Defendant was convicted of preparing false income tax returns. At sentencing, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada departed downward six levels based on defendant's family ties and responsibilities. The departure reduced the sentencing range from 27-33 months to 10-16 months, which in turn allowed the district ...

High at the top of the list of the most barbaric features of the American criminal justice system is the use of stun belts on criminal defendants at trial. Justified as a means of preventing a prisoner from becoming unruly and disruptive at trial, they can cause enormous physical and ...

Back in 1975, pretrial inmates at 14 jails in New York City filed seven related class actions against the City and prison officials, alleging that they were being subjected to unconstitutional conditions of confinement. In 1978 and 1979, the parties entered into a series of consent decrees which, inter alia, ...

Here, by a vote of 8 to 3, the en banc court held that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002) announced a watershed rule of law and thus it applies retroactively to cases on collateral appeal.

This is an important (albeit highly contentious) ...

In this lengthy, 260-page decision, Judge Evans held that the rule established in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), was merely a new rule of criminal procedure that could not be applied retroactively to cases on collateral appeal.

In sharp contrast to the rationale set forth in the Ninth ...

Here the Court held that a four-year delay in deciding a petitioner’s § 2255 motion (during which time he actually completed the service of the very sentence he was attempting to modify), while “unfortunate and regrettable,” held not to violate any constitutional right to habeas corpus review.

The defendant appealed from a judgment of the District Court, convicting him, pursuant to his guilty plea, of conspiracy to produce fictitious obligations in violation of 18 U.S.C.S. § 514, possession of fictitious obligations in violation of 18 U.S.C.S. § 514, and identification fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C.S. § ...

Here, joining with decisions from the Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuits, the First Circuit refused to extend the Apprendi requirements to criminal forfeitures, since forfeitures are “not viewed as a separate charge” but as “an aspect of punishment imposed following conviction of a substantive offense.”

The Court stated: " For ...

This is the first case we have seen in which a court has enjoined the BOP from implementing it recent new policy of limiting the amount of time that an inmate can spend in a halfway house, where the inmate in question has not yet been transferred to a halfway ...

In this case, after the District Court denied defendant's motion to dismiss Counts I and II of the indictment, he was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. "and any health care benefit program," in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1347(1), and attempting to defraud "any health care benefit ...