Federal Defenders of New York Second Circuit Blog

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

Supreme Court significantly narrows venue

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The Supreme Court just decided Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146 (U.S. June 11, 2026), which significantly narrows where venue may lie in the Second Circuit. A brief summary of the case is followed by its three key rulings. Section 1519 of Title 18 makes it a crime to “knowingly… falsif[y]… any record, document, or … Read more

What Remains of Compassionate Release After Rutherford and Fernandez?

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Last week the Supreme Court decided two companion cases (Rutherford v. United States and Fernandez v. United States) largely confining 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), colloquially known as compassionate release, to its historic core as a remedy grounded on a prisoner’s personal circumstances (such as age or infirmity), and not a vehicle for litigating the legality … Read more

How far can harmless-error review go before it swallows the jury-trial guarantee?

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United States v. Parasmo, No. 23-6555 (2d Cir. May 19, 2026) (Sullivan, joined by Kearse, Robinson dissenting) The Second Circuit affirmed Frank Parasmo’s conviction on thirty-two counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances under 21 U.S.C. § 841, despite acknowledging — as it had to after Ruan v. United States, 597 U.S. 450 (2022) — that … Read more