Update: Senator Jeff Sessions, one of radical right cabal, is praising the decision on CNN, he can hardly contain his glee. So Bush sold out to the radical right. Plus, Sessions already lies. He said on CNN Roberts was overwhelmingly approved both in the Judiciary Committee and in the full Senate. Reuters reports:

He joined the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in May 2003 after a protracted confirmation fight in the Senate.

Sen. John Cornyn just got busted with the same lie on Fox News. He said Roberts was unanimously voted out of the Judiciary Committee. The reporter corrected him and said Kennedy, Durbin and Schumer voted against him.

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It's not Edith Clement, It's D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. Here's Harry Reid's statement:

STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARRY REID ON THE NOMINATION OF JOHN ROBERTS TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

The President has made his choice. Now the Senate will do its job of deciding whether to confirm John Roberts to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

The President has chosen someone with suitable legal credentials, but that is not the end of our inquiry. The Senate must review Judge Roberts¹s record to determine if he has a demonstrated commitment to the core American values of freedom, equality and fairness. The nominee will have an opportunity to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and make his case to the American people.

I will not pre-judge this nomination. I look forward to learning more about Judge Roberts.

He's a former law clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist and has argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court as a lawyer.

Bump and Update (by TChris): President Bush will announce the nominee in a live telecast tonight, at 9:00 Eastern time.

Update: WaPo says the White House will announce Bush's Supreme Court nominee today.

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Scott McClellan today:

"The president is closer today than he was yesterday on naming a nominee."

Speculation is centering on 5th Circuit Justice Edith Clement.

White House officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the process, said Bush's timetable appears to have been accelerated and that a choice could come as early as Tuesday. They said Clement is a leading candidate, but cautioned that the president had not made a final decision and that there were other prospects still in the mix.

Known as a conservative and a strict constructionist in legal circles, Clement has eased fears among some abortion-rights advocates. She has stated that the Supreme Court "has clearly held that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution includes the right to have an abortion" and that "the law is settled in that regard."

Some good news: All the finalists are judges, which means no need to fret about Sen. John Cornyn, Fred Thompson, Alberto Gonzales - for this particular vacancy.

Even better news: Also missing from the final list: former Solictor General Ted Olson.

The L.A. Times reports that Kobe Bryant's "star is rising" again. He has regained his Nike endorsements.

So last week's ad represented something more than just a sleek pitch for sneakers. With its striking approach -- as if Bryant were facing his detractors, at least in basketball terms -- marketing experts say it was a canny means of testing the waters of public opinion, if not a first step in rebuilding the player's image.

"I think enough time has passed," said Doug Shabelman, senior vice president of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing in Evanston, Ill. "And the way they used him in the ad - it's a muted advertisement. It's quiet, calm."

The Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault objects. I think it's appropriate. Kobe was never convicted of a crime and the accuser's story had more holes than swiss cheese. He should not be penalized any more. The accuser got her money in the civil action, why shouldn't he get his? At least he works for it.

More on the Nike endorsement here.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who supports efforts to reinvestigate the Oklahoma City Bombing, has been trying for weeks to meet with Terry Nichols at the AdMax prison in Florence, CO where Nichols is serving his life sentence. The meeting took place last week, and LA Weekly has this extensive account. Rohrabacher is pursuing theories that Timothy McVeigh had the help of middle-eastern men to carry off the bombing.

To me, as one of McVeigh's trial lawyers, the interesting part of the LA Weekly article is that Nichols' has finally admitted he robbed Roger Moore, the Arkansas gun dealer.

Terry Nichols' mother is giving interviews as well, and says Terry didn't know what McVeigh was going to do with the bomb he helped McVeigh build. She says Terry thought McVeigh was going to bomb a monument. The LA Weekly article says,

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols refused to testify last week before a federal grand jury in Denver investigating explosives recently found under his old house. He said the grand jury is not the right forum.

Nichols, 50, has said he would cooperate with a congressional investigation. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., is considering a probe into the bombing and is seeking to meet with Nichols in prison.

McDonnell said her brother does not feel safe at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo. "He feels his life is very threatened," she said. Other inmates "have told him he has been marked as a snitch and marked for murder, and so he's very fearful for his life."

She blamed FBI misconduct for the problem but would not elaborate. His life has been put in danger, and we don't appreciate it," she said. ....In late March, agents discovered explosives under Nichols' old house, acting on information that came indirectly from another inmate, mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. Nichols later complained in letters to victims that Scarpa had mixed the truth about the explosives with lies in an effort to get a reduced prison sentence.

Convicted OKC bomber Terry Nichols, who has maintained his silence for ten years, now is accusing Arkansa gun dealer Roger Moore of providing some of the explosives for the 1995 OKC bombing.

Nichols claims Arkansas gun collector Roger Moore gave the explosives to Timothy McVeigh and also provided additional bomb components recently found in Nichols' former Kansas home, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. In the early stages of the bombing investigation, the FBI took a hard look at Moore because of his anti-government views and close relationship with McVeigh. He was never charged.

by TChris

Those who have followed the Booker case know that the Supreme Court made the federal sentencing guidelines advisory, freeing federal judges to impose sentences that are less (or, unfortunately, more) harsh than the guidelines formerly required. (Those who haven’t followed the case can catch up here.)

The Court’s decision will benefit some defendants, but – you heard it here first – it didn’t benefit Booker, who was resentenced today to a term of 30 years, the same sentence that the district court originally imposed. Booker’s counsel, who happens to be writing this, was disappointed, to say the least.

by TChris

This is from an email alert sent out this morning by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers:

A disastrous "Booker fix" is scheduled for hearing and markup this afternoon before the House Crime Subcommittee. The provision, sneaked into a drug sentencing bill (H.R. 1528), would effectively make the guidelines a system of mandatory minimum sentences. If this provision is enacted, there will be almost nothing left of judicial discretion in sentencing: it would eliminate virtually every basis ever relied on by a judge to depart downward. If it were to pass, the Supreme Court likely would find the new "Guidelines" would be subject to constitutional challenge on almost the same grounds as Booker, and, after another year or two of uncertainly, we likely would be right back to where we are today. Due to a complete lack of reasonable notice, the judiciary, practitioners, academics and other experts have been denied the opportunity for meaningful input.

More information is available from NACDL here, and analysis from sentencing expert Doug Berman is here and here. In this post, Prof. Berman asks the insightful question: "Is this Booker fix a symptom of the post-Schiavo attack on the judiciary?"

Tell your congressional representative: Just say no to bad sentencing laws.

Law review articles about the Supreme Court's Blakely and Booker decisions are sprouting like wildfire. Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy has a roundup.

But, there's also good advice out there for practitioners and clients. Federal post-conviction expert Alan Ellis has just published this guide (pdf), which we agreed to host on TalkLeft.

NACDL has a new article today, Booker Advisory: Into The Breyer Patch, available free to all.

There are also seminars around the country. TChris, our contributing blogger, who was counsel for Booker and who argued the case in the Supreme Court, is on the road a lot these days, speaking at CLE seminars and providing tactical advice. The AFDA is held this seminar in Los Angeles last week. Check out the agenda portion at the bottom for a good description of what's at stake.

MSNBC reports that Kobe Bryant and his accuser have settled their civil lawsuit...in time for Kobe to avoid being deposed on Friday. Smart move by both. Kobe can afford to settle and the accuser, now married and expecting, needs to get past whatever happened that night and move on with her life.

One of the big issues with applying the Supreme Court's opinion in Booker and FanFan is whether it is retroactive and applies to cases that are no longer on direct appeal or review. Today the Sixth Circuit joins the Seventh Circuit in ruling that the decision is not retroactive. The case is Humphress v. United States and you can read the opinion here (pdf).

In a supplemental brief, Humphress argues that his sentence was increased on the basis of facts found by the sentencing court, in violation of Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004). Because the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005), which now governs Humphress’s Blakely claim, does not apply retroactively to cases already final on direct review and because there is no reasonable probability that, but for his counsel’s allegedly deficient performance, Humphress would have pled guilty, we will AFFIRM the district court’s denial of the § 2255 motion.

Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy adds some analysis.

Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy makes it sound so easy....Just back from a week in Washington attending hearings where he testified before the Sentencing Commission, he writes:

...Many Commissioners and witnesses at the USSC hearings (basics here) expressed the view that judges at sentencing must now

• (1) calculate an applicable guideline range, and then
• (2) make traditional departure determinations under the guidelines, and then
• (3) decide whether to follow or vary from the (now advisory) guidelines based on the 3553(a) factors.

But, Prof. Berman says, beware: