![]() Holloway’s 57-year term was more than twice the average sentence in the district for murder in 1996, the year he was sentenced. Holloway filed one motion after another trying to get his sentence and his case re-evaluated, Judge Gleeson, of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, began to speak out against those mandatory sentences that he believed were unduly harsh. This is not recommended practice, but it often happens.īut it’s another for the judge, years after the case is over and the government’s position fully vindicated by the higher courts, including the Supreme Court, to use his office to go backdoor to achieve the outcome one side - the armed felon’s side - has wanted all along. It’s one thing for a trial judge, during the trial, to make it decently clear he finds one side more persuasive than the other. He thus violated the fundamental principle that a judge cannot decide a case in which he has been, much less in which he actively remains, an advocate. Judge Gleeson was an advocate for the defendant in a case before him. Holloway, but also for a surprising and most effective advocate: the trial judge, John Gleeson. There were armed carjackings, and his participation in an illegal chop shop, where stolen cars would be dismantled and sold for parts.īut the fairness of the mandatory sentence has been a matter of dispute, not only for Mr. In an article called “Defense Lawyer in a Robe,” Bill quoted the New York Times as follows:įrancois Holloway has spent nearly two decades of a 57-year sentence in a federal prison, for serious crimes that no one disputes he committed. Thus, op-ed or not, he was always the perfect candidate to advise Judge Sullivan, who clearly wants to assume the role of advocate in the Flynn case. He favored leniency for street criminals but, it now seems, favors toughness for political enemies.Īlso, as Bill Otis says, Gleeson has no appreciation of the distinction between judge and advocate. He was a left-wing judge whose attitude towards crime depends on the identity of the alleged criminal. Judge Sullivan got exactly what he wanted.Įven without the op-ed, Gleeson’s position was 100 percent foreseeable. Thus, the course of action Gleeson calls for in the brief comes as no surprise. Gleeson had sketched out this argument in a Washington Post op-ed before Sullivan appointed him to brief the matter. ![]() ![]() He argues that Judge Sullivan should reject the government’s motion and continue the prosecution to sentencing, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s desire to stand down. In any event, Gleeson today filed his brief. One wonders whether any such “talking” is required, other than for the sake of appearances. John Gleeson is the former judge tasked by Emmet Sullivan, the judge in the Michael Flynn case, with talking him into sentencing Flynn in a case that the prosecution has moved to dismiss. ![]()
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