Federal Criminal Law & Process – Page 30 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Seventh Circuit Clarifies Application of Fourth Amendment to Searches of Computer Hard Drives

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 22, 2010
Post category:Circuit Splits Computer Law Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Seventh Circuit

While working as a life guard instructor, Matthew Mann covertly installed a video camera in a locker room in order to take footage of women changing their clothes. After the camera was discovered and turned over to the authorities, police executed a search warrant at Mann’s home for “video tapes, CD’s or other digital media, computers, and the contents of said computers, tapes, or other electronic media, to search for images of women in locker rooms or other private areas.” In connection with the search, police seized computers and an external hard drive from Mann. Police later ran forensic software on this equipment that revealed the presence of child pornography, which formed the basis of a federal prosecution.

The district court denied Mann’s motion to suppress the images found on his hard drives. Mann then pled guilty, but preserved the right to litigate his Fourth Amendment claim on appeal. In United States v. Mann (No. 08-3041) (Rovner, J.), the Seventh Circuit affirmed. Although the scope of the warrant was limited by its terms to a search for “images of women in locker rooms or other private areas,” the court held that police did not exceed the scope of the warrant when they collected and viewed Mann’s collection of child pornography.

Seventh Circuit: Earlier Sentence Served in Juvenile Detention Facility Can Make Defendant a Career Offender

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 17, 2010
Post category:Circuit Splits Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Seventh Circuit

seventh circuit After pleading guilty in federal court to various drug-trafficking offenses, Isaiah Gregory received an eye-popping sentence of 327 months in prison — more than 27 years behind bars. Driving this extraordinary sentence was the district court’s finding that Gregory was a “career offender” under the federal sentencing guidelines. It was the career offender guideline that raised Gregory’s guidelines range from either 120-135 months (as he calculated it) or 121-151 months (as the government calculated it) to 262-327 months. Thus, the career-offender finding likely added more than fourteen years to Gregory’s sentence.

Although the term “career offender” may conjure up images of a hardened criminal with a rap sheet down to your knees, the guidelines require only two prior felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense in order to trigger the career-offender sentence enhancement.

Even at that, Gregory hardly seems the sort of defendant that the Sentencing Commission must have had in mind when it drafted the career-offender guideline. In particular, one of his two qualifying convictions was a $30 robbery he committed when he was only fifteen (he is now in his mid-20’s) — a robbery for which he was sent, not to prison, but to a juvenile detention facility. Although it is not clear that the conviction should have counted under the plain terms of the career-offender guideline, the Seventh Circuit nonetheless affirmed his sentence last week in United States v. Gregory (No. 09-2735).

Seventh Circuit Weighs in on Crime-Lab Evidence

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 13, 2010
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Evidence Federal Criminal Law & Process Seventh Circuit

The Supreme Court was not the only court wrestling this week with the admissibility of crime-lab evidence. A day after the Justices heard oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia, the Seventh Circuit decided United States v. Turner (No. 08-3109). Both cases put into question the vitality of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009).

A jury convicted Turner of selling crack to an undercover police officer. The drugs were sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory, where they were analyzed by a chemist named Hanson, who confirmed that they were indeed crack. The government intended to call Hanson to testify to this effect, but she went on maternity leave before the trial. So Hanson’s supervisor, Block, was summoned instead. Based on Hanson’s notes and data, Block testified that he agreed with her conclusion that the drugs were crack.

On appeal, Turner argued that Block’s testimony violated Melendez-Diaz.