SDNY Judge Deborah Batts Passes Away After Pathbreaking Career of Service From NYC to Ghana

By Matthew Russell Lee, PatreonBBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - The Source

SDNY COURTHOUSE, Feb 3 – Path-breaking Judge Deborah A. Batts has passed away, Inner City Press has learned. Judge Batts had been hearing cases in her 24th floor courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York right until the end, see below.

   Judge Batts was nominated by President William J. Clinton in 1994 and was sworn in as a judge on June 23, 1994 by the Honorable Lawrence W. Pierce of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  Judge Batts received her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College in 1969 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972 where she served on the editorial board of the Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review. Upon graduation, she clerked for Judge Pierce, then a United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York.  In 1973, Judge Batts became an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in the litigation department. In 1979, she became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the Criminal Division. In 1984, Judge Batts joined the faculty at Fordham University School of Law; she became a tenured Associate Professor of Law in May, 1990. While at Fordham, Professor Batts taught Property, Legal Research and Writing, Federal Criminal Pre-Trial Procedure, Domestic Relations and an advanced Domestic Relations Seminar on Non-Traditional Families. Judge Batts resigned her tenure when she went on the bench in 1994, but continues to teach at Fordham as an Adjunct Professor.  From 1973 to the present, Judge Batts has been a member of various bar associations including The Bar Association of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Black Bar Association and the Lesbian and Gay Law Association of Greater New York (LeGal). In addition, she has served on various committees of these associations as well as on the Boards of several educational institutions. Judge Batts was awarded an honorary degree by CUNY School of Law in 1998. She is currently a member of the CUNY School of Law Board of Visitors.  In 1990-91, she served as Special Associate Counsel of the Department of Investigation of the City of New York. From 1990 to 1994, Judge Batts was a Commissioner on the Law Revision Commission, State of New York.  In June, 2001, Judge Batts was a Team Member of the Crowley Program in International Human Rights’ Mission to Ghana, West Africa to observe the impact on the status of women in the area of inheritance of PNDCL 111, passed in 1985.  Rest in Peace.

  Inner City Press was covering the SDNY Magistrates Court on February 3 when it learned the sad news, from several sources in receipt of the news from the Chief Judge, and then confirmed it on another floor before this publication. Batts' passing follows that of also groundbreaking Judge Robert W. Sweet. His cases were re-assigned, as will be Judge Batts, including the second Michael Avenatti case in SDNY.

  A sample December 2019 proceeding: when Dejon Jackson appeared to plead guilty to and be sentenced on Violations of Supervised Release, the first time Judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered that the VOSR specification against him be corrected.

    On December 17, there were still errors, including the date of the incident constituting a VOSR, attempted possession of a weapon in the third degree under New York State Penal Law, Section 110/265.02(1).

    Judge Batts admonished Probation, but agreed to take Dejon Jackson's guilty plea. The guideline sentence was eight to 14 months, and that is what Assistant US Attorney Kristy J. Greenberg pushed for.  

Jackson's lawyers, Marne L. Lenox and Peggy Cross-Goldenberg, Federal Defenders' Director of Training, urged four months, citing classes he has taken and completed in the last two months in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.   

AUSA Greenberg responded with a litany of violations in state custody including an altered razor.

   Judge Batts imposed a sentence of six months, conditioned on Jackson having no more disciplinary issues so that he can attend his sister's high school graduation. Call it the carrot and the stick. It was a personalized sentencing, as provided for under Section 3553a. The case is US v. Jackson, 11-cr-265 (Batts). Rest in peace.

Obituary: UN Diplomat Sana Maboneza Is Dead, A Great Man From the Great Lakes

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 3 -- Our least favorite stories to write are obituaries, and this one is particularly painful, so we'll keep it short. An able diplomat at the UN, Sana Maboneza, died on the night of December 1 in a car crash on Interstate-495 in Virginia.

He covered the Security Council, the C-34 committee on peacekeeping, the election of incoming Secretary General Antonio Guterres and virtually every other issue at the UN and beyond, for example Somali athlete Samia Yusuf Omar death in the  Mediterranean, here.

Sana was present on the UN's 38th floor on November 11 of this year when Rwanda's new ambassador Valentine Rugwabiza had the ceremonial presentation of credentials with outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. 

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But Sana hadn't drunk the UN Kool-Aid, so to speak: when Ban and his head of communications Cristina Gallach had Inner City Press ousted from the UN in February, and evicted in April (confined to minders ever since), Sana spoke up. And he was interested in things at the beyond the direct interests of his country -- which he represented ably. He will be missed: the world is poorer without him.

Dead in Lahore, Haider Rizvi Covered Corporatization at UN, Opposed “Mafia”

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 31 -- The UN Spokesman ended his open statement at the October 29 UN noon briefing with this: “I have a bit of sad news.  We have been informed that Haider Rizvi, who was, as you know, a reporter in the UN press corps for many years, died last night in Lahore, Pakistan.  Our thoughts are with him and his family.”

   Ours too. Haider began covering the UN in 1993; in recent years there were times he and Inner City Press were the only ones asking questions at press conferences onindigenous issues, on disarmament, decolonization and against the increasing corporatization of the UN.

  Relatedly, when Inner City Press resisted attempts atcensorship and ejection by the honchos of the UN Correspondents Association, then co-founded the Free UN Coalition for Access, Haider expressed support (“Bravo! I am with you) and said of UNCA, “That gang has become a king mafia.” 

  Now UNCA has been exposed taking money from indicted Ng Lap Seng's vehicle to which UNCA then have a “journalism” award while giving Ng a photo op with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. That is today's UN; Haider embodied or covered some of the better aspects of an earlier or Other UN.

  Here are links to some of Haider's stories:

Police brutality (or in UN-speak, "Summary execution");

"U.N. Set to Take International Lead in Post-Gaddafi Libya," Inter Press Service (IPS);   Happiness 

Stewart Stogel, Who Asked UN UNcomfortable Questions, Dead at 60, Questions Continue

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 24 -- In the small world of journalists covering the UN from within, Stewart Stogel stood out as combative, dogged, critical, unique. He staked out Kofi Annan outside his UN-provided Sutton Place townhouse; he shouted questions at diplomats entering the Security Council while others mouthed, “Hello, Ambassador.”

On November 24 the UN's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit announced:

“It is with great sadness that my office just learned that U.N. correspondent Stewart Stogel passed away from complications of diabetes. Stew was a veteran journalist who had been covering the United Nations, its Secretaries-General and the activities of the Member States for many years. He worked for several media outfits and his stories appeared on ABC News, Press TV and NBC News but also in Newsweek, The Miami Herald, The Washington Times and World Net Daily. He was 60 years old.”

  Often, those Stogel was covering including in Mount Vernon where he lived, would try to undermine his connections to the above-listed publications. The UN itself made Stogel re-apply for credentials and, according to him, did not make his work easier. Inner City Press and the new Free UN Coalition for Access offers a few anecdotes, links and Rest in Peace wishes.

  In 2008 UNICEF's Ann Veneman agreed to essentially rent out the UN's North Lawn to an event by Madonna, or really, Gucci. Stogel registered to cover it; Inner City Press investigated it from outside. Ultimately many in the UN stepped away from the flawed event. But Stogel kept digging, even as a public relations firm tried to complain against him. His story is here.  Stew Stogel was a working journalist. He will be missed.

  Stogel in his reporting on the UN had a love - hate relationship with some in UN Security: some were sources, others went after him. 

  He reported critically on UN Security official Bruno Henn - who, Inner City Press today reports in Stogel's spirit, has been acted in the most recent Department of Safety and Security promotion / demotion exercise - and was known for his reporting on a so-called “riot” last time the UN changed catering contractors, as it is slated to do again on December 31, click here for that. Stogel likewise had a love - hate relations with the Accreditation unit: he liked and was liked by some.

  Another Stogel story, in 2010, involved the reduction in journalists' access at the UN Security Council, citing then “French ambassador Gerard Araud, who had been growing increasingly frustrated with unwelcomed ambush interviews.” 

  Precisely the kind of blacklisting which BuzzFeed faced this year from the UN World Health Organization, and which when the Free UN Coalition for Access asked UN spokesman Dujarric about, Dujarric said the UN doesn't do, Stogel faced from Dujarric's predecessor.

Also in 2010, even while accredited through other media, Stogel joined the campaign for bloggers' rights at the UN, writing to the same UN office which eulogized him that

“ICP is reporting that the media/accreditation status of bloggers is still being debated within DPI. Why? Ban Ki-moon is now in office more than three years and this question still remains? The White House addressed the issue of bloggers more than 6 years ago, yet at the UN it is still debated? Why?

“It becomes an important issue because of the repeated confrontational positions DPI has taken with press especially since Ban Ki-moon arrived. DPI has taken the outrageous position of contacting various news organizations and occasionally 'advising' them on who to assign to cover the United Nations. It is tradition going back more than 50 years of accrediting news organizations, not individuals. The Organization has often used credential accreditation as a "political" pressure tactic to retaliate for news coverage it took exception to. This is a department that is quite literally spinning out of control. How long will this continue?”

  In the spirit of Stew Stogel, these questions will continue to be asked. Watch this site.

   

Rich Williamson, Who Offered Candid Criticism of UN Peacekeeping in Sudan, Has Died: Rest in Peace

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 9 -- Rich Williamson, the US envoy on Darfur in 2008, has died. While at the UN, Williamson was frank. On June 17, 2008, he came to announce that Khartoum had been asked for permission to open up six additional routes for humanitarian convoys to Darfur.

  Inner City Press had asked if the UN peacekeepers stationed in El Fasher should rather be deployed to protect at least some of the World Food Program trucks which have been subject to hijacking. Williamson agreed there should be "more activity from the UN." Video here (old UN Real Media).

  Down in the UN basement in a conference room that day, Williamson painted a fuller picture of UN inaction, of UNMIS peacekeepers sitting in their base while, he said, 25 feet away Sudanese homes were being burned and looted in Abyei. 

  "We pay one billion dollars a year for UNMIS," Williamson said. And yet they stood by while 52,000 lives were shattered and nearly 100 dead.

UN Photo: Williamson and Ban Ki-moon, condolence to be added if issued

Six weeks after Williamson's candor, the Security Council went late before renewing the mandate of the mission in Darfur, complete with high school antics captured here. Williamson did good work, including on Darfur. Rest in Peace.

UN Photo: Williamson & Mia Farrow at UN

Footnote: Also on June 17, 2008 but still relevant today, some of French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert's sudden standoffishness with the press during the Security Council trip to Sudan and Chad which Inner City Press covered became more comprehensible. 

  Sources told Inner City Press that it was only on the trip that Ripert learned that he would not be getting the job of head of UN Peacekeeping. At the last moment, these sources say, the Ban Ki-moon administration because concerned that Ripert's constant references to Bernard Kouchner might create a problem of split loyalty. And so France was asked for another name, and forwarded that of Alain Le Roy.

   Turns out that Herve Ladsous was considered and rejected at that time, as he was before Jean-Marie Guehenno was selected. He finally got put into the job in 2011 after the UN chose then un-chose Jerome Bonnafont, and Sarkozy administration jammed Ladsous through. He has refused to answer Press questions, video here, UK coverage here. We'll have more on this.