| Amid Breyer
Replacement Talk SDNY Picks Federal
Defender Willis For 8 Years in Mag Court
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Jan 26 – On a day when most
U.S. judge-picking talk
focused on the Supreme Court
vacancy being opened by the
retirement of Justice Stephen
Breyer, he Board of Judges of
the United States District
Court for the Southern
District of New York did their
own judge picking.
To replace
retiring SDNY Magistrate Judge
Kevin N. Fox, they chose
Federal Defender Jennifer
Willis.
Inner City
Press has covered her work,
for example in the Balde
case involving review of
the fairness of SDNY jury
pools, and in the sentencing
of a Rwandan defendant who
quit their job at the UN, here.
Inner City Press is looking
forward to covering incoming
Judge Willis' criminal cases
in the 5th floor Magistrates'
court, and her civil case -
and hopes for maximum
transparency and public access
in both kinds of cases.
Back in December 2021 the U.S.
Senate Judiciary Committee
held a
hearing on December 15
on a number of nominees for
District Court seats, and on
Alison J. Nathan who while
presiding over the U.S.
v. Ghislaine Maxwell
sex trafficking trial was
nominated for the Second
Circuit Court of
Appeals.
The
Maxwell trial took a three day
hiatus.
The reason
was not publicly explained, in
keeping with the redaction in
the case of the flight logs of
Jeffrey Epstein's planes, the
withholding of Maxwell's
witness list, and the
curtailing of the public
call-in line that other
Districts and even some SDNY
judges maintain. Since then,
Juror 50's questionnaire and
motion, and Maxwell's motion
for a new trial, have all been
withheld in full.
(In full
disclosure, Inner City Press
has written more than four
times to Judge Nathan on these
topics. The first two letters
were docketed
and denied, here.
The third,
citing the Omicron variant of
COVID and the ban on travel
from African countries that
Epstein's plane flew to, with
former President Clinton and
Kevin Spacey, has yet to be
docketed; its January 19 filing
was obliquely
referred to in the Court's
order
of January
26.)
At the
December 15 Senate Judiciary
hearing, none of these topics
came up. Most Democratic
Senators offered only praise.
(Senator Mazie Hirono, to her
credit, asking her standard
question about unwanted sexual
advances.)
Two
Republican Senators asked
about Judge Nathan shaving a
year off the sentence of
William Tucker in 13-cr-378
and questioned it, since he
already had COVID and was
vaccinated.
One of
Judge Nathan's boldest
decisions, to at least
initially grill the
prosecutors for Brady
violations in US
v. Nejad, did not
come up in the Committee, nor
in some recent profiles. Judge
Nathan for her part shouted
by, by name, her SDNY
courtroom deputy Khalilah
Williams.
In DC on
December 15 there were
questions about the Second
Amendment and the place of
international law, citing
Nathan having noted the
presence in the Supreme Court
gallery of a delegation
from China when the
application of the death
penalty was
limited.
But nothing
about the Maxwell case and its
implications; nothing about
court transparency either.
Video of hearing here,
from 1:00 to 1:48.
To some it seemed
strange (some might note that
since big wigs of both parties
are implicated in l'affaire
Epstein and Maxwell, neither
side wants to touch it).
To others, it was
a missed opportunity. We'll
see - and closer to home,
we'll see Judge Willis' cases
in the SDNY Mag Court -
watch this site.
***
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