Complete Blog Archives

Despite the wild events in the Capitol this week, the machinery of the Federal and State appellate courts continued on. The Second Circuit’s sentencing remand in Brogdon for the district court’s failure to consider, or at least articulate how it had considered,...

In this last week of the year, the Circuit released only a single opinion in a criminal case, United States v. Ho, which dealt with complicated Foreign Corrupt Practices Act questions. In the state courts, AD2’s decision in Harris is worth a read. There, AD2 took the...

Another quiet holiday week in the Circuit. But New York’s appellate divisions were relatively busy, with reversals in the Second, Third, and Fourth Departments. The Second Department’s decision in Antoine is a particularly interesting one, where the trial court...

A quiet pre-holiday week in the Federal and State appellate courts. While CA2 released a number of summary orders, there was no relief for defendants, with the exception of a stricken supervised-release condition in Olmeda. In the NY courts, the only decisions of note...

In a relatively quiet week, CA2’s decision in Gadsden is a reminder that the Federal judiciary continues to approve absurdly long sentences for drug offenses, notwithstanding repeated reforms with the stated purpose of reducing them. In the state courts, AD2 reversed...

While it was a quiet week in the Circuit, there were significant and interesting decisions from three of NY’s appellate divisions. AD1’s decision in Feliciano, AD2’s decision in Hollmond, and AD3’s decision in Holtslander are all worth a read. Second Circuit In United...

This week, in Portillo, CA2 expressed its frustration with the now more than thirty-year-old decision to eliminate parole. But CA2 was not frustrated enough by the consequence of parole elimination to find a 55-year sentence imposed upon a 15-year-old, substantively...

After several busy weeks, the Circuit was quiet this week, with no precedential opinions and only two summary orders in criminal cases. The state courts were busier. NYCA released several decisions this week, including an interesting one in Pena, which continued to...

While there were several interesting precedential opinions from the Circuit this week—Ramos, Houtar, & Gray—none of them granted relief to defendants. In the state courts, on the other hand, there were a number of significant decisions from the Second and Fourth...

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...