This is an important decision that holds that the Texas Board of Corrections violated the petitioner's constitutional rights to procedural due process when it revoked the petitioner's parole on the basis of hearsay testimony.

While on parole, the petitioner was charged with sexual assault; but that charge was quickly dismissed ...

In rendering its decision, the Court observed that although a "defendant's failure to pay fees may cause some divisiveness between attorney and client", courts generally presume that counsel will subordinate his or her pecuniary interests and honor his or her professional responsibility to a client. (Id., at 71).

Case held ...

Government is entitled to advance notice of downward departures.

Here the Court held that it was proper for a DEA agent to testify about the meaning of various wiretapped conversations, even though she had not been qualified as an expert.

Citing a report that concluded there are 223 separate terms for marijuana, the court held that it was proper ...

In this case the defendant was denied permission to cross-examine a cooperating co-conspirator about a polygraph test she had failed in the course of her cooperation, and he argued that he should have been allowed to mention the failed test in his argument to the jury. Citing numerous precedents, the ...

Citing its earlier decision in U.S. v. Sensi, 879 F.3d 888, 901 (D.C.Cir. 1989), the Court noted that a new trial may be granted under Rule 33 "only when five conditions are met: (1) [T]he evidence must have been discovered since the trial; (2) the party seeking the new trial ...

The defendant in this case was accused of rape; and his principal defense was that the victim had had
intercourse with several other people immediately prior to her altercation with the defendant; and that
the semen found inside her belonged to others. The Government was unable to identify the source ...

"To prove unconstitutional pre-indictment delay, the defendant must first prove "substantial prejudice to his right to a fair trial." United States v. Brown, 959 F.2d 63, 66 (6th Cir. 1992). The government argues that Rogers has not demonstrated how Miller's death caused Rogers substantial prejudice since he did not describe ...

Court affirmed a sua sponte resentencing of the defendant more than three months after deciding the merits of his collateral attack.

Here the Court held that a defense that sounds in inducement is limited to entrapment, and thus held that the defendant's claim that the Government's alleged "sidestepping" of the statute of limitations was not valid since entrapment was not raised.

Here the defendant argued that the five year statute of ...

One of the issues raised in this huge telemarketing fraud case was whether the district court had properly applied a sentencing enhancement under § 3A1.1 on elderly victims. The Court observed that the trial record reflected that the victims of this scheme "primarily were individuals in their sixties, seventies and ...

This case is noted for Judge Nygaard's dissent in which he stated: "The government argues that the combination of wholly ambiguous tertimony from a handwriting expert and equivical testimony from a witness receiving favorable treatment from the government is sufficient to support the conviction of Altigraci Rosario for passing a ...

At first glance it is surprising that this case generated sufficient interest to warrant an en banc hearing. After all it "only" involved an appeal by a prisoner from a district court's dismissal of his civil rights action; and even the eight dissenting judges described the case as "certainly a ...

Here the Court held that defense counsel's question to his client "Would you like to take the stand and testify?" was improper, but in view of instructions to the jury, the comment did not affect the defendant's substantial rights.

In this case, the prosecutor, bothered by the defendant's commentary during ...

In stark contrast to the Freund decision (Freund v. Butterworth, 117 F.3d 1543 (11th Cir. 1997) (Judge Tjoflat) which is noted in this same issue) is this second attorney-client conflict-of-interest case; only here the Second Circuit used decidedly different colored eyeglasses to arrive at a dramatically different result. The defendant ...

In this case the Fifth Circuit joined four other Circuits in holding that, just as the defendant must receive advance notice of a upward departure, the Government is entitled to receive advance notice of a downward departure. (See, U.S. v. Alba, 933 F.2d 1117 (2nd Cir. 1117); U.S. v. Maddox, ...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK - The incredibly convenient monikers of justice.

"We acknowledge that there are more verbal formulas for the scope of appellate review (plenary or de novo, clearly erroneous, abuse of discretion, substantial evidence, arbitrary and capricious, some evidence, reasonable basis, presumed correct, and maybe others) than there ...

Court held that use of hearsay evidence as basis for revoking parole constituted a violation of his procedural due process and Sixth Amendment rights.

This is one of those bizarre cases that raises some troubling questions about the political realities of the courts' oft-invoked and much-vaunted supervisory powers. Here, two of the three judges acknowledged that the case against the defendant was "shaky" and was based on "unreliable testimony". Both also admitted that the ...

Here the Court held that an enhancement under USSG § 3A1.2(a) (Official Victim) was properly applied to a crime of solicitation and attempt to blow up an IRS building, even though the plan was never carried out.

Here the Court rejected a First Amendment challenge to a condition of supervised release that required the defendant to notify his present and future employers that he had been convicted to embezzlement.

In this case, the D.C. Circuit affirmed a two level sentence enhancement under § 3B1.3 for an employee who was convicted of interstate transportation of stolen property in connection with her scheme to defraud her employer. Relying largely on the Court's decision in U.S. v. West, 56 F.3d 216 (D.C.Cir. ...

Once again, Judge Weinstein has granted a significant downward departure in a drug case. The defendant, a 32 year citizen of the Dominican Republic, pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute drugs. His base offense level was 38, requiring a sentence of 188 to 235 months. After applying an assortment of ...

Here the Ninth Circuit reversed a 10-level downward departure granted by the district court on the grounds that the defendant's aggravavated felony was not serious enough to warrant a 16-level increase in the sentence. The prior crime in question was selling narcotics - and the district court reasoned that the ...

Third party notification.

This decision rejects a challenge to one of the Guidelines most controversial conditions of supervised release: the requirement that obligates the felon to "notify third parties of risks that may be occasioned by the defendant's criminal record." (See U.S.S.G. § 5B1.4(a)(13)). Normally the enforcement of that requirement ...

This extraordinarily lurid, highly-publicized case is a testimonial to the perseverance of two defense lawyers; and it contains an unusually detailed analysis of the law dealing with prejudicial conflicts of interest between lawyers and their clients - at least in the context of the ugly facts of this case.

The ...

Here the Court affirmed the denial of a safety valve sentence reduction partly because the defendant refused to take a polygraph exam to clarify conflicts between her testimony and that of a co-conspirator.

Once again, Judge Weinstein has granted a significant downward departure in a drug case. The defendant, a 32 year citizen of the Dominican Republic, pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute drugs. His base offense level was 38, requiring a sentence of 188 to 235 months. After applying an assortment of ...

This case is noted for another one of those expansive readings of the scope of the Federal Anti-Bribery Act - 18 U.S.C. § 666. In this case the Court holds that "the legislative history confirms that § 666 was intended to be broad. The section was enacted as part of ...

In this case the Fourth Circuit reversed Judge Turk's decision to set aside a tax conviction under § 7212(a) on insufficiency of evidence grounds, holding, inter alia, that "The acts themselves need not be illegal. Even legal actions violate § 7212(a) if the defendant commits them to secure an unlawful ...

This is one of the rare cases that discusses the broad reach of § 1B1.4. The defendant in this case received an upward sentence departure in large part because the court considered, and used, conduct that was not illegal as a basis for an upward departure. The conduct in question ...

It is becoming quite obvious that the Government is dedicated to expanding the elastic reach of the severe money laundering penalties to cover just about any crime. Far too few defendants challenge those efforts; and in this drug conspiracy case the Government probably felt that it had a certain winner. ...