On the Record

Good afternoon! It’s a short week, but there are plenty of blogs for you to check out:

Everybody has something to say about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that struck down the capital city’s handgun ban. For two very different examples, compare these posts on Pillage Idiot and Volokh Conspiracy.

Lorax law!

SCOTUSblog parses divisiveness on the nation’s high court.

Will Vermont Law School’s decision to bar military recruiters from campus nudge other schools, like the ones on this list, to take a stand?

Reading “Lions in the Street” has spurred Prof. William D. Henderson to ask, “Is it ok to detest your law partners?” and “Has the legal press downplayed the value of public service?”

As to the second question, The Daily Record cares about your interesting pro bono work. Tell me about it at 443-524-8156.

BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer

The conventional thinking was that more women would rise to law firm leadership when more women became lawyers. So why aren’t more women managing partners? And how did these four women do it?

* The Court of Special Appeals orders a new trial for James Edward Johnson, reversing his murder conviction in the stomping death of a man in Essex in July 2004.

* The Maryland State Police and the NAACP get a compromise ruling in a lawsuit for access to records the association claims it needs to ensure compliance with a racial profiling settlement.

* In Verdicts & Settlements: A civil jury in Baltimore rules for the police officer who killed a 14-year-old after being called to the house by the teen’s mother. And in Baltimore County, a fallen trick-or-treater loses her lawsuit against against the costume-clad property owner.

* Dana O. Williams takes over as head of the Baltimore County Bar Association, while solo practitioner Jim Carbine talks about writing his unusual genealogy during two of the busiest years of his career.

* In their columns, Judge Dennis Sweeney looks at recent developments in jury trial practice, while Jack Gohn discusses the Supreme Court’s ruling on the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Also, a letter writer takes issue with the Supreme Court’s ruling on punitive damages in the Exxon case.

PLUS: Legal briefs, On the Move, and digested opinions from the Court of Appeals, Supreme Court, 4th Circuit, and Maryland’s federal courts.

As always, please feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest others we should be covering.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

In a story in today’s Reading (Pa.) Eagle, Edward V. Giannasca II says he will appeal his $33 million loss to former Raven Michael McCrary — and denied he has any intention of fleeing the country with his three children, as alleged by his ex-wife.

“What is she talking about fleeing? I’m right here,” Giannasca told the paper from his office in Reading, where he’s seeking approval for a $2.8 billion mixed-use project on 80 acres along the Schuylkill River.

Giannasca said he “merely got passports for all the children at the same time because one son needed one,” the Eagle reports.

He will have a chance to explain that to visiting Judge Paul E. Alpert, who ordered him to appear in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Monday, June 30, under threat of a body attachment.

But, according to the Eagle, he has other plans.

“Giannasca said he won’t be there because he and his family will be on a weeklong vacation in Hilton Head, S.C.,” the story said.

The Eagle also says Giannasca stayed away from this week’s legal proceedings in Baltimore, despite a court order and his own promise to appear, on advice of counsel.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

The Board of Public Works meeting was running late Wednesday, leaving many Maryland judges sweltering in the late June sun as they waited to attend the swearing in of Sally D. Adkins to the Court of Appeals in the Legislative Services Building in Annapolis.

The jovial jurists appeared not to mind the 30-minute delay of the scheduled noon proceeding, particularly Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, who brought his digital camera and took pictures of the attendees.

Asked whether the board, an executive-branch agency, was showing unconstitutional disdain for the co-equal judicial branch, Bell responded in the negative.

“They’ve got work to do,” Bell said. “I’m not going to fight about that.”

Other current and former members of the high court congratulated and offered advice to Adkins, including retired Judge Dale R. Cathell, whom she replaced on the bench.

“Sally, you made it. Now, relax,” Cathell said. “It’s a long haul from where you start out to get here.”

Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr., when asked what advice he would give Adkins, joked that when writing opinions “she should ask herself, ‘What would Judge Harrell do?’”

Judges Joseph F. Murphy Jr., Lynne A. Battaglia and Clayton Greene Jr. were longer on praise than advice, saying they expected Adkins would be “wonderful,” that she would “step right in” and “make the transition very quickly” from the Court of Special Appeals.

And Peter B. Krauser, chief judge of the Court of Special Appeals, jokingly offered self-serving advice to his former colleague upon her elevation to the higher court.

“Remember these words: To reverse is human, to affirm divine,” he said.

STEVE LASH, Legal Affairs Writer

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vv7FFmTdkyc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The New York Times has a piece today about how tough it is to transfer children removed from their homes in one state to relatives who live in another state.

The story is datelined Hyattsville and features five kids from Washington whose Maryland grandparents and aunt and uncle want to take them in. Because of the bureaucratic hurdles that accompany interstate transfers, the kids are in foster care, “where they could remain for months while their relatives wait for Washington and Maryland to make formal requests, home inspections and approvals,” the Times’ Erik Eckholm writes.

“From the kids’ point of view, it’s like they’re being punished,” the aunt, Mia Johnson, told the Times.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

In two of the last three opinions of its term, the Supreme Court struck down both the D.C. handgun ban and portions of the “Millionaire’s amendment” to federal campaign financing laws, both by 5-4 votes.

“[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy options off the table,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-judge majority in the handgun ban case, D.C. v. Heller. “These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”

In one of two dissents, Justice John Paul Stevens expressed disbelief that “over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”  (For more quotes from Heller, see our sister blog, D.C. Dicta.)

In the second case, Davis v. Federal Election Commission, the court  sided with Jack Davis, who’s spent millions of his own money in two unsuccessful bids for a Congressional seat and hopes to make a third run. Davis claimed it’s unconstitutional to triple the limit his opponents can raise from individual donors once he spends $350,000 of his own money. The majority agreed, noting that the limit was not lifted on Davis’ outside donors.

“This Court has never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different contribution limits for candidates competing against each other,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “and it agrees with Davis that this scheme impermissibly bur¬dens his First Amendment right to spend his own money for cam¬paign speech.”

In the third case, Morgan Stanley Capital Group v. Public Utility District 1 the justices agreed that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should reconsider the validity of power contracts purchased by utilities in California, Nevada and Washington state during the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001.

However, contrary to the 9th Circuit, it found the Mobile-Sierra doctrine does apply in this case. That means FERC must presume the contractual rate is “just and reasonable” unless it finds that the contract “seriously harms the public interest.”

Morgan Stanley was decided by a 5-2 vote; Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Stephen Breyer recused themselves.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, gun dealers nationwide “lost” an average of at least 82 firearms every day last year. For all of fiscal year 2007, this adds up to a grand total of more than 30,000 firearms that cannot be accounted for in dealers’ inventories. The Brady Center analyzed this month’s data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which led to these disturbing figures.

Untraceable guns are the perfect fit for criminals seeking to become untraceable themselves. That’s why the law already requires dealers to keep records of the guns it sells, and to whom. And gun laws aside, tracking inventory should be basic shopkeepers’ math. It doesn’t seem like that should be too much to ask of any honest, moral gun dealer.

Unfortunately, an enforcement agency like the ATF doesn’t have the resources to inspect every single gun store across the country. Between untraceable guns and legislative loopholes (like the fact that our government has failed to require gun shows to implement a thorough background check on customers), gun control looks more and more like an exercise in futility.

As a person who grew up in a house with guns, and whose father took the license to have such a weapon very seriously, I would hope there are many law-abiding gun owners out there who would not see more stringent enforcement of inventory regulations as an assault on the Second Amendment. Besides, according to that very amendment, even the militia “necessary to the security of a free State” is “well regulated.”

Francis Smith, Special Publications Assistant Editor

Is the log of ground-up food served to problem inmates in prisons all over the country foul enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as prisoners in lots of jurisdictions have charged? Slate has this piece in which the author made “Nutraloaf” recipes from three different states’ prison systems and invited friends for a taste test. The consensus among the writer and her friends appears to be that the loaves were terrible, but not unconstitutionally so.

Unfortunately, Maryland’s recipe — known as a “special management meal” — wasn’t one of the three the writer cooked, but if some brave blog reader wants to take the Free State’s loaf for a test drive and report the results back to The Daily Record, I won’t stop you.

Maryland was mentioned in the story. Slate links to what appears to be the Web site of a clerk for an administrative law judge who heard and dismissed an inmate’s grievance about Nutraloaf. The clerk has posted what looks like a draft opinion holding that it’s not arbitrary and capricious to serve an inmate this nasty stuff.

Hat tip: How Appealing.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer 

Think the declining number of 5-4 splits on the Supreme Court this term was a tribute to the Chief Justice’s consensus-building skills? Not so, says veteran SCOTUS litigator Walter Dellinger. Instead, he thinks the margins have been wider simply because the court has had fewer hot-button issues to resolve. “I’m doubtful as to whether it’s a trend,” he said.

And if anyone should know about hot-button issues, it’s Dellinger: the O’Melveny & Myers partner argued both the Exxon v. Baker and D.C. v. Heller cases this term. While waiting (and waiting, and still waiting) for the high court’s opinions in those cases, Dellinger spoke at a media briefing Tuesday hosted by the National Chamber Litigation Center, the public policy law arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. You can read more about Dellinger’s comments on our sister blog, DC Dicta.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

Montgomery County State’s Attorney John J. McCarthy is a bit of a movie aficionado. In my story in this week’s Maryland Lawyer, he said discovery rules that take effect July 1, requiring prosecutors to disclose a host of information without so much as a request by the defense remind him of a scene in the 1992 movie, “My Cousin Vinny.”

In the scene, the title character, an inexperienced criminal defense attorney, played by Joe Pesci, thinks he has tricked the prosecutor into surrendering information helpful to his client. Vinny’s ego is quickly deflated by his fiancée, played by Marisa Tomei, when she tells him — in no uncertain terms – that the prosecutor was required to give him the information.

Been a while since you’ve seen it? Refresh your recollection here.

STEVE LASH, Legal Affairs Writer