Appeals

Yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s broad reading of aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028(a)(1), which requires a two-year mandatory add-on sentence. See Dubin v. United States, No. 22-10 (June 8, 2023).  Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of a unanimous court, holding that under §1028A(a)(1), a defendant “uses” another person’s means of identification “in relation to” a predicate offense when the use is at the crux of what makes the conduct criminal.

In 1993, an Arkansas woman is brutally murdered in her apartment while her two young children watch from a closet. A man is convicted, twice sentenced to death due to a reversal. In the days before his scheduled execution, he seeks DNA testing—much improved since the 90s—on 26 pieces of evidence, which allegedly point to a perpetrator of a different race and would thus exonerate the condemned man.

The Supreme Court will take up yet another dispute involving the oft-litigated Armed Career Criminal Act, this time in relation to frequently changing federal drug laws.

The law at issue in the pair of cases granted Monday imposes a mandatory 15-year minimum for certain firearms offenses in which a defendant previously has been convicted of “serious drug offenses.”

A San Antonio man, during a traffic stop outside his mother's house, throws his jacket onto a garbage can on her property. Police grab the jacket and find a gun inside. Felon in possession? Suppress the evidence? District court: No suppression Fifth Circuit: Suppression. Tossing an item onto property you often visit and are welcome isn't abandonment, so the cops couldn't just search the jacket willy-nilly. You need a warrant for that but you didn't get one. Conviction vacated. Dissent: Anyone could've taken that jacket.

North Carolina man is involuntarily committed after threatening to kill a U.S. congressman. Years later, he's conditionally discharged, and though he breaks lots of rules at his halfway house, it's not obvious the violations mean he's especially likely to be dangerous to the public. Recommit him? Fourth Circuit: "While there have been profound developments in the science of risk assessment in the past three decades, they are unmatched by updated, corresponding legal guidance respecting how the inquiry ought to proceed for those under a federal civil commitment order.

Federal district courts near the southwest border are bracing for a potential increase in cases, as the Trump administration pledges to prioritize immigration enforcement over other criminal matters (view full article).

Chief judges of trial courts in southern Texas and California said preparations include working to ensure they have space available to process more defendants and interpreters on-call and closely monitoring border numbers.

President Donald Trump on Monday named his one-time defense attorney and current White House counselor Alina Habba to be the interim top federal prosecutor in the District of New Jersey (view full article). 

Habba, who turns 41 Tuesday, takes over the interim post from John Giordano, whom was sworn in as New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney earlier this month. 

In state court news, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has elected to use its "extraordinary superintendence powers" and hold that about 27,000 defendants who pleaded guilty to DUI from 2011 to 2019 are entitled to a conclusive presumption of "egregious government misconduct" and to the suppression of the breathalyzer results if they seek to withdraw their plea—thanks to an investigation that uncovered "a history of intentional withho

The Alabama Constitution of 1901 was enacted with the specific purpose of establishing white supremacy. To accomplish this goal, the 1901 constitution, among other things, contained a provision disenfranchising anyone convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. After the Supreme Court held that provision unconstitutional in 1985, the state enacted a new constitutional amendment that disenfranchised only those who committed felonies involving moral turpitude. So we're good now? Eleventh Circuit: Yeah, this is fine.

It's generally a crime to possess a machinegun. If you affix a "bump stock" to a semiautomatic rifle, it functions essentially like a machinegun. So, do you now have a "machinegun"? ATF: yes. District court: yes. Sixth Circuit (en banc) (2021): We are evenly split and cannot decide. What do you want us to do? Sixth Circuit (three-judge panel, 2023): Um, since our full court can't decide this, and a bunch of other judges are all over the place, and the same question is before us yet again, let's just go with the rule of lenity. Not a machinegun.