Petitioner inmate sought review of a judgment from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, which dismissed his application for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 following his conviction for possession of a controlled substance, Cal. Health & Safety Code § 11350(a), ...

Because the statute of limitations continues to run during the pendency of Federal habeas corpus proceedings, a petitioner often will not have time to exhaust all of his available state remedies and return to the Federal courts. However, under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2), the limitations period is ...

As part of his plea agreement, the defendant in this case stipulated that he had conspired with several others to smuggle hundreds of kilos of marijuana into Puerto Rico. At sentencing, the district court (Judge Perez-Gimenez of the D.Puerto Rico) sua sponte added a two-level sentence enhancement pursuant to the ...

The defendant in this case, Issam Awad, pled guilty to one count of illegally possessing pseudoephedrine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(d)(2). While the plea agreement did not obligate the Government to seek any sentence reduction based on the defendant’s assistance with any other prosecutions, the AUSA did file ...

After the husband and wife defendants in this case were convicted by a jury of two counts of tax evasion, they appealed, arguing principally that their right to a fair trial had been prejudiced because the Government had assembled a large team of current and former agents of the IRS ...

Although the provisions of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 3663A and 3664) (“MVRA”) are silent on the issue, the Second Circuit held, as a matter of first impression, that based on the common law background against which Congress is presumed to legislate orders for restitution by co-defendants, ...