Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Southern District of Florida

Federal Judiciary

: Southern District of Florida

Trials

I was supposed to start a month-long trial this week in West Palm Beach, but it got postponed till next Monday. Here are some stories about other trials that started this week:

1. Participant or just translator? Shahrazad Gholikhan started trial in front of Judge Cohn. She is charged with attempting to export night vision goggles to Iran. This was the case that originally pled out to credit time served, but the government moved to vacate the sentence saying it had made a mistake in the guidelines. Judge Cohn then resentenced her to 29 months. Then the defense moved to vacate the plea, saying that everyone had thought it was a CTS case. Judge Cohn agreed and here we are in trial. Vanessa Blum covers it here:

The strange legal odyssey that led an Iranian woman to surrender last year to face charges she tried to supply Iran with U.S.-made night vision goggles took another turn Tuesday with opening statements to jurors in Fort Lauderdale federal court.A prosecutor told jurors that Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, 30, conspired with her former husband to illegally purchase thousands of military-grade night vision goggles and traveled to Vienna in 2004 to obtain a sample pair.Gholikhan's attorney countered that she went to Vienna without knowing her ex-husband's plan and served only as his translator.

2. The Venezuelan cash smuggling case started up before Judge Lenard. Here's Curt Anderson's take:

A wealthy Venezuelan businessman went on trial Tuesday on U.S. charges that he illegally acted as his government's agent in an elaborate scheme to conceal the source of $800,000 in political cash carried in a suitcase into Argentina.
Prosecutors say Franklin Duran, 40, was doing the bidding of Venezuela's intelligence service when he and others used promises of $2 million in cash and veiled threats of violence to make the cover-up work. The FBI taped dozens of conversations between Duran and his alleged cohorts on the telephone and in South Florida restaurants and coffee shops.
Jury selection began Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, with the trial expected to take up to six weeks. Duran, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy and failing to register with the U.S. as a Venezuelan agent.
The purported cover-up involved a cash-stuffed suitcase brought into Argentina aboard a Venezuelan aircraft in August 2007 that prosecutors say was intended as a contribution for new Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. Both she and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have denounced the trial as politically motivated, but U.S. officials deny that.
Still, the case has further strained the already sour relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela. Duran's lawyer, Ed Shohat, has repeatedly insisted the trial is intended mainly to embarrass Chavez and his allies in Latin America and that Duran wasn't even aware of the registration law he is accused of violating.
"Our view is that this case is a political attack," Shohat said.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on September 03, 2008 (boomark / email).