Here, in remand from the Supreme Court, the 5th Circuit held that the district court plainly erred when it failed to submit to the jury drug quantity as an element of the offense and require the jury the make that determination beyond a reasonable doubt.

In 1994, Rosalind Reed, a former criminal defense attorney from Detroit, MI, allowed her office to be used as a drop-off and pick-up point for some $200,000 in cash payments owed to one of her clients as proceeds from various drug transactions. The Government charged that Reed did this in ...

Here, over the dissent of Judge Reinhardt, a majority held that the Child Support Recover Act (18 USC § 228(a)) permits the inclusion of interest on delinquent child support payments - even where interest was not mentioned in the state order.

In 1994, Rosalind Reed, a former criminal defense attorney from Detroit, MI, allowed her office to be used as a drop-off and pick-up point for some $200,000 in cash payments owed to one of her clients as proceeds from various drug transactions. The Government charged that Reed did this in ...

To date, only one appellate court has held that the Supreme Court’s decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) rendered the Government’s principal drug enforcement statute, 21 U.S.C. § 841, facially unconstitutional. In U.S. v. Buckland, 259 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2001), a divided panel from the ...

Here the Court held that a sentencing court may not depart downward under USSG § 5K2.13 for reduced mental capacity where the defendant's criminal history suggests a history of repeated and violent bank robberies.

Judge Mollway started her decision in this case by stating: “This case presents the unusual circumstance in which a defendant pleads guilty to the charges in an indictment, is sentenced to a prison term, and then, after he has completed that prison term, faces related charges in a superseding indictment ...

In the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, defendant pleaded guilty to participating in a drug conspiracy. In his plea agreement, defendant waived the right to appeal his conviction and sentence. After his co-defendant was acquitted of the conspiracy charge to which defendant had pleaded guilty, ...

In theory, the Guidelines recognize that a person may commit a crime under the pressure of coercion or duress; and, while that is not a complete defense to the commission of the crime, the Guidelines do permit the sentencing court to take those circumstances into account as extenuating factors when ...

For the record, we note that a divided panel from the Ninth Circuit held in this case that a prisoner who is incarcerated for life has a constitutional right to mail his semen from prison so that his wife can be artificially inseminated. Judge Silverman dissented, calling the majority’s decision ...

One of the issues raised on appeal be the defendant in this case was that the sentencing enhancements increasing his sentence were improperly applied in light of Apprendi. The defendant conceded that the sentence of the district court did not exceed the statutory maximum for the crimes charged. He argued, ...

In U.S. v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 (1996), the Supreme Court held that, to prove a selective prosecution case, the claimant must prove two elements: first, he must demonstrate that the Federal prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect; and, second, that it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.

Since Armstrong, ...

In this case, the Court rejected a claim by the defendant that his conviction for illegal possession of a firearm as an "unlawful user" of drugs, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) violated due process since the defintion of unlawful user contained in § 922(g)(3) was too vague to ...

One of the issues addressed in this case was a restitution collection issue - and the Court held that Federal law supersedes the garnishment protection that state law provides for funds in an individual retirement account.

One of the many issues raised in this appeal was an important restitution issue ...

After the defendant in this case pled guilty to various drug trafficking and money laundering offenses, he filed an unopposed motion to waive the preparation of a presentence report in which he acknowledged that his base offense level was 38 based on the possession of 267 kilos of cocaine. After ...

The defendant in this case, James W, McFarland, robbed four different retail convenience stores in Fort Worth, Texas during a one-month period in 1998 - in which he stole approximately $1,795-$2,295. He was charged and convicted under the Hobbs Act (18 U.S.C. § 1951) and under several related gun statutes ...