One day history will look back at the seven ignominious years that followed the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, and sadly ask why and how, in that short period of time, the Bush administration was allowed to recreate the law and totally emasculate so many Constitutional rights ...

Sentence enhancement for possessing a firearm in connection with another felony offense is vacated and remanded for resentencing where, in absence of a more detailed explanation identifying facts in the record which would support finding defendant's commission of other felony crimes, the district court's factual findings on the record alone ...

Here the Court concluded that, due to the Government's stacking of the deck, it was necessary to expand the circumstances under which the Government could be compelled to grant use immunity to a defendant’s witnesses under 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002-6003.

This is an important decision that clarifies the rights of ...

Convicted of espionage and conspiracy to murder Cuban exiles under 18 U.S.C. §§ 794(c), 951, 1117, several defendants appealed their convictions from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing errors under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1845 and the Classified Information ...

In its recent historic decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 2797 (2008), the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation”; and it struck down as unconstitutional a number of ...

Conviction for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base is affirmed where: 1) although the government's egregious act of eliciting improper testimonial evidence from its witness should not be condoned, defendant's failure to make objections to those abusive evidentiary presentations limited the standard of review to plain error; and 2) accounting for ...

In U.S. v. Askew, 482 F.3d 532 (D.C. Cir. Apr. 26, 2007) (“Askew I”) (P&J, 03/19/07), a divided panel from the D.C. Circuit issued a controversial and extremely activist ruling regarding the permissible scope of searches during a so-called Terry stop (see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)). Now, ...

Judge Block started this remarkably blunt and thought-provoking sentencing decision with the following words:

“I have sentenced Lennox and Lester Parris today to a term of incarceration of 60 months in the face of an advisory guidelines range of 360 to life. This case represents another example where the guidelines ...

Here the Court imposed a non-Guidelines sentence of probation in a child pornography case due to the defendant’s extremely poor health and the complexity of his needs for medical care which “override any value that further imprisonment would have".

In this case, Judge Kane has written an exceptionally discerning sentencing ...

After David Reynolds was arrested and charged with making felonious threats against a Federal judge, it was determined that he suffered from a “delusional disorder, persecutory and grandiose types.” He was sent to a BOP facility in Butner, NC for further evaluation and treatment to restore his competence to stand ...

The defendant in this case was convicted of a number of counts of possession and distribution of child pornography. His sentence included a term of supervised release with a special condition that he wear a global positioning satellite (“GPS”) device throughout his entire term of supervised release, even after he ...

Mostly because it happens so rarely in the United States, which seems to pride itself on doing whatever is necessary to maintain it reputation as the world’s largest Prison Nation, we note this ruling by Judge Bruce Jenkins - who actually granted a prisoner’s motion, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § ...