In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the Supreme Court revitalized the Confrontation Clause by holding that the Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant's right to confront those "who 'bear testimony' " against him. Crawford rendered inadmissible a witness's testimony against a defendant unless the witness appeared at trial, or ...

Writing for an 8-1 majority in the final decision of his Supreme Court career, Justice Souter held that the strip search of a 13-year old schoolgirl by school officials looking for forbidden prescription drugs violated her Fourth Amendment rights. Calling the events “embarrassing, frightening and humiliating,” Justice Souter wrote that ...

Conviction for drug crimes is affirmed where the evidence was sufficient to show both that defendant knew that cathinone was a controlled substance and that he conspired to possess and distribute that specific substance, and there were no errors in the jury instructions.

[Editor's Note: For a commentary on this ...

In this case, the Supreme Court held, by a 6-3 vote, that if a jury finds an individual not guilty on some counts, but can’t agree on the others, prosecutors may not try that individual again on the “hung” counts if they had a common element with those on which ...

Conviction for firearms possessions is affirmed where: 1) the district court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized from his house as defendant's live-in girlfriend had authority to occupy the premises and consented to the police search; and 2) the court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's ...

In this case, a divided panel from the Ninth Circuit held that a Las Vegas prosecutor and a police detective were not entitled to the defense of qualified immunity in a civil rights lawsuit for damages arising out of a forcible taking of a DNA sample from a pre-trial detainee ...

Here the Court held that someone being prosecuted for possessing a gun after having been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor is constitutionally entitled to present an affirmative defense that he posed no prospective risk of violence.

In a brief decision that some proponents of Second Amendment rights have claimed ...

This case is noted for its detailed discussion of the relatively easy procedures that the Government must follow when it seeks an order to compel a defendant to give a DNA sample.

The six defendants in this case were charged in a nine count indictment with numerous violent offenses, including ...

In an important post-Heller Second Amendment decision, the Seventh Circuit declined to invalidate some local gun laws based on Heller, reasoning that the Supreme Court has never ruled the Second Amendment applies to the States.

On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court issued its historic decision in District of Columbia ...