When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.

In a decision that was widely condemned by organizations that advocate strong whistleblower protections, the Supreme Court held, by ...

Here, the Ninth Circuit reversed Curtis Howard’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm - after concluding that his probation officer did not have probable cause to conduct a probation search of the apartment of Howard’s girlfriend where the gun in question was found.

The district court ...

This is an astonishing tale of the extraordinary efforts of ATF Agent Christopher Demlein to implicate defendant Ramses Smith in the crime of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The events arose out of a sting operation on January 28, 2002 in Boston, that was set up by ...

The defendants in this case, Kasper Dobbs and Robert Wilson, appealed their federal convictions and sentences stemming from the armed robbery of $ 565 from a "mom and pop" convenience store in Dubuque, Iowa. A jury convicted them of Interference with Commerce by Violence (robbery) under the Hobbs Act, 18 ...

Here the Court held that a defendant who accidentally discharged a firearm was not subject to the ten year mandatory minimum sentence specified in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(iii) for discharging a firearm during a crime of violence; he must act with intent.

Texas, apparently, does not agree with the time-honored proposition that a condemned man has the right to speak his last words. In this case, a divided panel from the Fifth Circuit agreed that it was not “objectively unreasonable” for the Texas courts to deny James Jackson the right to present ...

Defendant challenged a judgment from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, which sentenced him to 48 months' imprisonment upon his guilty plea conviction of mail fraud.

The district court departed upward from the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range based on a number of victim impact ...

In this 45-page decision, the Second Circuit upheld the arrest of paroled sex offender Christopher Farrell for violating a condition of his supervised release that prohibited him from possessing pornography. Farrell challenged the condition and resulting arrest as a violation of his First Amendment and due process rights. Although the ...