Case reversed a drug and gun conviction of a passenger in a car on the grounds that there was no evidence that the passenger ever had ownership, dominion or control over the drugs or guns or the vehicle in which they were concealed.

Here the Court affirmed that a district court does not have any inherent authority to grant use immunity to a witness absent a request by the U.S. Attorney.

This decision contains one of the most comprehensive reviews that we have seen recently on the topic of prejudicial pretrial publicity. The outcome of this case was that the Court granted a Writ of Habeas Corpus to a defendant who was convicted of second degree murder on the grounds that ...

Case held that denying defense the opportunity to cross examine Government witnesses because of alleged "tag-team" cross examinantion by various lawyers violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment rights, but was only harmless error.

Court agreed that the United States was not a proper victim in a Medicare fraud case to support an abuse of trust enhancement, since the defendants owed only a contractual - not a fiduciary - duty to the Government.

Over the strong dissent of Judge Jones, the Court held that a lengthy reasonable doubt instruction lowered the State's burden of proof obligations below the constitutional minimums and thus violated due process.

Here the Court rejected claim that the crime of accessory after the fact was a crime of violence for purposes of § 4B1.2, despite the fact that the defendant had originally been charged with aiding and abetting.

Here, on remand, the court approved sentencing departures based both on diminished capacity and extraordinary post-offense rehabilitation.

This decision was issued on the resentencing of the defendant after the Third Circuit vacated the original sentence, in a case reported at 124 F.3d 533, which was reviewed in the Nov. 3, ...

This decision was issued on the resentencing of the defendant after the Third Circuit vacated the original sentence, in a case reported at 124 F.3d 533, which was reviewed in the Nov. 3, 1997 issue of Punch and Jurists. At the original sentencing, Judge Bassler held that the defendant had ...

The defendant in this case raised an intriguing issue: were his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination violated by the requirements of the Criminal Justice Act (18 U.S.C. § 3006A) which required him to disclose his financial resources in order to qualify for the appointment of CJA counsel to represent ...

In this case the court approved a downward departure based on diminished capacity, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K2.13. The defendant was a young deaf woman with no criminal history who suffered from a serious mental disorder. She pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact to a bank robbery ...

Court held that giving the jury multiple Allen charge instructions did not impermissibly coerce the jury into returning a guilty verdict.

The facts in this case were hardly complex; but the decision is important because it dealt with another one of those narrow, theoretical exceptions that the Supreme Court has suggested might exist to give defendants relief in cases involving successive prosecutions. The facts in this case were of interest: The ...

Case held that a notation on the jury verdict form qualified the jury's verdict and required the trial court to make inquiry into the notation's meaning to resolve what the jury meant.

This decision is one more indication of the racial overtones behind much of the crack-cocaine prosecution policies of the Government. ATF Special Agent Joseph Secrete decided that the best way to pad his arrest statistics was to approach and befriend ex-felons as they were leaving their regularly meetings with their ...

Case rejected a broad range of challenges to wiretap evidence and held that defendants were not entitled to a Franks hearing on alleged misrepresentations and omissions in the application papers.

How often does one see a decision in which a conviction is reversed because of rank and pervasive judicial hostility? Well, this is one such case; and, although the First Circuit is careful to fill its decision with a carefully measured bounty of open criticism of the role that defense ...

This double jeopardy case is particularly noteworthy because it re-opens a controversial issue that most people had assumed had been foreclosed ever since the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688 (1993).

Defendant Forman is a former federal prosecutor who was convicted in 1993 of the relatively ...

Case held that in condicting a Sandin analysis to determine whether a disciplinary sentence imposed an atypical and significant hardship, the court must consider the degree and duration of the sentence actually imposed - not the maximum sentence that could have been imposed. While the Court recognized that before the ...

This is an important and instructive decision dealing with the prevailing legal standards that govern claims of Constitutional violations arising out of lengthy pre-indictment delays. In this case, the defendant was indicted in 1997 on charges that he set fire to his business in 1991 in order to collect insurance ...

Case is noted for Judge Heaney's dissent in which he concluded that an all white jury that convicted a black defendant, with a tenth grade education, had been empaneled in violation of the principles announced in Batson v. Kentucky.

This decision should be read in conjunction with the Ninth Circuit's ...

Here the Court vacated the convictions of 2 cops convicted of 2nd degree murder due to prejudicial pretrial publicity.

Court rejected a claim of a double jeopardy violation based on a successive prosecution, and it distinguished the 6th Circuit's decision in Rashad v. Burt, 108 F.3d 677 (6th Cir. 1997), a decision with which it obviously disagreed.

Case rejected a broad range of challenges to wiretap evidence and held that defendants were not entitled to a Franks hearing on alleged misrepresentations and omissions in the application papers.