Archive | interlocutory

Tuesday, December 12th, 2017

Recent Cert. Grants

The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in three criminal cases, the availability of sentencing reductions pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) when a Guidelines sentencing range is retroactively lowered:

Hughes v. United States, No. 17-155
Question Presented: Whether, as a four-justice plurality in Freeman v. United States concluded, a defendant who enters into a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement is generally eligible for a sentence reduction if there is a later, retroactive amendment to the relevant Sentencing Guidelines range.

Cert. papers and opinion below available here:

Hughes v. United States

Koons v. United States, No. 17-1756
Question Presented: Whether a defendant who is subject to a statutory mandatory minimum sentence, but who substantially assisted the government and received a sentence below the mandatory minimum pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e), is eligible for a further sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), when the Sentencing …


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Categories: 3582(c)(2), interlocutory

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Friday, July 8th, 2016

Defendant Not “in Custody” When Questioned During Execution of Search Warrant at Her Home

In United States v. Danielle Faux, Docket No. 15-1282-cr, the Circuit (Jacobs, Hall, Restani), in an opinion by Judge Jacobs, reversed on the Government’s interlocutory appeal the district court’s grant of defendant Faux’s suppression motion, based on the claim that she was “in custody” when law enforcement agents questioned her (without providing Miranda warnings) while executing a search warrant of her home. The ultimate question in such cases — whether, taking into all the circumstances, “a reasonable person would have understood his freedom of action to have been curtailed to a degree associated with formal arrest,” Op. at 12 — is necessarily fact-specific. And while the Court acknowledges that this is a very close case – “[t]he Government stepped right up to the limits of constitutionally permissible conduct and . . . just managed to toe the line” – it ultimately concludes that “the circumstances did not rise to …


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Categories: interlocutory, Miranda, search warrant

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Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Double Trouble, But Not Double Jeopardy

United States v. Dionisio, Docket No. 06-0908-cr (2d Cir. September 17, 2007) (Calabresi, Wesley, CJJ, Oberdorfer, DJ)

This case presented a question open that the Circuit has never addressed: does jeopardy attach to counts that were dismissed with prejudice by the government pursuant to a plea agreement? Reviewing the framework set by a line of Supreme Court cases, the Circuit concluded that the answer to this question is “possibly, but not here.”

Dioniso pled guilty in 2001 under plea agreement in which the government agreed to dismiss certain racketeering charges with prejudice, and ultimately did so. In 2004, despite its promise, the government indicted him on suspiciously similar charges, and he moved to dismiss the new indictment as a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The district court held that, per se, jeopardy never attaches to a pretrial dismissal.

The Circuit disagreed with this ruling, although not the ultimate outcome, …


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Categories: dismissal, double jeopardy, interlocutory, plea agreement, prejudice, Uncategorized

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