Over at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, reporter Ashby Jones rounds up some of the reaction to the verdict of the trial against accused embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in civilian courts, was acquitted on all but one count of conspiracy. He faces up to life in prison.
So is one conviction still a win? And what does this do to Attorney General Eric Holder’s proposal that the Sept. 11 plotters be tried in civilian courts?
It depends on who you ask, Jones reports.
Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and the founder of Keep America Safe, called the Obama administration “reckless” for insisting on a civilian trial. On the other side, Daphne Eviatar, a human rights lawyer writing for The Huffington Post, notes that prosecutors had limited evidence to work with after a judge threw out the testimony of a key witness. Given those limitations, the verdict isn’t surprising.
Over at the New York, writer Amy Davidson notes that the one conviction isn’t so shabby — it comes with a mandatory minimum of 20 years.
The verdict is “a blow to both sides of the debate; neither side comes away with a clean argument for its case,” Robert Chesney, a University of Texas law professor, told the WSJ.
A former Arkansas state representative was the U.S. Attorney nominee for the Eastern District of Arkansas for about 40 minutes Wednesday night.
Christopher Thyer (Gov)
A White House news release at 6:39 p.m. listed Christopher R. Thyer as one of President Barack Obama’s U.S. Attorney nominees, but didn’t include the standard biographical information on him. Then, at 7:17 p.m., the White House issued a correction, saying S. Amanda Marshall of Oregon was the only U.S. Attorney nominee Wednesday night.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Main Justice.
Thyer, a Democrat, who represented Jonesboro in the state legislature, is currently a partner at the law firm of Stanley & Thyer PA in the city.
In May 2009, Democratic Arkansas Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor recommended Thyer for the Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. Attorney nomination. The senators also recommended Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O. Walker and Michael Barnes, a partner at the Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP for the post. Barnes took himself out of the running for the Little Rock-based job in August.
The Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. Attorney’s Office has not had a presidential appointee at the helm since Bud Cummins was ousted during the 2006 U.S. Attorney firing scandal. Rep.-elect Tim Griffin (R-Ark.), a protege of George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, replaced Cummins in 2006, serving as interim U.S. Attorney until June 2007. Jane Duke has led the U.S. Attorney’s office since Griffin’s departure.
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The leader of Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday urged patience as Democratic senators expressed frustration with agency actions that they said prevent the dispensation of prescription drugs.
Michele Leonhart (photo by Daniel Hoffman / Main Justice)
Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing prodded acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart to address delays in the administration of pain medication to individuals in need at nursing homes. The senators wrote in an October 2009 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that enhanced efforts by the DEA to combat illicit prescription drug use have made it difficult for ailing individuals in long-term care facilities to seek quick pain relief.
Kohl met with Leonhart in May to discuss the issue, and in August, requested feedback from the DEA on draft legislation that would allow nurses at long-term care facilities to prescribe drugs like morphine.
The DEA has yet to respond to the request from Kohl. Leonhart would not set a date for the DEA’s response, saying a reply would take time. But Leonhart said she expects the DEA feedback would be “favorable” to the senators.
Kohl said Leonhart should “work a little harder” to make some headway on the proposed bill as a stipulation for her confirmation as the presidentially appointed head of the DEA. Leonhart, the acting head of the agency since November 2007, appeared before the Senate panel as part of a hearing on her nomination to be the Senate-confirmed DEA Administrator.
“It appears that the DEA is putting paperwork before pain relief,” Kohl said.
Leonhart said addressing the concerns of the senators is extremely important to her and the DEA. She said the DEA has enacted short-term solutions that attend to some of the senators’ worries.
The DEA established new policies last month that allow nurses to prescribe some medications to individuals in nursing homes. But pain relief drugs like morphine still require a doctor’s prescription.
“We need to do more and I agree with you,” Leonhart said. “This is a serious issue.”
Whitehouse also took issue with DEA’s work on electronic prescriptions. He said there needs to be “more progress” on that matter, which he said would help modernize the health care system.
The DEA in March issued an interim rule that would allow doctors to electronically prescribe controlled painkillers, but it would still force them to keep paper copies of e-prescriptions of other drugs.
Whitehouse said the rule is a “step in the right direction.” But he said more must be done.
“I believe that the urgency of getting the United States of America onto a robust and secure health information infrastructure so that we can provide Americans with the health care system of the future is a primary national goal and of real urgency,” Whitehouse said.
Leonhart said advancing electronic prescriptions would be one of her priorities if she is confirmed.
“We share your concerns,” Leonhart said. “We think that interim rule was our way of moving forward with what we believe … will help.”
President Barack Obama nominated Wednesday two former prosecutors to be federal judges.
Vincent Briccetti (Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence)
Vincent L. Briccetti is nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A partner in the law firm of Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence, LLP, in White Plains, N.Y., Briccetti previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1985 to 1989.
Obama also nominated Sara Lynn Darrow to be a U.S. District judge in the Central District of Illinois. Darrow is currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Central District, where she is chief of the violent crimes section. She joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in 2003 after four years with the Henry County State’s Attorney’s Office in Cambridge, Ill.
President Barack Obama nominated an attorney with the Oregon Department of Justice to serve as the state’s top federal prosecutor, the White House said Wednesday.
Amanda Marshall (facebook)
S. Amanda Marshall, the top lawyer in the Child Advocacy Section of the state DOJ, is nominated to the Oregon U.S. Attorney post. Marshall was previously the Assistant Attorney in charge of the section, and an Assistant state Attorney General. From 1996 to 2001, Marshall served as a deputy district attorney for Coos County, Ore.
If confirmed, Marshall would replace interim U.S. Attorney Dwight C. Holton. Bush U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut resigned in July 2009 and later became a state judge.
Obama has nominated 78 U.S. Attorneys, 72 of whom have won Senate confirmation. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to consider three of the nominees at its hearing tomorrow.
The Office of Tribal Justice is now its own, stand-alone component at the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday.
The office was established in 1995 as part of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. In July, President Barack Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, which permitted the DOJ to establish the office as a distinct component of the department.
“In the coming years, OTJ will play an important role in continuing the critical dialogue between the department and tribal governments on matters including public safety,” Holder said in a statement. “The establishment of OTJ as a permanent component in the department has been a priority for me and this administration, and it is a critical step in our work to improve coordination and collaboration with tribal communities.”
The office will be headed by director Tracy Toulou, and have a staff of two deputy directors and a special assistant on detail from other Justice Department components. According to the Justice Department, the fiscal 2011 budget has requested funds to hire additional staff for the newly established office. Prior to his position with the Office of Tribal Justice, Toulou served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Montana and as an attorney in the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
Stacia A. Hylton, the nominee to lead the U.S. Marshals Service, rejected allegations at a Senate hearing Wednesday that her previous consulting job would create a conflict of interest if she is confirmed to the agency’s top post.
Stacia Hylton (photo by Andrew Ramonas / Main Justice)
Earlier this month, prison and human rights watchdog organizations blasted Hylton, claiming her work as a consultant in the prison industry would present a conflict of interest.
After retiring from her post as Federal Detention Trustee in March, Hylton received $112,500 in consulting fees from The GEO Group Inc., which contracted with her Virginia-based firm Hylton Kirk & Associates. The GEO Group, one of the largest prison private businesses, receives millions of dollars from U.S Marshal contracts.
In response to a question from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Hylton dismissed the charges and affirmed that she followed the legal procedure.
“I’d like to assure the entire members of the committee that I did follow all ethics requirements and that I worked closely with the ethics office before retirement and subsequently after,” she said.
Hylton previously worked for the U.S. Marshals Services from 1980 until 2004, where she held several high-ranking positions. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on Sept. 20 to become the new director of the U.S. Marshals.
Four student aid U.S. lenders will shell out $57 million to settle allegations they bilked the Department of Education out of millions of dollars by improperly using a loan subsidy, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
According to the complaint, the lenders — Nelnet Inc.; Southwest Student Services Corp., a subsidiary of Sallie Mae; Brazos Higher Education Authority, and Panhandle Plains Higher Education Authority – improperly obtained payments through a federal interest rate subsidy that was intended for a limited class of student loans.
The False Claims Act case was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2007 by Jonathan Oberg, a former Department of Education researcher who retired from the agency in 2005. The Justice Department chose not to intervene in the case, but provided assistance to Oberg, who will take home $16.65 million from the settlements.
Jonathan Oberg (CSPAN)
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller referred all questions on the settlement to one of Oberg’s lawyers, Michael Sturm of Wiley Rein LLP. Sturm declined to comment.
Oberg’s attempts to stop the misuse of the loan subsidy date back as far as 2000, according to a 2007 New York Times article.
While a researcher for the Education Department, Oberg reviewed government filings by student lenders and discovered that the companies were claiming an increasing amount of subsidies. According to a 2006 audit conducted by the Education Department’s Inspector General, Nelnet Inc. — one of the country’s largest student lenders — implemented a new accounting process that allowed it to claim subsidies on $3.66 billion in loans in 2004, up from only $551 million in loans that qualified for the subsidy the year before.
In 2003, Oberg notified the Inspector General’s office and his supervisors, and was told not to pursue the line of research. He later retired, but remained interested in the issue. In the 2006 audit, the department’s Inspector General recommended that agency officials seek the return of $287 million that Nelnet acquired through the loan subsidies. Months later, the Department of Education reached an agreement with Nelnet that required the company to pay back the money and stop using the subsidy.
Oberg later filed the qui tam suit against 10 student aid lenders for their improper use of the subsidy. Bert Rein, a founding partner at Wiley Rein, told the Lincoln Journal-Star in Nebraska last year that Oberg filed the suit because he was dissatisfied with how the Department of Education handled the subsidy issue, particularly the department’s settlement with Nelnet.
In August, the judge in the case, Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson, ordered the companies to enter settlement talks after one of the defendants — Brazos — reached an agreement to settle. A week later, the judge canceled the planned trial, and Nelnet announced it also reached a settlement agreement.
On Wednesday, the court entered a final judgment by consent against a fifth defendant — Student Loan Finance Corp. and its subsidiary Education Loans Inc. Under the judgment, the company will pay the Justice Department $2.5 million, with $500,000 going to Oberg. Because of the company’s current financial situation, the Justice Department will hold off on collecting the money pending further analysis.
Over the past several years, the Justice Department has stepped into more False Claims Act cases. In fiscal 2010, which ended in September, the DOJ brought in more than $3 billion from false claims suits. In June, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West said the Justice Department has taken in about $24 billion since the law was enacted in 1986.
