[HN Gopher] Judge in SBF criminal trial has recused herself
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Judge in SBF criminal trial has recused herself
Author : 1vuio0pswjnm7
Score : 131 points
Date : 2022-12-24 07:49 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.courtlistener.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.courtlistener.com)
| gaudat wrote:
| I read that at "recursed herself" first...
|
| recuse ri-kyoo[?]z' 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| If your job is to interpret sophisticated schemes, as a judge,
| you need to know how to recurse.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| Or if you're a shaman and the first attempt didn't go so
| well.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://www.davispolk.com/experience/blockfi-400-million-rev...
| giarc wrote:
| People will still see this as some sort of controversy or cover
| up, but this is the system working as intended and is a good
| thing. Small tiny conflicts like this, if not disclosed and dealt
| with, appear much larger and consequential when discovered down
| the road.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Unless you're a SCOTUS Justice. Then you do what you want with
| impunity.
| edgyquant wrote:
| SCOTUS judges recuse themselves all the time due to
| conflicting interest. Stop trying to discredit them just
| because your team lost control after 50 years
| m-p-3 wrote:
| The fact that either the Republicans or the Democrats can
| influence the SCOTUS is worrying in itself.
|
| Justice mixed with partisanship is incredibly dangerous to
| democracy.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Some justices recuse themselves some of the time. Others do
| not
| alistairSH wrote:
| Thomas largely does not recuse himself. Given his wife's
| interests and work, this is troubling. Damn near any case
| involving Trump or the GOP establishment should have Thomas
| stepping aside.
|
| The rest of the Justices appear to recuse themselves
| regularly and properly.
| phlipski wrote:
| I think at this point it's pretty obvious that Thomas is
| an angry and bitter man who is for whatever reason hell
| bent on "owning the libs". If we're stuck with this
| system of politicizing justices based upon the party that
| appoints them then at the very least I think term limits
| are appropriate. 12 years? 15? 20? I see no reason for
| this justice for life crap.
| jfengel wrote:
| There has not been a Democratic majority on the court in
| the last half century, and it is unlikely that there will
| be one for another half century.
|
| There could have been one a few years ago, but a judicial
| nomination was held up for over a year, on blatantly
| partisan grounds. They all know that they were appointed
| for partisan reasons.
|
| There are some very partisan cases appearing in front of
| the court and it is worth considering whether they will act
| in a partisan manner. There is reason why to believe that
| they have, and will. It should not just be up to the
| minority party to call for impartiality.
| gcanyon wrote:
| You are of course correct -- the last democrat-nominated
| majority was during the Kennedy/Johnson era.
|
| The greatest majority lately was 8:1 during Bush Sr.
|
| The last democrat supermajority was during
| Roosevelt/Truman, when all 9 justices were democrat-
| nominated.
|
| For anyone who's interested, here's a google doc I
| created that shows the tenure of the justices with the
| party of the president that nominated them, starting from
| the end of Truman. It's been on my to-do list to extend
| it back to the first justices. Maybe I'll take that as a
| weekend project.
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TKXH_wb29XumUAEXP
| GCn...
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| findalex wrote:
| Definitely don't want to Judge Ito one of the biggest financial
| crime cases of the decade.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| twblalock wrote:
| Everything about this case has been the system working as
| intended, and faster than normal.
|
| 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.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| If we are literally talking about a conspiracy though then
| there are many in the shadows that might get away with it.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yea but imagine the optics if the judge didn't do it. It would
| be much worse either guilty or innocent .
| akerl_ wrote:
| You're saying the same thing that the parent comment said.
| rmk wrote:
| I wonder if one could employ a legal strategy to 'taint' as many
| judges as possible by retaining spouses etc. to get a favorable
| judge. Brings to mind an episode of The Sopranos where Tony
| Soprano is advised to consult all the leading divorce lawyers in
| the area to deny his wife the opportunity to retain them if a
| divorce were initiated (he ends up doing that and crippling his
| wife's chances of retaining a good lawyer).
| pksebben wrote:
| fwig this is actually known as a strategy in divorces, in some
| states. Not total fiction.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Do judges often have spouses who are in a similar profession
| i.e. lawyers ?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > I wonder if one could employ a legal strategy to 'taint' as
| many judges as possible by retaining spouses etc. to get a
| favorable judge.
|
| 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.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > It has come to the Courts attention that the law firm of Davis
| Polk & Wardwell LLP, at which my husband is a partner, advised
| FTX in 2021, as well as represented parties that may be adverse
| to FTX and Defendant Bankman-Fried in other proceedings (or
| potential proceedings).
|
| 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.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| It's a bit odd to see the judge jump between referring to herself
| in both first-person and third-person even in the same sentence.
| I guess that's normal for this sort of thing?
| puffoflogic wrote:
| A distinction is being drawn between two entities: the Court
| and the judge. The Court makes legal rulings but it is the
| judge who is recused.
|
| 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.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| The judge is also the sister of Dan Abrams
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Almost every non-single judge will have to do the same if enough
| people and lawfirms were involved in the case
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| [flagged]
| bigdict wrote:
| I bet she's so happy she had an excuse to remove herself from
| this mess.
| gist wrote:
| > It has come to the Courts attention that the law firm of Davis
| Polk & Wardwell LLP, at which my husband is a partner, advised
| FTX in 2021, as well as represented parties that may be adverse
| to FTX and Defendant Bankman-Fried in other proceedings (or
| potential proceedings).
|
| 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'.
| [deleted]
| oneplane wrote:
| Seems sensible. It's not like there is any point to 'collecting'
| as many cases as you can as a judge, and it's better for everyone
| if focus remains on the case instead of getting pulled into some
| 'appearance of conflict' (even if there is none).
| DannyBee wrote:
| Kinda? I agree in principle. But not in this instance I think.
|
| 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)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| A judge has to be impeccable. There should be no discussion
| at all, if the conflict is minor or major.
|
| Other judges are avaliable. Reputation and integrity, once
| lost, cannot be recovered
| DannyBee wrote:
| This sort of ignores the point - it all depends how you
| define conflict, which is where any meat of this sort of
| thing is.
|
| 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.
| epivosism wrote:
| Genuinely curious - what is your explanation for why the
| recusal happened?
|
| 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.
| philippejara wrote:
| It's a huge case being watched by the entire world, even if
| there is a minuscule chance of it causing an actual issue, or
| there is the possible bad optics, I fail to see why the judge
| wouldn't do it. Nobody is going to excuse themselves on these
| terms for regular cases where the entire world isn't
| watching, but why risk anything in this case?
|
| 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.
| oneplane wrote:
| I suspect this might not have happened on a lower profile
| case. While in principle the idea here is that the court
| weighs the facts and the judge makes sure that it happens and
| ends up with a verdict, the reality is that with enough money
| it gets changed into some weird sports-gameshow hybrid where
| irrelevant bits of data are used to weasel out of
| responsibility.
|
| 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).
| credit_guy wrote:
| We only know the husband worked in a large company that had
| SBF as a client back in 2021. But chances are he was close to
| that case. We don't know that. The judge says she doesn't
| know that either, and we can take her at her word. But she
| certainly asked him "Do you think there could be a problem?".
| The husband answers "Maybe", and he does not cross any
| ethical boundaries about client-attorney confidentiality.
| Then the judge simply follows the rule "when in doubt, recuse
| yourself".
| DannyBee wrote:
| Greg was also a US attorney in the southern district for
| 12+ years, and special counsel for the US for 2 years in
| 2017 before he went back to davis again (IE davis->us
| attorney->davis->us attorney->davis)
|
| 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.
| gist wrote:
| > 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > We only know the husband worked in a large company that
| had SBF as a client back in 2021
|
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are almost 200 partners at the firm. It's not that
| big a thing.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > not that big a thing
|
| "Your Honor, the Prosecution suggests this is not that
| big a thing!"
|
| No. Don't want to go there.
| ffggffggj wrote:
| I think you're right, but I assume the whole idea was to
| avoid having the formal version of this thread in an
| appeals court a year from now.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Does it cross any boundaries of client-attorney
| confidentiality to say that you were someone's attorney or
| worked on a case? I don't believe so.
| robryk wrote:
| Surprisingly in some jurisdictions it does. At least in
| cases related to criminal defense in Poland the existence
| of a attorney-client relationship is protected (obviously
| if it comes to trial, it's eventually revealed, but it's
| not subpoenable up to that point).
| mcrady wrote:
| IANAL but it seems like it could be a basis for appeal.
|
| 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.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I'm not sure I see how judges recusing themselves could
| be grounds for appeal.
|
| _Not_ recusing oneself though...
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| >chances are he was close to that case
|
| Nope. "My husband has had no involvement in any of these
| representations."
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's not about the conflict being weak, it's mostly about
| standard setting. If it is the norm that judges recuse
| themselves even in case of fairly remote conflict of
| interest, it will make it very difficult for a judge to not
| recuse himself in the case of a more problematic conflict of
| interest.
| DannyBee wrote:
| In theory, maybe. I can buy it in places judges are elected
| or subject to popular anything.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by
| impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable
| offense
|
| 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.
| twblalock wrote:
| The conflict may be weak, bur the case has a much higher
| profile than normal.
| epgui wrote:
| > The conflict here is very weak
|
| 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.
| DannyBee wrote:
| I'm quite aware of the judicial bar, and i don't think it
| even comes close to "appearance of a potential conflict".
| Which, as a phrase without interpretation, of course,
| covers literally everything (IE defendant is a vegan and I
| am not).
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| epgui wrote:
| > as a phrase without interpretation
|
| 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.
| DannyBee wrote:
| As a recovered lawyer (though still licensed in several
| states), and friends with many judges, i'm again, aware,
| and have read plenty of it, and been forced to talk about
| it at parties (unfortunately).
|
| 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.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Right on. Forget "what if every judge recused for this
| level of conflict!", they already do that, and it doesn't
| really put a dent in judge supply.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think there are prominent examples where they don't. We
| notice those because they seem unfair. Recusals that _do_
| happen probably don 't usually make headlines.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Actually, they 100% do not recuse for this level of
| conflict. I'm not sure why you believe otherwise, or what
| data you have to support.
|
| 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.
| RobLach wrote:
| Even a reasonable excuse won't stop a headline that will muck
| up things.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think it's a great move in this particular case just
| because it's so highly watched. A major motivation behind
| recusal is to maintain confidence in the judicial system. SBF
| has already been the subject of all sorts of claims of
| political corruption. Better that this one be squeaky clean,
| even if sophisticated observers might understand why this
| sort of connection is innocuous.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yep. All upside, no downside. Better safe than sorry here.
| havkom wrote:
| She got out while she could. I guess it is not too fun to handle
| a long-going mega case..
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I thought the legal process was more about justice than fun.
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