The Seventh Circuit had a busy week, with eight new opinions in criminal cases.  In this post, I’ll discuss three that deal primarily with substantive criminal law issues.  A subsequent post will cover the sentencing and procedure cases.

Two of the opinions in this post deal with the difficult and important question of whether it is money laundering when a brothel purchases advertising.  But, before getting to that question, I’ll discuss a case that offers an unusual dressing-down of a federal prosecutor.  (There’s actually a pun in that last sentence — read on to see what I mean.)

The legal question in United States v. Farinella (Nos. 08-1839 & 08-1860) was whether those “best when purchased by” labels you find on food packages really mean anything to consumers.  Do they indicate that spoilage is imminent, or are they essentially meaningless marketing devices, akin to claims that a product is “new and improved?” 

Farinella, the defendant, purchased 1.6 million bottles of “Henri’s Salad Dressing” for resale at so-called “dollar stores.”  He presumably bought them at a discount because the bottles were past, or at least fast-approaching, the “best when purchased by” date stamped on each bottle by the manufacturer.  The manufacturer’s label would obviously make resale more difficult, but Farinella solved this problem by covering the original labels with new labels listing a later purchase date.  Of course, no one would hold this up as a model of business ethics.  But was it a federal crime?

The Seventh Circuit had three new opinions in criminal cases in the past week.  The court also withdrew, without explanation, its opinion in United States v. Dunson (No. 08-1691), which I blogged about last week.

In United States v. Brazelton (No. 07-2488), the defendant was convicted by a jury of various drug and gun offenses.  The jury included the second cousin of a man who had once been shot by the defendant.  Voir dire indicated no actual bias on the part of the juror — or even that the juror knew of the shooting — and no motion was made to strike him for cause.  On appeal, however, Brazelton argued that he was entitled to a new trial under the implied bias doctrine, which indicates that close relatives of people with actual bias must be automatically excluded.  The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Coffey) rejected this claim.  After noting uncertainty in the law as to whether second cousins are closely enough related to fall within the scope of the implied bias rule, the court instead decided the case on the basis of Brazelton’s failure to seek removal of the juror at trial.  The court concluded that Brazelton thereby waived any right he had to raise the implied bias claim later.  Along the way, the court noted a Sixth Circuit case indicating that defendants may not waive their right to an impartial jury, thus suggesting the existence of a circuit split on the question.