In 1996, Congress amended the Federal Gun Control Act (“FGCA”) by enacting 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which expanded the list of persons prohibited from possessing firearms to include persons convicted of the “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” (“MCDV”). Prior to that amendment, a person had to have been convicted of ...

In a matter brought by Associated Press for denial of request for any petitions seeking to reduce a twenty-two year prison sentence of John Walker Lindh, convicted of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, dismissal of plaintiff's complaint under the Freedom of Information Act and grant of summary judgment in favor ...

Here Judge Scheindlin issued an important ruling curtailing the use of Federal probation officers as surrogates for Federal law enforcement agents in criminal investigations; and she rejected as invalid substitute search orders obtained under 28 USC 1615.

This is an important suppression ruling that, hopefully, will curtail the use of ...

William Morena appealed from a jury verdict that found him guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun with a barrel of less than 18 inches in length. While Morena raised a number of interesting arguments g about a series of ...

The technical issue before the Court in this case was: what is the proper standard of appellate review of sentences in the somewhat rare circumstances where the appellant (in this case the Government) fail to object to the sentence’s substantive reasonableness at sentencing - but subsequently challenges the sentence as ...

Here the Court overturned a district court order requiring the immediate release into the United States of 17 Chinese Uighurs who are being held at Guantanamo Bay and who the Government now concedes are not “enemy combatants” as originally alleged.

Sometime before September 11, 2001, the 17 Petitioners in this ...

Convictions for narcotics conspiracy and possession of a silencer-equipped firearm in furtherance of that conspiracy and imposing consecutive sentences for co-defendant's two offenses are affirmed over claims of error that: 1) the evidence was insufficient to support their conviction; and 2) their sentences were unreasonable.

[Esitor's Note: For a commentary ...

Convictions for murder for hire conspiracy and a separate conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm are vacated in part, affirmed in part, and remanded in part where: 1) the district court's erroneous admission of detective's testimony recounting statement made by an alleged participant in the conspiracy ...

In this lengthy, en banc decision, the Seventh Circuit essentially reinstated a $156 million judgment against a number of Palestinian charitable organizations in the United States with alleged connections to the terrorist organization Hamas. The judgment was awarded in 2004 to the parents of a teenage boy who was randomly ...