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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
October 4-8, 2010.

United States First Circuit, 10/07/2010
US v. Figueroa-Gonzalez
Conviction of defendant for carjacking and firearm use during and in relation to a crime of violence is affirmed as there was no error, clear or otherwise, as the district court was presented with conflicting evidence and chose to conclude that the evidence was stronger in favor of competency to plead guilty.

United States First Circuit, 10/08/2010
Tevlin v. Spencer
District court’s denial of defendant’s request for habeas relief from his convictions for first-degree murder, armed robbery, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, is affirmed where: 1) defendant has failed to demonstrate the existence of ineffective assistance of counsel in any of his theories; and 2) the Massachusetts discovery procedures are not on their face unconstitutional and defendant has not established that their application here violated due process. .

United States Second Circuit, 10/06/2010
Matthews v. US
Defendant’s convictions for racketeering, drug-related murder, and the use of a firearm are affirmed where, while drug-related murder can be punishable by death if certain aggravating circumstances are specified in the charging instrument, no such aggravating factors were specified in the information. .
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A significant note from the Duke Law Journal by Joanna Huang with the above title has been posted today September 29 on the Sentencing Law and Policy blog According to Ms. Huang, “…in 1987 the United States political and social systems lost trust in the judiciary and severely limited its authority by enacting the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.” She goes on to observe that in 2005 trust was restored in the judiciary when United States v. Booker made the Sentencing Guidelines advisory; and that, although Booker provides for increase in judicial discretion, judges are still unable to correct sentences imposed during the intervening eighteen years because Booker does not apply retroactively.

For more, we recommend that you go to the Sentencing Law and Policy blog

NOTE:

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.Following up on our postiing about U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Bryer, we wanted to share with you the following excerpts from news and commentary sent to us by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School

September 24, 2010.

1.. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee again voted to approve four of President Obama’s nominees for federal judgeships. Goodwin Liu, a Berkeley law professor for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Louis Butler Jr., a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Chen of California, and lawyer John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island – all of whom had been previously approved by the Senate panel but never received a final vote on the Senate floor – were approved along party lines. The Blog of Legal Times says the vote indicates a partisan showdown in the weeks before the heated mid-term elections. Two opposing editorials illustrate how divisive the issue is: a New York Times editorial recently blasted “An Extreme Judicial Blockade” by Senate Republicans while a Washington Times editorial stated that a “GOP Senate [is] needed to block bad judges.”

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Theodore Pollack, Senior Law Librarian at our public access law library writes: “Here is an interesting feature for Google Scholar regarding attempting to locate journal articles that are not easily available in Westlaw, Lexis, or HeinOnline. If you set the preferences in Google Scholar to libraries that you have access to, Scholar is supposed to inform if the article is available online thorough a digital subscription.”
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/librarylinks.html

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The National Archives has created a new online public website that features more than 3,000 historic documents, photos and videos available for download, along with applications for teachers to create and share history lessons about the items, officials announced.

The new website, DocsTeach.org, offers historic items such as a short newsreel of American war planes attacking Japan in 1944, photos of President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration and a court document on the conviction of activist Susan B. Anthony for voting before it was legal for women to vote….

Click here to see complete article.

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I often find there is little time to read all of the books I would like, or even need, to and therefore find myself resorting to book reviews. Last Sunday I read a review that to me seemd exceptional and would like to share it with you.

David Badertscher

REVIEW::

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Apparently the court system in Missouri thinks so. In her article, Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences, publsihed in the September 18 New York Times, Monica Davey reports that “When judges here [Missouri] sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the State of Missouri”. According to the article “legal experts say no other state systematically provides such information to judges, a practice put into effect here last month by the state’s sentencing advisory commission, an appointed board that offers guidance on criminal sentencing.”

Smart Sentenciing Volume 2 Number 5 August 17, 2010 A Bulletin of the Missouri Sentencing Commission includes a discussion of cost of sentencing as a variable when determining sentences. According to the Bulletin the Missouri Sentencing Commission has added data about the risk of being reincarcerated and the costs of sentences to its online application as a variable to enhance the availability of objective inform

I found it somwhat surprising that “….no other state systematically provides such information to judges”. On alternative for those interested in pursuing this subjct further would be to start by following a search I conducted on the National Center for State Courts website using the terms cost and incarceration.

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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
September 13-17, 2010.

Criminal Law & Procedure

United States First Circuit, 09/14/2010
Merlonghi v. US
In plaintiff’s suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), for the actions of a U.S. Special Agent, involving an automobile accident, district court’s grant of government’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is affirmed as plaintiff’s claim under 28 U.S.C. section 1346(b)(1) was properly dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because the agent was not acting within the scope of his employment when he crashed into plaintiff during a car chase. .

United States First Circuit, 09/16/2010
Fusi v. O’Brien
District court’s denial of defendant’s request for habeas relief from his rape conviction is vacated and remanded as the district court should have dismissed the petition without prejudice because the defendant failed to exhaust his ineffective assistance of counsel claim in state court. .

United States First Circuit, 09/16/2010
Gautier v. Wall
Defendant’s application for a certificate of appealability is denied and the judgment of the district court is vacated as the court lacked jurisdiction to consider defendant’s second or successive petition without authorization, and not one of defendant’s claims meets the gatekeeping requirements of section 2244(b).
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Constitutional Law

United States Second Circuit, 09/14/2010
Chase Grp. Alliance LLC v. N.Y. Dep’t of Fin.
In an action claiming that plaintiffs’ right to due process was violated by liens placed upon their properties by the City of New York, dismissal of the action is affirmed where the complaint alleged that New York law afforded appellants a right to notice and access to a tribunal to assert their objections before the liens were imposed, and thus, appellants’ right to due process was not violated. ..

United States Second Circuit, 09/17/2010
Faghri v. Univ. of Conn.
In an action claiming that defendants unconstitutionally retaliated against plaintiff for his exercise of his right to free speech in violation of the First Amendment and violated his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment when they removed him from his position as dean, a denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity is reversed where plaintiff had no clearly established right to remain as dean while voicing opposition to the policies of the team he was hired to be part of.

United States Second Circuit, 09/17/2010
Van Allen v. Cuomo
In an action challenging New York Election Law sections 5-210 and 5-304, which prevented plaintiff’s enrollment in a party from becoming effective until after the November 2007 general election, dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where plaintiff did not indicate that he currently intended or had already attempted to change his party enrollment again, and thus his claims were moot.
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