Defendant’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm is affirmed where: 1) no constructive amendment of the indictment occurred because neither the evidence at trial nor the jury instructions implied that defendant could be convicted of anything other than being a felon in possession of a firearm that had been in and [...]
In a dormant Commerce Clause challenge to a Texas law allowing alcohol retailers to ship to the door of their local consumers, partial summary judgment for plaintiffs is vacated where the Twenty-First Amendment permitted Texas to authorize its in-state, permit-holding retailers to make sales and prohibit out-of-state retailers from doing the same. Read Siesta Village [...]
Defendant’s tax fraud conviction is affirmed where: 1) a rational jury could find that a fax sent by a participant in defendant’s investment program updating her contact information in anticipation of future payments was an important part of “lulling” participants into believing that defendant’s investment scheme was a legal, secure financial program; 2) defendant did [...]
In a tort and civil RICO action against an investment company through which a third party funneled certain insurance companies’ funds before moving them to his Swiss bank account, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed in part where there was no evidence that defendant knew or ought to have known that the funds it processed [...]
In an action seeking to declare unconstitutional the Louisiana Secretary of State’s deadline for submitting qualifying papers entitling candidates to be on the ballot for the 2008 presidential election, dismissal of the complaint as moot is affirmed where plaintiffs failed to show a reasonable expectation that the Secretary would again unilaterally change filing deadlines in [...]
The $100 special assessment portion of the district court’s order revoking defendant’s supervised release for illegal reentry into the U.S. is vacated where the district court erred in reimposing the unpaid assessment from defendant’s sentence for a prior offense, because neither 18 U.S.C. section 3013 nor 18 U.S.C. section 3583, which concerned supervised release, sanctioned [...]
District court’s classification of defendant as a career offender under U.S.S.G. section 4B1.1 based on his prior convictions in South Carolina for four counts of second degree burglary of a dwelling and one count of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature is reversed and remanded where: 1) defendant’s four prior convictions for [...]
In plaintiff’s retaliation claim under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 against a town and one of its supervisors, partial grant of defendant’s motion for summary judgment regarding the First Amendment retaliation claim is reversed and remanded where plaintiff’s factual allegations were sufficient to raise more than a mere possibility of unlawful First Amendment retaliation on the [...]
District court’s grant of conditional habeas relief to a defendant convicted of first degree murder is affirmed as withholding impeachment evidence regarding a witness’s status as a confidential informer was material under Brady because there was a reasonable probability that disclosure of the evidence would have resulted in a different outcome for the proceeding. Read [...]
A petition for review of BIA’s final order of removal of a German citizen is denied as, petitioner’s convictions under 18 U.S.C. sections 371 and 1001 (making false statements to an agency of the U.S. and conspiracy for failure to provide accurate financial records in connection with a grant he received from the government) constituted [...]