Here the defendant argued that in order to impose a reasonable sentence, the District Court was required by § 3553(a)(6) to consider the sentences imposed in Arkansas state courts for comparable conduct by defendants similarly situated to him and to impose a sentence designed to diminish the disparity between the ...

Shortly prior to this decision, the Second Circui, in Xue v. Board of Immigration Appeals, 439 F.3d 111 (2nd Cir. Feb. 21, 2006) (P&J, 01/30/06), that Court sharply criticized the BIA’s cookie-cutter method of dispensing justice in asylum cases with these words:

“Asylum petitions of aliens seeking refuge from alleged ...

Here the Court held that a federal court has the authority, on its own initiative, to correct the state's error and dismiss a habeas petition as untimely, once the State has answered the petition without contesting its timeliness.

This is still another of the seemingly endless stream of cases defining ...

Petitioner alien sought review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which reversed a finding of an immigration judge (IJ) that the alien was entitled to relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). The alien also challenged the constitutionality of the REAL ID Act, Pub. L. No. ...

The issue before the Court in this case was whether a criminal defendant's federal constitutional rights are violated by an evidence rule under which the defendant may not introduce proof of third-party guilt if the prosecution has introduced forensic evidence that, if believed, strongly supports a guilty verdict.

The rule ...

Since Jan. 12, 2005, when the Supreme Court handed down its landmark sentencing decision in U.S. v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), more than 75, 245 sentences have been imposed in Federal criminal cases; and, to the best of our knowledge, the instant case is only the second time a ...

This is one of those absurd immigration cases that is so disconnected from reality as to constitute deliberate indifference. Here, a panel of three white judges from New England (including one female, Judge Lynch), who really didn’t get it, somehow concluded that the petitioner, a poor Chinese woman who faced ...

Here the Court held that U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(c), which allows a court to run a sentence “concurrently, partially concurrently, or consecutively to the prior undischarged term of imprisonment” does not authorize a sentencing court to give credit for time served on a state offense. "In other words, a defendant's total ...

In this case, the Eleventh Circuit reversed a conviction after finding that a two-year delay between the defendant’s indictment and his trial was presumptively unreasonable and violated the defendant’s right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment. In February, 2000, the defendant, Larry Ingram, who had previously been convicted ...

Here the Court discussed at some length the concept of admissions and the impact of an alternative sentence during the Blakely-Booker interregnum. Here are the basics from the start of the opinion:

Joseph Revels brings this challenge under United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005), to the district ...

In this case, the Eleventh Circuit addressed the reasonableness of downward departures in the post-Booker world; and its ruling gives credence to the wide-held belief that there are different standards for determining the reasonableness of upward departures versus downward departures.

This high-profile white-collar case involved the sentencing of the 65-year ...