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Did Scott Rothstein surrender or was he arrested?

There has been some debate about whether Rothstein was arrested or whether he was permitted to surrender. The answer is really neither. When a defendant surrenders, he is permitted to show up at magistrate court for his first appearance on his own (not in handcuffs). And when someone is arrested, federal agents show up at your house at 6:30 in the morning and bring you to court. Here, we had a little of both -- Rothstein wasn't arrested at his house (or the hotel he was staying at) and he didn't show up to magistrate court on his own. Instead, it appears he surrendered himself to the FBI office where they put him in handcuffs and brought him to court. The feds did this so that they could say they arrested him, but they allowed him to show up to the FBI office because it's pretty obvious he has been cooperating and so they gave him this small concession. Also, for some reason Rothstein's lawyer continues to say he isn't cooperating, so having him show up to court in handcuffs allows Rothstein to continue to say this even though I think everyone knows that train has left the station.

The whole surrender vs. arrest thing has always bugged me. If a defendant knows about the charges and hasn't gone anywhere, he should be permitted to surrender even if he isn't cooperating. The government should not be able to use the threat of arrest to coerce a person into pleading... It's a complete waste of resources. Obviously, this is not the typical case, so perhaps the government, for political reasons, couldn't allow him to simply show up to court on his own (especially since he's been sipping martinis for the past couple weeks in everyone's face).
The other topic being discussed is the information vs. indictment. Rothstein has been charged by way of information, meaning that the feds didn't have to go to a grand jury. This generally is a tell-tale sign that the defendant is cooperating. But again, the whole information vs. indictment thing has never made much sense to me. Who cares whether you are charged with an information instead of an indictment. It does absolutely nothing for the defendant whatsoever. I guess it saves an agent from an afternoon of explaining the case to a grand jury. In my view, we should just get rid of the grand jury altogether. That would require a constitutional amendment though, and we haven't had one of those in a while.

Here's Jeff Sloman at the press conference yesterday:

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on December 02, 2009 (boomark / email).