Another crop of three:

In United States v. Reed, No. 09-2093-cr (2d Cir. May 5, 2011), the court vacated special conditions of supervised release requiring the defendant to participate in drug and alcohol treatment. He committed the offense of conviction while in prison, without access to drugs or alcohol, and there was no evidence that alcohol or drugs had any relation to its commission.

In United States v. Cedeno, No. 09-1857-cr (2d Cir. May 2, 2011), the district court erroneously charged the jury that, in prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), “as a matter of law, a gun is a firearm.” Not all guns are firearms “because, for instance, a BB gun is not a ‘firearm.'” But, here, the error was harmless.

In United States v. Stroman, No. 10-0962-cr (2d Cir. April 26, 2011), the court considered whether a police officer conducted an “interrogation” of the defendant, for Miranda purposes, …

Here are four recent summary orders of interest.

In United States v. Durham, No. 10-1046-cr (2d Cir. April 12, 2011), a supervised release violation case, the defendant claimed that his CJA lawyer was ineffective due to a conflict of interest. The circuit observed that in a VOSR the right to counsel is “statutory, not constitutional,” and thus that “the scope of [the] right to effective assistance of counsel is arguably an open question in our Circuit.” In the end, however, the court did not resolve the question because the factual basis for the conflict of interest claim was not sufficiently developed.

In United States v. Monk, No. 09-3618-cr (2d Cir. April 11, 2011), the court vacated a drug sentence because the district court’s findings of fact were insufficient to support the imposition of the two-level gun enhancement. The court relied on evidence that the defendant had possessed guns in the …