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U.S. officials moving Madoff to federal prison
Lawyer Blog News |
2009/07/14 15:56
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Swindler Bernard Madoff was temporarily moved to a prison in Atlanta from New York and was in transit to yet another facility on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.
A spokeswoman at the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Madoff "had left Atlanta and was in transit" after U.S. prison records showed that the disgraced financier was taken to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, from his New York jail cell.
Prison officials in New York and Washington declined comment on reports by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC that Madoff was going to serve his effective life term at a medium security prison in Butner, North Carolina. The prison is an eight-hour drive from New York.
He was sentenced on June 29 to a total of 150 years on several criminal charges, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury for a Ponzi scheme amounting to as much as $65 billion. A Ponzi scheme is one in which early investors are paid with money from new clients.
The Bureau web site, www.bop.gov/, which provides locations of inmates, listed his full name Bernard Lawrence Madoff, his prison number 61727-054, age 71, race, gender, projected release date of Nov. 14, 2139 and location of the Atlanta prison |
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Liz Cheney refuses to discuss veep's role in CIA
Law & Politics |
2009/07/14 14:58
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Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Liz said Tuesday she doesn't believe her father did anything wrong in connection with a secret CIA operation that officials have said was designed to capture and kill al-Qaida figures.
At the same time, Liz Cheney accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats of seeking to politicize lingering arguments over how the Bush administration conducted the war against terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Asked directly on MSNBC whether her father directed the CIA not to keep Congress fully informed about the secret program, Cheney said, "This is a classified program and he doesn't talk about classified programs." An official with direct knowledge of the program had said earlier that CIA Director Leon Panetta, according to notes he'd been given in the early months of the program, Cheney had told the CIA not to inform Congress of the specifics of the effort. Panetta canceled the program on June 23. Officials have said the program was aimed at going after officials of the terrorist network individually rather than through air attacks in an effort to limit civilian casualties. Liz Cheney, a former principal deputy secretary of state for Mideast affairs during George W. Bush's presidency, is helping her father write his memoirs. She aggressively defended him in Tuesday's nationally broadcast interview while declining to say point-blank whether he had violated any law or rule. |
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Orion G. Callison, III has opened The Callison Law Firm
Law Firm News |
2009/07/14 02:00
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Orion G. Callison, III has opened The Callison Law Firm P.A. in Miami, Florida. The firm's practice will primarily focus on commercial litigation, labor and employment law, and education law. Mr. Callison is a 1988 graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where he was a member of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. He graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1985, with highest honors. The firm has a website at www.callisonlawfirm.com. |
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Motive probed in slaying of Fla. pair with 16 kids
Criminal Law Updates |
2009/07/13 14:44
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Investigators are looking at business ties among other leads for a motive in the slaying of a wealthy Florida couple known for adopting children with developmental disabilities, authorities said Monday. But there may be multiple motives and more arrests are possible after three men were jailed Sunday, two of them on murder charges in the shooting deaths of Byrd and Melanie Billings at their sprawling home near Pensacola, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. "It began as what we thought was a home invasion. At this point because of the complexity and the ties this family had through the business community, we're moving many other directions. Could be money, could be a whole host of things," Morgan said on the NBC "Today" show. Morgan also cited the family's business ties in an interview on the CBS "Early Show" but declined to be more specific and said investigators are working on "multiple motives." Three men have been arrested in connection with the slaying and were expected to have court appearances as early as Monday. Court officials Monday morning could not immediately confirm dates or times. |
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1 of 3 escaped inmates from Ind. prison caught
Criminal Law Updates |
2009/07/13 14:43
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One of three inmates who escaped from the Indiana State Prison was caught Monday in a southwestern Michigan town by a security guard for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. A Grand Beach police officer got a call before 7 a.m. that a private security guard for Daley was holding convicted killer Charles Smith at gunpoint in a home's driveway near the mayor's vacation house in the town about eight miles from the prison, said Grand Beach Police Chief Dan Schroeder. Schroeder said another inmate had been spotted in Grand Beach, but he didn't know which one or who saw him. Authorities were still searching for convicted murderer Mark Booher, 46, of New Castle, and convicted rapist Lance Battreal, 45, of Rockport. It was not immediately clear whether Daley was at the house when Smith taken into custody and Schroeder did not have any more information about Smith's capture. The Associated Press left a message at the house where Smith was captured in the driveway. Indiana Department of Correction officials said the men were discovered missing about 10 a.m. Sunday. The three escaped by getting past bars in the tunnels and pipe chases under the grounds of the maximum-security prison in Michigan City, Ind., said Department spokesman Doug Garrison. Two of the inmates did maintenance work in the prison's tunnel system as part of supervised work crews. Garrison said he wasn't sure which two had done the work. The three men were in the same housing unit but it's unclear how they knew each other, Garrison said. Prison officials were talking to people who knew the inmates, including people on their visitation or e-mail lists and family and friends. Smith, Booher and Battreal started serving time in the late 1990s and all faced at least 30 more years behind bars. |
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Democrats push for probe into Bush policies
Law & Politics |
2009/07/13 14:43
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President Barack Obama has been reluctant to probe Bush-era torture and anti-terrorism policies, but his Democratic allies aren't likely to let the matters rest.
"I've always preferred my idea of a commission of inquiry to look at all these issues," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Sunday. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., head of the intelligence committee, suggested that the George W. Bush administration broke the law by concealing a CIA counterterrorism program from Congress. The Wall Street Journal, anonymously citing former intelligence officials, reported Monday the secret program was a plan to kill or capture al-Qaida operatives. The Journal's sources said the plan, which was halted by CIA Director Leon Panetta, was an attempt to carry out a presidential finding authorized in 2001 by President George W. Bush. The Journal said the agency spent money on planning and maybe some training, but it never became fully operational. The plan was highly classified and the CIA has refused to comment on it. The assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the program kept secret from Congress came amid word that Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating opening a criminal probe of possible CIA torture. |
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