In 2007, Judge Nancy Gertner issued a scathing 235-page ruling in which she ordered the FBI to pay a record $101.7 million in damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) to four men and their families for its role in wrongfully imprisoning those men for a 1965 gangland murder. ...

Defendant was charged in a two count indictment alleging violations of 26 U.S.C.S. § 7206(2) (Aiding and Assisting in the Filing of a False Income Tax Return). The indictment arose from his work as a Certified Public Accountant for a taxpayer for the calendar years 1998 and 1999. Plaintiff was ...

Sentence for for producing, transporting, receiving, and possessing child pornography is vacated and remanded further sentencing proceedings where a restitution order pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2259 may include an amount for estimated future medical expenses, but the district court did not explain adequately its calculation of the restitution amount ...

Here Judge Reggie Walton issued an important and far reaching order in which he essentially rejected the Government’s contention that all of its hearsay evidence about an individual detainee should have a special rank, admitted into court with a presumption that it was reliable unless detainees’ lawyers could show it ...

This lengthy decision is noted because it presents an in-depth view of some of the hurdles that defense counsel can expect to encounter when defending against the Government’s efforts to delay the release of sex offender clients who have completed their prison sentences, but who the Government says are “sexually ...

Here, more than five years after the Supreme Court ruled (in Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004)) that Fawzi Khalid A.F. Al Odah had the right to challenge his continued detention at Guantanamo Bay, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly finally rejected Al Adah’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. She ...

Here Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that the legal team for a Pakistani prisoner at Guantanamo can seek to challenge his detention by questioning an alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). Over strong government objections, Judge Urbina said that the questioning should be permitted because information from KSM could help ...

Judge Gladys Kessler held that the Government’s detention of Mohammed Al-Adahi, a Yemeni national, was unlawful and ordered the Government to take immediate steps to arrange for his release. That ruling came after the Government had presented classified evidence that Al-Adahi had extensive family links to Osama Bin Laden; that ...

Here the Court granted a motion to suppress evidence seized by TSA at an airport on the grounds that the warrantless search exceeded its statutory limits and was motivated by a desire to uncover evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.

This is a decision that is likely to warm the cockles ...

Here the Court held that four convicted drug traffickers deserve a new trial because prosecutors engaged in misconduct.

[Editor's Note: For an interesting follow up on this decision, see "Prosecutors defend false testimony as 'truthful, but inaccurate'," by Lynne Marek, as published in The National Law Journal on September 21, ...

Here the Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to attack the 2008 amendments to FISA which authorized the warrantless surveillance of phone calls and other communications abroad, even when one of the parties is an American.

In this case, Amnesty International, joined by a number of human rights groups, ...

Sentence for firearms possession is vacated and remanded for resentencing where defendant's prior conviction for escape based on his failure to abide by the terms of his transitional supervision was not a violent felony within the meaning of the Armed Career Criminal Act, and thus the district court improperly calculated ...

This consolidated decision grew out of the Federal Government’s aggressive and seemingly endless investigation into steroid use by professional baseball players; and it involves the Government’s appeals from adverse rulings issued by three separate district court judges: Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the C.D.Cal., Judge James Mahan of the D.Nev., and ...