Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, entered in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Defendant argued that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress the handgun underlying his conviction. The gun was discovered during ...
n an appeal concerning Nassau County Correctional Center's blanket strip search policy for newly admitted, misdemeanor detainees, denials of plaintiffs' repeated class certification motions for lack of common issue predominance are reversed as: 1) district courts may certify a class on a particular issue regardless of whether plaintiffs' claims, as ...
Derrick Kimbrough pleaded guilty to distributing fifty or more grams of crack cocaine, distributing cocaine, conspiring to distribute fifty grams or more of crack cocaine, and possessing a firearm in connection with a drug trafficking crime. The sentencing guideline range was 168 to 210 months imprisonment for the drug counts ...
In this case, Judge Sharp addressed - and quickly rejected - a series of constitutional challenges to the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (“CPSA”), another of those election-year, patchwork quilts that we first discussed in the 09/11/06 issue of P&J and which, among many other things, ...
Petitioner, a native and citizen of Peru, sought review of an order from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which summarily affirmed the immigration judge's (IJ) ruling that petitioner was removable as an aggravated felon under 8 U.S.C.S. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) based on his guilty plea to felony unlawful sexual intercourse ...
Plaintiffs, former detainees at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sued defendants, executive and military members of the U.S. government, alleging that they were subjected to various forms of torture during their detention, in violation of international law, the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, and the Religious Freedom Restoration ...
Here the Court held that a “theft offense” under the Immigration and Nationality Act includes the crime of “aiding and abetting” a theft offense as defined in the California Vehicle Code and thus qualifies as an "aggravated felony" for the INA.
Sometimes it seems as if the Supreme Court deliberately ...
Defendant appealed decisions of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which convicted him of conspiring to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C.S. § 846 and for unlawful use of a communication facility in violation of 21 U.S.C.S. § 843(b), and sentenced him to a term ...
In its latest attempt to bring some clarity to the confusion it created with its Apprendi/Blakely/Booker line of cases, the Supreme Court held, by a 6-to-3 vote, that California's "determinate sentencing law" is unconstitutional because it allows judges, not juries, to find facts that lead to higher criminal sentences. The ...
The defendant in this case, Mario Claiborne, pled guilty to two counts of possession and distribution of 5.03 grams of crack cocaine. Since the offense to which he pled guilty exceeded - by three-hundreths of a gram - five grams of that drug, Claiborne was subject to a mandatory minimum ...
From the Decision of the Day Blog:
In this interesting Fourth Amendment case, a divided Ninth Circuit panel rejects a constitutional challenge to County officials’ policy of conducting a walkthrough visit of the homes of San Diego’s welfare applicants. The majority concludes that the walkthroughs are not a search for ...
Thjs case involved the interpretation of the phrase “civil rights restored” in the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1)). Those who have been convicted previously of felonies and are then convicted of possessing guns are subject to a maximum sentence of ten years, but that maximum is ...
Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), “failure to exhaust” is an affirmative defense, prisoner need not name all defendants in prior grievances, and court must proceed on exhausted claims while dismissing unexhausted claims.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) (42 U.S.C. §§ 1997e, et seq.) was enacted in 1995 ...
Here the Court held held that a person seeking to establish a claim of innocent possession to cash seized by the Government as suspected drug proceeds could not use the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination privilege as both a sword and a shield.
This is an interesting forfeiture case, both factually and ...
The defendant in this case was convicted of violating the Clean Air Act and conspiracy to promote money laundering. The Government appealed, challenging sentence imposed, and defendant cross-appealed, challenging his conviction for money laundering conviction. In U.S. v. Thorn, 317 F.3d 107 (2nd Cir. Jan. 9, 2003), the Circuit Court ...
The defendant in this case appealed a judgment from the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which entered a jury's verdict convicting him of international money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i). The defendant contended that the evidence was insufficient to prove the required elements of ...
Defendant was a partner at an accounting firm. She was questioned in the course of an IRS investigation by attorneys hired by the firm. The firm waived its attorney-client privilege and gave the government documents embodying the substance of the attorneys' communications with defendant. Defendant argued the attorneys were representing ...
Plaintiff German citizen claimed to be an innocent victim of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program and, through three causes of action, sued defendants, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), private corporations, and unknown employees of both the CIA and the corporations. Asserting the state secrets privilege, ...
Plaintiff arrestee appealed a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which granted summary judgment to defendants, a city and two police detectives, in the arrestee's action, alleging a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state torts of ...
Petitioners, a detainee and two next friends, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order with an application for habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 brought against respondents, various military officials. The court treated the motion as a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin the detainee's transfer ...
Appellant state inmate sought judicial review of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas's denial of habeas relief. The district court found that the inmate suffered from some form of mental illness, which some of the doctors diagnosed as schizo-affective disorder. However, the district court held ...
Brian Gall pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance (Ecstacy). The lowest sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines was 30 months in prison. The district judge (Judge Pratt) sentenced Gall to 36 months of probation, stating:
"Any term of imprisonment in this case would be counter effective by ...
This ruling is noted for its informative analysis of some of the tensions between the Executive Branch’s right to conduct grand jury investigations and the Judiciary’s limited rights of oversight over those proceedings. Here, Judge Brack issued a heavily redacted memorandum opinion and order (which does not even refer to ...
Appellant inmate sought review of a judgment from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, which dismissed, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the inmate's 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit alleging that appellee guard violated Eighth Amendment by forcing the inmate to perform sexual acts of ...
In this case, the Fourth Circuit summarily affirmed Victor Rita’s thirty-three month within-guideline sentence for perjury. Neither the trial court nor the appellate panel discussed the relevance of any of the factors that the Sentencing Reform Act mandates that courts “shall consider” in every case, including the nature and circumstances ...
An Arizona state court convicted Jeffrey Landrigan of first-degree murder, which he committed after escaping from an Oklahoma prison where he was serving sentences for an earlier murder and for a prison stabbing. At the sentencing hearing, the trial judge found two statutory aggravating circumstances: 1) Landrigan’s prior felony conviction ...