ISIS suspects “de-radicalization” release plan challenged, legal literary styling lambasted, and mandatory retirement age mulled

Terror suspect: ““We’re not gonna be in the program, bro”

MPR checks in on what skeptical government prosecutors call “a unique and untested” pretrial release plan for three Minnesota terror suspects accused of plotting to join ISIS.

“None of these proposals can sufficiently guarantee that the defendant will eschew this extremist ideology, remain law-abiding and appear in court when instructed,” the government said in a motion.

The defense’s proposed pretrial release plan aims to “de-radicalize” the suspects with help of imams and other Somali-American community leaders but secretly recorded conversations between suspect Zacharia Abduraham and an informant suggest that will be a tough slog.

“With me, all of us, we’re hopeless, we’re not gonna be in a program, bro,” Abduraham told the informant. “We will straight up serve time.” In the same recording, Abdurahman describes his fellow suspects as “the hot boys on the block, bro.”

Local lawyer/poet on awkward and indulgent literary efforts from the bench

Minnesota Litigator interviews the local real estate lawyer/poet Tim Nolan about the differences between legal writing and more literary forms.

“When judges attempt to be literary, usually they fail and there’s a kind of awkwardness and self-indulgence that is disturbing to me,” Nolan says. “I’m thinking you brought up the marriage equality case. I read [Supreme Court Justice Anthony] Kennedy’s opinion. There’s some beautiful language in there and yet I don’t think of any of it as being the language of poetry because it’s serving the needs of the case.”

Nolan is considerably more barbed in his assessment of Kennedy’s colleague, Antonin Scalia:

“Yes, and for a number of reasons I dislike Scalia. It strikes me Scalia is an extreme example of what I’m talking about where he has a very interesting writing style. It’s very snappy. It’s almost like he has come out of a scene in “Guys and Dolls” or something. He’s got this very New York snappy writing style, which is attractive in some ways. But, again, I think it’s indulgent. We don’t really need that from a judge. He’s amusing himself and that seems to me a problem in judicial opinions. He’s also a very angry person in general so he’s lashing out at his colleagues.”

Mandatory retirement for judges

At the Pi Press, Rachel Stassen-Berger looks at Minnesota’s mandatory retirement age for judges – 70 – which, it turns out, only dates back to 1973. It also makes Minnesota a bit of an outlier.

“Only 19 states lack any judicial retirement requirement, including Wisconsin, where the retirement age is not enforced,” Stassen-Berger writes. “In another dozen states, the age cutoff is higher than Minnesota’s. For judges in Vermont, it’s 90.”

Among those interviewed is Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, who will be forced to retire when he turns 70 in August.

“I think today’s 70-year-olds are different from the 70-year-old of 20 years ago,” says Page, who nonetheless doesn’t seem much bothered. “That’s just what the rules are,” Page says. “It is not something I spent any time at all thinking about.”