Seemingly without pause, the Seventh Circuit continues its unremitting assault on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000). The issue addressed in this case was whether the classification of a firearm as a “semiautomatic assault weapon” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(B)(i) was a sentencing …

Here the Court held that the police were justified in barring the defendant from re-entering his home alone while they waited for a search warrant since they had probable cause to suspect there were drugs inside and the delay was limited in time.

In this case the Supreme Court held, …

Here 17 years after he was convicted of two murders, the petitioner finally convinced a court that his rights had been violated when he was denied a competency hearing despite having had a huge piece of his brain removed.

This is one of those reality check cases. James Richard Odle …

Here the Court revisited Judge Harrington’s controversial decision in which he refused to sentence a defendant to a “draconian” Guideline sentence that was ten times greater than the applicable state sentence because it offended his sense of justice.

This is one of those cases that is usually buried in the …

This case is noted as the first reported case to apply constitutional protections (specifically the rights against self-incrimination and the Miranda rights) to foreign suspects who are interrogated by American officials abroad.

In this decision, Judge Sand held that foreign suspects who are interrogated abroad by American law enforcement officials …

This case is noted principally as one of the first cases we have seen in which a Circuit court has upheld the use of e-mails as evidence in a criminal case. Here the Eleventh Circuit held that the district court had the discretion to determine the authenticity of the e-mails …

The issue addressed in this case was “whether [under Apprendi] a jury, rather than a sentencing judge, must find a sentencing fact that affects only a Guidelines sentencing range within a statutory maximum, but has no bearing on sentencing above a statutory maximum, and does not trigger a mandatory minimum.” …

The five separate decisions in this case reflect how extraordinarily sensitive and explosive charges of racial profiling can be. Here those charges set off an old-fashioned judicial donnybrook that was filled with an undercurrent of invective and “hurtful remarks” that is rare in the world of judicial politeness.

In this …