Here, reversing a prior panel decision, a divided en banc court held that simple theft of an automobile is not a crime of violence as defined in § 4B1.2(a)(2) for purposes of the sentence enhancement called for in USSG § 2K2.1(a)(4).

We never cease to be amazed by the ubiquitous ...

Here the Court held that a guilty plea was not coerced (and did not violate the provisions of Rule 11(e)(1)) by the district judge's commitment, during plea negotiations, to sentence defendant at the low end of the guidelines range.

The defendant in this case sought on appeal to withdraw his ...

The defendant in this case was convicted of manufacturing 100 or more marijuana plants in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841 and he was sentenced to 188 months in prison. On appeal he argued, inter alia, that the district court violated the double jeopardy clause by vacating his guilty plea ...

Petitioner, who had been convicted in a Michigan state court of first-degree murder, filed a habeas corpus petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C.S. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The district court granted the petition, and the State appealed.

Petitioner and two co-defendants ...

Section 841(b)(1)(A) mandates a minimum sentence of ten years for any mixture or substance that "contains a detectable amount" of a prohibited drug, unless the drug is cocaine base. n4 If the drug is cocaine base, the minimum sentence provision applies if the mixture or substance simply "contains" cocaine base. ...

In the is case, the defendant, who was charged with racketeering and drug-related offenses, was granted bail in the amount of $ 135,000. The Government moved to revoke the bail on a number of grounds. In a classic exposition of the law, Judge Adelman denied the Government’s motion. Judge Adelman ...

The defendant in this case, Alberto Riera, pled guilty to 11 counts of wire fraud, involving the embezzlement of $541,000 from a former employer. In the plea agreement, the defendant also admitted committing relevant conduct not charge in his indictment, involving the embezzlement of an additional $365,000 from still a ...

In this case various public interest organizations filed a complaint against defendant United States Department of Justice seeking disclosure of the number of people arrested in connection with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack investigations, their names, lawyers, reasons for detention, and other information, under the Freedom of Information Act ...

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 possession of a firearm during drug trafficking. During a search of defendant's room in his uncle's home, police found a pistol and an assault rifle. The district ...

Here, on remand from the Supreme Court in light of Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the sentence that the Supreme Court had vacated, holding the errors based on government's failure to allege a drug quantity to support a sentence, and court's failure (a) to inform the defendant ...

Following a bench trial, the Court approved an award of $150,000 in damages to the plaintiff/inmate in this Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit due to the BOP's medical malpractice in failing to provide proper treatment for the inmate's ileostomy condition.

The plaintiff in this case, a former prisoner filed suit ...

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia entered defendant's conviction of one count of attempting to persuade a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C.S. § 2422(b), and one count of traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in ...

Here the Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not compel the suppression of a series of searches set in motion by an application to scan a private residence and its outbuildings with a thermal imaging device.

In this case, interpreting Kyllo v. U.S., 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Court ...

Among the many issues covered in this appeal was a challenge to the Governmment's use, during its opening, of a Power Point slide presentation which contained a number if images (e.g., large amounts of crack cocaine and fistfuls of money) that were not intended to be used in evidence. The ...

Here the Court held that a sentence enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2J1.7 did not violate Apprendi, where the fact that defendant was on release at the time of a second crime was neither proved to a jury nor specified in the plea agreement.

Section 2J1.7 of the Guidelines states: "If ...

"The current race to federalize state crimes epitomizes the very tendency most feared by those who wrote and ratified the Constitution: a strong central government relegating to itself all power. That concern led them to assure future generations that the central government would be restrained by a constitution giving it ...

The Tenth Amendment provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (For one view on the purpose of that Amendment, see the Quote of the Week below.) The ...

Here the Court held the failure to instruct the jury to determine the type of drug involved in a conspiracy did not violate Apprendi where evidence that defendant was involved in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine was overwhelming.

The defendant in this case was charged with conspiracy to distribute in ...

The two defendants in this case, “Little Bum” Marrero and “Fat Man” Hernandez, lured three drug dealers from Detroit to a rendezvous in Chicago on the pretext of selling them cocaine. When the dealers arrived, the defendants showed them what purported to be cocaine but was actually flour with a ...

In this case the plaintiff, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ("HLF"), the largest Muslim charitable foundation in the country, brought an action challenging its designation as a terrorist organization and the resulting blocking of its assets as arbitrary, capricious and unconstitutional. After examining the statutory framework, including various ...

This is a significant decision that explores Guideline departures based on “the totality of circumstances” even when there are no separate “offender characteristics or other circumstances” that alone would justify any departure. Here, the district court based a significant downward departure on the language contained in the commentary to U.S.S.G. ...