Ernest Adams is a seventy-one-year-old opiate addict with an extensive criminal history of approximately 20 convictions. All of those prior convictions were closely linked to Adams’ substance-abuse problems. While on supervised release from his most recent prior conviction in 2011 (for which he received a 60 month sentence), Adams tested ...

In the thirty years since the enactment of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, there has probably been no greater nor more steadfast “voice of conscience” on the role of judges in sentencing than the great Judge Jack Weinstein of the E.D.N.Y. His legacy of brilliant thought-provoking decisions is astonishing; and P&J ...

We close out our review of 2017 cases with a gem of a dissent by another Sixth Circuit Judge - Bernice B. Donald - who has given us an inspiring and spirited defense of the right of a defendant to a fair and impartial jury.

Judge Donald’s dissent was issued ...

This habeas decison is noted for Judge Daughtrey’s powerful concurrence in which she all but conceded that Federal habeas relief is virtually impossible any more under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and she denounced the courts and Congress for narrowing habeas relief

As we reach the end of another year, we ...

We highlight this case because it is the first appellate case we have seen to explore in a meaningful way the purpose and effect of U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(2)(A)-(H), a recent Guidelines Amendment (No. 792), which took effect on November 1, 2015, and was added to provide for increased offense levels ...

This is a model Guidelines sentencing decision filled with nuggets of pure gold in which the district judge (Katherine Forrest of the S.D.N.Y.) was sharply rebuked for imposing an above-Guidelines sentence in an illegal reentry case that was three times the top of the Guidelines range - a sentence that ...