Defendants' child pornography convictions and sentences are affirmed, where: 1) any Sixth Amendment error due to the introduction of Defendant's redacted confession was harmless; and 2) the District Court applied an unwarranted sentencing enhancement for using a computer to solicit sexual activity with a minor, but the District Court stated ...

Here the Court dismissed an indictment with prejudice on the grounds that the Government had engaged in a vindictive prosecution by retaliating against the defendant because he successfully appealed a prior conviction.

Once in a great moon, a judge issues an outstanding decision in which he finds that the Government ...

Interrupting its summer recess (itself a rare event), and acting on a procedurally rare original writ of habeas corpus directly to the Supreme Court, a 6-2 majority intervened in the highly-publicized case of Troy Anthony Davis, a Georgia death row inmate, who was convicted of the murder of an off-duty ...

Ordinarily, a district court may not modify a sentence once it has been imposed. (See 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)). However, an exception exists "in the case of a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the ...

Defendant's firearm possession conviction is affirmed where, when police stopped Defendant's car, they had reasonable suspicion in light of the fact that the automobile had the same license plate number and description as one used to flee from a shooting two days earlier.

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

District court judgment granting plaintiff's petition for a writ of habeas corpus in a case involving an application for discharge as a conscientious objector is affirmed where: 1) in the event that Department of the Army Conscientious Objector Review Board (DACORB) does not provide an adequate statement of the reasons ...

In the 07-13-09 issue of P&J, we noted a strong ruling by Judge Huvelle in which she granted a writ of habeas corpus to a Guantanamo Bay detainee after finding that the Authorization for the Use of Military Funds (“AUMF”) that was hastily passed by Congress shortly after the 9/11 ...

Finally, after Errol Scarlett, a Jamaican citizen, spent more than 5-½ years in immigration detention facilities while fighting deportation, a Federal judge has ordered that he be given a bail hearing. The full details of Scarlett’s long battle for freedom are set forth in the Magistrate Judge's underlying Report and ...

In a sweeping decision that casts serious doubts on the legal underpinnings of one of the Government’s main counterterrorism tools, Chief Judge James Carr of the N.D.Ohio held that the Treasury Department acted unlawfully when it froze the assets of an Ohio based charity it suspected of aiding terrorists. Judge ...

The appellate waters are beginning to churn in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (2008). On September 29, 2009, at its first Conference for the new term, the Supreme Court will consider two new cases on the scope of ...