It was an unusually busy week in the Circuit, with five precedential opinions. None of them, however, benefitted defendants. Most interesting among the opinions was Moseley, where CA2 addressed conflict of laws provisions in payday loan agreements, finding that NY...
Protecting Your Rights And Your Future
Ed Sapone’s Decisions of the Week
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED OCTOBER 30, 2020
Two interesting decisions from the Circuit this week addressed the authority of a district court to reduce a sentence under the First Step Act: the precedential decision in Echeverry, which addressed eligibility in the face of a mandatory minimum sentence resulting...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED OCTOBER 23, 2020
Another week with little to report in the Circuit. In the State courts there were two significant decisions in NYCA—Batticks and Goldman—both going against the defendants. The split decisions follow a familiar pattern. DiFiore, Garcia, and Feinman have shown...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED OCTOBER 16, 2020
While CA2 released no precedential decisions this week, its summary decision in Brettschneider is worth a read, as a cautionary tale. There, CA2 affirmed the convictions of two former criminal defense attorneys who overstepped in their advocacy on behalf of their...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED AUG 28, 2020
The most interesting decision from the Second Circuit this week was the summary order in United States v. Tapia, where CA2 recalled its prior decision affirming defendant’s conviction, finding that a previously-unchallenged jury instruction directly conflicted with...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED AUG 14, 2020
This was a very quiet August week in the Second Circuit and the New York State appellate courts with only a single decision on a criminal matter published by the Circuit, which was on a technical point, and a single decision from each of the First and Second...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED AUG 7, 2020
We have an interesting decision related to federal sentencing this week from CA2 in United States v. Huberfeld, where the Circuit vacated the sentence imposed by SDNY Senior U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. CA2 found that the sentencing court improperly...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED JULY 31, 2020
The courts slowed down for their traditional mid-summer break, and published only two opinions of note this week. In United States v. Smith, CA2 created significant new law relating to how long the police can delay when obtaining a search warrant for previously seized...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED JULY 24, 2020
This was an unusually busy week in CA2, with six precedential opinions in criminal cases. Most interesting among them was United States v. Solano, in which the Circuit reversed as plain error an instruction that threw defendant under the bus relative to his interest...
DECISIONS OF THE WEEK ENDED APRIL 17, 2020
What CA2 lacked in volume this week, it made up for in quality, issuing three significant decisions, two of which---Nolan and Bramer---resulted in reversals for defendants. New York’s appellate courts were quiet, issuing only a handful of decisions in criminal cases,...