Jeff Taylor

General Motors Co. announced on October 20, 2015, that NAFUSA member and former member of NAFUSA’s board Jeffrey A. Taylor is joining the company effective November 1 as Deputy General Counsel for Federal Oversight. He will report to Craig Gladden, executive vice president and general counsel.

Taylor, 50, has most recently served as vice president and general counsel of Tewksbury, Mass.-based Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. Before that, he led a team of more than 300 professionals as chief executive of Ernst & Young’s Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services practice in the Americas.

He served in the United States Department of Justice for 15 years as an assistant U.S. attorney, senior advisor to Attorneys General John D. Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, and as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 2006 to 2009.

Among Taylor’s duties, he will work with the federal monitor who will be appointed as part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement GM has entered into with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The monitor will review and assess the company’s policies and procedures in certain discrete areas relating to safety issues and recalls.

“Jeff is a highly accomplished attorney who has managed extremely complex legal issues and his appointment demonstrates how seriously we take our commitment to the federal government and our customers to build the best safety organization in the industry,” Glidden said.

Taylor earned his juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University.

General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM, TSX: GMM) and its partners produce vehicles in 30 countries, and the company has leadership positions in the world’s largest and fastest-growing automotive markets. GM, its subsidiaries and joint venture entities sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Cadillac, Baojun, Buick, GMC, Holden, Jiefang, Opel, Vauxhall and Wuling brands. More information on the company and its subsidiaries, including OnStar, a global leader in vehicle safety, security and information services, can be found at http://www.gm.com.

Don Davis

NAFUSA’s newest member, Don Davis, has joined the Grand Rapids/Fremont firm of Springstead, Bartish & Borgula, P.L.L.C, as of counsel to the Firm. The firm is a small criminal defense firm consisting of two former FBI special agents, an Army JAG officer, a former assistant U.S. attorney (and 2015 NAFUSA Exceptional Service Award recipient) and Davis, who served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Michigan from 2008-2012. See www.springsteadbartish.com.

Davis also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the WD of Michigan, 1975-2008 and 2012-2013. He also served in the United States Marine Corps. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University, B.A., Magna Cum Laude and the University of Michigan Law School.

Larry Thompson

In this morning’s New York Times, NAFUSA member Larry Thompson (ND Georgia, 1982-1986 and DAG 2001-2003), pubished an OpEd entitled How America Tolerates Racism in Jury Selection. The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this morning in Foster v. Chatman, “a case that challenges the all-too-common practice by which prosecutors deliberately exclude African-Americans from criminal juries.”

The 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky was thought to have outlawed this practice, but Thompson argues that prosecutors routinely ignore that decision. Timothy Foster was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Georgia 30 years ago.

Thompson argues,

In at least six different ways, the prosecutors singled out eligible black jurors: Notes from the jury selection list show they marked their names with a “B” and highlighted them in green on four separate copies; circled the word “black” on their juror questionnaires; noted several as “B #1,” “B #2”; ranked potential black jurors against one another “in case it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors”; and wrote “Definite NOs” on the list of priority strikes, which had all four possible black jurors.

Although the prosecution has never admitted that race played a role in selecting a jury for Mr. Foster’s trial, some of its “race-neutral” reasons for strikes were inaccurate and inconsistent.

For example, prosecutors struck a black juror for being a social worker — but she was a teacher’s aide. Meanwhile, prosecutors accepted every white teacher and teacher’s aide in the jury pool.

When the prosecutors asked a white juror and a black juror whether the defendant’s age, which was close to that of their children, would be a factor in the sentence, the black juror said “none whatsoever” but was struck based on his son’s age. The white juror answered “probably so” and was accepted.

Along with other former prosecutors, I joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Mr. Foster. We recognize, and refuse to condone, the blatant unconstitutionality of the prosecutorial misconduct in this case. Moreover, my own experience suggests that discrimination in jury selection is indeed a national problem, despite over a century of attempted legislative and judicial remedies.

The Georgia courts have all ruled in the state’s favor. But the jury selection notes, discovered by Foster’s attorneys through Georgia’s open-records law, casts new light on the practice.

In an article in this morning’s New York Times, Bill Seeks to Bar U.S. Prosecutors From Reading Inmates’ Emails to Lawyers, Stephanie Clifford wrote of federal prosecutors in Brooklyn who last year alerted defendants that their emails would be monitored. The U.S. Attorneys Office argued that prisoners had agreed to terms that advised them that their emails could be monitored by the Bureau of Prisons. They argued that the BOP system could not distinguish emails to lawyers from other emails. The U.S. Attorney determined it would no longer appoint “taint teams” to sort through the emails. Defense lawyers in Brooklyn filed objections, citing the attorney-client privilege and federal judges have split on the issue.

On Thursday morning, October 29, 2015, a bill was introduced in Congress to bar federal prosecutors from reading emails between inmates and their lawyers. In Clifford’s article, she quoted two members of NAFUSA:

Doug Jones, a former United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama who is now in private practice, said the legislation was sensible.

 

“It’s a very difficult representation to represent a client who is in custody,” Mr. Jones said.

 

He gave the example of Birmingham defendants who were kept at a county jail three blocks from him. “You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, but it’s an itty-bitty room; it’s hard to bring tapes and transcripts and other things,” he said, adding that it was also difficult to contact a client with a quick question.

 

Donald K. Stern, a former United States attorney for Massachusetts, said that while there would no doubt be some cost to overhauling the email system, there was also a cost to the current setup. Court-appointed defense lawyers who have to spend several hours trying to visit their clients are ultimately paid by the government, he pointed out.

 

“You have to balance the cost of doing that with the importance of permitting the ability of counsel to communicate freely with a client,” Mr. Stern said. “The lawyer ought to be able to have very free access to their clients — not only for the right to counsel and the Sixth Amendment, but also to provide a more efficient and fair criminal justice system.”