This is the first case we have seen interpreting (and somewhat limiting the broad sweep of) the Supreme Court's decision in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., 124 S.Ct. 2457 (2004), which upheld a Nevada law that makes it a criminal offense for anyone suspected of wrongdoing to ...

As she so often does, Judge Gertner has presented another powerful case for the need for downward departures under the Guidelines to protect against unwise and unjust results that would otherwise flow from a rigid application of the Guidelines - and from prosecutorial intransigence that make no sense.

In March, ...

In this case the Second Circuit adopted a bright-line rule that the appointment of counsel fully satisfies the constitutional guarantees on providing prisoners access to the courts. The Court emphasized that it was “explicitly” holding that the appointment of counsel satisfies the obligation to give prisoners, including pretrial detainees, the ...

This provocative, must-read decision represents another of a series of recent major body-blows to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. It follows Judge Young’s recent scathing attack on the Federal sentencing system in U.S. v. Green, 346 F.Supp.2d 259, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11292 (D.Mass. June 18, 2004) (P&J, 05/31/04). It also ...

The provisions of 18 U.S.C. §§ 3153(c)(1) and (c)(3) provide, respectively, that information obtained during the performance of pretrial services functions shall be used only for the purposes of a bail determination and is otherwise confidential; and that such information “is not admissible on the issue of guilt in a ...

While no one can legitimately ignore the dangers of child pornography or the ease by which images of child pornography can proliferate over the Internet, the Government is clearly pushing its prosecution of child pornography offenders to the fictionalized-types of crimes that one might expect would be charged by “thought-control ...

The First Amendment often seems to be reviewed under slightly different standards if the statements at issue have a tendency to attack things that are near and dear to the power base of the establishment. This case involves the right of Irwin Schiff, the 76-year author and long-time opponent of ...

Joe Arpaio, the 72-year old, self-proclaimed “toughest Sheriff in America” from Maricopa County, AZ, has always believed that his divine mission in life is to out-duel the judges and the legislators for the role as kingpin in meting out punishments to the many prisoners housed in his ever expanding chain ...