The United States Supreme Court recently decided a number of criminal cases of interest to citizens, criminal law practitioners, and constitutional law aficionados. This roundup summarizes the following cases: Bailey v. United States (search & seizure); Evans v....
In United States v. I.E.V., a Juvenile Male, the Ninth Circuit reiterated the parameters of a frisk pursuant to a Terry stop. The facts of the case involved a male (juvenile) passenger of a car which was detained due to an alert by a drug-sniffing dog. The officers...
This week the California Court of Appeal concluded that a driver who deliberately races through a red light at a busy intersection and collides with another vehicle, causing injury to another, can be convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. “Assault with a deadly...
Defendant's conviction for sale and possession of marijuana was reversed and remanded where the trial court erred in disallowing the defendant from offering his defense under the Medical Marijuana Program Act (MMPA), with respect to distribution to patients who...
Mayor Lee has remained firm in his initiative to implement a Stop-and-Frisk policy in San Francisco as a means of gun control, particularly in the wake of the movie theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. The policy, which already exists in New York City,...
On July 16, 2012, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in United States v. Pariseau that possession with intent to distribute qualifies as a substantial step towards the commission of a crime; therefore, it established federal venue in the district where the...
On June 22, 2012, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in United States v. Suarez that upon successfully completing California’s deferred entry of judgment program, that conviction cannot be subsequently used in a later federal sentencing for a California drug...
On April 10, 2012, an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals limited the application of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), 18 U.S.C. § 1030, to violations of restrictions in accessing information, i.e. “hacking,” rather than criminalizing...
The United States Supreme Court, led by Judge Scalia, ruled that a federal district court had the discretion to order that defendant's federal sentence run concurrently to the anticipated, but not yet imposed, state court sentence. This was Sester v. United States,...
The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously this past January that attaching a GPS device to suspect’s car constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus requires a valid search warrant. The case, United States v. Jones, arose when the...