Federal Defenders of New York Second Circuit Blog

A SCOTUS plurality holds that Congress authorizing the U.S. Attorney General  “to specify the applicability” of  SORNA’s registration requirements to people convicted before SORNA was enacted (in 2006), is not an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority under Article I, § 1 of the Constitution.

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Yesterday, in Gundy v. United States, Sup. Ct. No. 17-6086, 2019 WL 2527473 (June 20, 2019), a case out of the Second Circuit, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that 34 U.S.C. § 20913(d) — which authorizes the U.S. Attorney General “to specify the applicability” of the registration requirements of the Sex Offender Registration … Read more

Favorable decision in a First Step Act case, concerning the defendant’s eligibility for relief and the nature of the proceeding under the Act: United States v. Rose, No. 03-CR-1501, _F.3d_, 2019 WL 2314479 (S.D.N.Y. May 24, 2019)

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Section 404 of the First Step Act of 2018,  Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194 (2018),  empowers district courts to “impose a reduced sentence” on people who were convicted of certain cocaine base (crack cocaine) offenses before August 3, 2010, when the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was enacted. It makes retroactive — to … Read more

En banc Sixth Circuit Holds That Guidelines “Controlled Substance Offenses” Do Not Include Attempts

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In United States v. Havis, the en banc Sixth Circuit held, unanimously, that a Tennessee state offense criminalizing the attempted delivery of a controlled substance was not a “controlled substance offense,” for purposes of U.S.S.G. §§ 2K2.1 and 4B1.2. ___ F.3d ___, 2019 WL 2376070 (6th Cir. June 6, 2019) (en banc). Overruling prior Circuit … Read more

Supreme Court issues a new ruling on the definition of generic burglary

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In Quarles v. United States, decided on June 10, 2019, a unanimous Supreme Court held that “remaining-in” burglary qualifies as a crime of violence for ACCA purposes even if the defendant does not form the intent to commit a crime in the building or structure until sometime after the unlawful remaining commences. The petitioner contended … Read more

Let’s wait a bit on the non-delegation argument …

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The Circuit today affirmed the defendant’s conviction in United States v. Michael O’Brien, which principally rejects, on fact-specific credibility grounds, his 4th and 5th Amendment arguments concerning Miranda and an alleged consent to search. Judge Kearse’s typically thorough opinion lays out the details; no legal ground is broken. The only issue of note is the … Read more

Pretrial detention later credited against a term of imprisonment imposed upon conviction tolls period of supervised release under § 3624(e)

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Section 3624(e) of Title 18 of the U.S.C. provides that “[a] term of supervised release does not run during any period in which the person is imprisoned in connection with a conviction for a Federal, State, or local crime unless the imprisonment is for a period of less than 30 consecutive days.” The question sometimes … Read more

Supreme Court to decide whether plain-error review applies when defendant does not object to sentence as substantively unreasonable at sentencing

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Today the Supreme Court granted cert. in Holguin-Hernandez v. United States, S. Ct. No. 18-7739, to resolve the earth-shattering question of whether plain-error review applies to an appellate claim of substantive unreasonableness (i.e., “The sentence is too damn long!”) when defense counsel did not object to the sentence’s unreasonableness at sentencing. The case comes out … Read more