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January 26, 2009

CIVIL PROCEDURE, CIVIL RIGHTS, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, No. 07-854 In the context of 42 U.S.C. section 1983 civil rights suits, a prosecutor’s absolute immunity extends to claims that the prosecution failed to disclose impeachment material due to failure to: 1) properly train prosecutors; 2) properly supervise prosecutors; or 3) establish an information system containing potential impeachment material about informants..

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Former NY Senate Majority Leader Indicted on Federal Corruption Charges US V. JOSEPH L. BRUNO (U.S. Dist. Ct., N.D.N.Y., Jan. 23, 2009) – Republican Joseph Bruno, the former New York Senate Majority Leader, was indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges accusing him of public corruption by accepting nearly $3.2 million over more than a decade from labor unions.

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January 19 – January 23, 2009
U.S. Supreme Court, January 21, 2009 Locke v. Karass, No. 07-610 In a case involving circumstances where a local union charges nonmembers a service fee that (among other things) reflects an affiliation fee that the local union pays to its national union organization, a portion of which the national union uses to pay for litigation expenses incurred in large part on behalf of other local units, the Supreme Court rules that the Constitution permits including such an element in the local’s charge to nonmembers as long as: 1) the subject matter of the extra-local litigation is of a kind that would be chargeable if the litigation were local; and 2) the litigation charge is reciprocal in nature.

U.S. Supreme Court, January 21, 2009 Pearson v. Callahan, No. 07-751 In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action against state law enforcement officers who conducted a warrantless search of plaintiff’s house incident to his arrest for the sale of methamphetamine to an undercover informant (whom plaintiff had voluntarily admitted to the premises), a court of appeals ruling reversing a ruling that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity is reversed where: 1) the procedure the Supreme Court mandated in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement; and 2) petitioners were entitled to qualified immunity on the ground that it was not clearly established at the time of the search that their conduct was unconstitutional. ..

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, January 22, 2009 Abraham v. Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst., No. 08-1655 In an employment discrimination action brought by former employee, a researcher on the biological aspect of zebrafish, who was terminated after he stated he did not believe in the theory of evolution, denial of plaintiff’s motion for leave to file an amended complaint, as well as a decision not to apply equitable tolling principles in granting defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, are affirmed where: 1) the request to amend was futile; and 2) the doctrine of equitable tolling could not apply as plaintiff failed to exercise diligence in meeting any of the filing deadlines for his employment discrimination claim Continue reading

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January 19 – January 23, 2009
U.S. Supreme Court, January 21, 2009 Waddington v. Sarausad, No. 07-772 In a case arising from a fatal drive-by shooting of a group of students standing in front of a Seattle high school, grant of a petition for habeas relief from defendant’s conviction for being an accomplice to second-degree murder, attempted murder, and assault is reversed where: 1) Washington courts reasonably concluded that the trial court’s instruction to the jury regarding accomplice liability was not ambiguous; and 2) even were it ambiguous, the circuit court still erred in finding the instruction so ambiguous as to cause a federal constitutional violation.

U.S. Supreme Court, January 21, 2009 Pearson v. Callahan, No. 07-751 In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action against state law enforcement officers who conducted a warrantless search of plaintiff’s house incident to his arrest for the sale of methamphetamine to an undercover informant (whom plaintiff had voluntarily admitted to the premises), a court of appeals ruling reversing a ruling that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity is reversed where: 1) the procedure the Supreme Court mandated in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement; and 2) petitioners were entitled to qualified immunity on the ground that it was not clearly established at the time of the search that their conduct was unconstitutional.

U.S. Supreme Court, January 21, 2009 Spears v. US, No. 08–5721 In proceedings arising from the government’s appeal of a sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base and powder cocaine, a circuit court’s ruling reversing a mandatory minimum sentence is reversed where district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack-cocaine Sentencing Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines Continue reading

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January 23, 2009 From the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section “> www.abanet.org/crimjust“>

Spears v. US, No. 08–5721

The government appealed a sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base and powder cocaine in which the District Court reduced the sentencing range for crack cocaine from the 100 to 1 ratio to a 20 to one ratio based on the U. S. Sentencing Commission guidelines and the Smith and Perry cases. The District Court imposed a sentence based on a 20 to 1 ratio which was its interpretation of the mandatory minimum sentence in the case. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district Court’s interpretation of the minimum sentence in the case and imposed a tougher sentence based on the 100 to 1 ratio. The Supreme Court remanded for rehearing by the Eighth Circuit which again imposed the tougher sentence. On rehearing the Supreme Court reversed stating, “we now clarify that district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack cocaine Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines.”

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January 21, 2009,

President Obama also released the following Memoranda on January 21: “the Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act, which re-establishes a presumption of openness under FOIA and orders the Office of Management and Budget to ‘update guidance to the agencies to increase and improve information dissemination to the public,’ and the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, which lays out several ways in which the new Administration will ‘work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.’ ” Both address issues of longtime inerest and concern to the American Association of Law Libraries

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Update from the Lexis Alert Service,

January 19.21, 2009:

1. People v. Starnes, 5042, 5249/05, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT, 2009 NY Slip Op 125; 2009 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 119, January 15, 2009, Decided, January 15, 2009, Entered, THE LEXIS PAGINATION OF THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING RELEASE OF THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION., THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND SUBJECT TO REVISION BEFORE PUBLICATION IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

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State of New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library (New York County)

Inspired by the recent New York Unified Court System Report Green Justice: An environmental Action Plan for the New York State Court System*, the New York Supreme Court Law Library, Criminal Term (New York County) is pleased to announce a major upgrade to the section of our website dealing with search engines. Our objective is to best serve your information needs through enhanced access to reference and research sources. Consequently, we have have provided a wide variety of general Internet search engines as well as search engines that specifically target legal information sites. Moreover, we have included in our resource page meta search engines which combine the search results and different technologies of multiple companies (e.g. Google and MSN). We hope that these resources are another means for you to conveniently and best retrieve information from the Internet. Our new search engine page is located at: /nyc_criminal/search_engines.shtml .

You may wish to reacquaint yourselves with out library homepage which is located at: http://www.nycourts.gov/library/nyc_criminal/ .

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