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 ...

Once the Government decides to file a § 5K1.1 motion, it may not then defer a determination as to the substantiality of a defendant’s assistance on the ground that it would be premature to make such a judgment or that it can file a Rule 35(b) motion later.

The defendant ...

The district court erred in denying the defendants the right to prove that the presence of a team of up to 10 current and former IRS agents, glaring at the jury during their tax evasion trial, “intimidated the jury and prejudiced its deliberations”.

After the husband and wife defendants in ...

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, ...