In United States v. Morgan, the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction despite the defendant’s challenge to the use of Low Copy Number DNA evidence at trial. The Circuit concluded that “although LCN analysis is supported by significantly weaker evidence of reliability than traditional DNA analysis, the district court did not abuse its discretion in this … Read more
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice issued new guidelines for the use of photo array identification procedures. You may find this useful in support your request for an expert in cases in which these procedures were not followed. The ABA Journal has an update on the policy as well as links to the DOJ … Read more
Have you ever wanted to know the average length of sentences for a particular criminal history category for a particular guideline? Do you want to make an argument that cases involving MDMA see a higher rate of below-guideline sentences than other drug cases, either nationally, by circuit or by district? Then this is the website … Read more
In United States v. Jamahl Leonard, No. 15-2232-cr (Dec. 14, 2016) (Circuit Judges: Raggi, Chin, Droney), the Circuit, in a published opinion, vacates a district court’s ruling that the defendant is ineligible for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and remands for further proceedings. But it also holds that the defendant cannot receive … Read more
On Tuesday, the Second Circuit issued a decision in United States v. Brown. The opinion presents an interesting debate about how the federal system punishes defendants accused of child pornography charges. I encourage defense attorneys to check out both the concurrence and dissent, for some powerful arguments about the risks of unreasonable sentences in child … Read more
On 12/1/16, the Second Circuit (Newman, Winter & Cabranes) handed down a decision finding that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless GPS tracking of a suspected sex trafficker. In United States v. Gilliam, the defendant, who was suspected of prostituting an underage girl, was located thanks to GPS coordinates on his cellphone provided to the police by … Read more
From SCOTUSblog: “Bassam Salman, a Chicago grocery wholesaler, received stock tips from a friend, who had in turn received inside information from Salman’s brother-in-law, an investment banker at Citigroup. Salman made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the tips, but he was also charged with insider trading and sentenced to three years in prison. Today … Read more
In an opinion written by Judge Newman, the Second Circuit today vacated the defendants’ sentences of 30 and 21 months, respectively, for food stamp fraud for the district court to consider imposing non-guideline sentences on the ground that the defendants’ Guidelines ranges were significantly increased by the loss enhancements, an unusual feature of the Guideline … Read more
On Tuesday, in Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, the Court decided that, when a jury has returned inconsistent verdicts in a multi-count criminal case—acquittals on some counts but a conviction on another—and the conviction is subsequently vacated on appeal because of erroneous jury instructions, the double jeopardy clause does not preclude the government from retrying the … Read more
No Second Circuit decisions today. But yesterday there was a decision out of the SDNY on the issue of whether a juvenile should be transferred for prosecution as an adult. Judge Paul Engelmayer decided that a juvenile who was almost 18 years old at the time he was indicted for committing a number of violent … Read more