With only one new opinion in a criminal case, there’s not much to choose from. Unfortunately, United States v. Sainz-Preciado (No. 07-3706) was a fairly routine case that broke no new legal ground. In its opinion, the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Tinder) affirmed the defendant’s 262-month sentence for cocaine trafficking over various objections to the way the guidelines sentence was calculated and imposed.
One aspect of the case merits at least brief comment. The defendant was awarded only a two-point, not the possible three-point, reduction in offense level under the sentencing guidelines for “acceptance of responsibility.” The third point requires a motion from the government, and the government did not make such a motion for Sainz-Preciado. Normally, defendants who enter a timely guilty plea, as Sainz-Preciadio did, receive the full acceptance benefit. However, Sainz-Preciado was penalized by the government for contesting his responsibility at the sentencing hearing for drug deals that he was not even charged with. This is a nice reminder for defense counsel of the perils of challenging “relevant conduct” at sentencing — and, to invoke one of Justice Scalia’s favorite themes, of the extent to which the ... Read more..
Archive for May, 2009
Broward criminal attorney finds it interesting how the media and the general public fixate on certain crimes, while many more go unnoticed and, in many cases, unsolved and unpunished. In the 1990s, several high-profile cases captured the attention of the masses, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the death of JonBenét Ramsey. Fort Lauderdale criminal attorney Moore believes that those cases received the kind of media attention that Casey Anthony has been receiving over the past months.
JonBenét Ramsey was a little girl who lived with her family in Boulder, Colorado. Born in 1990, she became a star in the beauty pageants for her age group. JonBenét was reported missing on December 26, 1996, after her mother Patsy apparently found a ransom note in the family’s home. The note demanded $118,000 for the child’s safe return. The figure was the same amount as a bonus John Ramsey, JonBenét’s father, had received from his job. When police and family members were searching the home hours later, John Ramsey found his daughter’s body underneath a ... Read more..
Famed music producer Phil Spector was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison today, according to Reuters.
Spector was found guilty April 13 of second degree murder in the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson.
Doron Weinberg, Spector’s criminal defense attorney, has vowed to appeal the conviction.
The conviction came after a 2007 mistrial, in which the hung jury could not reach a verdict after 15 days of deliberation. The jury in the current trial deliberated for 30 hours before reaching its guilty verdict.
The prosecution’s case included the testimony of five women who illustrated Spector’s history of threatening women with guns. The defense says this testimony should have been inadmissible, and negatively influenced the jury.
The sentence includes California’s minimum 15 years for the second-degree murder charge, plus an additional 4 years for the use of a gun in the commission of a felony.
Spector, 69, will be eligible for parole in 2028.
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A U.S. District Court judge ruled that mandatory DNA collection for all felony suspects is constitutional, dealing a major blow to civil rights advocates and criminal defense attorneys.
Judge Gregory J. Hallows on Thursday upheld the 2006 DNA Fingerprint Act, a federal law that allows law enforcement officers to collect DNA from anyone “arrested, facing charges, or convicted” of felony crimes.
The case before Judge Hallows involved a California man arrested on child pornography charges who refused to submit to a DNA swab test, arguing that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
Civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that allowing police to collect DNA from anyone arrest, not just convicted, of a felony crime opens a door for abuse.
“We think this ruling is incorrect. It ignores the presumption of innocence and it does not pay enough attention to the protections of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” said Michael Risher, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.
Most states’ statutes only allow for DNA collection after a conviction. The new ruling could greatly ... Read more..
I am among what must be a million or so people who receive e-mail messages from President Obama. They come addressed to “David” and are signed “President Barack Obama.” The most recent concerned the Sotomayor nomination and included an earnest four-minute video in which the President offered his reasons for the nomination.
I found the video impressive for various reasons. The President of course comes across as photogenic, genuine, and articulate. My goodness, he did not muff a single word! He also is a superb ideologue. In discussing the Sotomayor nomination, he skillfully invokes the importance of hard work, the rags-to-riches myth, the notion of a neutral rule of law, and assorted other staples of the dominant ideology. The President also assures us that the nominee herself is not an ideologue. The disavowal of ideology might in itself be the video’s most ideological ploy.
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