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Henry Martin thought he might spend a few years as federal public defender, then return to private practice as a slightly older and much wiser attorney. That was almost 40 years ago. Today, he’s the longest serving federal defender in the entire country. (…

A new BOP statement sheds light on the high costs of using minimum security facilities, also known as camps, in lieu of cheaper detention alternatives, including halfway houses and home confinement. The BOP’s main facility designations are minimum, low, medium, and high security. Minimum…

Mexican national is connected to the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in the United States. Seven years later, FBI agents interrogate him in a Mexican prison. After reading him his Miranda rights, they hit him with everything: good cop, bad cop; your friends told us a different…

In July, the Fourth Circuit (over a dissent) held that "geofence" warrants ordering Google to provide law enforcement with information about every account holder who enters a particular area in a particular time period are totally…

Inmate at Pennsylvania federal prison is sexually assaulted by a guard on several occasions and subjected to inhumane conditions of confinement, like being forced to sleep on a cold metal bunk in below freezing temperatures for months. Can he bring constitutional claims against the guard and the…

The original law criminalizing illegal reentry under 8 U.S.C. 1326 grew out of a disturbing time in history marked by the rise of eugenics, the Ku Klux Klan, and deeply nativist sentiments. See, e.g., Webinar: The Racist Origins of Illegal Reentry (and how to Challenge Them in Your Practice…

In 1971, man pleads guilty to killing his wife. After a few years behind bars he gets out, gets a girlfriend, and then kills her. He agrees to trust his fate to a 3-judge panel (whose identities he knows ahead of time) instead of a jury. Which gives him the death penalty. And after some appeals…

Man and woman conspire to kill woman's former husband, which they accomplish. Both are sentenced to death. Yikes! Turns out the judge (ex parte) tasked the prosecutor with drafting the sentencing opinion with the aid of the judge's notes. (The judge and prosecutor are…

Late one night a Pittsburgh man—a felon on probation—and his girlfriend see shadowy figures breaking into her car behind their house. Girlfriend gets out her handgun she keeps in a safe, hands it to the man, and takes her three kids out of the house and to safety. Man then confronts the figures…

A California federal judge who ordered a teenager handcuffed at her father’s sentencing hearing was properly reprimanded, a judiciary conduct committee said Tuesday.

The review panel agreed with a unanimous…