Motor City Original: Federal Judge Victoria Roberts

One of President Joseph Biden's first Article II judicial appointments will be to replace US District Court Judge Victoria Roberts; she announced her intention of transitioning to the senior judical service earlier this week. Former President Bill Clinton appointed Judge Roberts to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1997, replacing retiring Judge George LaPlata. 

Judge Roberts has a long history of public service in the Motor City. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1973, then attended Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. Like this blogger, she served as a research attorney for the Michigan Court of Appeals. She also taught legal writing and research at the old Detroit College of Law.

In 1993, Judge Roberts worked on former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Dennis Archer's transition team when he served as Detroit's mayor. After a short stint as an Assistant United States Attorney in Detroit in the late 1980s, Roberts was in a private law practice for a decade. 

We here at the Motor City Law Blog have fond memories of Judge Roberts service as a federal judge. In 2004, we had a series of habeas corpus cases filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Our client was convicted in a series of murders from Washtenaw County Circuit Court. His appeals were exhausted. 

Because his confession came following a request for legal counsel, he had a valid constitutional issue involving his 5th Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination. When a convicted defendant exhausts his appeals, a petition for habeas corpus can be filed in federal court. 

Our client had a series of six assault and murder convictions, all of which became the subject of a series of habeas petitions in Judge Roberts' court. Her staff could not have been more professional and helpful in getting the petitions properly lodged and ready for disposition. 

Toward the end of her tenure, Judge Roberts is well known for her role in the "travel ban" case of Arab American Civil Rights League vs President Trump. She ordered Trump lawyer Rudy Guliani to turn over a legal memorandum designed to make the Arab travel ban appear not to be aimed at Muslims. 

One of former President Trump's crowning achievements, from a conservative perspective, was appointing hundreds of conservative jurists to the federal bench and three conservative justices to the United States Supreme Court. The debate between textualist conservative and activist liberal jurists has raged for over 100 years in our country. 

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last year, many liberals and Democrats decried her decision to remain on the bench until her death, thereby depriving a Democrat administration from replacing her on the bench. Instead, her death provided former President Trump with a third SCOTUS appointment. 

Well, Judge Roberts can now shift to the senior service of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan knowing that President Biden will select an appropriate replacement for an unforgettable Motor City Original. 

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Chinese Citizen Journalist Sentenced to 4-Years for COVID-19 Reporting

On the first business day of the year, Zhang Zhan, a 37-year old former lawyer, was sentenced to 4-years in Shanghai, China for her dogged reporting about how the Chinese Communist Party handled the world's initial outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus. She is one of several journalists who have disappeared, only to reappear in court to face criminal charges; the Chinese government has a 99.5% conviction rate. 

Her official charges were, "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". Her indictment accused her of publishing a large cache of "fake" information and interacting with foreign media outlets. Interestingly, Ms. Zhan had been charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" twice in 2019; but the indictment shed no light on the details of  the pair of prior incidents. Here is a copy of her original indictment, in Chinese. 

According to Amnesty International, Ms. Zhan has been on a hunger strike for the past 5-months; AI says she has been force-fed through feeding tubes and may have been tortured in other ways. Here is the complete AI report.

Leading up to her trial, she was shackled 24-hours a day. She had to be brought into court in a wheelchair to face her accusers; she defiantly refused to participate in the "trial", saying it was insulting. The BBC reported she was "psychologically exhausted".

In China, prosecutors typically resort to charges of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" whenever they need to silence government critics like Ms. Zhan. Journalists, dissidents, and human rights activists are all subject to these handy charges.

Ms. Zhan's trial no doubt went like 99.9% of all Chinese criminal trials: guilty as charged. In the sentencing phase of such cases, punishment is harsh. Ms. Zhan, for example, will now do 48-months in a Chinese prison, presumably the Pudong New District Detention Centre in Shanghai. As far back as March 2020, Ms. Zhan clashed with authorities when she bucked the official Communist Party line of encouraging so-called "gratitude education" recognizing the efforts of party leaders in containing the pandemic.

Zhan's Twitter handle and Youtube channel streamed content and videos of the crisis in real time. The videos were smuggled out of China through virtual private networks. Twitter and Youtube are banned in China; Zhan also posted some of her videos to the Chinese social media network WeChat.

Before her arrest, she was able to video a crowded hospital, a crematory, and a community health center. In other videos, she interviewed people on the street for their reactions to the government's handling of the pandemic; she sprinkled critical editorial throughout. 

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China in January, Ms. Zhan was not even a citizen journalist; she had been a lawyer. The New York Times described her as a stubborn and idealistic Christian; she reportedly quoted this passage from I Corinthians: "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." One of Ms. Zhan's more fervent concerns was the fate of other now-missing journalists she met while reporting on the Communist Party's handling and early containment of the virus. 

Probably because the Party had its hands full with containing the pandemic, Zhan was able to move freely about Wuhan to create, smuggle, and post content. According to the NYT, she was able to fly under the Party radar because she was a small citizen journalist with a very small following.  Apparently, she acquired a higher profile when she began inquiring at police stations about the missing journalists. In China, that will do it every time. 

She went missing in mid-May 2020 and popped-up over 400-miles away in a Shanghai courtroom in December. Very difficult to fathom that, if she outlives her hunger strike, Ms. Zhan will not embark upon a 4-year prison term for simply recording information about the pandemic.

The Communist Party judge that sentenced Zhan for documenting a public health crisis was, no doubt, impressed with her meddlesome character, as evidenced by her two prior charges from 2019. She apparently failed to show the proper deference to the government's efforts to combat the virus; she did not buy into her neighborhood "gratitude education". 

Of course, this is nothing new for China and the Chinese Communist Party; a locked-down centrally-controlled communist governmental system with a very singular focus: the survival and advancement of the Party. Free critical thought is criminalized and repressed as it has always been in China. 

Ms. Zhan's courage to document government action may prove disproportionately effective in shedding light on an always shifty regime. 

The blogger, Timothy P. Flynn, owns and operates Clarkston Legal, a general practice law firm.