| Trucker On
Supervised Release OKed To Travel To
Panama Amid COVID In SDNY Proceeding
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
SDNY
COURTHOUSE, Jan 11 –
Much of the work of Federal
district judges is taken up
with supervision of those they
have previously sentenced and
in some cases tried.
So it is with
U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York
Judge Richard M. Berman, who
holds some of the most
retained supervision meetings
and sometimes remarks that
while public, some information
should not be reported. Inner
City Press covers the
proceedings, and does the best
it can,
voluntarily.
On January 11
Judge Berman held a session
with a man he had sentenced to
sixty months for being
recruited into the armed
robbery of a drug dealer. The
man is now a truck driver.
He was in
Idaho when he learned of the
death of his mother's husband
in Panama, and his mother's
response to this trauma.
The
supervisee, whom we are
leaving unnamed, voluntarily,
was asking for permission to
travel to Panama for two
weeks. Judge Berman granted
it, and asked about quarantine
proceedures. These did not
seem clear.
The supervisee,
who seems to be doing well in
his trucking job with a raise
from $115 to $130 a day with
more per mile on top of that.
The company is
supporting his bereavement
trip. on which Judge Berman
commented
positively.
It was a
positive example of SDNY
judicial work, but can only by
half reported, without the
docket number.
And Inner City
Press has covered Judge
Berman's brand of supervision,
with interest and not without
sympathy.
But apparently
there are problems, with
covering and reporting on this
public proceedings.
On November
5, 2020 Judge Berman held a
supervision session with a
defendant Inner City Press has
been asked to leave unnamed.
The proceeding began some 18
minutes late, after some
banter about the current
boarding-up of stores on
Manhattan's Upper East
Side.
But half
way through the actual
proceeding, Judge Berman said
that he hope that the press
that covered the proceeding
would not use any names. The
defense lawyer said he agreed;
the Assistant US Attorney,
whom it seems clear could be
identified, said that while it
was of course an open
proceeding he more or less
agreed. Does his Office?
The
rationale was that medical and
treatment information is
discussed. Fine - Inner City
Press has generally left such
information about of its
reports, expect perhaps once
mentioning Judge Berman's statement
that he would go up to the
Bronx to help take a
supervisee into treatment.
That was laudable
- but apparently, is not to be
reported. Or only without any
names, which takes it out of
the realm of
journalism.
At the
end, Judge Berman asked the
AUSA to be sure to order the
transcript. And, it is true,
the transcripts of these
proceeding are public, part of
the record on PACER, with
names.. It is unclear why then
the press should not report on
these proceedings.
This happened
while Inner City Press is, for
example, seeking
to unseal the sentencing
submission of Peter Bright
a/k/a Doctor Pizza, found
guilty by a jury of seeking to
entice a nine year old girl
into sex. (In fairness, he
says it was just age playing).
The memo's
section "Bright Is Not A
Pedophile" is entirely
redacted. But these are public
proceeding, in which public
funds are spent, and that
potentially impact the
public.
Inner City
Press out of respect for the
request is not including in
this report the name of the
defendants - an amiable person
- nor of his defense attorney.
But it is unclear why. We will
continue on these
issues.
This case we'll
have to call US v. Name Not
Published At Judge's Request,
Blank-CR-Blank (Berman).
***
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