Judge in SBF criminal trial has recused herself
courtlistener.com
courtlistener.com
If the conspiracy theorists had just sat back and relaxed, they would have seen the guy get arrested, extradited, and charged for a crime, which is exactly what was supposed to happen.
Funnily enough the conspiracy theorists, who know exactly how it all works, said it would never happen.
Though, I couldn’t help googling the judge and she’s had some interesting cases lately involving various Trump related things. She had to recuse herself there as well because her husband was in talks with the Mueller investigation. I guess this is more common than I’d think for prominent DC connected families.
The conflict here is very weak, and most judges would not likely recuse in this case or feel shut pressure to do so. The husband worked for a 1000+ attorney firm that once had a client, and had no involvement in anything. The judge has no knowledge or involvement.
If every judge in a similar situation recused, you would likely have to move/transfer lots of cases around the country to try to find judges that could hear them.
I actually suspect the judge just may not want to deal with this high profile of a case. It can be really a mess to deal with (even before you get to the personal toll of increased death threats, etc)
And what's the point of putting in months of work hearing a case if there's a chance that it will all get nullified.
Not recusing oneself though…
He didn't only "work" in the firm; he was a partner in it. Maybe he talked to the partner who managed the SBF work; maybe he didn't. But as a partner he'd have some justification for asking, "Hey, how's that crypto case going?" at least.
"Your Honor, the Prosecution suggests this is not that big a thing!"
No. Don't want to go there.
That is a more interesting conflict than the Davis-Polk one to me, since he likely worked directly with the office handling the case.
Outside of that, he was at Davis since 1999.
There is simply no sane argument that, essentially anyone his quite-large firm worked for (without him even knowing about it), since 1999 should cause his wife to recuse.
It violates no ethical rules, opinions, cases, or what have you. Judges have stricter ones too, and it doesn't violate or even come close to appearing to violate any of them.
It would be laughed out of appeals.
i've not yet seen any convincing argument here.
As such, i maintain she probably did this because she didn't want the case.
I was going to agree with this but then I realized and made this comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34120906
Essentially I feel this is about business for the firm going forward, not anything that happened in the past.
Nope. “My husband has had no involvement in any of these representations.”
Yes, and the ethical bar for the judiciary is supposed to be super strict. It's not even enough to avoid conflicts of interest: one must also avoid the appearance of any potential conflicts of interest.
So in the end, i simply disagree with you - this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions.
That's not particularly productive: the meaning of the phrase is studied and covered ad nauseam by case law and scholarly (legal & ethical) literature.
Differences in dietary preferences is unlikely to ever be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest, although it's certainly not impossible. There would need to be "reasonable grounds" to think the judge was unable to hear both parties fairly. I know that this sounds a bit wishy-washy, but that's the legal system for you.
That is precisely why i said " this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions."
What is here would never be considered reasonable grounds. It's not even close.
Outside of random people arguing on hacker news, of course.
Recusals are extremely rare, and it is common for judges to have SO's or children or .... in law firms that, at some point, represented someone before a judge, without the person having been involved. Which is the case here.
They do not recuse. So no, they do not "already do that". If they did, it really would put a dent in the judge supply - there are not that many federal judges.
In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense. It is otherwise a lifetime appointment.
One with a lucrative partner job waiting if they choose to go that route early, regardless of social reputation.
They are fairly insulated from being forced to do something based on the standards others want to set.
Conflict of interest is one of the things typically listed as impeachable judicial misconduct; not that there is any concrete boundary to “impeachable offense” since the House is free to decide any conduct is or or is not impeachable.
Perhaps one of the issues here is the (apparent?) amount of personal input a judge can have, so if a judge were to dislike the taste of tomatoes and they have to hear a case on ketchup, they might act differently than a judge that doesn't really care about tomato-taste either way. But since all of this (generally) revolves around humans, removing all wiggle room is problematic as well (since laws are not humans, but are rather static).
Other judges are avaliable. Reputation and integrity, once lost, cannot be recovered
There is no real conflict here. At all. By any definition you will find of a conflict, or any advisory opinions, or any caselaw.
That a family member once worked for a firm that, at some point in the past, may have represented a corporation that someone worked for (they aren't even sure), where the family member:
1. did not work on it
2. has no knowledge of it
3. wasn't even aware of this until informed.
is simply not a conflict.
Someone is always going to argue you should recuse.
While recusal is super-rare, recusal motions are not.
Someone will always try to paint a conflict about something!
So your theory on reputation doesn't work in practice - you are going to get smeared either way. That's the fun of being a judge.
Your arguments paint it as clearly unusual or invalid but not knowing you or the details of the case, what is your case for believing you rather than the facts of the case, that a professional judge made this decision? Could you lay out an alternative explanation for why this happened?
i.e. you're making strong claims that this is obviously wrong, yet not explaining why it happened. Barring detailed knowledge, tie usually goes to reality rather than the HN commenter.
The law might be blind -or at least should-, but the audience isn't and that audience might very well include federal agencies and nutjobs.
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP have clients that lost money in the FTX mess. Seems a very reasonable recusal and a major conflict of interest (not at all a minor connection as some are suggesting).
Anyway - its a shitty case to preside over, it will either be over in a few days/weeks or get pointlessly dragged out.
In practice you'd probably only want to taint the worst ones. In this case the judge he was assigned was supposedly one of the most lenient ones in the district, so this definitely isn't a good thing for him at all.
I've never bought into the idea that a lenient or overly-draconian sentence not informed by standard practice and sentencing principles wouldn't just get struck down or severely modified on appeal
A more traditional formula would be to refer to the judge as "the undersigned", and then there's no mixing first person. The first person references we actually see are rather informal but probably part of the court's preferred style.
recuse rĭ-kyoo͞z′ transitive verb
To disqualify or seek to disqualify (a judge or juror) from participation in the decision in a case, as for personal prejudice against a party or for personal interest in the outcome.
To refuse or reject, as a judge; to challenge that the judge shall not try the cause.The key to this is simple. 'as well as represented parties that may be adverse'. (Past and as I say below 'future')
The judge doesn't want her husband's firm to be disadvantaged by the connection such that (for lack of a better way to put it) the firm can't further benefit from the money that will flow surrounding this case going forward for any party that is involved. If a partner's wife is the judge hard to believe that wouldn't be a good reason to not pick the firm 'just to be sure'.