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Prominent Attorney Accuses Sotomayor of Possible Ethics Breach
FR Posted on Thursday, July 16, 2009 by kristinn
The following letter was sent to Senators Sessions, Hatch, Grassley, Graham and Coburn. It was also sent to Cong. Peter King (R) NY.
Text of the letter: I am an attorney in NYC who represented White House Photographer Chris Usher in litigation against Corbis, a privately held company wholly owned by Bill Gates. The case principally concerned lost Presidential and campaign photography during the 2000 Bush v. Gore Campaign and the US Supreme Court case related thereto.We won at the trial level in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York but the award to the victorious plaintiff was absurdly low. We appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals where the award was inexplicably upheld.
It was revealed by opposing counsel that Judge Sotomayor and Mr. Gates’ counsel have known and (possibly worked with) each other for decades. Such relationship was never disclosed to me as plaintiff’s attorney by the Court. No opportunity for us to request that Judge Sotomayor recuse herself was afforded as this information was never disclosed. The appearance of impropriety is astounding as Judge Sotomayor could have recused herself and we could have had another Appeals Panel within days. Please contact me so that this apparently unethical judicial behavior is brought to the attention of the judiciary committee immediately. Edward C. Greenberg, Esq. contact info redacted.
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HER ACTUAL WORDS FROM THE BENCH TO AN ADMITTED DRUG DEALER: Sentencing Louis Gomez (a noncitizen), who pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine:
“[I]t is in some respects a great tragedy for our country that instead of permitting you to serve a lesser sentence and rejoin your family at an earlier time I am required by law to give you the statutory minimum. ... [W]e all understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, unfortunately there are laws that I must impose. “Louis Gomez, yours is the tragedy of our laws and the greatest one that I know. ... the one our congressmen never thought about and don’t think about. ... “It is no comfort to you for me to say that I am deeply, personally sorry about the sentence that I must impose, because the law requires me to do so. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir.”
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Nelson Castellanos was arrested in NYC outside his Harlem apartment, charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was holding his keys and a white shopping bag containing about $10,000, mostly in $1 and $20 bills. That evening, pursuant to a warrant, DEA personnel searched his apartment and found over 1,200 grams of cocaine, six live rounds of ammunition, a .44 caliber revolver and incriminating notebooks. All this evidence was thrown out by District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that the DEA agents had not provided the magistrate with probable cause to search Castellanos's apartment.