This is another one of the many cases that arose out of the Government’s crackdown on terrorism funding operations in the aftermath of 9/11; and, among the many issues raised on appeal, the most interesting issue was the defendants’ contention that they had received an unfair trial due to highly ...

By a 7-2 vote, the Court held that the States may give prisoners the retroactive benefit of Supreme Court criminal law decisions, even in cases where the Court has held that such decisions may not be given retroactive treatment in the Federal courts.

In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, ...

Here the en banc court reversed a prior decision which had held that when a defendant states to a policeman “I plead the Fifth,” that statement was not a sufficiently clear and unambiguous invocation of the defendant’s Miranda rights to stop interrogation.

In Anderson v. Terhune, 467 F.3d 1206 (9th ...

This is an interesting decision that contains a detailed analysis of the Government’s discovery obligations under Fed.R.Crim.P. 16 in a case that was based primarily on information supplied by an unidentified confidential informant (CI).

In Nov. 2006, the Government obtained a five count indictment against Richard Pesaturo, charging him with ...

Although the psychotherapist-patient privilege has been recognized by the Supreme Court as a valid privilege (see, Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1 (1996)), the Circuit courts have disagreed over whether there is a dangerous-patient exception to that privilege. In other words, must the psychotherapist-patient privilege must give way if a ...

In this case the Court held that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had violated section 706(2)(A) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it promulgated a regulation under its Residential Drug Abuse Treatment Program (RDAP) which categorically excludes from eligibility for early release those whose "current offense is a felony...[t]hat ...