The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed count one of an indictment against defendant, which charged defendant with conspiring to engage in conduct prohibited by various provisions of the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C.. §§ 2510-2522, in violation of 18 U.S.C.S. § 371. The government appealed.

The ...

In this decision, the Ninth Circuit joined the judicial debate about the impact of Blakely v. Washington on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The defendant, Alfred Ameline, pled guilty to the possession of a detectible amount of methamphetamine. He was sentenced to 150 months in prison, based on the district court’s ...

Defendant was convicted by a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). On appeal, defendant argued that the district court erroneously allowed the government to present evidence that years ...

Defendant moves to dismiss a superseding indictment charging a drug conspiracy on the ground of prosecutorial vindictiveness.

Shortly before defendant's trial on a single, low-level narcotics charge, the court ruled inadmissible four similar acts involving four prior narcotics deals. The jury then hung, and the court scheduled a re-trial. The ...

Defendant was indicted on one count of knowingly conducting, controlling, managing, supervising, directing, or owning all or part of an unlicensed money transmitting business, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 1960(a) and (b)(1)(A). Defendant filed a motion to declare § 1960(b)(1)(A) unconstitutional based on equal protection and vagueness ...

Based on Crawford, the Confrontation Clause bars the use of a coconspirator’s statement against a co-defendant after he became unavailable for cross-examination by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

This is one of the first cases we have seen interpreting the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Crawford ...

Here, disagreeing with a recent decision from the Ninth Circuit, a divided panel from the Sixth Circuit held that the prosecution’s use of two conflicting theories concerning the identity of a shooter to convict both violated the Due Process Clause.

In Shaw v. Terhune, 353 F.3d 697 (9th Cir. 2003), ...

Appellants, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Justice, and various federal officials, sought review of a judgment from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which granted appellee alien's petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C.S. § 2241 after finding that ...

The per curiam label on this decision is actually quite deceptive - as it tends to cloud some of the significant differences among the judges on the contentious sentencing issues before the Court. True, all three judges agreed that the defendant’s various convictions for insider trading (mail fraud, securities fraud ...

In response to three separate actions filed against the New York City Police Department, Judge Sweet has ruled that police officers cannot search the bags and backpacks of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention later this summer without showing both a specific threat to public safety and an indication of ...

Defendants were charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to murder and kidnap persons in a foreign country, soliciting persons to engage in crimes of violence, conspiring to and providing and concealing material support for the aforementioned conspiracy, and making false statements in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ ...