This is another one of those decisions which confirms the adage that “sentencing is different.” The defendant, James Nichols, was originally indicted on three counts: bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a); armed bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(d); and using or carrying a firearm ...

Appellant attorneys sought review of an order of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, which required them to disgorge and pay to appellee government the post-verdict legal fees obtained from their criminal defendant client in contempt of a protective order entered pursuant to 18 U.S.C. ...

This decision addresses the balance between a defendant’s right to test the validity of a search warrant against the government’s need to keep certain information confidential. Under Franks v. Delaware, a defendant has a right to an evidentiary hearing on the validity of a search warrant if he can make ...

Defendant challenged a decision from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which entered a sentence in a drug case.

Defendant was sentenced at the highest end of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual range, and the district court refused to depart. Thereafter, defendant sought review. In ...

Here, a divided en banc court held that Blakely and Booker are inapplicable to both restitution and to forfeiture issues, stating in part: "Because, in our view, restitution under the VWPA and the MVRA is not the type of criminal punishment that evokes Sixth Amendment protection under Booker, we conclude ...

Plaintiff United States appealed the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana's post-Booker, non-Guideline sentence after defendant pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C.. § 2252A(a)(5).

Defendant pled guilty to one count of possessing child pornography. Defendant submitted a factual ...

The Ninth Circuit may be the Supreme Court’s favorite punching bag, but it always seems alive with novel decisions. In the instant case, the Court vacated the drug conviction and 20-year sentence imposed on Bobbie Bear because the district court failed to give the jury, sua sponte, the public authority ...

Anyone familiar with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has to be concerned about its methods of operation - highlighted by its infamous “paper review” of cases. Just consider this description of the BIA taken - verbatim - from the Department of Justice’s Website at http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/biainfo.htm

“The Board of Immigration ...

IThe principal issue addressed by the Court in this case was “whether a district court in the post-Booker world can vary from the advisory sentencing range under the Guidelines by substituting its own crack cocaine/powder cocaine ratio for the 100: 1 crack cocaine/powder cocaine ratio chosen by Congress.”

That issue ...

Here the Court vacated the sentence of 96 months imposed on the defendant and remanded with instructions that the district court impose a new sentence of "no less than 20 years imprisonment" - a mandate that Judge Goodwin subsequently rejected.

The defendant, Brian Moreland, appealed from a judgment of the ...

Defendant was convicted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, of mail fraud, money laundering, and various tax crimes. He appealed his convictions and sentence. The court addressed only three issues raised on appeal: the validity of defendant's 18 U.S.C.S. § 1956 money ...

Ending nearly 20 years of litigation, the Supreme Court has finally ruled that the Hobbs Act (18 U.S.C. § 1951(a)) does not outlaw the kind of violence that anti-abortion protesters have used to block access to abortion clinics nationwide. In the 1980's, the National Organization for Women, Inc. (NOW) and ...