After many years on the bench, and many sentences delivered, U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent had to sit on the other side of the courtroom today and listen to a judge hand down a 33 month sentence against him for obstruction of justice during an investigation into alleged sexual abuse.
Two former workers at the Galveston courthouse where Kent sat as a district judge claimed that Kent had engaged in non-consensual sexual contact with them. A federal grand jury indicted Kent on sexual abuse and obstruction of justice charges last August.
The debate about the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine continues.
The Obama DOJ has gone before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs to request that Congress "completely eliminate the disparity in prison sentences between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine."
While they made no mention of how they wished Congress to accomplish this, the mention of a complete elimination of any difference in sentences suggests that the administration wants to alter both the mandatory minimum sentences and the sentencing guidelines for crack offenses.
In one of the strangest cases yet to come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has approved a plea deal from Wesam al-Delaema, an Iraqi-born citizen of the Netherlands, on charges of conspiracy to murder American troops in Iraq.
Now the judge just has to cross his fingers and hope that the Dutch courts agree that al-Delaema should serve 25 years in prison for his role in the conspiracy.
It's a beautiful day in convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's 
