This is an extraordinarily blunt and candid decision by Judge Young in which he granted a Certificate of Appealability to consider whether the practice of "fact bargaining" had unduly and unconstitutionally burdened the petitioner's right to trial by jury.

Every once in a while a judicial decision is handed down ...

Here the Court held that it was without authority to permit the petitioner to amend his § 2255 petition to include an Apprendi claim, for a number of reasons including its belief that there were no newly discovered facts supporting the proposed amendment.

Although this case principally dealt with "fact ...

Here the Court held that the failure of the indictment to allege drug quantity as required by Apprendi was harmless error, since the defendants were sentenced below the statutory maximum; and it also rejected an Apprendi Guideline claim.

The defendants in this case were convicted of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, ...

In this case,q divided panel from the the Eighth Circuit joined with decisions from the 2nd, 7th and 9th Circuits in holding that when calculating the base offense level under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 for a conviction of possession with the intent to distribute, or of an attempt to commit this ...

This is a rare case in which the Court vacated a series of exceptionally broad and onerous special conditions of probation that were imposed on a defendant convicted of bank robbery but which were primarily directed at an earlier state sex conviction.

Lately, it is beginning to appear as if ...

Here, once again, the 7th Circuit snubbed the Supreme Court and reaffirmed and reinstated the 100 year sentence that the Supreme Court had vacated "in light of Apprendi," concluding that any error did not seriously affect the fairness of the proceedings.

Out of 48 convictions vacated by the Supreme Court ...

Here a divided panel refused to impose any sanction on an attorney who cited an unpublished opinion in a court brief in violation of a Ninth Circuit Rule, finding that counsel "misunderstood the scope of the exception" that permits such citations.

The plaintiff in this case filed a civil action ...

The decision in this case contains a detailed analysis of the history of the Vienna Convention and the case law in the other Circuits, all of which have held that suppression of evidence is not a remedy for a violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention.

Joining all the ...

The defendant in this case committed multiple acts of child sexual abuse and exploitation over a period of many years. As part of his sentence, the defendant was ordered to pay - for one of his victims - future counseling and treatment expenses. He appealed that restitution order, arguing, inter ...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK - Some of the evils of “fact bargaining.”

“Plea bargaining gets away from the facts. First, as is widely recognized, justice is not done when premeditated murder, for example, is reduced to a lesser charge. But, more fundamentally and perhaps less obvious, plea bargains corrupt the ...