Joining with the First, Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits (and disagreeing with decisions from the Fourth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits), the Third Circuit held that sentencing courts do not have to give defendants notice, pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(h), of proposed "variances" from the advisory Guidelines range.

In this decision, her first major criminal decision since her appointment to the D.C. Circuit last summer, Judge Janice Rogers Brown has probably surprised a lot of people. Her contentious, controversial and long-debated appointment to the Court was vehemently opposed by more than 150 state and national organizations, including the ...

In a rare departure from form, Justice Scalia joined with the more liberal Justices on the Supreme Court to provide the swing vote in this 5 to 4 decision that gave a resounding endorsement to a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel of his choice in a criminal case.

Cuauhtemoc ...

This domestic wiretap case, which has absolutely nothing to do with any alleged terrorists, is noted for the sheer audacity of the Government’s argument that, notwithstanding a “flagrant and obvious” failure to comply with the wiretap laws, suppression of the evidence is not warranted.

In this case, the Government filed ...

In Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000), the Supreme Court announced a relatively simple and straightforward rule - namely that "any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum [other than the fact of a prior conviction] must be submitted to ...

The Court held that police threats to imprison a suspect’s girlfriend and to place their child in foster care unless he confessed to his drug crimes and cooperated with the Government were not sufficiently coercive to render his confession involuntary.

This decision is noted for its unqualified (albeit logically suspect) ...

Here, joining with the First, Third, Fourth and Eleventh Circuits, the Second Circuit approved the use of mandatory polygraph examinations as a special condition of supervised release to ensure compliance with the terms of a defendant’s supervised release. In so ruling, the Court rejected the defendant’s twin contentions that mandatory ...

In its first go-around in this case (Kenna v. U.S. District Court, 435 F.3d 1011 (9th Cir. Jan. 20, 2006) (P&J, 01/02/06)), the Ninth Circuit boldly trumpeted the broad rights of crime victims at sentencing, making the sweeping assertion that the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3771 (“CVRA”) ...