When the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were enacted into law in 1987, the Sentencing Commission made a number of grandiose promises about how the Guidelines could be counted on to produce “honesty in sentencing” and to eliminate the “confusion and implicit deception that arose out of the pre-guidelines sentencing system.” Federal …

Here the Court held that all inmates, including those placed in segregation for a lengthy period of time, have a constitutional right to out-of-cell exercise as a necessary ingredient to their physical and mental well-being.

This is an interesting prison case in which the Seventh Circuit held that the total …

This is a rather extraordinary prison case which the Court said “exemplifies [the] antagonism toward prisoner litigation at the cost of constitutional rights and legal ethics.” (Id., at 1122). The principal issue addressed by the Court was whether counsel for the State of Idaho, who was representing the Idaho Department …

The sole issue in this appeal was whether the sentencing court had erred in fixing the amount of intended loss from the theft of credit card applications out of the U.S. mail (in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1708) at $43,000 - the total amount of the credit limits on …

The defendant in this case, the Mayor of the capitol city of Kampala, Uganda, was charged with a number of crimes stemming from his currency exchange business in Uganda. Among the charges were two counts of making false statements in U.S. Customs forms (in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001) …

QUOTE OF THE WEEK - Some thoughts on the high level of plea bargains in America.

"If all the defendants should combine to refuse to plead guilty, and should dare to hold out, they could break down the administration of criminal justice in any state in the Union. . . …

The Court held that the Apprendi rule did not apply to sentencing factors (such as the loss calculations in the instant tax case under USSG § 2T1.1(c)(2)) that increased the defendant's guideline sentencing range but not his prescribed statutory maximum.

In this case the Court held that Apprendi "does not …

In a decision that was later reversed by a divided en banc court, the panel held that inquiries falling outside the scope of the matters that gave rise to the defendant's detention constitute an unlawful seizure.

Here the Court held that a police officer had reasonable suspicion to stop defendant …

As the debate over the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) has grown, one issue that has generated a hailstorm of controversy is whether the appellate courts can overlook any Apprendi error if it can determine that the district court could …

In this case the Court held that the fact that a defendant attempted to suppress his confession and chose to proceed to trial rather than plead guilty does not make him categorically ineligible for a downward adjustment for acceptance of responsibility under U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1.

The defendant, a Mexican citizen, …

Here the Court held that a one-room office in a private residential home may provide federal jurisdiction for purposes of federal arson statutes, even if defendants were unaware that any business activity took place there.

As explained by the Court, this appeal presented "a simple question of first impression in this circuit and apparently all others under the sentencing guidelines: can a defendant who pleads guilty to eighty-three counts of bank fraud, money laundering, forfeiture and tax evasion, involving more than $ 18,000,000 in embezzled …

Here the defendant first argued that the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey rendered 21 U.S.C. § 841 facially unconstitutional. In rejecting that claim, the Court stated: "We note that the Fourth, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits have considered this question and concluded that § 841 remains constitutionally viable, …