Defendant was convicted by a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Montana of violating the Hobbs Act, 18, U.S.C. § 1951, and carrying a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). The trial court sentenced defendant to a twenty-two ...

Petitioner inmate filed a motion for injunctive relief in connection with a habeas action under 28 U.S.C.S. § 2241 to compel respondents, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and associated officials, to immediately make a determination as to his eligibility for pre-release designation to a Community Corrections Center (CCC) pursuant ...

Defendants were convicted of several charges, including conspiracy, making false statements to government officials, and obstruction of an agency proceeding. Defendants moved for a new trial under Fed. R. Crim. P. 33, or alternatively for an evidentiary hearing, claiming that they were deprived of a fair trial because a certain ...

Here, after a noteworthy and comprehensive review of the law relating to prison conditions and prisoners' rights, Judge Young unlimately dismissed the petitioner's requests for relief based on his claims of inadequate medical care.

Every so often, a decision addressing barbaric prison conditions and prisoners’ rights stands out as beacon ...

Granting in part Government's motion for reconsideration based on the "plain view" exception to the Fourth Amendment.

As a result of its finding that a special agent made deliberately false statements in a warrant affidavit, the court suppressed all of the evidence that the government seized from defendants' warehouse pursuant ...

The Court held that subjecting death row inmates to temperatures above 90 degrees during Florida’s summer months without any air-conditioning does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

This is one of those absurdly pointless and unduly harsh criminal justice decisions that is certain to evoke cries of shame from the ...

In this major review and interpretation of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, Judge Cassell ordered two defendants, convicted of involuntary and voluntary manslaughter, to pay restitution to the families of their victims.

The two defendants in this consolicated case had been convicted of homicide. Defendants' cases were not related, but ...

Defendants, a stockbroker and his client, were convicted of obstruction of an agency proceeding, making false statements, and conspiring to do those things. The stockbroker was also convicted of perjury. The stockbroker moved for a new trial pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 33 or, alternatively, for an evidentiary hearing ...

This is a rare case in which the Court acknowledged that, while district courts “do not have the authority to compute sentence credits for the time a defendant is detained prior to sentencing . . . once administrative remedies are exhausted . . ., prisoners may then seek judicial review ...

Sharply disagreeing with the D.C. Circuit, the Third Circuit held that the Ensign Amendment, which bars the distribution of sexually explicity materials in prison, was facially invlid as overly broad and unsupported by adequate penological goals.

In 1996, Congress enacted a law that bars the BOP from distributing to inmates ...

We have no idea why this decision took more than 18 months to be published; but we are relatively certain that some heads will role now that Judge Justice’s ruling has finally leaked out. Both the facts and the ruling in this case are quite unusual - almost to the ...

Here a divided panel upheld a special condition of supervised release that imposed a humiliating punishment on a convicted felon - namely that he wear a sandwich board announcing that he stole mail.

In this case, a divided panel from the Ninth Circuit affirmed a special condition of supervised release ...

Rejecting authority to the contrary from the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, the Second Circuit held that the district court had erred in imposing a two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice under U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, because the defendant swore to false financial statements in order to obtain court-appointed counsel. The panel ...

In October 0f 2003, a divided three judge panel from the Ninth Circuit held that the forced extraction of blood from parolees pursuant to the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act (42 U.S.C. § 14135a) (the “DNA Act”) requires individualized suspicion under the Fourth Amendment, and that the compulsory collection of ...

Defendant challenged a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, which applied the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual §§ 2S1.1(b)(2)(C), 2S1.2(b)(2) (1994) and sentenced him to 42 months' imprisonment after a jury found him guilty of mail fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. Defendant sought a ...