Mayoral Control: Second Thoughts? Third Thoughts?

hamletAt the Marquette Educator, Dean Bill Henk has an interesting new post on the proposed mayoral takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools.  Bill chronicles Mayor Barrett’s hesitant, on-again-off-again embrace of the proposed takeover.  Contrary to the conventional wisdom that politicians always want more power, Barrett is displaying a marked lack of enthusiasm for taking on responsibility for the schools.  Does this have any implications for the wisdom of a takeover? 

On the one hand, given both the importance and the difficulty of turning MPS around, it would be nice to see more passion, more vision, and more tenacity from the person who proposes to lead the effort.  On the other hand — well, I am reminded of Woody Allen’s old quip that he would never want to belong to a club that would have him.  We might rightly suspect that any politician who wants responsibility for MPS does not really understand the magnitude of system’s difficulties.  Perhaps the Mayor’s reservations are evidence of the sort of good judgment that will be necessary for MPS’s next leader.

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Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Good Enough for Government Work

seventh-circuit51Under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A), certain drug offenders face a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment if they have two prior drug felony convictions.  As befits such a draconian statute, special procedural protections have been adopted to ensure that the mandatory minimum does not take defendants by suprise at sentencing.  Thus, 21 U.S.C. § 851(a)(1) requires that “before trial . . . the United States attorney [must] . . . serve[] a copy of [an] information on the [defendant] . . . stating in writing the previous convictions to be relied upon.”  But the statute does not specify under what circumstances, if any, a failure to comply with the rule precludes imposition of the mandatory minimum.

By the statute’s literal terms, there can be no doubt that the prosecutor in United States v. Williams (No. 09-1924) failed to comply.  In the § 851 notice he served on Williams, the prosecutor identified only one prior conviction (not the requisite two) and then merely stated, “Further information concerning the defendant’s criminal history can be obtained from the United States Probation Office and specifically the Pretrial Services Report in this matter . . . .”  The Pretrial Services Report, which listed a second drug conviction, was not actually served on the defendant until after trial.  Indeed, it appears that the prosecutor himself had not even received and read the Report before his attempt to incorporate it by reference into the § 851 notice.  This was very sloppy work, and the Seventh Circuit righly chastised both the individual prosecutor and his office (the Northern District of Indiana), which lacked any protocol on how to make § 851 notices.  But sloppiness, even inexcusable sloppiness, is not the same thing as reversible error, and the court (per Judge Posner) affirmed Williams’ life sentence. 

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Justinians Honor Professor Blinka

rsz_danblinkaLast weekend, together with a number of colleagues (including Professor Emeritus James D. Ghiardi and Professors Irene Calboli and Thomas J. Hammer), I attended the Justinian Society’s annual Columbus Day dinner. The society consists primarily of Italian-American lawyers and their families and meets at the Third Ward’s Italian Community Center (which, former Milwaukee County Circuit Court Chief Judge Patrick T. Sheedy, L’48, once remarked, might well have been the “Irish Community Center,” if it had not been for the Lady Elgin disaster in 1860). The evening included the Justinian Society’s honoring our colleague, Professor Daniel D. Blinka, with its annual “Jurist of the Year Award.” The award was presented by Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge John J. DiMotto, with citations also presented by Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson and current Milwaukee County Circuit Court Chief Judge Jeffrey A. Kremers. One who does not know Prof. Blinka can get a sense, from this outline of Judge DiMotto’s remarks, of the remarkable way that Prof. Blinka devotes himself to teaching, scholarship, and service (see also this article from a previous alumni magazine). It was a privilege to be at the event, as well as to be Prof. Blinka’s colleague.

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