In this decision, Judge Gertner addressed sentencing rights where the defendant pled guilty to a drug conspiracy indictment, leaving the quantity to be determined by the judge through a jury waiver. Over government objection, the judge decided the case based on the reasonable doubt standard in two separate ways. First, ...

This decision presents an eye-opening view of the scope of the activities and the sophistication of the porn police in searching for child predators who lurk on the Internet. It also presents a timely review of the affirmative defense of entrapment in a world where the line between catching child ...

Jumping into a growing circuit split, the Eleventh Circuit joined with the Third, Seventh and Eighth Circuits in holding that "the district court was not required to give Defendant advance notice [pursuant to Rule 32(h) of the Fed.R.Crim.P.] before imposing a sentence above the advisory guidelines range based on the ...

Once again the Seventh Circuit has routinely affirmed a substantially above-Guidelines sentence; and once again Judge Posner has used such excessively sweeping language to explain his ruling that his words evoked an immediate outcry of frustration and disbelief from some noted commentators.

For example, upon reading this decision, Prof. Douglas ...

Few cases can describe with greater clarity than this gem the absolute insanity that can result from the imposition of some mandatory minimum sentences. Marion Hungerford, a 52-year old, mentally-disturbed, mother of four was sentenced to 159 years in prison for helping her live-in boyfriend commit a string of robberies ...

Here the Court held that the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence based on a sentencing court’s determination of the quantity of drugs by a mere preponderance of the evidence did not violate the principles laid down by U.S. v. Booker.

In U.S. v. Malouf, 377 F.Supp.2d 315 (D.Mass. June ...

This is an interesting decision in a § 1983 case brought by an inmate in a Washington state prison. As part of the prison’s mandatory work program, plaintiff Steven Morgan applied for and received a coveted position on the prison’s printing press. These skilled positions were hard to come by, ...

Relying on the Fifth Circuit’s en banc decision in U.S. v. Estate of Parsons, 367 F.3d 409 (5th Cir. 2004), Judge Simeon Lake vacated the conviction of late Enron founder Kenneth Lay, wiping out a jury's verdict that he committed fraud, conspiracy and insider trading in the months before his ...

In this case, the court addressed the hair-splitting issue of whether, in appeals from sentences imposed for revocation of supervised release, the courts should apply a "reasonableness" or a "plainly unreasonable" standard in the post-Booker world.

The defendant in this case, Christopher Crudup, repeatedly violated the terms of his supervised ...

Here the Court rejected a series of challenges by a group of Israeli organizations that had been designated as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” by the Department of State, noting that the courts have limited authority to set aside such designations.

Another of the many provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death ...

Defendant filed a motion for a bill of particulars. While the government provided most of the requested clarification and specification informally in meetings with defense counsel after the motion was filed, defendant sought greater specificity from the government only with respect to allegations of false statements in the first eleven ...