Edward Preciado-Nuno

A retired FBI agent was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter on Tuesday for using a hammer to beat his son’s girlfriend to death, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

Edward Presciado-Nuno, whose trial began last week, had worked at the FBI bureau in San Diego until 2003,when he resigned.

On Nov. 13, 2008, Presciado-Nuno allegedly went to the Las Vegas home shared by his son Jeffrey Preciado-Nuno, his son’s girlfriend, Kimberly Long, and their infant son at the request of Presciado-Nuno’s son. The defendant allegedly asked his son to leave the house while he talked with Long about her moving out due to the turbulent relationship between her and the younger Presciado-Nuno.

Presciado-Nuno claimed that Long attacked him with a hammer for trying to take legal means to get her to leave the house. As a result, he said, he used another hammer against her in self-defense, the Sun reported.

Presciado-Nuno had pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder with a deadly weapon.

The case is being handled by Clark County prosecutor Giancarlo Pesci.

Preciado-Nuno is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 23, 2011. He faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. However, District Judge Donald Mosley has the option of sentencing him to probation.

Right on crime is the smart approach

Last week, the president signed into law an extension of the Bush tax cuts. The Senate voted to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell� policy. And the Republicans killed an omnibus spending bill in favor of a short-term spending resolution. All of these not-so-lame-duck-like happenings obscured the launch of a new initiative that could have a bigger impact on American politics and social policy than any of these developments.

On December 15, conservative leaders from around the country convened at Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and announced a new “Right on Crime� campaign. As its name suggests, the project is aimed at building support for criminal justice reform, including sentencing reform, among conservative policymakers at the federal and state levels. The campaign is being sponsored by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

As president of a nonpartisan organization that has been fighting unjust sentencing laws for 20 years, I could not be more excited about the Right on Crime group. I have never believed sentencing reform was a liberal or conservative issue, and yet for more than a generation, it has been used as a political wedge issue. Put simply, if you were a federal or state policymaker, unless you reflexively supported long, mandatory prison sentences for even nonviolent offenders, you risked being labeled “soft on crime.�

Thus began the tightening of a one-way ratchet – more activity criminalized, prison sentences increased – that has left us with, in part, a lower crime rate and, in whole, an unsustainably expensive and socially destructive corrections system. Today, one of out every 31 Americans is either in prison or jail, on probation or on parole and there are 2.3 million people in prison. That number represents 25 percent of the world’s prison population and yet the United States is home to just 5 percent of the world’s population.

If these numbers don’t seem completely disproportional, then you have to concede against all evidence, including what you know about the goodness and generosity of the American people, that we really belong to the most evil and corrupt society on the face of the earth. And you must blind yourself to the fact that our criminal justice policies are destroying families. At least 1.5 million children have a parent in prison and the majority of these children are under 18 years old.

The economic consequence of locking everyone up and throwing away the key is huge. Prison and corrections spending by the states is now the fastest-growing segment of their budgets, outpacing education and transportation.

I have long wondered why more conservatives have not been willing to apply the same cost-benefit analysis to criminal justice programs that they do to other government activities. How can conservatives in Washington attack the power and spending of the IRS, EPA, and other agencies, while exempting DOJ? And where were the believers in state authority over local matters while Congress federalized more and more crimes and imposed one-size-fits-all sentences? Were the twin wars – on crime, on drugs – truly beyond scrutiny?

Last week, we learned, happily, that the answer is “no.� Prominent conservatives signed a statement of principles organized by the Texas Public Policy Foundation with a simple overarching message: conservatives who have been tough on crime now need to get tough on criminal justice spending. It is time to try new alternatives to controlling crime that will give us more bang for the taxpayer’s buck. The endorsements for this new approach came from all rooms in the conservative mansion – economic conservatives, like Grover Norquist; law-and-order types, like former DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson; and social conservatives, including Prison Fellowship’s Pat Nolan. The participation of other prominent conservatives, such as Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, and David Keene, will give this campaign even more heft.

I am grateful for the contribution that some of these conservative leaders have played in recent battles, including in the successful fight to reduce the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. Working together as part of the Right on Crime campaign, however, will allow these leaders’ voices to be amplified in Washington and across the country.

Long-time observers of politics might recognize the dynamic at work here. It took Nixon to open China; it took Clinton to sign welfare reform; and it’s going to take conservative policymakers to help us achieve real criminal justice reform. That’s why I am thrilled about this new campaign and I look forward to working together with all of the coalition’s members in the months and years ahead to pass criminal justice reforms that keep us safe without bankrupting us.

Julie Stewart

President and Founder, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)
Washington, D.C.

1612 K St. NW

Suite 700

Washington, D.C. 20006

(202) 822-6700

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former Cleveland Assistant U.S. Attorney Benita Pearson to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

The confirmation is part of a rapid series of Senate judicial approvals, following a deal reportedly struck by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to break a logjam caused by GOP objections that Democrats had denounced as without substance.

On Tuesday, the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys urged the Senate to confirm more judges.

Pearson, whose nomination was reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, worked in the Cleveland U.S. Attorney’s office from July 2000 to August 2008.

She currently serves as a magistrate judge for the Northern District of Ohio. Pearson previously was an associate at Jones Day Reavis & Pogue (now Jones Day) and McDonald Hopkins LLC.

Attorneys for a Somali-born U.S. citizen charged with attempting to bomb a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony have asked a court to bar Attorney General Eric Holder from speaking about the case.

Somali-born U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested last month on charges he attempted to bomb a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. Mohamud was arrested after undercover FBI agents provided him with bomb materials, authorities said.

The FBI has come under fire for its tactics in the case and others involving Muslims. Holder recently defended the undercover tactics, saying in a speech: “Those who characterize the FBI’s activities in this case as ‘entrapment’ simply do not have their facts straight – or do not have a full understanding of the law.”

Lawyers for Mohamud on Monday filed a motion in federal court accusing Holder of prejudicing the pool of potential jurors. Holder has strongly denied suggestions that Mohamud was a victim of government entrapment. Attorneys say Holder’s statements violate constraints placed on pretrial public comments by prosecutors under federal rules and the rules of due-process.

At a news conference after Mohamud’s arrest, Holder said the suspect had declined “a number of opportunities” to back out of the alleged bomb plot and added that he was confident that “no entrapment claim will be found to be successful.”

In the motion the attorneys seek a court order “prohibiting the attorney general from engaging in inappropriate pretrial comment.” They continue: “The attorney general’s remarks go far beyond the fact of the indictment and any legitimate policy issues, instead discussing the merits of Mr. Mohamud’s case.”

In a statement Tuesday, the Justice Department said Holder’s “comments have been appropriate and entirely consistent with [DOJ's] filings in court. We will answer the motion in court and look forward to trying the case there,” Reuters reported.

Former Albuquerque police officer Brad Ahrensfield and his defense team are asking for a dismissal of his conviction on obstruction of justice charges based on new evidence shining negative light on the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Ahrensfield was found guilty last week of tipping off an employee at a friend’s auto shop that was under drug-related investigation focusing on another employee. Ahrensfield’s attorney said pertinent evidence that could have changed the guilty verdict was withheld. The evidence came in the form of FBI tapes containing interviews with a relevant witness from April. The defense team maintained they had no knowledge of such transcripts, even though they had been available since September.

The U.S. Attorney’s office issued a public statement arguing against dismissal and will file a report to the judge defending their reasoning. But the defense team is skeptical and deemed Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara Neda as a “win at any costs prosecutor.”

“This is not the first time this prosecutor has [withheld evidence]. We found cases going back 10 years where she has done the same thing, and we’ve asked the judge to dismiss the case,� said defense attorney Jason Bowles.

The defense team submitted a 16-page brief further challenging the indictment and said it is adamant that the U.S. Attorney’s office knowingly committed a serious misstep to win the trial.

The National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys called on Senate leaders to schedule votes on non-controversial judicial nominees, saying the vacancies were making it hard for prosecutors to be effective.

John E. Nordin, the NAAUSA vice president for membership and operations, wrote in a letter last week to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that federal judicial vacancies “are reaching historic highs.” The full Senate has yet to consider 26 nominees the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed for judgeships on U.S. District Courts and U.S. Circuit Circuit Courts of Appeal.

“Our members – career federal prosecutors who daily appear in federal courts across the nation – are concerned by the increasing numbers of vacancies on the federal bench,” Nordin wrote in the Dec. 17 letter. “These vacancies increasingly are contributing to greater caseloads and workload burdens upon the remaining federal judges. Our federal courts cannot function effectively when judicial vacancies restrain the ability to render swift and sure justice.”

The NAAUSA said Senators should vote on nominees who received the backing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel said Tuesday.

During the first two years of the Bush administration, when Democrats in the opposite party controlled Senate, the chamber confirmed 100 judicial appointments. By contrast, the 111th Congress has confirmed 53 circuit and district nominations to date.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee had 38 pending judicial nominees awaiting a Senate floor vote, but nine of those nominees were confirmed on Friday and over the weekend.

As of today there are 26 pending judicial nominations, with the Senate scheduled to vote on two more nominations this afternoon. Many of these nominations were reported as early as last January and from the 26 vacant slots, 15 are considered judicial emergencies by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The executive director of the NAAUSA, Dennis Boyd, said such a letter is unusual for the association to send to Senate leaders.

“These vacancies increasingly are contributing to greater caseloads and workload burdens upon the remaining federal judges. Our federal courts cannot function effectively when judicial vacancies restrain the ability to render swift and sure justice,” said Nordin.

A former Alabama lobbyist pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to bribe legislators in exchange for their favorable votes on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would legalize electronic bingo, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and Special Agent in Charge Timothy J. Fuhrman of the FBI’s mobile field office announced.

In October, Jarrod Massey of MANTA Governmental was one of 11 individuals — including the owner of the state’s largest casino and four state lawmakers — arrested as part of a public corruption probe.

Massey, along with Thomas E. Coker of Coker & Associates and Robert B. Geddie Jr. of Fine Geddie & Associates allegedly promoted the passage of the electronic bingo amendment on behalf of their clients by offering bribes and campaign contributions to several state lawmakers.

The probe, which the Justice Department first disclosed in April,  inflamed tensions between state Democrats and Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, who prosecuted former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) and whose husband has close ties to Gov. Bob Riley (R), who strongly opposed the amendment.

Massey alleged in a letter to DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility that he was harassed by federal agents. He requested that Canary’s office be barred from participating in the investigation because of her husband’s political ties to Riley.

Massey pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery and five counts of federal program bribery. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge, while  each of the five bribery counts carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Massey is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 26, 2011. This spring, he is expected to testify for the prosecution when the other defendants come to trial. (One of Massey’s assistants pleaded guilty earlier to a conspiracy charge.)

“Jarrod Massey has admitted that he bribed members of the Alabama State Legislature in exchange for their votes in favor of electronic bingo gambling legislation,� Breuer said in a news release. “In a democracy, votes should be cast on the merits and in the best interests of constituents, and not influenced by bribes and the possibility of personal gain.  Mr. Massey has admitted his wrongdoing, and will now face the consequences of his corrupt conduct.�

The case is being prosecuted by Senior Deputy Chief Peter J. Ainsworth and trial attorneys Eric G. Olshan, Barak Cohen and E. Rae Woods of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section; Senior Litigation Counsel Brenda K. Morris of the Criminal Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Louis V. Franklin and Steve P. Feaga of the Middle District of Alabama.