Martini gets OK as Federal Judge

Former Rep. Bill Martini has been confirmed as a New Jersey federal judge by the U.S. Senate.

Martini, 55, a Republican who lives in Clifton and practices law in Newark, is a former federal prosecutor who also has served as a Passaic County freeholder.

A member of a prominent Passaic County family long involved in politics, he serves as a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Martini will have to resign from the agency, and Governor McGreevey will name his replacement on the 12-person board.

"I'm actually excited about the new undertaking and the challenges it will present," he said.

Sens. Jon Corzine and Robert Torricelli, both D-N.J., said Martini and four other judges confirmed late Thursday night will add "new voices to New Jersey's federal courts that will reflect our state's intellectual, geographic, and ethnic diversity."

Martini played a key role in the state as a fund-raiser and organizer for President Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

He began his political career on the Clifton City Council, where he served from 1990 to 1994. He was elected to the Passaic County Board of Freeholders in 1993.

A year later, Martini won a congressional seat in the 8th District, which covers most of Passaic County and some of northern Essex County. He lost the seat two years later to former Paterson Mayor Bill Pascrell, a Democrat.

Martini also has served as an assistant Hudson County prosecutor and spent three years as a federal prosecutor in Newark. Most recently, he has been practicing law at Sills, Cummis in Newark, specializing in litigation, government affairs, and regulatory work.

Bush nominated Martini to the lifetime position in June. It pays $150,000 annually.

New Jersey has three federal courthouses - Newark, Camden, and Trenton - and it was unclear Friday which courthouse Martini would serve in.

Of the four other judges confirmed by the Senate for New Jersey seats, three are magistrates: Stanley Chesler, Freda Wolfson, and Robert Kugler. The fourth confirmation was of Essex County Superior Court Judge Jose Linares.

Chesler, a Republican who sits in Newark, has been a magistrate since 1987. He was a federal prosecutor investigating organized crime from 1980 to 1986, and an assistant district attorney in the Bronx from 1974 to 1980.

Wolfson, a Democrat who sits in Trenton, has been a magistrate since 1986. She is married to Douglas K. Wolfson, director of the law division in the state attorney general's office.

Kugler, an independent who sits in Camden, worked as an assistant Camden County prosecutor. His father is former state Attorney General George Kugler.

Linares, a Republican who sits in Newark, was the first Cuban-American judge at the Essex County Courthouse and former head of the New Jersey Hispanic Bar Association.

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1042614649315360.xml?starledger

Journey leads to federal Bench

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

BY JOHN P. MARTIN
Star-Ledger Staff

Jose Linares was 7 years old when Cuban police jailed his father at the Morro Castle, the picturesque Spanish fort at the edge of Havana.

It was 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion had failed and Fidel Castro was rounding up thousands of suspected insurgents. Linares accompanied his mother to the prison and watched as she lowered a bucket of food to her husband in the crowded castle courtyard.

Linares' father, a teacher, was sentenced to death for his political activities, but avoided execution by fleeing Cuba with his wife and sons. They arrived in New Jersey in 1966 with little except hope.

These are the memories that occasionally flash through Linares' mind, and the ones that no doubt will do so again today when he is sworn in as a federal judge. There are more than 860,000 Cuban-born Americans, according to the 2000 Census, but Linares is believed to be only the third appointed to the federal bench.

"He's a role model not just for people of the same nationality and background, but for everybody," said Superior Court Judge Eugene Codey, who presides over the civil division in Essex County, where Linares most recently served. "He is the American dream."

Linares' father will attend today's event, as will his uncle, a onetime political prisoner who was granted a special visa to come from Cuba. The keynote speaker at the ceremony in Newark will be Mel Martinez, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the first Cuban-American Cabinet member.

"If you told my parents that there was going to come a day when the president was going to send a member of his Cabinet to speak at something for one of their sons, who would believe that," Linares said in an interview Monday. "And yet here we are. In great measure, it's justification for everything they did."

Linares' friends and supporters point just as quickly to his own accomplishments. They say Linares built a reputation as a skilled medical malpractice attorney, one that helped him earn his seat on the Superior Court two years ago.

He has long been an active member of the Hispanic Bar Association, where he sponsors an annual student scholarship. Linares has also been visible both in political circles and on the fields and courts of Essex County, where he has coached youth sports for years.

For Linares, a 49-year-old West Caldwell resident, coaching is a stress relief and a way for him to strengthen the bonds with the three children he and his wife, Gail, have raised. But sports also eased his introduction into American culture after he arrived in 1966.

Linares played tackle at Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair and Jersey City State College. He still carries a lineman's frame.

It is telling that, when asked for names of people who know him, Linares includes a fellow baseball coach in West Caldwell, a longtime friend from Newark who has long shared his passion for sports, and the high school football coach with whom he still talks.

"He had fight in him back then that you'd love to have in a player or anybody. He was just not going to give up," said Joseph Lennon, who coached at Immaculate Conception and now is football coach and athletic director at DePaul High School in Wayne.

Linares' route toward a career in law started a few months after his family arrived in New Jersey, he said. They were living in an apartment over a real estate office in Verona when the landlord tried to evict them.

Linares said he saw the shock in his father's eyes, and the comfort that followed when a legal aid attorney later explained their rights.

After graduating from Temple University Law School in Philadelphia, Linares worked for the New York Department of Investigation and then a private practice in Newark before hanging his own shingle in Bloomfield.

His mother and brothers helped run the office and soon he built a clientele, starting first with the North Ward neighbors and friends in Newark that he had cultivated, and the experience of being a newcomer to the country.

"He's mindful of where he came from -- I think that's his biggest advantage," said Ramon de la Cruz, a regional president for the Hispanic National Bar Association.

Linares and his friends also credit the strength he drew from his close-knit family. His parents, Jose and Mercedes, ran their own school in Cuba and became certified as teachers in the Newark school district. Their five sons remain extremely close, friends say.

In 1985, the senior Linares launched a long-shot bid to represent Newark's North Ward in the Assembly, and turned to his oldest son to manage his campaign. He lost the race, but his respectable showing gave heart to future Hispanic candidates.

"This was something that we never thought could be accomplished -- but he did and his brothers did," said Mario Moyano, who first became friends with Linares when both were teens in Newark.

The youngest of the brothers, Luis, 36, said he and his siblings still turn to the oldest for his vision and perspective. And he credited his mother with teaching all of her sons drive and humility.

"She kept life very simple," Luis Linares said. "She always reminded them: You are as good as anyone else; you're not better than anyone else."

Mercedes Linares died of cancer in 1989. She spent the last weeks of her life at home with her sons at her side. Linares said that watching her suffer reinforced his enthusiasm as an advocate for malpractice victims. Talking about it now makes him pause.

"I never pursued anything on her behalf because it was too painful a process for me," he said.

But there were other cases.

Among Linares' clients was the family of Marie Avilla, an Elizabeth woman who died in the Essex County jail annex in 1993 after allegedly being denied her prescription medicine. Avilla's relatives later collected a private settlement from the county, and Linares believes the case helped improve conditions at the jail.

Linares had been active in Republican politics, but not in the spotlight. But when President Bush had the chance to fill court vacancies in New Jersey, Linares threw his name into the ring. The Senate approved the bid last fall.

"I never had a doubt," said Bill Palatucci, the GOP consultant who helped arrange the appointment. "But he worried the entire time."

Among those attending today's ceremony will be John Shannon, who has shared coaching duties with Linares on a West Caldwell recreation league baseball team for three years.

Shannon said the judge typically coaches from third base when his team is at bat, and is never squeamish about waving a runner around second base or calling for a squeeze bunt.

"We get a lot of kids thrown out coming into third base," Shannon said. "He's very aggressive. He'll push the envelope to try to get the kids every advantage he can."

Linares doesn't deny it.

"Anyone who's successful," he said, "has got to be willing to take some chances."

Bush Appoints his 6th, Pro-Abortion Federal Judge in NJ!!

Bush taps Chertoff for a high-profile appeals court post

Friday, January 17, 2003

BY ROBERT RUDOLPH AND ROBERT COHEN
Star-Ledger Staff

Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey now heading the government's terrorism investigations, will soon be nominated by President Bush to a prestigious post on a federal appeals court.

New Jersey's two Democratic senators confirmed yesterday that Chertoff, who is head of the Justice Department's criminal division, will accept a presidential appointment to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, the judicial panel that handles federal appellate cases for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands.

Spokesmen for Sens. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said the lawmakers were contacted by the White House and told of the president's intention to nominate Chertoff to the appeals court.

"Sen. Corzine has a very favorable view of the nomination and has no questions about Mr. Chertoff's legal talent," said Corzine spokesman David Wald.

Tim Yehl, Lautenberg's chief of staff, said the senator intends to meet with Chertoff soon to discuss the appeals court judgeship.

Among other things, the senators may seek to question Chertoff about issues like abortion rights and affirmative action. Both lawmakers are expected to support his nomination.

Chertoff could not be reached for comment yesterday.

A background investigation is required before the actual nomination can be made, but it is likely to be little more than a formality and take just a few weeks because Chertoff already has been cleared for sensitive government positions.

If confirmed by the Senate, Chertoff will fill a vacancy created in June 2000 when Judge Morton Greenberg went on part-time senior status.

Although the nomination is not likely to face serious opposition, there is no guarantee of swift confirmation in the Senate, where it could be held up by political battles over other, more controversial judicial nominees.

As assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, Chertoff has overseen a number of important terrorism cases since the Sept. 11 attacks. He also has been intimately involved in planning and executing the administration's pre-emptive strategy against terrorism, including policies that have drawn harsh criticism from civil libertarians.

These have included use of sweeping new powers to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails and to conduct searches, the holding of some 1,200 prisoners in secret detention across the nation, the use of new rules for the FBI to monitor religious places and political rallies without evidence of wrongdoing and the widespread questioning of young men of Arab descent.

Privately, Chertoff's friends say he has quietly deflected some of the more draconian measures proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in the administration. Publicly, Chertoff has said he feels comfortable with the route the administration has taken.

"We have quite successfully reconciled national security interests with our civil liberties," Chertoff said in a panel discussion in November. "Our critics have overstated what is going on. Every change in the way we operate does not constitute a desecration of the Constitution."

In his current job, Chertoff also has overseen a number of important cases against executives at Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia. He also approved the indictment of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, which led to its collapse and conviction.

In November, Chertoff was considered for the post of chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to replace the embattled Harvey Pitt. Chertoff met with key White House aides, but ultimately was not chosen. Government officials said the business community did not want a prosecutor at the SEC, and helped scuttle the appointment.

Chertoff, who was in private practice before being tapped for the Justice Department post in March 2001, garnered national headlines as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey from 1990 to 1994. He oversaw the prosecution of the kidnappers and killers of Exxon executive Sidney Reso, New Jersey mob boss Louis "Bobby" Manna, Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann and New York's top judge, Sol Wachtler.

Chertoff later went to Washington to work for New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and other Republicans on the Senate committee that investigated President Bill Clinton's Arkansas land deals, which came to be known as Whitewater.

More recently, he was a special prosecutor for the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee, coordinating inquiries into a Corrections Department scandal and the state's handling of State Police racial profiling issues.

The son of a rabbi, Chertoff was born in Elizabeth. He graduated from Harvard University in 1975, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School three years later. From 1979 to 1980, Chertoff clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., before taking a post as assistant U.S. attorney in New York.

It was in that post that Chertoff first began to attract media attention, successfully bringing to trial the celebrated Mafia "Commission" case, which toppled the bosses of most of the major crime families operating in New York.

NJ Federal Judicial Appointments

Pro-Abortion - 6
Pro-Life - 0

President Bush, you are 0 and 6, please appoint at least ONE Pro-lifer to the Federal Judiciary in NJ.

Please Contact President Bush and your 2 U.S. Senators and local congressman http://www.congress.org and impress upon them that it's imperative that President Bush appoint at least ONE pro-life Judge to the Federal Judiciary in NJ. I am sure a large majority of the 1.2 million people who cast their votes for him did so because he stated that he was going to appoint pro-life federal judges. I didn't know there were "exceptions" when it came to abortion.

president@whitehouse.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Here is another chance, Mr. Bush, to make good on your word.

ORLOFSKY LEAVING FEDERAL BENCH TO REJOIN BLANK ROME

Come Sept. 1, court watchers will see something rare in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey: a federal judge returning to private practice. Judge Stephen M. Orlofsky will be stepping down after serving since 1996. President Clinton nominated him in 2000 to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that appointment never got out of the Senate after Republicans regained control of the White House. Orlofsky said politics had nothing to do with his decision to resign.

Rather, he said, he was approached by the managing partner at Blank Rome in Cherry Hill and was asked to rejoin the staff. Orlofsky chaired the litigation department there before becoming a judge. He is only the eighth judge in the history of the federal court here to resign.

Official Platform of the Republican Party

http://www.rnc.org/GOPInfo/Platform/2000platform4.htm

We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of JUDGES who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

I see no "exceptions" in here for NJ and the 1.2 Million people who voted for him.

Ping:

Here’s what a Bush NJ appointed judge thinks should happen with terror suspects. Yeah why not just give them probation instead of just bail...

Judge to Consider Bail for Plot Suspects
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, AP
Tue Nov 27, 2:31 PM EST
A judge on Tuesday opened the possibility that the five men charged with plotting an attack on the Army’s Fort Dix could be freed on bail as they await trial.

The men had previously been denied bail, but their lawyers say the situation has changed because the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia is not giving the suspects adequate access to recordings they need to review in preparation for trial.

In legal papers filed over the past week, the men asked to be moved from the Special Housing Unit, where they’ve been held since their arrests in May.

The men have complained that they were not being given enough time to review audio and video recordings that the government may use as evidence against them.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler on Tuesday scheduled a Dec. 20 hearing where lawyers can make their case for bail. He said he could also consider an arrangement in which the men could be taken to their lawyers’ offices during the day to review material in the case.

One lawyer said in court that his client had not been allowed to go to the conference room to review the recordings at all since Oct. 31; another said his client had made 20 requests since then, but had been allowed to review the recordings only once.

Just Monday, lawyers for the men said that some of them were allowed to share cells so they could discuss their cases.

Kugler said he would consider bail, but he was not sympathetic to the men’s complaints about life behind bars.

“There are over 1,200 inmates there,” he said. “Your clients don’t have their own personal corrections officers” to answer all their needs.

The men _ brothers Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka; Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer; and Serdar Tatar _ have complained about food at the facility and treatment by guards, among other issues.

The five, all foreign-born and in their 20s, were charged in May with planning a raid on Fort Dix. They face life in prison if convicted of conspiring to murder military personnel. A sixth man pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to provide weapons to the group. No attack was ever staged on the base, which is being used largely to train reservists bound for Iraq.

Government lawyers said Tuesday that they plan to add some weapons charges against some of the men.

A trial has been scheduled for March 24.

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