Legislative counsel Brenda Erdoes says marijuana lounges are legal. [Las Vegas Sun; RJ]
Nevada inmate wants to know how to prepare for execution. [RJ]
Some of Robert Graham’s victims want a tough sentence for him. [RJ]
Here are 10 discovery tips from Discovery Commissioner Bonnie Bulla given at last month’s civil bench bar meeting. Another meeting is today at noon. [eighthjdcourt blog]
One of the unpublished orders issued by the Supreme Court yesterday was regarding Robert Graham. [nvcourts]
(1) Call me your honor. Really butter me up to make me feel like I'm a real judge.
(2) Never make any statement that suggests that I have made a mistake. I never make mistakes.
(3) When I don't like the way you filed something, even if the thing I dislike is utterly trivial, I will stamp rejected at least 15 times on the document. Deal with it.
(4) I like to pretend I'm a lawyer. So when I start putting arguments into your mouth, go with it. I might be giving you the arguments that I like.
(5) Don't fret when I threaten to call your firm's managing partner about whatever meaningless problem I'm dwelling on today. I'm just saying that to show everyone in the courtroom that I'm super powerful.
(6-10) I am smart; you are dumb.
I like Bonnie. I liked Bonnie when she was in private practice. I have liked Bonnie as the Commissioner. With that said, she has these spurts where you just cock your head to the side and have to go "Huh?"
She yells and fines attorneys for no reason. She belongs at the OBC.
Guest
Anonymous
September 12, 2017 3:55 pm
The Supremes broke lose with a number of Unpublished Decisions yesterday. As one of the critics of their productivity, it is only fair to note that they released 17 Orders yesterday.
You mean undermining the legitimate power of POTUS in an effort to undermine the outcome of the election? Even SCOTUS realizes you can't blatantly usurp the explicitly delegated powers of a co-equal branch of government.
That's the problem with you leftwing nutjobs: you refuse to operate within the system. Beat people in the streets, violate the constitution, spread fake news, spread fake science. Truly un-American.
So, in all seriousness, what are you going to do after the Trump landslide in 2020? Blame it on the….hmmmm….oh, the Cubans? Wait! No, no. It will be the ghost of Saddam "Weapons of Mass Destruction" Hussein! Booya. Live on CNN.
I would be willing to discuss this point with you, 8:14 pm, but only if you first expressly acknowledge that what the Senate did to Garland last year was an equally bad — if not worse — example of one branch "blatantly usurp[ing] the explicitly delegated powers of a co-equal branch of government." If you won't acknowledge that, then I'm afraid there's no way we can have an honest conversation.
Not 8:14, but how did the Senate usurp anything? The Executive nominates, which he did. The Senate consents, and nothing in their rules places a timeline on how long it should take for the Senate to dither around or even get around to setting the matter for a hearing, as evidenced by the hundreds of federal court judicial openings that have not been filled.
Guest
Anonymous
September 12, 2017 8:32 pm
The RJ article about Graham is quick to point out that the Mormon church accepted his donations, but it doesn't point out how quick the Mormon church also always is to return those funds once it has an inkling that the funds were obtained through fraud or some other criminal act(s).
Don't tell me how quick they normally are; tell me how quick the Church was in this case. Because the Church has been on notice for 9 months, and I have yet to hear of a penny being returned to clients. It will be worthy of a mention once it is relevant.
Just because somebody (church or not) has been "on notice" of possibly receiving tainted funds doesn't mean they're going to immediately turn over the funds. Nobody's going to actually turn over funds until it's established that the funds were tainted. Now that Graham has admitted guilt, the Church should turn over the donated funds as it has done in the past.
Guest
Anonymous
September 12, 2017 9:14 pm
The funds won't be returned.
The church will start off by saying the right thing. The church will indicate that it is appropriate to return donated funds that were initially wrongfully taken for needy people.
But the devil is in the details. Once additional, more focused questions are put to them, as to whether all the funds will be returned, and when, that's where it all becomes dicey.
The church will indicate that they need to appoint a committee or a handful of specialists to analyze the problem, and that will take considerable time and effort.
If the church is then pressed as to whether the funds will be returned if the specialists appointed, or committee, creates a nexus between the donations to the church and wrongfully diverted funds, the church will qualify and hedge further. The church will then say that the next laborious project, which they indicate will also take considerable time, is to determine what percentage of the donated funds were generated from legitimate work performed by Graham, and what percentage was the result of wrongful conversion of client funds.
And by the time a number of months passes, and there is no longer any media focus on whether the church will return the money, the church will
gamble(and it's a safe gamble) that the focus on them has died down, there will be no further media inquiry of any import as to this matter, and they will then quietly close out the matter, do nothing, and return nothing.
So, while the public spotlight is gleaming on it, the church will say the right things, but when pressed further will indicate they need time to finalize the issue(as I indicated above), and then once the scrutiny disappears, little or no money will be returned.
So, it does not really matter much if they have kind of, sort of, committed to return the money if discovered that the origin is ill gotten. In actuality, it will never, ever occur.
And I'm certainly not singling out this church. All churches(since they rely almost exclusively on support from members to stay afloat) would take the same approach. And all non-religious organizations, whether designated as profit, non-profit, or whatever, take the same approach.
I have seen so many of these types situations over the years(although, granted, each case is factually different in varying degrees). The organization or church, when initially questioned, always initially says the right thing. But then when pressed with more specific questions about when and how much will be returned, the response is always that it will be examined and that feasibility committees will be convened. But then when pressed even further with more specific questions, they invariably say that if at the end of our exhaustive analysis it is very clear precisely how much of the funds were honestly generated, and how much were ill-gotten, we will then examine the propriety as to the return of any funds(which means new committees and new inordinate delays).
In these type case of mass fraud, where even the authorities cannot pinpoint a lot of the funds and how much were taken, the church or organization then always has a built-in, infallible justification to return none of the funds–the authorities themselves can't say how much in total was taken, so how on earth can we determine what was taken, and whether it was all illegally and improperly obtained by the individual making the church donations?
So, for all those individuals on recent threads who defensively and indignantly stressed that the church is already committing its cooperation on this mater, I say this. I appreciate your loyalty to your church, but you apparently are somewhat blind, or intentionally wish to insulate yourselves, from how the real world sometimes operates.
I saw this mentioned in a previous thread, the idea that the church would determine what percentage of the donations were ill-gotten and only return that much.
I don't know if there's any legal authority, but it seems to me, on a purely moral level, that the church (or any charitable organization) should pay 100% of the donations received in a situation like this back to the victims. Even if the donor was earning 50% of his money legitimately — heck, even if it was 90% — he was stealing the rest, and the people he stole it from need it a whole lot more than the church.
Why should it matter if the stolen money was being used to pay his bills while the legitimate income went to charity? Just assume that anything received from him is tainted, and give it back to the innocent victims.
Of course, I'm not in charge of any charities, so it's easy for me to say, right?
Because the monies were already spent and are gone. They would have to take from today's donors to give that money back to non-church people. Easier thing to do is to give back a little and then say that the whole thing is a shame.
The church will never return most of the funds. But they may do what 2:33 indicates. In fact, they probably will. They may return a relatively small amount that they received, and then release a statement as to how much their heart bleeds, and how all their members' hearts bleed, for the dreadful plight of the victims.
2:39, Jeremy Johnson was to be known to be stealing money years ago. What tool so long for them to give the money back or were they forced by the court?
2:39– Jeremy Johnson and his 2.3MM was a drop in the LDS bucket compared to what they received. It always amazes me that the thieves tithe. For f***s' sake, you aren't going to heaven.
I've been involved in an actual case where the LDS church did return the money once it was certain that the donations were made with dirty money. It was a securities fraud case with a receiver. So with Graham the church may not have returned his donations yet (I don't know), but the reality is that it is the church's policy, practice and actual reality that funds are returned.
Guest
Anonymous
September 12, 2017 9:39 pm
To: 2:27. You just established how 2;14 is right on point. If the church does not simply return all the money, but indicates they will only return the precise percentage that was obtained by the attorney's fraud(something the authorities can not even precisely determine), that means none will ultimately be returned.
The church needs to take the principled stand that since most, or virtually all of the funds, were obtained by fraud, so therefore they will return all the funds. But it does not seem the church will take such stand. They seem to already be going down the road of "it needs to be established precisely what percentage was ill-gotten."
Although we know most, or perhaps virtually all, was ill-gotten, it will never be possible to determine that with a precise percentage.
You are exactly correct. And 2:33 is exactly correct. For example, supposedly substantial sums of money went into construction costs for building a church in Fort Collins. Do you think that stake is going to go take out a mortgage so they can give the money to the State Bar of Nevada? Not a chance. The National Church will give back a pittance of those sums which came in at a national level. Donations to the local stake maybe can pull some heart strings. But churches and charities not in Nevada where the monies were lost and victims are? Too bad so sad. You will get $0 back from Colorado. And the Cook Islands and Turks & Caicos? Never getting the monies that are in those locations.
3:40 PM, that's not how church buildings are financed. All the finances run through SLC before they ever make it back to individual congregations or stakes. The "stake" doesn't exist as a legal entity anyway, and wouldn't and couldn't disgorge the funds. When the disgorgement happens, it will be from SLC, not Vegas and not Ft. Collins.
I am not LDS and not defending the Church. Isn't the Church here a victim too. They accepted the money in good faith. I always thought there was something fishy about Rob Graham but this is "hindsight 20-20". How was the Church to know? Look how long Bernie Madoff got away with his PONZI scheme. The victims still have not seen a dime as I understand it even though they clawed back a lot of money.
Let's assume he stole the entire $16 million. As a full tithe payer, he would have paid $1.6 million to the Church. This amount represents about one hour's worth of donations the Church receives in a given year, based on estimates that it collects about $5 billion in tithing each year. In addition to that, the Church owns businesses and real estate worth billions. Don't believe me, check out City Creek Shopping Center in SLC that cost somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to build. Refunding the full $1.6 million would be the easy and right thing to do. I guess we will wait and see what happens.
5 billion? I need to start my own church. I'll personally head the Ministry of Morality for Young Women and the Ministry of Tithing.
Guest
Anonymous
September 12, 2017 11:58 pm
Judge Gonzales mentioned today at Bench/Bar that there was a new ADKT stating that you can't cite unpublished Court of Appeals opinions anymore? Anybody know anything more about this?
1. Congratulations, COA. I've always thought of you as the Shitwork panel. Apparently, so does the NSC.
2. The "majority [of the COA's] caseload is comprised of error-correction cases that provide little persuasive value." Guess what, folks? Their's ain't the only ones.
Wow what a slap. "Hey we are the Supreme Court who kicks out garbage orders dismissing appeals and calls it a month's work. But we still are better than the COA."
Who is Doug Ansell
(1) Call me your honor. Really butter me up to make me feel like I'm a real judge.
(2) Never make any statement that suggests that I have made a mistake. I never make mistakes.
(3) When I don't like the way you filed something, even if the thing I dislike is utterly trivial, I will stamp rejected at least 15 times on the document. Deal with it.
(4) I like to pretend I'm a lawyer. So when I start putting arguments into your mouth, go with it. I might be giving you the arguments that I like.
(5) Don't fret when I threaten to call your firm's managing partner about whatever meaningless problem I'm dwelling on today. I'm just saying that to show everyone in the courtroom that I'm super powerful.
(6-10) I am smart; you are dumb.
Do NOT stare at my hair.
I like Bonnie. I liked Bonnie when she was in private practice. I have liked Bonnie as the Commissioner. With that said, she has these spurts where you just cock your head to the side and have to go "Huh?"
Kills me when a green Lawyer misses #4. And softballs.
I have nothing nice to say about the woman.
She yells and fines attorneys for no reason. She belongs at the OBC.
The Supremes broke lose with a number of Unpublished Decisions yesterday. As one of the critics of their productivity, it is only fair to note that they released 17 Orders yesterday.
I expect at few important NSC opinions Thursday. You can learn about Ansell by searching the Clark County district court criminal records.
What important decisions do you expect on Thursday?
Tea with Samson or Coke?
It's interesting that the RJ was apparently completely unaware that Rob Graham has been disbarred. Again, a lack of attention to detail on their part.
That is a big deal.
When will they finally break up the 9th Circuit?? SCOTUS yet again has to stop the silliness.
Stop the silliness? You mean put a stop to Cheeto Man and his ridiculous antics?
You mean undermining the legitimate power of POTUS in an effort to undermine the outcome of the election? Even SCOTUS realizes you can't blatantly usurp the explicitly delegated powers of a co-equal branch of government.
That's the problem with you leftwing nutjobs: you refuse to operate within the system. Beat people in the streets, violate the constitution, spread fake news, spread fake science. Truly un-American.
So, in all seriousness, what are you going to do after the Trump landslide in 2020? Blame it on the….hmmmm….oh, the Cubans? Wait! No, no. It will be the ghost of Saddam "Weapons of Mass Destruction" Hussein! Booya. Live on CNN.
I would be willing to discuss this point with you, 8:14 pm, but only if you first expressly acknowledge that what the Senate did to Garland last year was an equally bad — if not worse — example of one branch "blatantly usurp[ing] the explicitly delegated powers of a co-equal branch of government." If you won't acknowledge that, then I'm afraid there's no way we can have an honest conversation.
Not 8:14, but how did the Senate usurp anything? The Executive nominates, which he did. The Senate consents, and nothing in their rules places a timeline on how long it should take for the Senate to dither around or even get around to setting the matter for a hearing, as evidenced by the hundreds of federal court judicial openings that have not been filled.
The RJ article about Graham is quick to point out that the Mormon church accepted his donations, but it doesn't point out how quick the Mormon church also always is to return those funds once it has an inkling that the funds were obtained through fraud or some other criminal act(s).
Don't tell me how quick they normally are; tell me how quick the Church was in this case. Because the Church has been on notice for 9 months, and I have yet to hear of a penny being returned to clients. It will be worthy of a mention once it is relevant.
Just because somebody (church or not) has been "on notice" of possibly receiving tainted funds doesn't mean they're going to immediately turn over the funds. Nobody's going to actually turn over funds until it's established that the funds were tainted. Now that Graham has admitted guilt, the Church should turn over the donated funds as it has done in the past.
The funds won't be returned.
The church will start off by saying the right thing. The church will indicate that it is appropriate to return donated funds that were initially wrongfully taken for needy people.
But the devil is in the details. Once additional, more focused questions are put to them, as to whether all the funds will be returned, and when, that's where it all becomes dicey.
The church will indicate that they need to appoint a committee or a handful of specialists to analyze the problem, and that will take considerable time and effort.
If the church is then pressed as to whether the funds will be returned if the specialists appointed, or committee, creates a nexus between the donations to the church and wrongfully diverted funds, the church will qualify and hedge further. The church will then say that the next laborious project, which they indicate will also take considerable time, is to determine what percentage of the donated funds were generated from legitimate work performed by Graham, and what percentage was the result of wrongful conversion of client funds.
And by the time a number of months passes, and there is no longer any media focus on whether the church will return the money, the church will
gamble(and it's a safe gamble) that the focus on them has died down, there will be no further media inquiry of any import as to this matter, and they will then quietly close out the matter, do nothing, and return nothing.
So, while the public spotlight is gleaming on it, the church will say the right things, but when pressed further will indicate they need time to finalize the issue(as I indicated above), and then once the scrutiny disappears, little or no money will be returned.
So, it does not really matter much if they have kind of, sort of, committed to return the money if discovered that the origin is ill gotten. In actuality, it will never, ever occur.
And I'm certainly not singling out this church. All churches(since they rely almost exclusively on support from members to stay afloat) would take the same approach. And all non-religious organizations, whether designated as profit, non-profit, or whatever, take the same approach.
I have seen so many of these types situations over the years(although, granted, each case is factually different in varying degrees). The organization or church, when initially questioned, always initially says the right thing. But then when pressed with more specific questions about when and how much will be returned, the response is always that it will be examined and that feasibility committees will be convened. But then when pressed even further with more specific questions, they invariably say that if at the end of our exhaustive analysis it is very clear precisely how much of the funds were honestly generated, and how much were ill-gotten, we will then examine the propriety as to the return of any funds(which means new committees and new inordinate delays).
In these type case of mass fraud, where even the authorities cannot pinpoint a lot of the funds and how much were taken, the church or organization then always has a built-in, infallible justification to return none of the funds–the authorities themselves can't say how much in total was taken, so how on earth can we determine what was taken, and whether it was all illegally and improperly obtained by the individual making the church donations?
So, for all those individuals on recent threads who defensively and indignantly stressed that the church is already committing its cooperation on this mater, I say this. I appreciate your loyalty to your church, but you apparently are somewhat blind, or intentionally wish to insulate yourselves, from how the real world sometimes operates.
I saw this mentioned in a previous thread, the idea that the church would determine what percentage of the donations were ill-gotten and only return that much.
I don't know if there's any legal authority, but it seems to me, on a purely moral level, that the church (or any charitable organization) should pay 100% of the donations received in a situation like this back to the victims. Even if the donor was earning 50% of his money legitimately — heck, even if it was 90% — he was stealing the rest, and the people he stole it from need it a whole lot more than the church.
Why should it matter if the stolen money was being used to pay his bills while the legitimate income went to charity? Just assume that anything received from him is tainted, and give it back to the innocent victims.
Of course, I'm not in charge of any charities, so it's easy for me to say, right?
Because the monies were already spent and are gone. They would have to take from today's donors to give that money back to non-church people. Easier thing to do is to give back a little and then say that the whole thing is a shame.
They didn't seem to have a problem giving back $2.3 million in donations from Jeremy Johnson just a few months ago.
The church will never return most of the funds. But they may do what 2:33 indicates. In fact, they probably will. They may return a relatively small amount that they received, and then release a statement as to how much their heart bleeds, and how all their members' hearts bleed, for the dreadful plight of the victims.
2:39, Jeremy Johnson was to be known to be stealing money years ago. What tool so long for them to give the money back or were they forced by the court?
2:39– Jeremy Johnson and his 2.3MM was a drop in the LDS bucket compared to what they received. It always amazes me that the thieves tithe. For f***s' sake, you aren't going to heaven.
I've been involved in an actual case where the LDS church did return the money once it was certain that the donations were made with dirty money. It was a securities fraud case with a receiver. So with Graham the church may not have returned his donations yet (I don't know), but the reality is that it is the church's policy, practice and actual reality that funds are returned.
To: 2:27. You just established how 2;14 is right on point. If the church does not simply return all the money, but indicates they will only return the precise percentage that was obtained by the attorney's fraud(something the authorities can not even precisely determine), that means none will ultimately be returned.
The church needs to take the principled stand that since most, or virtually all of the funds, were obtained by fraud, so therefore they will return all the funds. But it does not seem the church will take such stand. They seem to already be going down the road of "it needs to be established precisely what percentage was ill-gotten."
Although we know most, or perhaps virtually all, was ill-gotten, it will never be possible to determine that with a precise percentage.
The church will never return the funds.
You are exactly correct. And 2:33 is exactly correct. For example, supposedly substantial sums of money went into construction costs for building a church in Fort Collins. Do you think that stake is going to go take out a mortgage so they can give the money to the State Bar of Nevada? Not a chance. The National Church will give back a pittance of those sums which came in at a national level. Donations to the local stake maybe can pull some heart strings. But churches and charities not in Nevada where the monies were lost and victims are? Too bad so sad. You will get $0 back from Colorado. And the Cook Islands and Turks & Caicos? Never getting the monies that are in those locations.
3:40 PM, that's not how church buildings are financed. All the finances run through SLC before they ever make it back to individual congregations or stakes. The "stake" doesn't exist as a legal entity anyway, and wouldn't and couldn't disgorge the funds. When the disgorgement happens, it will be from SLC, not Vegas and not Ft. Collins.
I am not LDS and not defending the Church. Isn't the Church here a victim too. They accepted the money in good faith. I always thought there was something fishy about Rob Graham but this is "hindsight 20-20". How was the Church to know? Look how long Bernie Madoff got away with his PONZI scheme. The victims still have not seen a dime as I understand it even though they clawed back a lot of money.
Let's assume he stole the entire $16 million. As a full tithe payer, he would have paid $1.6 million to the Church. This amount represents about one hour's worth of donations the Church receives in a given year, based on estimates that it collects about $5 billion in tithing each year. In addition to that, the Church owns businesses and real estate worth billions. Don't believe me, check out City Creek Shopping Center in SLC that cost somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to build. Refunding the full $1.6 million would be the easy and right thing to do. I guess we will wait and see what happens.
5 billion? I need to start my own church. I'll personally head the Ministry of Morality for Young Women and the Ministry of Tithing.
Judge Gonzales mentioned today at Bench/Bar that there was a new ADKT stating that you can't cite unpublished Court of Appeals opinions anymore? Anybody know anything more about this?
New ADKT Order, yes. Issued today. http://caseinfo.nvsupremecourt.us/document/view.do?csNameID=35681&csIID=35681&deLinkID=615189&sireDocumentNumber=17-30605
1. Congratulations, COA. I've always thought of you as the Shitwork panel. Apparently, so does the NSC.
2. The "majority [of the COA's] caseload is comprised of error-correction cases that provide little persuasive value." Guess what, folks? Their's ain't the only ones.
Wow what a slap. "Hey we are the Supreme Court who kicks out garbage orders dismissing appeals and calls it a month's work. But we still are better than the COA."
Again, Pickering's analysis is the most reasonable. Unfortunately, she's writing the dissent.
If they melted down those golden plates and sold them they'd make their money back. They still know where those are located right?