

(Note: The headline is the first of several bee references I plan to pollinate throughout this blog post. You’ve been warned.)

The University of Baltimore reintroduced its Bee mascot on campus Thursday. The Bee has been part of UB since 1937, but was largely extinct from campus for 30 years. It was more of a reflection of the campus demographics (a lot of part-time, adult students who commuted) than any allergic reaction to a mascot.

“I don’t think there was much of a push because people didn’t care,” said Susan Luchey, director of the Center for Student Involvement.

That changed in recent years with the re-introduction of undergraduate classes. The newest freshmen had been bugging the administration about a mascot, drawing bees in the school newspaper and even giving it a Facebook page.

“They’re looking for an identity in their school, and a mascot is one of those ways,” Luchey said. “Students are excited, but they’re almost embarrassed to say they’re excited.”

Spencer Mierzejewski, a first-year law student, is not one of those students. Mierzejewski got stung by mascot fever after he heard a UB alum utter the phrase “Super Bees.” Having never heard the phrase and shocked the school even had a mascot, he decided to find out more and wrote about spotting bees all over campus on UB’s official blog.

“It’s nice to have something recognizable that stands for the University of Baltimore,” he said.

Mierzejewski said he’d like to see the Bee land in a moot court session. Luchey said the Bee will be at many university functions, from open houses to orientations to graduations. Alumni have already inquired about the Bee making an appearance at their events, Luchey added.

“It’s another notch in the belt of UB becoming a traditional campus,” she said.

Cy Smith is not planning to watch much – if any – of the NFL Draft, which I believe will end sometime in May. But there is a chance some of these rookies could become Smith’s clients when their playing days are over.

Smith has represented numerous retired players seeking additional compensation from the NFL’s pension system, which he and others believe pays less than it should for disabilities caused by on-field injuries. Smith most famously represented the family of Hall of Fame Steelers’ center Mike Webster, which received a $1.5 million verdict in 2005. Last year, Smith settled a case on behalf of two former players, and he has several more cases at their earliest stages.

Perhaps the greatest danger facing players is head and brain injuries. Smith said research has shown that anyone who plays major college football and then pro football is at “serious” risk for repetitive concussion syndrome; oftentimes it’s not the biggest hit that causes the most damage but the accumulation of blows to the head. (For more on concussions, read Malcolm Gladwell’s story from the New Yorker.)

“It’s not a system of chance,” Smith said. “It’s predictable based on the way the game is played.”

The NFL last year recognized for the first time the long-term effects of concussions. The league has also taken steps to curb head injuries, including coming down harder on a player whose tackle or hit involves contact with another player’s head.

Smith said the NFL should be commended for taking steps to protect the players but that it might not be enough simply because of the nature of football.

“A lot may be inherent,” Smith said. “If that’s true, and we’re willing to have the game played in the way it has historically been played, we have to make sure the players are fairly compensated if they are injured.”

On this Take Your Child to Work Day, I remember the time in August 2008 when my daughter — a fan of the televison show Law & Order — tagged along as I covered a double-murder trial in Montgomery County.

I told her not to expect there to be a lead male prosecutor and a female assistant sitting “second chair,” a staple of the long-running NBC show. 

I also warned her that gruesome pictures of the crime scene would not be introduced into evidence, as occurs often on the program. After all – as I was told in law school – the prejudicial effect of such photographs on the defendant outweighs their probative value for the jury.

But when we entered the courtroom, there was Montgomery County State’s Attorney John J. McCarthy at the prosecution table sitting with his female assistant, Kathy Knight. And during the trial, the prosecutors successfully introduced into evidence bloody pictures from the 2002 slayings of Gregory Russell, 47, and his 9-year-old daughter Erika Smith at the father’s Silver Spring home.

My credibility now destroyed, what happened next was only fitting.

During a break in the trial, McCarthy came over and introduced himself to my daughter. She politely responded, “Hello, Mr. McCoy.”

[For those of you who may have been in a coma for the past 16 years, or without a TV, the chief prosecutor on Law & Order is Jack McCoy, played by Sam Waterston.]

As for the trial, defendant Anthony Q. Kelly was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

For extra credit, name the movie that co-starred Waterston and someone who was famously acquitted of a double murder. The answer is here.

Well, that was quick.

The Perring Place Express Deli in Towson has closed six months after opening. A sign on the door says it is temporarily closed and will open under new management in the “near future.” (But we’ve heard that timetable before.)

My courthouse sources said the closing was so sudden last week it even took the employees by surprise. The general consensus was the food was good but a little a pricey. The sources said they’ve heard it could re-open in three weeks, but no one is holding their breath.

And so the Deli Watch begins again…