“It’s really going to be a long road, even if he’s convicted and receives the death penalty,” said Michelle Lindo McCluer, director of the National Institute of Military Justice at American University’s Washington College of Law, to the WSJ.

On Tuesday, thanks to reporting from the WSJ reporters Stephanie Simon, Miguel Bastillo and Ann Davis, we learned a little bit more about the lawyer who will plead Hasan’s case. His name: John Galligan.

According to the story (link not yet available), Galligan (pictured), a retired Army colonel, has handled the defense in several high-profile military cases and has a national reputation for successfully defending soldiers being tried on serious charges.

Indeed, Galligan has gone on the offensive already, telling television reporters on Tuesday that he fears it will impossible for Hasan to get a fair trial at Fort Hood because of the intense publicity generated by the shootings. He said he had met with his new client for about a half-hour on Monday in a military hospital in San Antonio. He also told Good Morning America on Tuesday that hequestion his client’s mental competence, telling ABC News that one of the first things any lawyer would want to determine is whether there is a “mental responsibility issue present.”

As we noted on the blog Monday, Hasan will likely be charged in military court and could face the death penalty. If he does go to trial, Hasan will have at his side a veteran military defense lawyer who has persuaded juries in several high-profile cases to grant his clients leniency.

In 2005, for instance, Galligan represented military police reservist Willie Brand on charges of assaulting and maiming a shackled prisoner in Afghanistan. Brand admitted beating the prisoner, who later died of complications from his injuries, and a military jury convicted him. Prosecutors sought a lengthy prison term.

But Galligan called Mr. Brand “a hero” who was only doing what he had been trained to do. That argument carried the day; the jury did not order Brand jailed or discharged, but simply reduced his rank to private.

Galligan “is very, very highly respected,” with a national reputation as a premier defense lawyer for soldiers charged with serious crimes, said Geoffrey Corn, a professor of military law at South Texas College of Law.

A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the University of Puerto Rico Law School, Galligan has served as military prosecutor, defense lawyer and judge at various times in his career. He retired from the Army in 2001 and now works out of a private office in Belton, Tex., a small town about 25 miles east of Fort Hood.

Photo: AP

The former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, were on trial for various fraud counts, essentially accused of lying to their investors about the health of two funds as they were collapsing in 2007.

The trial didn’t go altogether smoothly for the government. More than one government witness strayed from the script, and ended up providing testimony that wasn’t exactly damaging to the defendants’ cases. The judge on the case, Frederick Block, ruled the jury couldn’t consider one of the prosecution’s emails, as well.

Jury deliberations began Monday morning.

The verdict brought to an end a two-year saga involving the former managers, Cioffi and Tannin, who were accused of lying to their investors about the health of two mortgage-related funds that collapsed in 2007. Those failures were the first of several blows that felled Bear Stearns and marked the arrival of the credit crisis.

Cioffi and Tannin were the first and so far only Wall Street executives to face criminal securities-fraud charges stemming from the crisis, underscoring the difficulty of assigning criminal liability for Wall Street’s mistakes.

After the verdict was read the defendants’ family members and lawyers embraced each other and cried. The verdict, which also cleared Cioffi of insider trading and both men of conspiracy charges, came after about six hours of deliberation by a mostly working-class jury of eight women and four men.

“I’m happy,” Cioffi said as he exited the courtroom. “We appreciate the attention the jury gave the case,” said Cioffi’s lawyer, Dane Butswinkas.

According to Efrati, the jurors simply bought the defense’s narrative. One juror, Aram Hong, a 27-year-old Korean immigrant, compared Cioffi to the captain of a ship, saying that while the ship was sinking, he and his colleagues were “working hard, 24/7” and “tried to do whatever they can…to stop the boat from sinking.” Because that ship was a hedge fund, the men could quickly change their bets about the mortgage market, she said.

Working the case for the defendants, according to the AmLaw Litigation Daily: Cioffi relied on William & Connolly’s Butswinkas, Brendan Sullivan, Jr.,, Margaret Keeley, and Jonathan Landy, and Hughes Hubbard & Reed’s Edward Little and Marc Weinstein. Tannin was represented by Susan Brune and Nina Beattie from the boutique litigation firm Brune & Richard.

According to a press release, the firm will reduce its hourly billing rates by 20 percent and also cut annual salaries for first-year associates in 15 U.S. offices by 20 percent. These changes will apply to the 51 new lawyers joining the firm in January 2010.

“In response to our clients’ feedback and concerns about driving down the cost of legal services, we wanted to send a clear message that we are listening. So, we have therefore reduced both the rates and the salaries of our incoming first year associates” said Gregory B. Jordan, Reed Smith’s Global Managing Partner. “We have also launched a new competency based development program to better prepare our new lawyers to meet the needs of our clients.”

Annual starting salaries for the new associates beginning in January 2010 will range from $130,000 in major markets such as New York City, Chicago, California, and Washington, D.C. (down from a high of $160,000 in 2008), to $110,000 in Pittsburgh, PA. These actions solely involve the new associates entering the firm’s U.S. offices. Salary levels for 2010 newly qualifying lawyers in the firm’s European, Middle Eastern and Asian offices will be determined in the normal course of business during 2010.

“Our new U.S. starting salaries represent a reasonable and appropriate reset based on today’s economic environment,” said Eugene Tillman, the firm’s Global Head of Legal Personnel. “We believe this will put Reed Smith in a stronger business position in a changing marketplace while still providing fair compensation to our new associates.”

In conjunction with the new compensation, Reed Smith has also reduced the first-year associate annual billable hour expectation from 1,900 to 1,700 hours, allowing additional time and opportunity to take advantage of the training and development programs associated with CareeRS™, the firm’s newly launched talent development initiative.

Wrote Norman on Monday, in a brief intro to the video:

From the Capital Grille, this is Scott Rothstein being greeted by the staff there and being served a martini. It’s not earth-shattering, but it’s him at about noon today.

We won’t comment on the video; we’ll leave that job to you, LBers. But on Monday, according to this report from the WSVN news channel in Fort Lauderdale, Rothstein said he plans on paying back all the money that’s allegedly missing. “I made a very, very serious mistake,” he reportedly said. “Everyone in life makes mistakes, everybody. Look, it’s a very, very simple process. I made a very, very serious mistake, but at the end of the day, you make a decision, you either run from your mistakes or you face them. You man up. You do the right thing.”

In other words, Rothstein will pay back the money — or try hard to. “I’ve come back here to make sure that everything’s made right,” he said. “If anyone’s lost any money, I’m going to do every single thing in my power to make sure that every single penny is recovered.”

Rothstein reportedly spoke with his attorney and former Rothstein Rosenfeldt lawyer Marc Nurik by his side. “We are right now, trying to figure out how this is going to work out,” Nurik said. “It’s a very detailed process. There are a lot of issues involved.”

Rothstein said he is not dealing directly with the government in his plans to return the finds. “Scott is cooperating with me,” said Nurik, “in trying to figure out how we’re going to arrange for all of this money to be paid back.”

Judge Sifton handled many major cases in more than 30 years on the bench, many of them as chief judge for the Eastern District of New York. According to the NYT story, he presided over civil-rights and school desegregation cases as well as trials of Mafia bosses and Irish terrorists.

But Sifton might be best known for his ruling made last January, in which he upheld a law passed last fall by the New York City Council to allow incumbents to run for a third term. The ruling paved the way for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to keep his seat as New York city’s mayor. The Council had followed the wishes of the mayor and some of its members in overturning a two-term limit endorsed by voters in two referendums in the 1990s.

Judge Sifton rejected arguments by individuals who filed suit to reverse the Council’s action. The opponents contended that only another referendum could overturn the limit. Judge Sifton ruled that officials elected by voters are entitled to reverse direct referendums.

“To hold that overturning a law enacted by referendum infringed on First Amendment rights would effectively bar repeal, amendment or revision of all laws initiated by the people,” he wrote in his 64-page opinion.

Sifton was born in Manhattan in 1935, and graduated from Harvard in 1957. He was a Fulbright scholar in Germany, and graduated from Columbia Law School. He worked on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the office of the United States attorney in Manhattan, where his last position was chief appellate lawyer. He then worked in private practice.

President Jimmy Carter appointed him a federal judge in 1977.

Judge Sifton’s son, Sam, is the restaurant critic for the NYT.

The NYT’s Adam Liptak asks that straightforward question in an intriguing little story out Tuesday.

According to Liptak, Scalia doesn’t readily enjoy talking about the hypothetical concerning the famed 1954 case that banned segregation in public schools. The decision is hard to square with Justice Scalia’s commitment to originalism, the theory of constitutional interpretation that says judges must apply the original understanding of the constitutional text. LIptak writes that the weight of the historical evidence is that the people who drafted the 14th Amendment did not believe themselves to be doing away with segregated schools.

The question came up at the University of Arizona last month in what was billed as a conversation between Justice Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer. Breyer asked Scalia about the case, but didn’t exactly get a straightforward answer from Scalia. Writes Liptak on Scalia’s answer:

“As for Brown v. Board of Education, I think I would have” — and then he changed directions. He said he would have voted with the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case Brown overruled.

But Plessy, decided in 1896, concerned the segregation of passengers on railroads. That is an easier case for originalists. For starters, railroads were long considered common carriers required to serve all customers equally.

In a 2005 profile in The New Yorker, Justice Scalia said he would have voted with the majority in Brown. But he did not explain why. Liptak writes that Scalia seemed to suggest that Brown reached the right result as a policy matter but that it was not compelled by the Constitution.

Still, in Arizona, Scalia was a fervent defender of the originalist approach. “Don’t make up your mind on this significant question between originalism and playing it by ear on the basis of whether, now and then, the latter approach might give you a result you like,” Justice Scalia said.

“The test is over the long run does it require the society to adhere to those principles contained in the Constitution or does it lead to a society that is essentially governed by nine justices’ version of what equal protection ought to mean?”

The seizure proceedings began after federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint alleging fraud and seeking forfeiture of several of Rothstein’s big-ticket items. It marks the first time prosecutors have leveled fraud allegations at him, even though criminal charges have yet to be announced. The forfeiture complaint put the value of the real estate at more than $18 million. Click here for the AP story on the complaint. Click here for previous LB posts about Rothstein.

In the complaint, prosecutors claim that Rothstein operated the Ponzi scheme since 2005 using his law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. Investors were promised fat profits of 20 percent or more by paying lump sums to people who had won legal settlements that would supposedly pay out larger amounts over a longer period.

It was all a lie, the complaint contends. Like all Ponzi schemes, new investor money was used to pay earlier investors to keep up an illusion of success, backed up by false documents showing bank accounts containing fictional large sums.

“The investigation has established that no such settlement agreements had ever existed and the entire investment scheme was a fraud,” prosecutors said in the complaint. “The scheme involved
hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Rothstein’s attorney did not respond to two phone messages seeking comment by the AP. The lawsuit mentions “others” involved in the scheme, but no one else is named.

Judging from the tenor of the arguments on Monday, this seems to be the way things are likely to play out in In Re Bilski, one of the larger cases of the term. At issue: the viability of so-called “business-method patents” — intellectual-property protection for financial strategies, risk management techniques, teaching methods, and the like.

According to Jess Bravin, the Journal’s Supreme Court correspondent, the justices were on Monday “skeptical and at times scornful reception to arguments that there should be broader patent protection for “business methods,” which several justices suggested did little to spur the technological progress that patent laws were intended to promote.” Click here for Bravin’s story; here for coverage from the NYT; here for the WaPo story; here for the National Law Journal piece; here for the transcript of the arguments.

Bravin writes that on Monday, several justices seemed almost contemptuous toward business-method patents, which they contrasted with inventions such as the telephone or Morse Code that an inventor might devise in a laboratory.

That boded ill for Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw (pictured), who are seeking to patent a method for hedging risk in commodities trading due to fluctuations in the weather.

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the hedging method was too abstract to be patented. The applicants’ argument, he said, meant that “anything that helps any businessman succeed is patentable.”

The Constitution authorizes the government to award limited-time monopolies “to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” Justice Antonin Scalia observed. “That meant, originally, and still means manufacturing arts, arts dealing with workmen, with inventors,” he said. “Not somebody who writes a book on ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’”

According to Bravin, the justices seemed most torn over how broad to make their ruling — whether to address the Bilski patent alone or try to draw a broader principle.

“How about if we say something as simple as patent law doesn’t cover business methods?” Justice Sotomayor said. That would avoid what she suggested were potential problems with the scope of the Federal Circuit ruling.

At the same time, Sotomayor seemed to realize that such a decision might be fraught. “I have no idea what the limits of that ruling will impose in the computer world, in the biomedical world, all of the amici who are talking about how it will destroy industries. If we are unsure about that, wouldn’t the safer practice be simply to say it doesn’t involve business methods?” she said.

Photo: Keith Srakocic/Associated Press

But not necessarily. Turns out that at the securities-fraud trial of two former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin (pictured), the jurors are a bit puzzled themselves over the issue of venue.

“Please explain venue further,” wrote Jenny McCaughey, the jury foreperson, to U.S. District Judge Frederic Block in Brooklyn earlier Monday. The jury began its deliberations earlier Monday.

We don’t blame them for the confusion. During closing arguments last week, the defense lawyers told the jury it shouldn’t have heard the case to begin with. The case was brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York’s eastern district, which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. But defense lawyers said the defendants worked exclusively in Manhattan and that all of the alleged activity took place there. (For background on the case, in which the men are accused of lying to their investors about their personal interests’ in two mortgage-related funds in 2007, among other things, click here.)

A federal prosecutor in the case, James McGovern, said in response that some of the alleged victims as well as some of Bear Stearns’ back-office operations were located in the eastern district, thus justifying the case. He also said that during the period of the alleged conspiracy in 2007, Tannin discussed one investor’s possible redemption with a Bear Stearns broker who managed that investor’s money, and the discussion occurred at JFK airport in Queens.

When Judge Block gave instructions to the jury prior to the start of their deliberations earlier today, he told them that the government needed to prove that the defendants committed an overt act in New York’s eastern district that was in furtherance of the conspiracy count on two securities-fraud counts. But he said the proof only had to be “by a preponderance of the evidence, which is less than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

After getting the foreperson’s note this afternoon, Block brought the jurors back to the court room and repeated his explanation, adding that he could answer more-specific questions should they arise.

The defense hasn’t challenged venue as to the other three counts in the case: alleged insider trading by Cioffi and two instances of alleged wire fraud by both defendants.

Separately, the deliberating jurors also asked to see the testimony of Kathleen Hartmann, a Bear Stearns payroll employee who testified about the millions of dollars the defendants earned at the firm. Prosecutors had argued that the defendants had a financial motive to keep the funds afloat, even if it meant lying to investors.

Photo: Associated Press

Belk, 60, is scion to a prominent family in North Carolina, grandson of the founder of a regional department store chain and nephew of a former Charlotte mayor. He’s accused of violating the N.C. Code of Judicial Conduct by serving on the board of directors of at least two companies while in office. He also is accused of bullying Chief District Court Justice Lisa Bell when she wouldn’t let him off duty to attend a board meeting of one of the companies, Sonic Automotive. The incident, according to the Charlotte Observer here, left Bell in tears after Belk called her a “political hack.”

The Observer, which has covered the saga extensively, reported that Belk ignored opinions on his behavior, including one from the Supreme Court, that his membership on the boards was a violation. At a hearing held last month before the N.C. Judicial Standards Commission, the commission’s attorney, Nancy Vecchia, described Belk’s refusal to resign from the Sonic board as “willful disobedience.”

As for Belk, the Observer writes:

Belk said the N.C. code that bans corporate service is out of step with those of other states. He also questioned a judicial code that says judges “should” not serve on corporate boards. If the code meant to ban such service, he argued, it would say “shall” not.

Last week, however, Belk announced that the commission had informed him it would recommend the Supreme Court remove him from the bench. He tendered his resignation to Gov. Bev Perdue by week’s end. As Officer Jim Malone might say, here endeth the lesson.