The Robert Wone murder case heated up yesterday. One defendant was released. There was the news that all three roommates, who were charged with obstruction of justice, would be living together in a rented apartment. There was the news that a Grand Jury was looking into more charges. And finally, Wone’s family filed a wrongful death civil suit in D.C. Superior Court against the three roommates.

One other aspect of the Wone case jumped out: There are some powerful attorneys on all sides of this case.

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One of the oldest and most frustrating murder cases in recent District history may finally come to a sad end. In June 1996, Shaquita Bell disappeared two weeks before she was scheduled to testify against her boyfriend, Michael Dickerson, in an assault case. Detectives had spent tons of time and resources attempting to find her body and put away Dickerson.

The case finally started to take serious shape last year and early this year with Dickerson’s arrest on murder charges. You can read the original charging documents here.

The Washington Post reports today that Dickerson has agreed to help law enforcement find Bell’s remains.

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Yesterday a Superior Court judge denied a request by the D.C. Attorney General’s office to seal exhibits entered into public record by two UDC professors as part of a FOIA lawsuit. The professors sued for the Department of Corrections’ emergency plans at D.C. Jail, the city said releasing them would cause a terrorist attack, and then, after it turned out you could get the withheld document from the department’s own website via Google, the District government demanded that the court force the professors not to tell anybody.

This absurd FOIA battle was the subject of a Sep. 22 City Paper story. The document is no longer directly accessible from the D.C. government’s website, but please feel free to download it from the Washington City Paper’s website.

The D.C. Jail went into lockdown the same day the story came out. The Department of Corrections insisted that the lockdown was routine and had nothing to do with the story, which was very alarming, because if the department believes its own statements about the security threat posed by the release of this document, wouldn’t you expect them to put the jail in lockdown or something when the document was publicized? Or maybe in this case the most alarming thing would be to know the government believes its own statements.

Last week, I wrote about the extra steps taken by Judge Erik P. Christian to keep his private life private. He had his own domestic relations case sealed. Christian isn’t the most popular judge on the D.C. Superior Court, and he has a reputation among many of the attorneys I spoke with for making unreasonable demands. Here’s the PDF of his explanation for demanding a doctor’s note from a witness who wanted to tape her testimony before a trial began, since she was dying of cancer. The woman’s brother said the experience made the last days of her life “miserable.”

Here’s what he said when he first asked for the note:

“When you say any day, any day for colon cancer, certain cancers, can be tomorrow or next year.”

The prosecutor explained that doctors believe the witness would not survive another month. Christian replied:

“Well are you just saying she won’t make it another year, another month? When will she die?”

The witness died before the trial began, without taping her deposition. The defense agreed to allow the use of her grand jury testimony.

Side note: There’s an interesting comment on my first post quoting from an appellate judge who took the time to lay into Christian for handing down a 12-year sentence for a drug possession charge. The sentence was well in excess of the guidelines for violent crimes and armed drug dealing.

There are certain privileges that come with being a judge on the D.C. Superior Court. You get a parking space, a courtroom, a law clerk and a secretary, upwards of $150,000 a year, and the job security of a 15-year presidential appointment. But it’s still a job for mortals. Judges have to pay for their own robes, and, unlike diplomats and juveniles, public records documenting their legal entanglements are well, still public. Except in the case of Judge Erik P. Christian.

Christian seems to think his personal business is none of your business, and he’s convinced another judge to keep it that way. In July, Judge Jerry Byrd approved a motion to seal the records in a domestic relations case filed by Christian’s ex-wife, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julieanne Himelstein.

According to Leah Gurowitz, a spokesperson for the Superior Court, domestic relations cases are rarely sealed. Gurowitz said reasons had to be given for sealing such records, but once the envelope is sealed, those reasons aren’t public either.

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The D.C. Department of Corrections says releasing Program Statement No. 5031.1A will “encourage an act of terrorism.” Why, then, did the department make the document readily available on its website, where anyone in the world could look at it?

Read all about it in this week’s cover story. Take a look at the document, too, and see if you think it encourages terror.

The city’s Judicial Nominations Commission just announced that Lee Satterfield will be the next chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court.

Satterfield, a longtime associate judge on the court, beat out colleague Anita Josey-Herring to replace the well-liked and well-regarded Rufus G. King III for the top slot, which entails a lot of administrative duties and representing the court before policymaking bodies.

The Washington Post had a nice little story about the choice a few weeks back.

Satterfield takes the job on Sept. 30. Press release after jump.

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In April, lawyers for both sides of WAKA LLC v. DC Kickball filed
paperwork with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for the case to be dismissed.

The motion was granted.

And so ends the Greatest Kickball Lawsuit of All Time™.

The federal case was originally filed in February 2006 and involved the folks responsible for turning DC into the adult kickball epicenter.

WAKA, also known as the World Adult Kickball Association, alleged that Carter Rabasa, founder of DC Kickball, had violated copyright laws because his league used the same kickball rules as WAKA.

Those are also pretty much the same rules used by third graders everywhere. No third graders were named as defendants.

The complaint also alleged that Rabasa, a former WAKA volunteer, defamed WAKA by calling the group “the Microsoft of kickball” in a 2005 City Paper story.

Rabasa countersued, alleging in his filings that WAKA used monopolistic tactics on the way to becoming, um, the Microsoft of Kickball™.

No terms of the settlement are included in the court filings.

However, the DC Kickball website holds clues that Rabasa, who lacked the deep pockets of the, um, Microsoft of Kickball™, hit his knees.

First, there’s a disclaimer from Rabasa saying that no “defamatory and/or disparaging remarks regarding WAKA” will be allowed on the DC Kickball site.

Then there’s this syntax-challenged announcement labeled as “Apology to WAKA“: “Carter Rabasa, DCKickball and DCK Sports LLC regret and retract the defamatory and/or disparaging statements made regarding WAKA Kickball. Those statement were in error.”

(“Those statement,” huh? Is that a typo, or some sort of juvenile,
kickball-age appropriate “I had my fingers crossed when I said I’m
sorry!” trick?)

Even with Rabasa’s apparent fold, it’s hard to declare any winner here.

But the losers are legion: Anybody hoping that this case would reach a trial stage, so grownups would argue in a public courtroom over kickball—or Kickball™—is diminished by its early denouement.

Last week, D.C. Superior Court issued 100 bench warrants to residents who failed to show up for jury duty and had failed to appear before a “show-cause” hearing to explain their absence. It had been years since the court had utilized the bench-warrant tactic. But it provided this result:

Earlier this week, five residents were taken into custody, according to court spokesperson Leah Gurowitz. These five spent some time behind bars. At least some, appeared before a judge—to explain their jury-duty failings—in shackles.

In an e-mail, Gurowitz explained the court’s actions:

“The Superior Court issued bench warrants only for those people who had ignored two court orders: a jury summons and an order to appear at a ’show cause hearing’ to explain their failure to appear for jury service. Our goal is not to arrest people, but to underscore the requirement of obeying court orders and the importance of jury duty. It is not fair to those who do serve jury duty for others to simply ignore it.

“Anyone concerned that they may have a bench warrant issued in their name as a result of ignoring jury duty and show cause notice should call the Jurors Office at 879-4604. Anyone who has recently skipped jury duty should do the same. The Court has made great efforts to make jury service as convenient as possible: you can register and defer on-line, there is a child care center at the courthouse, and there is a quiet room and WiFi for those who want to work while serving jury duty. But for those who shirk their civic duty, there are consequences.”

More than a dozen other residents responded to the bench warrant in some fashion without being arrested. This means there are still plenty more residents with outstanding warrants for their arrest.

I guess I need to say it again. People: Jury Duty Is No Joke.

Update 3:34 p.m.: According to Gurowitz, all five residents who were arrested, appeared before Chief Judge Rufus King III. They appeared before the Chief Judge in shackles. “Those taken into custody ‘involuntarily’ are in ankle shackles until released,” Gurowitz explains. 

Yesterday, we reported that D.C. Superior Court has installed an urgent-care clinic for mentally-ill defendants. The new clinic is being spearheaded by both the court and the Department of Mental Health as well as the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

According to Phyllis Jones, DMH’s spokesperson, the clinic has seen five people between Monday and Wednesday. One client was new to the system. The other four had been in the system but had lost contact. She says they were reconnected with services.

Sounds like the clinic–much needed in Superior Court and, of course, elsewhere–is working.

Last night, WJLA reported–along with everybody else–on a mysterious death inside Superior Court.

Here’s what we learned today: At around 3:30 p.m., a man fell to his death from the 3rd Floor. This is the floor where a lot of your criminal cases are tried. He was described to City Desk as an African-American male in his mid 50s. Although his name has not been released–at the time of this post–it appears he did not have a case pending.

He landed near the information desk. According to a source the man may have left a suicide note.

Within 20 minutes, paramedics had attended to the man and had taken him away in an ambulance. Police closed off the lobby as they considered it a possible crime scene. The front doors were shut. Police set about interviewing any witnesses.

Police re-opened the lobby yesterday evening.

Earlier this month there was another death inside the courthouse.

Earlier this month, FBI agents raided the Georgetown branch of the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles and arrested five people allegedly selling fake licenses.

“Everything that we do has a black market,” DMV Director Lucinda M. Babers said at an afternoon press conference. “There are people that are perhaps approaching our employees on a daily basis to see if they can entice them.”

What repercussions could result from this bust? The DMVs are probably monitoring their employees a little more closely. And perhaps there’s a vacuum in the fraudulent identification world currently being filled by new scam artists. But, here’s one after-effect I didn’t see coming: suspects charged with fraud are using the Georgetown DMV story as a possible defense.

Well, at least one is. Last Friday, I happened to be in Judge Rafael Diaz’s courtroom when defendant Yvette Scott’s case was called. Last October, Scott visited the Southwest M Street DMV with a phony driver’s license she was trying turn into a real one (she wanted to “renew” it).

Apparently, the I.D. wasn’t just a fake–it was a really bad fake. The officer who wrote up the police report said he could tell it was false the moment he looked at it: “The name printed on the license was typed on the outside of the [lamination]. The font used by [the] DMV was different from the font used on the fake driver’s license.” There are other details, but you get the point.

Scott didn’t fess up though. She just told the officer she got the license at the DMV’s  Brentwood branch in Northeast. Then, the officer told her he was going to arrest her.

In Diaz’s courtroom last week, Scott still wasn’t straying from her position. But, this time, she let her lawyer, Frederick Iverson, do most of the talking. He told Diaz he believed there was a “pattern” going on in the DMV system and the Brentwood location was possibly inflicted with the same problems as the Georgetown branch. Iverson asked for a continuance to look into this potential DMV debacle. Scott will be back in court on April 17.

When U.S. District Court summons D.C. residents for jury duty, it sends a letter with the potential juror’s number and a list of instructions. It also includes an enticement to show up: free Internet in the jurors lounge.

Last Thursday, four jurors attempted to wait out their civic duty online. But when they plugged in their laptops, they found the Web to be as accessible as a free lunch in the cafeteria. If potential jurors want to get online, they were told, they’d have to do it by way of a dial-up connection in a nearby room. No one jumped on the offer.

According to Nick Blend, director of the federal court’s IT department, the court had tried to contract out for installation of WiFi last year. But, Blend says, “it just turned out to be too much money.”

Sheldon Snook, a court spokesperson, says that the court’s “realistic” plans call for wireless service by spring. “We decided to handle it internally rather than go through an outside contractor,” he says. The court is hoping to make WiFi available in both the jurors lounge and the cafeteria. “It’s for the convenience of the jurors whose lives are dependent on the Internet,” Snook says.

Fisher is reporting that the infamous case of the missing pants is getting the ripped-from-the-headlines treatment from the good folks at “Law & Order.” The episode airs tonight. Finally a reason to watch the show!

WTOP reports that officials at Superior Court have added their names and mea culpas to the many that failed Banita Jacks and her children.

Prince of Petworth is down on the new 911/311 policies. We agree. The city has never really gotten the response times to an adequate level. Calling 311 is/was always a joke. This new shift will only confuse people.

Marc Fisher has a new hero.

The Sports Bog stays on the Arenas Beat.