On July 17, 2005, Michael Timothy Arnold, a 43-year old U.S. citizen, arrived at the Los Angeles International Airport after a nearly twenty-hour flight from the Philippines. Included in his luggage was a laptop computer, a separate hard drive, a computer memory stick, and six CDs. During a routine customs ...

It is rare to see a really harsh sentence imposed on a renegade prison guard. The powers that be don’t often permit harsh sentences in such cases, no matter how bestial the conduct of the guard, because they focus too much public attention on what Justice Brennan once described as ...

Here, creating a conflict with three other Circuits, a divided Court ruled that the mens rea element of the aggravated identity theft statute (18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1)) was ambiguous; and it therefore dismissed that count from an indictment.

As the incidence of identity theft crimes has risen dramatically, Congress has ...

Sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and cocaine base, which was substantially reduced premised on defendant's substantial assistance with the government, is vacated and remanded where: 1) the sentence departed approximately 93% from the statutory minimum; and 2) the trial court's failure to articulate reasons for its reduction below the ...

For a commentary on this decision, see "Circuit split widens on sentencing issue," by Pamela A. MacLean, The National Law Journal, February 25, 2008, as follows:

A deepening split among federal circuit courts just got bigger in the quest to determine the appropriate standard to review criminal sentences for reasonableness. ...

Here a unanimous Supreme Court held that state police do not violate the Fourth Amendment when they make an arrest that was based on probable cause but prohibited by state law, or when they perform a search incident to that arrest.

On February 20, 2003, two city police detectives detained ...

In this decision, the First Circuit became the first Circuit to hold that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) may, through rulemaking, deny placement of inmates in “halfway houses” during the first 90% of their sentences. In so ruling, the Court disagreed with the holdings in four other Circuits which ...

In a sweeping but cursory ruling, District Judge Roger Hunt rejected a series of challenges to the scope and validity of the Bureau of Prison’s Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP), the details of which are set forth in the BOP’s Program Statement 5380.

The stated purpose of the IFRP is ...