Saturday, July 29, 2006
Okay, done
I finished reading the decision. The majority decision, from Sonya Banerjee, Aurora Masum-Javed, Stephanie Lam, and Carmel Levitan, finds that the issuance of a default judgment in the previous case was a violation of double jeopardy in spirit. All of the arguments from the brief and charge sheet were dismissed. I should mention that double jeopardy was never really an argument in the charge sheet or brief, and was only brought up at the hearing, so there were issues with accepting the argument, but it was eventually accepted, and that's what the Student Action folks won on. That said, I think the grounds are reasonable, and the decision is solid, suggesting that it the Student Action folks were twice-punished for the same case.
Notably, they only reverse the punishment, and stand by their conclusion that Suken was held in contempt, and that the Student Action folks were liable. This means that if they had ruled on the issue of "violating an order of the Judicial Council" in Andy Ratto's favor, the disqualifications would probably have stood (and, as we now see, it turns out not to be moot, though there were bad faith grounds that could've been argued). Also, they say that, if Suken Vakil had been found in contempt during the trial or during an appeal, they would've stood by the disqualification.
Amaris White and Marisa Cuevas dissented on double jeopardy, claiming that double jeopardy only is a problem if it's being issued for the same offense, rather than case, and since there were two offenses here, the ruling was fine.
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