Here the Court upheld the right of the BOP to increase the schedule of restitution payments under the BOP's Inmate Financial Responsibility Progran without obtaining an order from the sentencing court directing or approving the larger payments.

In these three consolidated appeals, the Court addressed the question of whether the ...

Here the Court firmly rejected the Government’s attempt to create a Pinkerton co-conspirator liability out of “double and triple inferences from circumstantial evidence, involving the uncommunicated thought processes of co-conspirators”.

Long ago, in its landmark decision in Pinkerton v. U.S., 328 U.S. 640 (1946), the Supreme Court established its game-changing ...

Here a divided panel held that the San Francisco’s Sheriff Department’s blanket policy of strip searching all pretrial detainees, solely because they were classified for housing in the general jail population, and without any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, violated the arrestees’ clearly established constitutional rights. Accordingly, the majority affirmed the ...

Conviction and sentence for violation of sex trafficking statute, the forced labor statute, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is vacated and the matter is remanded where: 1) district court committed plain error in failing to instruct the jury with respect to the date of the enactment of TVPA; ...

Conviction for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana is remanded for further proceedings where defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized from a house, in which he claimed a privacy interest, could not properly be denied on grounds of lack of standing without a hearing. (Amended opinion) ...

In a criminal proceeding in which defendant plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, denial of defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized in his apartment after his arrest and from the sentence imposed after defendant pleaded guilty, is vacated and remanded where defendant's arrest was not ...

Conviction for conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine base is affirmed and sentence is remanded where the record is unclear as to whether the district court understood that it could impose a non-Guidelines sentence based on the cocaine base-cocaine powder disparity contained in the Guidelines and pursuant to United States ...

Conviction for illegal reentry to the United States after having been deported subsequent to a conviction for an aggravated felony is affirmed over claims of error that: 1) defendant's pre-indictment detention by immigration authorities violated his rights under the Speedy Trial Act (STA) and the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause; ...

In an important ruling of first impression, Judge Gleeson held that "the Due Process Clause . . . grants a convicted offender access to physical evidence for the purpose of DNA testing if it can be performed with negligible cost to the state . . . ".

This is an ...

Here, on remand from the Supreme Court, the Court held that the district court's second explanation for its sentence, namely a 14-year gap between the defendant's crimes and his second sentencing hearing, was an inappropriate sentencing consideration.

Here the Court abrogated, as misleading and inconsistent with the constitution, the prevailing rule that once a conspiracy has been established, only “slight evidence” or evidence that is not “overwhelming” is necessary to link the defendant to it.

In this case, a divided panel from the Second Circuit held that ...

Conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm is affirmed where the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his plea without conducting an evidentiary hearing because, on the basis of undisputed facts, the court permissibly found that defendant's plea was entered ...

Here, for the second time, the Ninth Circuit threw out the 22-year sentence imposed on Algerian Ahmed Ressam for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium; and it again remanded the case back to the district court to recalculate the sentence, stating: "We must ...

Denial of petition for writ of habeas corpus, based on a claim that ineffective counsel led to his conviction for attempted armed robbery, is vacated where attorneys, one or both whom may have encouraged petitioner to tamper with a witness, may have violated provisions of the Code of Professional Responsibility ...

This decision is another example of how the lower Federal courts seem unwilling to expand upon the Supreme Court’s recent landmark Second Amendment decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (June 26, 2008). In Heller, the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that ...

Here, after the defendant had completed serving his 30 month sentence for drug crimes, the Second Circuit vacated his four convictions finding that the evidence was insufficient "as a matter or law" to support any of his convictions.

Poor Francisco Ogando. He was convicted at a jury trial in 2004 ...

Here, after two prior reversals and two prior remands from the Supreme Court, the First Circuit finally grudgingly approved a 30-month sentence in a Medicare fraud case due to the post-Gall command to give broader deference to sentencing judges.

Aided by some timely decisions from the Supreme Court, William Thurston’s ...