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N.E. Brigand

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Everything posted by N.E. Brigand

  1. Thanks. I did know this was a state trial, so I appreciate you explaining your understanding of how it works at that level (at least in New Jersey--if someone has knowledge specific to Pennsylvania, please chime in). That does contrast with federal trials, from what I've seen over the past few years: except where there is some mandatory minimum--which, I gather, judges hate--only judges decide on the sentence. The prosecutors and defendant don't actually agree to a sentence in the plea agreement. Instead, they agree on the offense, and they note what sentence is called for in the guidelines for that offense, but they always add an acknowledgement that it's up to the judge (and also that the probation office gets to weigh in with an opinion). For instance, earlier this week I was reading a plea agreement that was just entered. It was a case where a lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an official document. (The details are almost comical: he was sent an email concerning an official matter, but he didn't think the email was clear enough, so before he forwarded it to someone else, he added three words to it without indicating that those were his additions and not from the original email. Those words didn't change the underlying facts, but the change was "material" because the person he forwarded it to acted on the assurance that the original sender didn't just agree about the issue at question but had used those specific words. The guilty lawyer even told the judge in his oral allocution this week that he believed the words he added were true, but that doesn't change the fact that he altered the document, which he admitted in court he did. Key lesson: lawyers shouldn't cut corners!) The deal the lawyer made with the government makes it very clear that they are only agreeing (mostly) on what the guidelines say and have no power to reach a deal on the sentence itself. Here's a taste of how such agreements are written (bolded as in the original; ellipses mine; also I think the "C." should be a "D.", but I didn't change it): -------------------- Your client understands that the sentence in this case will be determined by the Court, pursuant to the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), including a consideration of the Sentencing Guidelines. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(B), and to assist the Court in determining the appropriate sentence, the parties agree to the following: A. Estimated Offense Level Under the Guidelines [...] The parties agree that the following Sentencing Guidelines sections apply: U.S.S.G. §2B1.1(a)(2) Base Offense Level 6 [...] The parties disagree on the whether the following enhancement applies: U.S.S.G. §3B1.3Abuse of Position of Trust +2 [...] Total 8 [...] The Government reserves the rights to argue for the application of the 2-level enhancement at sentencing and the defendant reserves his right to object to the application of the enhancement. [...] In accordance with the above, the Government believes the Estimated Offense Level will be at least 6, and the defendant believes the Estimated Offense Level will be at least 8. [...] C. Estimated Guidelines Range [...] Based upon the above, your client’s estimated Sentencing Guidelines range is zero months to six months [...] In addition, the parties agree that, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5E1.2, should the Court impose a fine, at Guidelines level 6, the estimated applicable fine range is $1,000 to $9,500, and at Guidelines level 4, the estimated applicable fine range is $500 to $9,500 [...] Your client reserves the right to ask the Court not to impose any applicable fine.The parties agree that, solely for the purposes of calculating the applicable range under the Sentencing Guidelines, neither a downward nor upward departure from the Estimated Guidelines Range set forth above is warranted. [...] Your client understands and acknowledges that the Estimated Guidelines Range calculated above is not binding on the Probation Office or the Court. [...] -------------------- That selection I've made above only includes about 20% of the total "Sentencing Guidelines Analysis" section of the agreement. They make it complicated! And even if the procedure in state court is different, I'll bet it will be equally long-winded if we ever see a Hopkins deal. And to the other point I made: the law actually says that the maximum punishment for that particular crime is five years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Notice that prosecutors have agreed that the guidelines would only call for six months and $9,500 at the most. And the judge might impose something less (well not less than zero time served, but less than $1,000) or more. So, based on what you describe observing in a state court, quite different.
  2. Nice! Speaking of parodies, this one uses my favorite song from Hamilton:
  3. Having followed a lot of federal prosecutions over the past few years, I know that in that jurisdiction, the judge generally has a lot of leeway to impose a sentence that is less than or greater than called for in the sentencing guidelines. (And the sentencing guidelines themselves almost always call for a lesser sentence than gets talked up in the press. When you see a story that says someone "could face as long as 30 years!", be prepared after the plea or conviction for the guidelines to say "5-10 years" and for the judge to say "2-3 years.") But is that also true in Pennsylvania state courts? Or are a judge's hands usually tied there by mandatory sentencing requirements?
  4. And either way, they could have just let him go and said nothing, right? Take his name off the website, advertise for a replacement, and so on, without ever making a statement? By making a statement, even one with no explanation, you're telling someone: he's gone.
  5. Question: Do staff like Ramirez normally have permanent jobs? Or do they typically have contracts that expire at the end of a season?
  6. In July, some observers were warning us about this sort of thing, at least at the college level: "Students will get infected, and universities will rebuke them for it; campuses will close, and students will be blamed for it. Relying on the self-control of young adults, rather than deploying the public-health infrastructure needed to control a disease that spreads easily among people who live, eat, study, and socialize together, is not a safe reopening strategy -- and yelling at students for their dangerous behavior won't help either." So no one should be surprised that, besides what's already happened at UNC, Mich. State, and Notre Dame... --Indiana U. has announced that it's investigating "a large gathering of students ... [that] violated county and state regulations for groups and physical distancing as well as our own guidelines [and] constitutes a serious threat to the IU community." --Penn State U. issued a statement about "crowds of students congregating in large numbers." --Syracuse U. is looking into a video showing about 100 people, "some without masks," gathered at a party. --Purdue U.'s president has expressed concern "about how off-campus parties could threaten the university’s in-person reopening plan” --The U. of Kansas is warning about spikes in cases happening in their fraternities and sororities. In short: university presidents, they're no smarter than anyone else.
  7. As I mentioned in another thread, it's not easy to find what presumably were some once well-known details of Cadets' history, particularly now that the corps has split off from YEA. Neither Cadets' new website nor the Wikipedia entry on Cadets included this basic fact: when did George Hopkins become the corps' director? (Someone here who was on staff at the time responded that it was in 1982, and the first season under his leadership was 1983 season.) I certainly don't blame them for not wanting to dwell on certain aspects of their past! But history is owed some attention too, and it ought to be possible to at least find that history somewhere. By chance, I came across some pages on an older version of YEA's website, which was apparently last updated in 2014. Who knows how long that site will last? I haven't checked to see whether it's been saved on the Internet Archive, but for posterity's sake and ease of reference, I'll just post this here: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - George Hopkins CEO, Youth Education in the Arts, The Cadets George Hopkins is the Director of The Cadets and CEO and Executive Director of Youth Education in the Arts, a not-for-profit organization with headquarters in Allentown, Pa. Hopkins began his Cadets history as a Garfield Cadets' percussion instructor in 1979 after one year of teaching social studies in Pennsylvania. After being named corps director in 1982, Hopkins led the Cadets to four world championships from 1983 to 1987 and launched the Cadets Marching Band Cooperative (now USBands) in 1988. Hopkins has since led The Cadets to additional six world titles, the most recent in 2011. In 1990, he was integral to establishing Youth Education in the Arts (YEA!), an organization committed to supporting the development of young people to magnificent human beings through their participation in the performing arts. More than 70,000 young people across the country are involved in programs supported by YEA! with annual festivals, performances and clinics nationwide. Since 2005, YEA! has partnered with the Allentown Economic Development Association in the creation of the Musselman Arts Development Center in downtown Allentown. YEA! is now the managing tenant of this urban arts incubator, offering services and support for numerous Lehigh Valley non-profits. Current staffing for YEA! is now twenty-two, with a part time teaching staff of 60+. George Hopkins is a member of the Drum Corps International Hall of Fame and the Cadets Hall of Fame. He has been a member of the DCI Board of Directors since 1982, the DCI executive committee from 1983 to 1999, and 2005 to the present, the N.J. Music Educators Board of Directors from 2000-2003 and the president of the N.J. Coalition for Music Educators from 2001 to 2003. Hopkins holds a BA in secondary education and an MA in non-profit management. He has a daughter, Katie, 26, who holds a BA in dance from Columbia College Chicago, performs with ARCOS Dance nationally and internationally, teaches and choreographs for various high school colorguard programs nationwide, and is a four-year veteran of The Cadets and a fifth-year instructor/choreographer for the corps. Hopkins loves his Philadelphia Sports Teams, Broadway, the Philly Orchestra, live music concerts, reading, running and learning. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  8. Heh. Just stumbled across an old article on YEA's website with this now alarming title: George Hopkins Might Call You. That was actually posted a year before the discussion to which I linked, and included this little curio: "Since plenty of great musical suggestions have come in for Both Sides Now, the show design is being refined and finalized."
  9. No worries! It was fun to be prodded to look up that old thread. If we only knew then what we know now.
  10. Ugh. That sinking feeling when you spot a typo in something you wrote ... seven years later. . . But also, I feel like I'm looking at a time capsule. Here's just one of many summary entries that take me back: "100. dans condemns DCP cynicism as mere hatred of George Hopkins, believes the SE7EN proposal is sensible on the grounds that the most successful corps should have the biggest say in DCP’s future, and praises SE7EN for their imagination."
  11. A post so nice you quoted it twice. Reminds me of the time I summarized more than 900 previous posts in a G7 discussion, and then Jeff quoted the whole thing. (Someone asked around that time why I kept referring to the G7 as "SE7EN". It was because we didn't know what was in the box.)
  12. Aren't "Overture" and "New World" the same piece, but the latter has lyrics? (Drum Corps X says Cadets in 2005 played "Overture to a New World from Dancer in the Dark".) A number of other corps have played the piece, of whom my favorite (i.e, third overall) is probably Atlanta CV's 2018 version.
  13. So much for optimism? I've been watching so many marching bands over the past seven or eight years that when I check in on this feed, I find that sometimes I recognize the name of a town I never otherwise would have heard of from another part of the country. Every few hours, that "Faces of COVID" account posts a picture of one of the 170,000+ Americans who have died thus far from the pandemic, along with a short note about the person's life and and a link to his or her obituary. So when I saw this most recent post, for example, although I've never even been to Alabama, I remembered seeing video of the Hoover band in 2015, with a show titled "This Sacred Land," and I remember getting into a little argument with someone on the (now defunct) Music for All forums who was annoyed that Hoover had lost an early season contest to Grissom, whose show was titled "Mysteries of Egypt" (playing some Key Poulan music with tricky rhythms). Based on the footage I saw (in which both bands were a bit rough), I thought the judges got it right. Anyway, this is a sobering account to monitor:
  14. indeed. Among universities, see, for example, UNC, Notre Dame, and Michigan State.
  15. Thanks. Couldn't find that on Cadets' web page, which is understandable, but I was surprised it wasn't noted on the Wikipedia page for Cadets, either, not even in pre-2018 iterations.
  16. I can't remember: when did George Hopkins become corps director? I know it was in the late 70s or early 80s, but not the precise year.
  17. Something I learned tonight: the last song recorded by John Prine, the renowned folk/country singer who died in April (one of the first famous people to die of Covid), is titled "I Remember Everything." Impossible not to think of Blue Knights' 2019 show. Maybe not enough musical variety to work with in a drum corps arrangement, though.
  18. I'd be curious to see some numbers about what percentage of any given corps lives within 25 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles, etc., and particularly how those numbers changed over time.
  19. Lots of companies discovered this year that their business interruption insurance didn't cover "shut down by government order in response to pandemic."
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