United States v. Cavera, No. 05-4591-cr (2d Cir. December 4, 2008) (en banc) Gerard Cavera pled guilty to participating in a scheme in which guns were purchased in the South then transported to New York City for sale. At sentencing, the district court imposed a sentence six months longer than the top of the Guideline … Read more
United States v. Connolly, No. 06-3139-cr (2d Cir. December 4, 2008) (Straub, Raggi, CJJ, Sessions, DJ) Odell Connolly was born in Panama on April 21, 1968. His mother was a local, but his father was a United States citizen. They were not married. The father had been drafted into the United States Army in 1966 … Read more
United States v. Lee, No. 05-1684-cr (2d Cir. December 3, 2008) (Straub, Hall, CJJ, Haight, DJ) Here, a divided panel found that a Crawford error required a new trial for two defendants convicted in a murder-for-hire conspiracy, although the evidence was legally sufficient. Background Defendant Williams was the head of a crack-cocaine ring operating in … Read more
United States v. Salim, No. 04-2643-cr (2d Cir. December 2, 2008) (Newman, Walker, Sotomayor, CJJ) With the help of a cellmate, defendant Salim, while awaiting trial for the bombing of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, abducted an MCC guard and stabbed him in the eye with a sharpened comb, nearly killing him. … Read more
United States v. Padilla, No. 07-5359-cr (2d Cir. December 2, 2008) (Raggi, Calabresi, CJJ, Keenan, DJ) October is the cruellest month. That’s when a New York City detective recovered a gun from Hector Padilla’s waistband. Padilla was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment, the statutory maximum. On appeal, his principal challenge was to the stop-and-frisk. The … Read more
In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, No. 01-1535-cr (2d Cir. November 24, 2008) (Feinberg, Newman, Cabranes, CJJ) This trio of long opinions, captioned In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, resolves the appeals of the defendants convicted of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. One … Read more
Alsol v. Mukasey, No. 07-2068-ag (2d Cir. November 14, 2008) (Calabresi, Straub, Raggi, CJJ) This decision, although an immigration case, clarifies an important legal issue that also arises in criminal cases. Here, each petitioner had been convicted of two New York State drug misdemeanors involving simple possession of a controlled substance. The immigration courts, relying … Read more
United States v. Figueroa, No. 06-1595-cr (2d Cir. November 18, 2008) (Kearse, Sack, Hall, CJJ) In an interesting companion to Brinson v. Walker [blogged below under the title “Confrontation Claws”], the court treated a highly similar issue, this time under both the Confrontation Clause and the federal rules of evidence. At Edwin Figueroa’s gun possession … Read more
This week there were three interesting summary orders: In United States v. Solano, No. 07-1656-cr (2d Cir. November 14, 2008), the government repeatedly insisted before trial that a detective had not taken notes when he interviewed the defendant. Mid-trial, the government did an about-face and disclosed that the notes had once existed but had been … Read more
Brinson v. Walker, No. 06-0618-cr (2d Cir. November 13, 2008) (Kearse, Leval, Sack, CJJ) In this state prisoner’s habeas corpus case, the circuit affirmed the grant of the writ because the state court’s refusal to permit the defense to cross-examine a supposed robbery victim about his racial bias violated the confrontation clause. Brinson, the petitioner, … Read more