Federal Criminal Law & Process – Page 58 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Seventh Circuit Week in Review

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:October 19, 2008
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Seventh Circuit

Beginning with this post, I will provide a regular weekend review of new Seventh Circuit opinions in criminal cases. The past week was actually very quiet on the criminal front, with only one new opinion (and that one not especially significant in terms of discussing or modifying the law). In United States v. Jackson, the three defendants were convicted of mail fraud in connection with a scheme to bilk their car insurance carriers by submitting false theft claims. The Seventh Circuit had little apparent difficulty in affirming the convictions over the defendants’ arguments that the evidence was insufficient, that material evidence had been withheld by the government, and that evidence of a prior conviction had been improperly admitted.

Priorities for the New President: Restore Parole in the Federal Criminal Justice System

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:October 3, 2008
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process

This is part of a series of posts this month focusing on priorities for a new presidential administration.

In the area of federal criminal law, the next administration ought to undertake a number of initiatives: polish the Department of Justice’s tarnished image by ensuring that appointments to leadership positions are rigorously merit-based and by avoiding dubious prosecutions that appear politically motivated; make the federal criminal justice system a real leader and innovator in developing community-based alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders; likewise, make the federal system a leader and innovator in implementing restorative justice and other processes that are more responsive to victim needs than conventional criminal case processing; seek the elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing statutes; and bring greater coherence and transparency to an executive clemency process that was extraordinarily kind to Scooter Libby, but that rarely does anything for offenders who are not politically connected. Although I regard all of these as matters of considerable urgency–and will perhaps blog about some of them at greater length later this month–I might put still another initiative at the top of the list: restore the possibility of parole release for federal prisoners.

What Is an “Offense”?: Another ACCA Puzzle for the Courts

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:September 28, 2008
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process U.S. Supreme Court

I’ve posted a few times on recent Armed Career Criminal Act cases (e.g., here). With several Supreme Court decisions last term on the scope of the ACCA, this has been an especially dynamic area of federal sentencing law. The cases nicely illustrate one of the fundamental problems with the ACCA, which is that Congress sought to single out certain categories of prior state convictions as triggers for the ACCA fifteen-year mandatory minimum, when each state criminal justice system has its own idiosyncratic structure, terminology, and practice norms. Congress did not, and could not, take into account the particularities of fifty different systems when drafting the ACCA. As a result, the courts have faced a steady stream of difficult cases requiring them to determine which types of prior convictions from which states actually count as a “violent felony” or a “serious drug offense” (three of which trigger the fifteen-year minimum). The Supreme Court’s May decision in United States v. Rodriquez provides a good example of the difficulty.