The full U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved Judge Melissa R. DuBose’s historic nomination as the first person of color and first openly LGBTQ judge to serve on the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island (view full article).
The Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow to potentially thousands of federal prison inmates by ruling against a convicted drug dealer seeking a shorter sentence under a 2018 law.
The issue involved how to read a “safety valve” in federal criminal sentencing laws, which allows defendants to avoid the often lengthy mandatory minimum sentences scattered throughout the federal criminal code. The safety valve requires the defendant to satisfy a laundry list of each of five separate rules.
The bipartisan United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously today to prohibit conduct for which a person was acquitted in federal court from being used in calculating a sentence range under the federal guidelines (view USSC press release).
“Not guilty means not guilty,” said Commission Chair Judge Carlton W. Reeves.
On April 24, 2024, President Joseph R. Biden nominated Danna Jackson to serve as a federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of Montana. If confirmed , Jackson would be the first American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian to serve as a federal judge in Montana (view full article).
Feds: Hey Second Circuit, could you issue a revised opinion in this drug sentencing case to make non-precedential a December opinion that found the federal controlled substances list was narrower than New York state's? We want you to make clear that the part that could help out future New York criminal defendants was dictum. Second Circuit: Dictum? We hardly know 'em! (Which is more substantive legal analysis than your bad-faith argument deserves.) We said what we said. And what we said is our holding.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday he will not allow Pennsylvania to execute any inmates while he is in office and called for the state’s lawmakers to repeal the death penalty (view full article).
Shapiro, inaugurated last month, said he will refuse to sign execution warrants and will use his power as governor to grant reprieves to any inmate whose execution is scheduled.
Florida man: requiring registration and reporting after completing my sentence of probation on a charge of lewd or lascivious conduct constitutes illegal custody. Files habeas. To seek a writ of habeas corpus, one must be "in custody," and that doesn't necessarily mean "physical custody" (per SCOTUS in 1963). Eleventh Circuit: Nevertheless, individuals subject to Florida's lifetime registration and reporting requirements for sex offenders are not in custody.
In Lackawanna County, Penn., if a court finds you can afford to pay child support but you didn't, you get a prison term and won't have access to work-release to earn money unless you spend the first half of the sentence doing "community service" at a private recycling center, for nearly no pay in unsanitary and dangerous conditions. Three people sued: This is a 13th Amendment and Fair Labor Standards Act violation. Third Circuit: That may sound like involuntary servitude, but it doesn't violate the Thirteenth Amendment.
In en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will not reconsider its opinion that "and" does not mean "or" in a case about the First Step Act of 2018. (view previous coverage)
The case is United States v. Lopez, No. 19-50305 (9th Cir. Jan 27, 2023).
The “safety valve” sentencing provision in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) allows a district court to sentence a defendant below the mandatory-minimum sentence for certain drug offenses if the defendant can show he or she doesn’t have all three conviction categories, together, that are listed in the statute, the Ninth Circuit held Friday in United States v. Lopez, No. 19-50305 (9th Cir. May 21, 2021).
The First Step Act expanded this rule:
(1) the defendant does not have—