On May 23, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States gave California officials a strict order to cut its prison population by at least 23%, reducing its inmate population from 143,435 to 109,805. In Brown v. Plata, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made the concluding 5-4...
This week marks the start of the criminal trial against Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam in federal court in Manhattan. Rajaratnam is the central figure in the largest crackdown on hedge-fund insider trading in U.S. history. He is accused of making $45...
The State of California Court of Appeals has reversed a decision by the trial court in the case People v. Powers. The original decision in January 2009 charged David Thomas Powers with one felony count of criminal threats against a Cold Stone Creamery employee along...
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has once again stood behind prosecutors’ tactics of fueling minimums in drugs cases in which defendants refuse to snitch. The court upheld, for the second time, the conviction of a drug dealer who refused to act as a government...
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court judgment - that of Judge Patel. The court held that the government's decision to carry out an earlier threat to increase a defendant's potential sentence following his refusal to cooperate as a witness in a...
In this case, Judge Cantil-Sakauye of the California Third Appellate District, held that a defendant granted deferred entry of judgment could not be terminated based solely on the inability to pay program fees of the drug diversion program she had been referred to. ...
The Ninth Circuit Court reversed an order in the district court. The Ninth Circuit held that grand jury subpoenas for documents were enforceable where they came within subpoena power through litigation initiated after the grand jury investigation became public. The...
The Ninth Circuit Court reversed a district court order on Friday, December 3rd, that dismissed an indictment, remanding the action for further proceedings. The Court held that "honest services" mail fraud did not require proof of a fiduciary relationship nor did it...
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment holding that defendants who knew that under federal law that cannabis remained illegal, and could not be prescribed by physicians, were not misled by county sheriff’s deputies who purportedly assured them that...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court judgment which included traffic violation citations as “arrests” when calculating the defendant’s criminal history under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a)(2). The Court agreed with the Seventh Circuit in its application of United States...