Under Rule 11(d)(2)(B) of the Fed.R.Crim.P., once a defendant has entered a guilty plea and that plea has been accepted by the court, the plea may be withdrawn before sentencing only if the defendant can show “a fair and just reason for requesting the withdrawal.” In the Federal courts, the ...

Not long ago, Psychology Professor Craig Haney from the University of California, Santa Cruz, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights about the evils of solitary confinement. After noting that the nation’s roughly 80,000 inmates in solitary confinement are "at grave risk of ...

According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a majority of Americans now support the legalization of marijuana. (FN1) In addition, marijuana use is now legal in some form (such as for medical use) or decriminalized in 24 states (FN2); and additional states are jumping on ...

Here the Court held that a gun is a gun for purposes of prosecution as a felon in possession of a firearm even though the gun was inoperable because of "significant damage, missing/broken parts, and extensive corrosion".

In this case, the Seventh Circuit debated whether a defendant could be prosecuted ...

In U.S. v. Jones, 565 U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012), the Supreme Court held that “the Government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a ‘search’ ” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Since ...

Here the Court rejected California’s bid to end federal control over the state prison system’s mental health system, after concluding that “systemic failures persist” in prison mental health care.

Coleman v. Brown, 938 F.Supp.2d 955 (E.D.Cal. April 5, 2013) (Judge Kenneth Karlton)
Coleman v. Brown, 922 F.Supp.2d 1004 (E.D.Cal. April ...