The origins of this provocative decision came from one of the most ignominious sagas of prosecutorial misconduct, cover-up and hypocrisy in the annals of American criminal law. In 1989, indictments were filed against 65 alleged members of a Chicago street gang known as the El Rukns gang. The case, which ...

Here, as a matter of first impression, the Sixth Circuit held that the enhancement contained in USSG § 3A1.2(a), which applies if the victim was a "government officer or official" applies to state and local government employees as well as federal.

The defendant in this case was indicted for, and ...

One of the issues addressed in this case was whether two sentences that were imposed were so lengthy that the constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The defendants were convicted of nine armed bank robberies in a six month period. They received sentences of 1,396 months (116+ ...

In this case, the defendant-prisoner was charged with assaulting a police officer and interfering with two law enforcement agents who were transporting him, fully shackled, to testify as a defense witness in another trial. Prior to his trial on those charges, he chose to represent himself. Standby counsel was appointed ...

In this case, the defendant Matthews, an award winning journalist, appealed his conviction for sending and receiving child pornography over the Internet. In 1995, while working as a business news reporter for WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., the defendant had produced a three-part series on child pornography. During the course ...

The defendant in this case pled guilty to a drug conspiracy, under a the terms of a non-binding plea agreement entered pursuant to the provisions of Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(e)(1)(B). Under the plea agreement, the Government agreed to recommend a sentence reduction for acceptance of responsibility, but the agreement also provided that ...

Here, citing its ruling in U.S. v. Bradstreet, 207 F.3d 76, the Court affirmed the district court's refusal to grant a downward departure based on post-sentence relabilitation, stressing the such departures, while permissible, are "rare".

In this case the Second Circuit held that a district court, when sentencing a defendant on a charge of illegally re-entering the country after being deported following a conviction for an aggravated felony, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (b)(2), has no authority to depart from the sentencing range ...

In this case the defendant sought to suppress statements made after he had requested counsel, in accordance with the rule established in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477 (1981). He was arrested on August 19. During his interrogation, he invoked his right to counsel. He was not questioned further and ...

This high-profile case dealt with the question of whether Kenneth W. Starr, the Watergate Independent Counsel, violated the terms of a plea agreement with former Associate Attorney General Webster L. Hubbell when it forced him to produce thousands of pages of personal financial records under a grant of immunity and ...

This is another significant decision from the current Supreme Court that is bound to raise as many questions as it answers. Building on its recent decisions in Jones v. U.S., 526 U.S. 227 (1999) and Almendarez-Torres v. U.S., 523 U.S. 224 (1998), the Court again faced the issue of whether ...