Federal Defenders of New York Second Circuit Blog

Circuit rules that manual examination of a traveler’s cellphone at an international border is “routine” and requires neither reasonable suspicion nor a search warrant.

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United States v. Alisigwe, No. 24-960 (2d Cir. Sept. 17, 2026) (Menashi, C.J. (writing), joined by Gonzalez, D.J.; Lee, C.J., concurring in the judgment). The Second Circuit recently affirmed Chinwendu Alisigwe’s bank-fraud and money-laundering convictions, holding that border agents who manually scrolled through his cellphone and photographed its content at JFK Airport needed no suspicion … Read more

Court upholds third-party risk-notification condition against delegation challenge where the defendant’s criminal record and an on-record colloquy defined the risk she posed and sufficiently guided Probation’s discretion.

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In United States v. Stuart, No. 25-599 (2d Cir. Sept. 3, 2026) (Lohier, Jacobs (writing), Sack), the panel upheld a special condition of supervised release authorizing the Probation Office “to notify third parties, to whom you may present a risk including employers and potential employers, of your criminal history and past criminal conduct.” Slip op. at 12. … Read more

Federal law requiring registration and payment of $200 fee for possessing short-barreled rifles and suppressors doesn’t implicate the Second Amendment because such regulation does not “meaningfully constrain” the right to bear arms.

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United States v. DeFelice, No. 25-920-cr (2d Cir. Sept. 2, 2026) (Lohier, Kearse, and Walker, Circuit Judges) (per curiam). Affirming DeFelice’s conviction on a conditional plea for possessing two unregistered short-barreled rifles and an unregistered suppressor, the panel held that because neither the registration requirement nor the then-$200 fee of the National Firearms Act (NFA) … Read more

Section 404(b) of the First Step Act reaches back only to the Fair Sentencing Act’s crack-quantity thresholds and does not carry § 401, narrowing the definition of § 841’s triggering predicates, with it.

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United States v. VanHoesen, No. 24-2692 (2d Cir. Aug. 24, 2026) (Cabranes, Livingston (writing), Menashi). The Second Circuit affirmed VanHoesen’s sentence of time served and eight years of supervised release, imposed on a § 404(b) First Step Act resentencing. The sole issue is the term of supervision. Judge Livingston’s opinion affirms the eight-year term because … Read more

Sentencing court plainly erred by (1) crossing the “fine line” between declining leniency for a defendant’s silence and punishing him for it; and (2) varying upward on facts already accounted by the Guidelines

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United States v. Bagley, No. 25-606 (2d Cir. Aug. 24, 2026) (Sullivan, Bianco, Robinson (writing); Sullivan, J., dissenting). The Second Circuit vacated Stefan Bagley’s 84-month sentence for firearm trafficking conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 933(a)(3) and (b) — 21 months above the top of his 51–63 month Guidelines range and 30 months above what the … Read more

Second Circuit Applies Hunter and Expands Its Exceptions to Appellate Waivers

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United States v. Matos, No. 22-1561 (2d Cir. Aug. 13, 2026) (Cabranes, Livingston, Nardini), is the Second Circuit’s first published application of Hunter v. United States, 146 S. Ct. 1702 (2026). The result of Judge Livingston’s opinion is unremarkable: Matos’s challenges to his criminal history calculation under the Guidelines and to the substantive reasonableness of … Read more

“Take any prescribed medications” condition of supervised release is plainly erroneous absent medically grounded, on-the-record findings that compelled medication is necessary.

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United States v. McCrone, No. 22-3178 (L) (2d Cir. July 21, 2026) (Walker, Lee, Robinson) The Second Circuit today struck, on plain-error review, a supervised-release condition requiring the defendant to “continue to take any prescribed medications unless otherwise instructed by the health care provider.” Slip op. at 6. (The condition was a stock sentence embedded … Read more

18th Century norms define 21st Century privacy: Technological advances in surveillance can’t outrun analog-era expectations of privacy

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Chatrie v. United States, No. 25–112 (U.S. June 29, 2026) (Opinion by Kagan, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson; Gorsuch concurs in the judgment) Introduction The facts in Chatrie look daunting — a bank robbery solved through a multi-step “geofence” warrant served on Google, full of unfamiliar ideas like anonymized device lists, “Location History,” and … Read more

Hunter v. United States: Supreme Court Adopts a “Miscarriage-of-Justice” Limit on Appellate Waivers

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The Supreme Court ruled in Hunter v. United States, No. 24-1063 (U.S. June 18, 2026), that appellate courts will not enforce an appellate waiver in a plea agreement when enforcing it “would result in a miscarriage of justice — meaning, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious error that would bring the … Read more