In this capital case, the Supreme Court upheld an ineffective assistance of counsel claim by a Florida death row inmate, after concluding that the trial lawyer’s failure, during the penalty phase of the trial, to introduce mitigating evidence about the inmate’s traumatic Korean War experiences that earned him two purple ...
In the instant case, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by an escape artist to use a technical loophole in Pennsylvania’s fugitive forfeiture law as the means of mounting an attack on his death penalty sentence. In so ruling, the Court reversed the Third Circuit’s decision in Kindler v. Horn, ...
Although this is not a criminal case, the Supreme Court’s ruling does resolve an issue involving interlocutory appeals of the attorney-client privilege that has divided the Circuits.
Disputes about whether prejudgment orders may be appealed on an interlocutory basis stem from the language of 28 U.S.C. § Section 1291, which ...
In this case, the Court resolved an open question by holding that larceny from the person under N.Y. Penal Law § 155.30 (McKinney Supp. 2009) constitutes a “crime of violence” for the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2006) (“ACCA”). Larceny that involves a physical nexus between the victim ...
In a prosecution arising from defendants' conduct relating to their business of sending unsolicited email, or spam, advertising adult websites, defendants' electronic mail fraud convictions and sentences are affirmed where: 1) no authority supported defendants' notion that a district court must provide a clear geographic definition of the relevant community ...
Defense attorneys Jerold S. Solovy and Robert L. Byman of Chicago, IL recently published an interesting article in the Nov. 30, 2009 issue of the National Law Journal, entitled “Confronting the fact that jurors do research: Trial attorneys should assume that, despite judges' instructions, jurors will engage in illicit 'e-discovery’.” ...
Defendants' securities fraud sentences are affirmed where: 1) the district court was required to resentence defendants de novo following the reversal of a portion of defendants' convictions by another panel of the court of appeals; 2) based on the district court's alternative ruling, under which it did sentence defendants de ...
Defendant's murder conviction as to one victim is affirmed where defendant was denied due process by the prosecutors' gratuitous exploitation of his prejudicial nickname, "Murder," but this conduct did not prejudice defendant due to the strength of the evidence. However, defendant's murder conviction as to another victim is reversed where ...
Defendants' sex trafficking convictions and sentences are affirmed where: 1) defendants did not assert their legal innocence in moving to withdraw their guilty pleas; 2) the government would have been prejudiced by the withdrawal of defendants' pleas; 3) the district court ensured that the pleas were taken knowingly and voluntarily; ...
This is am interesting decision that speaks volumes about the Government’s consuming propensity to convert nearly every criminal statute into some “elastic, sprawling and pervasive offense whose development exemplifies . . . the tendency of a principle to expand beyond the limit of its logic - and perhaps beyond." (Quoting ...
