Grady High School’s Mock Trial Team from Atlanta has  won 2^nd place in the 28^th Annual National High School  Mock Trial Championship held last weekend in Albuquerque, N.M.   It is the sixth time that Grady High School students have competed at the national mock trial level and the team’s fourth top ten finish, according to the Georgia Mock Trial Office, a division of the State Bar of Georgia.

The Grady team placed 13^th nationally in 2000, 16^th in 2005, 8^th in 2009,  3^rd in 2010 and 4^th last year.

The mock trial team from Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico won the 2012 national title. The competition included 46 championship teams from 42 states as well as Guam, the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and South Korea.

Grady’s team included high school seniors Kenny Cochran, Atiana Johnson, Nally Kinnane, Shaun Kleber and Elizabeth McGlamry.  The team also included Grady juniors Ciena Leshley and Troy Kleber and Sophomore Archer Kinnane.

In mock trial competitions, team members play the roles of attorneys and witnesses in a mock criminal court case. Judges and lawyers from across the country made up the national competition judging panel. Teams were evaluated on their ability to make a logical, cohesive and persuasive presentation, according to the Mock Trial office here.

U.S. District Judge Charles Pannell Jr. of the Northern District of Georgia says he has notified the White House that he will take senior status after he turns 67 next January.  Pannell said he notified the White House, the U.S. Administrative Office of Courts  and Northern District Chief Judge Julie Carnes in March of his intent to take senior status after his Jan. 24 birthday.

Pannell said that by then he will have served 13 years as a federal judge.  At that time,  Pannell’s age and years of service on the federal bench will total 80 — qualifying him for senior status, making him eligible for a reduced case load and opening up his slot for a new federal appointment.

Pannell said that federal judges are generally requested to give a year’s notice before they step down.

Pannell was appointed to the federal bench in 1999 by President Bill Clinton. A graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, Pannell served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1971 to 1972. He left the U.S. Attorney’s office for private practice with Pittman and Kinney in Dalton. In 1976, he was elected district attorney of the Conasauga Circuit, which includes Whitfield and Murray counties.  In 1979 he became a Superior Court judge for the circuit, a post he held for 20 years.

Right now, the Northern District has two judicial vacancies. The White House had nominated U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Walker and Natasha Perdew Silas, an attorney with the Federal Defender Program in Atlanta, to fill the posts but withdrew both nominations at the end of last year after Georgia’s U.S. senators refused to lend their support to Silas.

The White House has not nominated their replacements.

A former U.S. Navy petty officer was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Atlanta to serve three years in prison for stealing and selling the identities of U.S. Navy recruits, which were later used to file fraudulent tax returns, the U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Georgia announced.

Kevon Kerr, 36, of Atlanta – who was originally charged in an 42-count indictment that included three other metro Atlanta defendants – pleaded guilty to one count of theft of public money and one count of aggravated identity theft, U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said in her announcement.

According to federal prosecutors and court records, Kerr stole recruits’ identities while he was assigned to an in-processing center for new and prospective recruits at Fort Gillem in Forest Park where he was entrusted with Navy personnel files.

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A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted a Fayetteville man who served as a U.S. Army captain in Saudi Arabia on charges of conspiracy and theft in connection with the alleged embezzlement of more than $2.7  million from federal bank accounts in Riyadh, the U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Georgia announced today.

The grand jury on May 1 indicted former Capt. Jasen Minter, 41, of Fayetteville and Louis Nock, 45, of Orlando – who served as  a senior non-commissioned Sergeant First Class with Minter in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said.

Nock was arraigned Monday and Minter was arraigned today in federal court in Atlanta.   Both defendants are currently free on bond, according to federal prosecutors.

According to court records and federal prosecutors, Minter and Nock were finance officers assigned to the U.S. Military Training Mission in Saudi Arabia in 2006  when they allegedly embezzled funds intended to finance the Training Mission’s finance office – which provided banking services to U.S. military personnel living in Saudi Arabia.

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The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is sponsoring an in-depth review of Florida’s notorious Casey Anthony trial in a May 10 webinar for which participating lawyers may receive continuing legal education credit.

The webinar, called, “Fighting the Prosecution’s ‘Fantasy of Forensics’ [their quote marks, not ours] – An In-Depth Review of the Casey Anthony Trial” starts at 12:30 p.m. Thursday May 12.  Casey Anthony’s attorney, Jose Baez, will host the discussion.

For those people who never watch Nancy Grace or who spent last summer living on a deserted island, Casey Anthony was tried and acquitted of first-degree murder in the death of her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. The trial, which began in May, ended in July.

While acquitting Casey Anthony of murder, for which she could have faced the death penalty,  the jury found her guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer.

Two-year-old Caylee was reported missing from her Orlando home where she lived with her mother and maternal grandparents in July 2008. Her remains were found in a wood near her home five months later.

Baez, Anthony’s attorney, will address the forensic evidence in the case as well as speak candidly about the trial and the trask of representing a client in a high-profile case, according to the announcement.

Here’s the link for more information on the webinar: http://www.nacdl.org/LegalEducation.aspx?id=23923

A convicted bank robber who wanted to go back to prison after his release because he was homeless and hungry has gotten his wish.

The office of U.S. Attorney Michael Moore of the Middle District of Georgia in Macon prosecuted convicted bank robber Lance Brown after the 36-year-old threw a brick through the front glass doors of the U.S. Post Office in the Federal Court Building in Columbus last July. Brown told authorities after he tossed the brick that being in federal custody was better than spending another night sleeping outside, federal prosecutors said.

On Tuesday, Brown pleaded guilty to malicious mischief in U.S. District Court in Columbus. U.S. District Judge Clay Land is scheduled to sentence him May 1. Brown, who had recently finished serving a prison term for a North Carolina Bank robbery when he found himself living on the streets, faces as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Said Moore: “The unfortunate circumstances in which Mr. Brown found himself cannot be a justification for destroying property of the United States. And while I am personally saddened by Mr. Brown’s plight, I regret that he chose to violate the law instead of taking help from those who offered it.”

Three former U.S. attorneys will speak Wednesday at a continuing legal education course on international  corporate crime at the State Bar of Georgia. The five-hour seminar is organized annually by Greenberg & Traurig’s Joe Whitley, a former U.S. attorney of both the Northern and Middle Districts of Georgia and the first general counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In addition to Whitley, King & Spalding partner Paul B. Murphy – a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia –  and Jones Day partner Richard Deane – former U.S. attorney for the Northern District –  will participate on a panel devoted to strategies for defending companies accused of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Other participating panelists in the seminar include Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Chartash, who oversees the U.S. attorney’s financial crimes division in Atlanta;  Nicholas Acker, a trial attorney with the fraud section of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington;  Gerald Hodgkins, associate director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, as well as lawyers from Patton Boggs, Kelley Drye & Warren, Greenberg Traurig, K&L Gates,  King & Spalding, Troutman Sanders and Baker & McKenzie. Other panelists also include corporate lawyers with Home Depot, Coca-Cola and UPS in Atlanta.

“The extraterritorial reach of the federal government has never been greater than it is today with the enforcement of U.S. laws  for conduct committed by U.S. persons and U.S. businesses for the bribery of foreign officials and the violation of antitrust laws in international commerce,” Whitley said in an email to the Daily Report. “Indeed, the U.S. business that chooses to ignore this phenomenon risks its very existence or at the very least substantial fines and penalties to include criminal consequences for its employees. For this reason, this program on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and criminal antitrust is a must attend program for attorneys who advise U.S. corporations and businesses that sell products and services in foreign markets.”

The CLE will be held at the State Bar headquarters at 104 Marietta St., NW., Atlanta, GA 30303.  The seminar begins 8:30 a.m. Registration opens at  7:45 a.m.

A Marietta madam pleaded guilty today to a conspiracy charge associated with running a brothel where she employed illegal aliens as prostitutes.

Luz M. Gutierrez, 56 – known as Tiffany — pleaded guilty to conspiracy to entice individuals to cross state lines to engage in prostitution while inducing them to reside illegally in the U.S., prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Atlanta said.

The brothel, located in Marietta, employed illegal workers living in Georgia as prostitutes and recruited other illegal aliens living Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and Massachusetts with the promise of similar work, according to federal prosecutors and court records. Gutierrez also recruited Georgia prostitutes to travel to Alabama to work for an associate of hers who managed brothels in that state, federal prosecutors said.

Gutierrez was among eight people indicted by a federal grand jury in December on federal charges of enticing foreign nationals to enter the U.S., and cross state lines to engage in prostitution. According to the indictment, the defendants used business cards to advertise and solicit customers for two Marietta brothels as well as other brothels in Atlanta, Tucker, Norcross and Duluth.

Some of the women they hired were also employed as “housekeepers” who maintained the house, collected money from customers and “kept watch over the women,” according to the indictment. Five other defendants entered guilty pleas associated with the brothels earlier this year, according to court records.

Gutierrez faces as much as five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for July 10.

The attorney for deposed Alpharetta High School student body president Reuben Lack is asking U.S. District Judge Richard Story of the Northern District of Georgia for an emergency hearing, saying that unsworn declarations from school officials submitted to the court “contain numerous material inaccuracies, omissions, and inconsistencies.” Decatur attorney James Radford made those assertions this week in a motion for a preliminary injunction.  Radford had earlier asked the judge for a temporary restraining order that would have reinstated Lack as student body president, claiming that Lack’s removal was an violation of his constitutional free speech rights.

Lack sued the school last month, claiming that he was stripped of his presidency – a post he has held for ten months – two months before graduation because he had asked the student council to consider making the annual junior-senior prom more friendly to gay and lesbian teens who might want to vy for prom king or queen.

On March 30, Story denied Lack’s request for the TRO, finding that while some of the reasons that faculty members removed the teenager from office likely violated his constitutionally protected free speech, they cited other reasons for his removal that did not infringe on his constitutional rights.

In the motion for an emergency hearing, Lack’s attorney noted that in the “wee hours” of the morning before the March 29 hearing, school attorneys filed six lengthy unsworn declarations listing “purported legitimate reasons” why Lack, had been removed from his post.  Radford said he discovered the filings as he was getting dressed to go to court.

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A supervisor in DeKalb County’s Public Works Department pleaded guilty today to federal extortion charges, federal prosecutors in Atlanta said.

Fidelis Ogbu, 59, a county engineering supervisor, engaged in a “pay to play” scheme in which he asked a county  contractor who had been awarded a $1.4 million federally-funded project to build county sidewalks  in DeKalb County to “grease my palms” if he wanted another contract worth $30,000 to $50,000 to construct a private driveway.

Ogbu also told the contractor – who was, unbeknownst to Ogbu,  acting as a confidential “good Samaritan source” for the FBI – to submit a fraudulently inflated $65,000 estimate for the work and then pay $30,000 in cash  to Ogbu, according to an affidavit attached to Ogbu’s arrest warrant.

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