Author Archive | Steve Statsinger

So far, a bunch of interesting summary orders this month. Here’s the roundup:

In United States v. Pryce, No. 07-2210-cr (July 25, 2008), a marijuana trafficking case, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for findings on the scope of the defendant’s participation in the conspiracy.

United States v. Gumbs, No. 06-4708-cr (July 24, 2008), upheld a finding that the defendant’s false claim of United States citizenship to pretrial services warranted a sentence enhancement for obstruction of justice.

In United States v. Marucilli, No. 08-1145-cr (July 23, 2008), the court vacated the defendant’s conviction in a housing fraud case because the district court erroneously instructed the jury that the money that funded the housing subsidy was the property of the United States. This “improperly took out of the hands of the jury the factual issue of whether the United States exercised ‘sufficient supervision and control’ over the funds to support …

Here are June’s first two summary orders of interest.

In United States v. Heredia, No. 07-0849-cr (2d Cir. June 20, 2008), the court agreed that introducing hearsay evidence as a prior consistent statement was error, but found the error to be harmless. In addition, the court condemned some of the prosecutor’s comments in summation – he compared an omission in a stipulation signed by both parties to an omission in the arresting officer’s memo book. This comment “falsely” implicated defense counsel in the government’s error, misrepresented the police officer’s testimony, and attempted to use defense counsel as a witness. Nevertheless, this too was harmless.

In United States v. Cammacho, No. 07-2370-cr (2d Cir. June 3, 2008), the court held that the sentencing record seemed to indicate that the district court incorrectly believed that it was required to make a supervised release violation sentence consecutive. The case was remanded for clarification.…