Ever since the Bush administration began its assault on the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism, one of the most dangerous powers it has claimed is the right to arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the U.S., and imprison them indefinitely in a military prison, without charging them ...

Here the Court held that a conviction based on jury instructions containing more than one theory of guilt, one of which was invalid, should not automatically be reversed as a “structural error” but should instead be evaluated for harmless error.

The Supreme Court has long held that a conviction based ...

A judgment of acquittal after conviction for racketeering conspiracy is reversed where: 1) given the level of generality at which the indictment alleged the principal purpose of the RICO enterprise, the evidence, viewed as a whole and in the light most favorable to the government, did not permit conclusion that ...

Here the Fifth Circuit held that an inmate seeking a sentence reduction under the recent, retroactive crack-cocaine amendment to the Guidelines had a right to the appointment of counsel “in the interest of justice”.

On November 1, 2007, a series of new amendments to the Guidelines became effective. One of ...

In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa (Fifth Amendment Challenges), No. 011535, 011550, 011553, 011571, 056149, 056704 (three decisions)

Judgments of convictions for offenses arising from involvement in an international conspiracy, led by Osama Bin Laden and organized through the al Qaeda terrorist network, to kill American ...

In a case regarding the import and distribution of khat plant, conviction on counts of money laundering are reversed, and convictions for conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to import cathinone, and conspiracy to distribute cathinone are vacated and remanded for retrial where: 1) the government did not show that the ...

Subsequent Events: According to PACER, on March 12, 2009, the Second Circuit denied a rehearing en banc in this case. However, Congress subsequently passed legislation (Section 565 of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2010) prohibiting the release of any of the photos at issue in this case; ...

Here the Court ordered the release “forthwith” of five Bosnian prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, after concluding that the Government’s claim that they were terrorists rested on a single classified document from an unnamed source.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the glue is coming off the walls at Americas’s notorious ...

The Second Circuit released three lengthy, separate decisions in this case which involved the appeals of three Al-Qaeda operatives who were convicted, a few months prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, of conspiring to kill Americans around the world, including the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and ...

In this en banc decision, the Second Circuit upheld an unusual upward departure from the sentencing range recommended by the Guidelines in a firearms trafficking case where the illegal guns were destined for the New York black market. The district court (Judge Sifton of the E.D.N.Y.) had reasoned that a ...

In reTerrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, No. 011535, 011550, 011553, 011571, 056149, 056704 (three decisions)

Judgments of convictions for offenses arising from involvement in an international conspiracy, led by Osama Bin Laden and organized through the al Qaeda terrorist network, to kill American citizens and destroy American ...