In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in U.S. v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005) (which held that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were advisory only), few Circuits have more stubbornly resisted real change in their sentencing jurisprudence than the Eighth Circuit. Fortunately, that stubbornness has now led to ...
Conviction for conspiring to provide and attempting to provide material support to designated terrorist organizations, and providing material support to a terrorist organization for one co-defendant, is vacated and remanded where the district court committed evidentiary errors that were sufficiently prejudicial as to deprive the defendants of a fair trial. ...
Conviction and sentence for conspiring to racketeer, illegal gambling, and conspiring to collect credit through extortionate means is affirmed where: 1) though lower court erred in admitting certain testimony by a witness and his sentencing challenges, the error was harmless; 2) the district court appropriately considered murder to be relevant ...
Conviction and sentence for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud are affirmed where: 1) the defendant managed and supervised his female criminal accomplice, and, therefore, a two-level enhancement is warranted under U.S.S.G. § 3B1.1(c); and 2) restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA) may not ...
Following an order requiring the production of ten e-mail communications allegedly protected by the attorney-client privilege in a case involving a Fourth Amendment claim for invasive strip search, petition for writ of mandamus directing district court to vacate the order is affirmed where: 1) a party must rely on privileged ...
Conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine base and possessing with intent to distribute is affirmed and sentence is vacated and remanded where: 1) federal prosecutors did not seek to offer any evidence obtained by state officials in violation of the Sixth Amendment; 2) district court did not abuse discretion in ...
Editor's Note: For a commentary on this decision, see "Southampton strip-search may violate the Constitution," by Stephen Bergstein, as posted on the Second Circuit Civil Rights Blog on Oct. 8, 2008 at
http://secondcircuitcivilrights.blogspot.com/2008/10/southampton-strip-search-may-violate.html as follows:
A woman in Suffolk County, New York, was arrested and strip-searched at the Village of ...
Here divided Court carved out another exception to the exclusionary rule holding that evidence of a crime does not have to be excluded from a case if the police obtained it while relying on erroneous information supplied by another police officer.
In Weeks v. U.S., 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the ...
Conviction and sentence for five counts involving the sexual abuse of children are affirmed over claims of error that: 1) certain photos of one of the minor victims were not "lascivious" within meaning of child pornography laws; 2) the jury was misled by the district court's instructions; 3) the district ...
The issue before the Court in this case was whether the Sixth Amendment, as construed in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), is violated by the imposition of consecutive sentences based on the sentencing judge’s determination of a fact (other ...
The issue before the Court in this case was whether, in the context of a vehicular stop for a minor traffic infraction, an officer may conduct a pat-down search of a passenger when the officer has an articulable basis to believe the passenger might be armed and presently dangerous, but ...
Conviction and sentence for conspiracy to commit bank robbery and bank robbery are affirmed where: 1) shifting the burden to the defendant under § 3559(c)(3)(A) was constitutional; 2) because defendant did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that his felonies were not serious, court refrained from addressing the ...
