The United States Sentencing Commission releases new Quick Facts periodically, which give readers "basic facts about a single area of federal crime in an easy-top-read, two page format."
Quick Facts published in September include:
Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another Texas death row inmate’s case challenging the state’s DNA testing statute as unconstitutional. Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809 (Oct. 4, 2024) (cert. granted).
Following up on the Supreme Court's Padilla v. Kentucky holding that non-citizen criminal defendants must be advised of any risk of deportation associated with a guilty plea, En banc Second Circuit: If a guilty plea could lead to denaturalization and deportation, lawyers must advise their clients of that fact or they're giving unconstitutionally ineffective counsel.
Wednesday, the federal government shed light on a new wave of scams targeting attorneys across the country.
Attorneys across the country are being targeted with fake electronic filing notifications, in which emails purporting to come from the federal Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system lead recipients to a malicious website with computer viruses.
Nevada man's trial in March 2021 began with one of the jurors participating via Zoom for the first two days because of a possible Covid-19 infection. Man is convicted and appeals, asserting that the remote participation was akin to depriving him of his constitutional rights to a fair and impartial jury trial. Ninth Circuit: If you don't want jurors in your criminal trial to participate by Zoom, don't consent to their doing so.
Mother of minor children named as victims in an indictment testified that she believed her children and that her children wouldn’t “lie about anything like this.” You don't see many plain-error rulings that invalidate triple life sentences, but the Tenth Circuit takes the opportunity to remind us that you really super-duper can't have one witness vouch and testify that she believes other witnesses are telling the truth. No excuse for this. Conviction vacated. New trial.
Disappointed after arriving at the Social Security Administration's office in Philadelphia and finding it closed by the pandemic, local man gets into a scrape with two of the security guards. He's convicted of assaulting federal officials. The man: But they were private security guards contracting with the feds. So they're not really federal officials. Technically. Gov't: Yes, they are. District Court: Yes, they are. Third Circuit: No, they're technically not! Enter a judgment of acquittal.
The case is United States v. Washington, 21-3299 (3d Cir. Aug. 24, 2023).