Lawrence Nelson was convicted of one count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base. The District Court calculated Nelson's sentencing range under the Guidelines, and imposed a sentence of 360 months in prison (the bottom of the range). During ...
The issue before the Court in this case was whether continuances and delays caused solely by an indigent defendant’s public defenders can give rise to a speedy trial right violation, and be charged against the State pursuant to the test in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), on the ...
Acting on a tip from AOL that child pornography was attached to e-mail exchanges involving David Grober's account David Grober , a team of Gestapo-like agents from the Passaic County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant at Grober's home at 7:00 a.m. on December 7, 2005. They separately questioned Grober, ...
In a case where racketeering conspiracists ran a subscription website recommending stock short-sales on the basis of misappropriated information: 1) venue was proper where seven site subscribers resided in the Eastern District of New York; 2) the misappropriated law enforcement reports were not public in any practical sense, even if ...
In litigation concerning First Amendment challenges to the constitutionality of statutes governing the issuance and judicial review of National Security Letters (NSLs) which request records from providers of wire or electronic communication services, decision finding 18 U.S.C. §§ 2709(c) and 3511(b) unconstitutional and enjoining certain actions by FBI officials is ...
Here the Court rejected as unreasonble and excessive the lengthy sentences recommended by the Guidelines for child pornography downloading cases, finding such sentences were unsupported by empirical data and not reflective of the will of the people.
In 2003, an FBI agent searching the Internet for child pornographers, discovered that ...
The proposition propounded by Judge Pratt in U.S. v. Johnson, 588 F.Supp.2d 997 (N.D.Iowa Dec. 4, 2008) - namely that the penalties imposed by U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2 are not the product of any “study, empirical research and data” by the Sentencing Commission, but rather were the result of “the tinkering ...
Conviction and sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act are affirmed where: 1) none of defendant's prior convictions (all from the 1970's) has been expunged or pardoned, and his civil rights had not been restored at the time of the present offense; 2) his constructive possession of the ammunition found ...
This decision contains an excellent survey of the current state of the law on the ability of the Government to garnish pension plan distributions of a defendant in order to enforce his or her restitution obligations, notwithstanding the so-called anti-alienation provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), namely ...
