Here the Court held trhat because the 5-year limitations period set forth in 18 USC 3282 stops running when the indictment is filed, a superseding indictment brought later is still valid so long as it does not materially broaden the original charges.

The Court stated: "We review a district court judge's decision not to recuse himself for abuse of discretion or showing of prejudice. See United States v. Bunch, 730 F.2d 517, 519 (7th Cir. 1984). However, we only review such issues when they have been raised properly before the district court. ...

Here the Fifth Circuit vacated a conviction and sentence after the district court had improperly involved itself in plea discussions in violation of Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(e)(1) - and it sharply defined the permitted activities of courts under that Rule.

Rule 11(e)(1) of the Fed.R.Crim.P. states that a court shall not participate ...

In this case, the defendant was an officer of a medical supply company that filed for Chapter 11 relief a few months after being suspended as a Medicare provider. The company had leased special beds directly to patients but was barred by the suspension from continuing to do so. To ...

In this case the defendants were arrested on November 4, 1993 for their roles in stealing mail from the U.S. Postal Service, but they were not indicted until nearly five years later, just five days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired on the earliest of the charged ...

United States v. Messer, 197 F.3d 330 (9th Cir. 1999)
United States v. Williams, 197 F.3d 1091 (11th Cir. 1999)

The Speedy Trial Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 3161 et seq.) provides that a defendant must be brought to trial within 70 days of the filing of his indictment, or his ...

The defendant in this case, a Federal inmate, pled guilty to a charge of distributing marijuana while in prison. Based on two prior drug convictions, the probabtion office recommended that he be sentenced as a "career offender" under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. On appeal, citing a footnote in U.S. v. LaBonte, ...

Now that the Government has successfully quashed all efforts to limit its practice of offering lienency to the chosen few for giving testimony against co-defendants, the last remaining battle that remains out of the tattered remnants of the Tenth Circuit's controversial decision in U.S. v. Singleton, 144 F.3d 1343 (10th ...

With sweeping language, the Fifth Circuit held that 18 USC § 201(c)(2) is not violated when prosecutors compensate informants for their cooperation - apparently without any limits on the amount of compensation offered for testimony.

Now that the Government has successfully quashed all efforts to limit its practice of offering ...

United States v. Messer, 197 F.3d 330 (9th Cir. 1999)
United States v. Williams, 197 F.3d 1091 (11th Cir. 1999)

The Speedy Trial Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 3161 et seq.) provides that a defendant must be brought to trial within 70 days of the filing of his indictment, or his ...

Here Chief Judge Farnan of the district court in Delaware held that any sexual intercourse between a prison guard and a prison inmate constitutes a per se violation of the Eighth Amendment because it violates contemporary standards of decency.

In the 12/27/99 issue of P&J, we noted that District Judge ...

In this case Judge Blake held that a branch of the NAACP had standing to bring a class action suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in which it alleged a pattern of racially discriminatory stops, detentions and searches of minority motorists travelling on Route I-95 in the State of Maryland. ...

In holding that suppression of evidence is not a remedy available to defendants for a violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, the Court stated: "The Vienna Convention, a treaty equivalent to a federal statute, does not provide suppression as a remedy. See United States v. Ademaj, 170 F.3d ...

Here the Court acknowledged that in deciding its previous ruling it followed its rule that a certificate of appealability, specifying issues, is required in cases in which the notice of appeal is filed after April 24, 1996, even though the habeas petition itself was originally filed in a district court ...

Here the Court held that granting the Government an open-ended "ends of justice" continuance under § 3161(h)(8) of the Speedy Trial Act was appropriate to resolve open issues that were being considered by the Tenth Circuit in an unrelated case.

In this case the district court granted the Government an ...

In denying a request for attorneys' fees under the Hyde Amendment (18 U.S.C. § 3006A, Note), the Court reasoned as follows: "A 'vexatious proceeding' is defined as a "proceeding instituted maliciously and without probable cause." (Id., at 698) Then, after analyzing various definitions of "vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith," ...

In this case one defendant challenged the admission of a "Recorded Recollection" of the testimony of one witness against him, claiming that the court erred in admitting that evidence of a past recollection recorded in violation of Fed.R.Evid. 803(5). In rejecting that claim, the Sixth Circuit held:

"Federal Rule of ...

Here the Eleventh Circuit held that the district court had erred in granting a judgment of acquittal on three money laundering counts due to the small amount of illegal funds involved, the passage of time, and the infusion of legal funds.

In this case, the defendant was convicted of six ...

On remand from the Supreme Court's decision in Neder v. U.S., 527 U.S. 1 (1999), the Court held that the district court's failure to instruct the jury on materiality as an element of the federal mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud was harmless error.

Rule 11(e)(1) of the Fed.R.Crim.P. states that a court shall not participate in any plea agreement discussions. As set forth in the Advisory Committee Notes to that Rule, there are valid reasons for excluding a judge from any involvement in plea discussions. “The unequal positions of the judge and the ...

In this case the Court addressed "the line of demarcation between two closely related but poorly understood rules of evidence", name Rules 608(b) and 613(b), both of which relate to credibility-related use of extrinsic evidence.

One of the issues addressed in this case was the correlation between what Judge Selya ...

In its decision, the court noted that, after Bank of Nova Scotia, a court may not, in the absence of racial discrimination in the grand jury pool, dismiss an indictment on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct unless the court has grave doubts about whether the improper acts substantially influenced the ...

Here the Court held that the use of peremptory challenges to strike a potential juror due to her disability did not violate the defendant's constitutional rights, although the juror cannot be removed based on an irrational fear of disabled people.

The defendant was convicted of bank robbery and, on appeal, ...

Here the Court granted a motion to suppress evidence obtained during a pat-down search at an airport of a Hispanic who was travelling to mexico, concluding that the search was not supported by even a minimal level of suspicion.

Here the Ninth Circuit held that the district court had erred when it concluded that it did not have authority to grant a sentence reduction in order to equalize disparate sentences, stating that after Koon the courts do have such authority.

In this case, the Ninth Circuit acknowledged that, under ...

In this case the district court, in calculating the defendant's sentence for tax evasion, included interest and penalties. The defendant argued that that calculation was erroneous. In a wonderful example of selective choosing of only sections of the relevant law, the government argued that the plain meaning of "tax loss" ...

In this case the Court rejected a downward "heartland" departure in a pronography case based on the harms addressed by the statute, stating that such departures must be based a comparision of the defendant's conduct with other offenders.

Here the Ninth Circuit held that a district court erred in granting ...

Here the Court explored the meaning of "fully taken into account" as used in USSG § 5G1.3(b) and held that relevant conduct can be used to determine whether a defendant's sentence must be concurrent with an undischarged prior sentence.

In Witte v. U.S., 515 U.S. 389 (1995), the Supreme Court ...

In 1996, District Judge Baer created a grand furor when he granted a defendant’s suppression motion after he concluded that the police had difficulty articulating any "reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that criminal activity 'may be afoot'." (U.S. v. Bayless, 913 F.Supp. 232 (E.D.N.Y. 1996) (See P&J, 3/18/96). That ...