Judge Posner Gives Two Opinions of Prosecutors' Behaviors:  At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman posts parts of two Seventh Circuit decisions on two very different issues.  Berman finds them noteworthy though because both opinions, written by Judge Posner, comment on the behavior of federal prosecutors.  The first case, U.S. v. Farinella, criticizes the prosecutor's improper statements during her closing arguments, as well as her "additional improprieties."  Judge Posner comments that while the government's attorney argued on appeal that an appropriate sanction might be a "talking-to" from her superior, the panel was "not impressed by the suggestion."  In the second case, U.S. v. Richardson, the Seventh Circuit refused to upset the federal prosecutor's decision not to move for a reduced a sentence unless the defendant dropped his appeal.  In Richardson, the defendant was sentenced to 140 months in prison and then helped the government in an unrelated prosecution.  At the time, the government offered to ask the judge to reduce his sentence based on his cooperation, but only if Richardson withdrew his appeal.  While this tactic might seem improper, the Seventh Circuit found the prosecutor's action to be reasonable.

Justice Thomas Gives Rare Appearance:  Eric Barendsen of Blog of the Legal Times posts on Justice Thomas' talk at Howard University School of Law yesterday.  His appearance was a part of the James M. Nabrit Jr. Lecture Series which has previously featured some of his fellow Justices.  According to Barendsen, the talk focused primarily on Justice Thomas' 2007 book, My Grandfather's Son, but later Justice Thomas gave a summation of his experience during his "brutal" 1991 confirmation hearings.  Justice Thomas stated that the process "was very hard," and he thought about giving up "thousands of times," but he did not.  In other words, Justice Thomas wanted to impart the message that students should not give up.  As Justice Thomas recalled his grandfather saying: "Old man 'can't' is dead. I helped bury him."