Frederic Block (born June 6, 1934) is a

senior Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Education and career

Born in Brooklyn,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, the Honorable Frederic Block received an

Artium Baccalaureus Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

from

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. * Indiana Univers ...

in 1956 and a

Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of ...

from

Cornell Law School Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, it offers four law degree programs, JD, LLM, MSLS and JSD, along with several dual-deg ...

in 1959. After law school, he was a clerk to the

New York Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...

, appellate division, from 1959 to 1961. He was in private practice of law in

Patchogue Patchogue (, ) is a village in Suffolk County, New York. The population was 11,798 at the time of the 2010 census. Patchogue is part of the town of Brookhaven, on the south shore of Long Island, adjoining Great South Bay. It is officially known ...

from 1961 to 1962, then in Port Jefferson, Centereach, and Smithtown, moving back and forth between these locations from 1962 to 1994. During this time, he became an adjunct professor at Touro Law School, beginning in 1992. In private practice, Block handled both civil and criminal cases, and trial and appellate work—even arguing a case before the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...

Federal judicial service

On July 22, 1994, Block was nominated by President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (Birth name, né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 ...

to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York vacated by

Eugene H. Nickerson Eugene Hoffman Nickerson (August 2, 1918 – January 1, 2002) was the Democratic county executive of Nassau County, New York, from 1962 until 1970. Nickerson was the only Democrat to be elected county executive in Nassau County until 2001. Late ...

. Block was confirmed by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and ...

on September 28, 1994, and received his commission the next day. He assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...

on September 1, 2005, and was succeeded by Judge Brian Cogan. In 2005, Block complained that the disparity in security between the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, compared to the federal courthouse in Manhattan, was like being a denizen of

Fallujah Fallujah ( ar, ٱلْفَلُّوجَة, al-Fallūjah, Iraqi pronunciation: ) is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important J ...

rather than the

Green Zone The Green Zone ( ar, المنطقة الخضراء, translit=al-minṭaqah al-ḫaḍrā) is the most common name for the International Zone of Baghdad. It was a area in the Karkh district of central Baghdad, Iraq, that was the governmental ...

Notable cases

On April 15, 2004, Judge Block sentenced

Gambino crime family The Gambino crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the " Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the A ...

boss Peter Gotti to 9 years and 4 months in prison for

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdiction ...

and

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and ...

charges. Gotti had a subsequent conviction in the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New ...

for plotting to murder informant and former Gambino

underboss Underboss ( it, sottocapo) is a position within the leadership structure of certain organized crime groups, particularly in Sicilian, Greek, and Italian-American Mafia crime families. The underboss is second in command to the boss. The under ...

Sammy Gravano Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano (born March 12, 1945) is an American former mobster who became underboss of the Gambino crime family. Gravano played a major role in prosecuting John Gotti, the crime family's boss, by agreeing to testify as a ...

. In 2008, Judge Block ruled that the United States government could not use ethnicity as a factor in deciding to detain two Egyptian-born men on a plane. The Judge stated that it was the first case post-

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

to address whether ethnicity may be used to establish criminal propensity under the Fourth Amendment. Judge Block has stated that this is the matter he is most proud of. On September 30, 2015, a portion of a "seemingly never-ending dispute" over the printing of the Rebbe's Sichos came to an end when Judge Block dismissed a major part of a lawsuit involving members of the Orthodox Jewish

Chabad Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups ...

group. Judge Block dismissed claims of copyright infringement and unfair competition brought by Vaad L'Hafotzas Sichos and Zalman Chanin against Merkos and Agudas Chasidei Chabad. On May 24, 2016, Judge Block ordered a sentence of one year of

probation Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences ( alternatives to incarceration), suc ...

(rather than the guideline 33-41 month imprisonment) for a defendant who was convicted by a jury of importation and possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. In a 44-page

opinion An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements. Definition A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with ...

, Judge Block claimed the "collateral consequences" facing convicted felons are punishment enough. Judge Block's opinion and call for reform appears to be one of the most detailed examinations of collateral consequences and sentencing.

Books

On July 17, 2012, Judge Block released his first book named ''Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge''. The book was written for a behind the bench look at some of the most controversial cases in the past 20 years. The book covers Judge Block's approach to sentencing such as the death penalty,

, gun laws, drug laws, discrimination laws, race riots,

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, and restitution of looted property to victims of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. On May 29, 2019, Judge block released his second book: ''Crimes and Punishments: Entering the Mind of a Sentencing Judge.'' The book discusses several criminal cases, Judge Block's personal experiences and personal thoughts as they related to his duties; and demonstrates to the reader the power and responsibilities of a federal judge.

References

External links