The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Peugh v. United States that the Ex Post Facto clause is violated when a defendant is sentenced under US Sentencing Guidelines promulgated after the offense was committed, and the new Guidelines version provides for a higher sentencing range than the version in place at the time of the […]

The Supreme Court in Maryland v. King, No. 12-207,  has held that when officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and bring a suspect to a station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is a legitimate police […]

The First Circuit has ruled that where a cell phone is seized incident to a lawful arrest, the phone’s data categorically cannot be searched absent a warrant.  United States v. Wurie, No. 11-1792 (1st Cir. May 17, 2013) says that the search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement places a burden on the […]

The Supreme Court in Moncrieffe v. Holder, No. 11-702, has held that a Georgia state conviction for possession with intent to distribute, for no remuneration, a small amount of marijuana is not an aggravated felony under section 1101(a)(43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  A noncitizen convicted of the offense thus is not […]

In Missouri v. McNeely, the Supreme Court has ruled that the natural metabolization of alcohol in the bloodstream does not present a per se emergency that justifies an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for non-consensual blood testing in all drunk-driving cases.  Exigency in the drunk driving context must be determined case […]

If you are contemplating a challenge in a crack case that was sentenced after August 3, 2010, where the sentence was determined based upon a pre-Fair Sentencing Act (“FSA”) mandatory minimum, you should move for relief before June 21, 2013.   The applicability of the FSA to pre-FSA conduct sentenced after August 3, 2010 was decided in 

The First Circuit ruled in US v. Sparks that police acted in good faith in attaching a GPS tracker to a car without a warrant, since under binding precedent at the time, there was no Fourth Amendment violation.  It did not decide whether the use of the GPS tracker violated the Fourth Amendment after the Supreme Court’s decision […]

The Supreme Court in Florida v. Jardines  affirmed a Florida state court suppression, ruling that a dog sniff on a front porch constitutes a search.

The Sixth Circuit in United States v. Williams  recently found unjustified an obstruction enhancement based on a defendant’s use of an alias at arraignment.  The Court reasoned that the alias was not material to any issue decided by the magistrate, since there was no record basis to find that it would have had a […]