This case involved a sentence of 360-months that was imposed on the defendant pursuant to the provisions of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A). At sentencing, the trial court found that the defendant was responsible for trafficking in at least 50 grams of cocaine base, even though she had been indicted and ...

Here the en banc court held that for purposes of 28 USC § 2255 the proper retroactivity test for second or successive habeas petitions under the AEDPA is whether the Supreme Court has specifically declared the new rule to be retroactive.

The issue of whether the Supreme Court’s recent decision ...

Although this case also dealt with “horizontal departures,” more than anything else, it represents a disquieting example of the power struggle between the Justice Department and the judiciary over who has the final right to fix and determine the sentences that are imposed in criminal cases. The defendant in this ...

The defendant in this case was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and he was sentenced to 210 months imprisonment. In addition to challenging the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1), the defendant challenged his sentence, arguing that the statutory maximum sentence ...

While this capital murder case dealt primarlity with a number of claims relating to ineffective assistance of counsel issues and habeas issues relating to Idaho law, the Court did address one Apprendi issue - namely whether Idaho's capital sentencing scheme constitutionally deprived the petitioner of the right to have a ...

Here the Court affirmed that a defendant is not entitled to a sentence reduction for voluntary disclosure of the offense under USSG § 5K2.16 if the district court finds that the disclosure was made out of a fear of the inevitable discovery of the crimes.

This case is noted for ...

Not surprisingly, in this Sentencing Memorandum, Judge Gertner has written an important addition to the body of Apprendi jurisprudence. Here, preempted by the First Circuit’s hasty rush to judgment on a number of important Apprendi issues, particularly in U.S. v. Mojica-Baez, 229 F.3d 292 (1st Cir. 2000), Judge Gertner concluded ...

This case involved a constitutional challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B), which prohibits the mere possession of sexually explicit depictions of minors if those depictions, or the materials used to produce them, were shipped in Interstate Commerce. The defendant in this case was prosecuted under that statute after Government agents ...

This case is noted for its holding that, while there may be limits on the initial term of supervised release that may be imposed for most felony convictions, there are no limits on “the number of terms of supervised release that a defendant can be ordered to serve as a ...

This is a significant (but divided) en banc decision on the issue of closure of the courtroom, upholding numerous convictions for sexual misconduct despite the complete closure of the courtroom during the testimony of the victim and chief witness.

This is a significant en banc decision in which a divided ...

This case is noted particularly for its broad view that in cases involving child pornography a defendant's decade old convictions can be included as a "pattern of activity" and thus qualify as relevant conduct for purposes of sentence enhancements.

This case is noted for its treatment of two provisions of ...

In this case, relying on Apprendi, the defendant argued that the trial court erred when it declined to submit the question of drug quantity to the jury. He urged that, because the maximum penalty for an offense under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) increases according to drug quantity, the trial court ...

In this decision, the Court noted that "very few courts have dealt with the issue of whether Apprendi applies retroactively to an initial habeas corpus petition" (id., at 466), and it listed a series of cases which have examined the retroactivity issue under the rubric of second or successive habeas ...