{"id":1486,"date":"2008-10-25T14:42:53","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T19:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2008-12-20T10:22:51","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T15:22:51","slug":"seventh-circuit-week-in-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/10\/seventh-circuit-week-in-review-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Week in Review (With a Brief Digression on Criminal Justice Federalism)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Seventh Circuit issued only one new\u00a0criminal opinion in the past week.\u00a0 In\u00a0United States v. Robinson<\/a><\/em>, <\/em>the defendant’s ex-girlfriend (Evans) reported to a Milwaukee police officer that Robinson had a gun in his home, a\u00a0charge that was later confirmed after the officer obtained a warrant to search Robinson’s residence.\u00a0 Robinson was then convicted in federal court of being a felon in possession of a firearm.\u00a0 On appeal, he argued that the\u00a0cop who\u00a0applied for\u00a0the search warrant should\u00a0have disclosed that Evans\u00a0had recently been charged with disorderly conduct for\u00a0threatening Robinson with a knife.\u00a0 In Robinson’s view, had the judicial officer known the history of conflict between Evans and Robinson, the officer would have discounted the credibility of Evans’ allegation that Robinson had a gun and declined to issue the search warrant.\u00a0 At a minimum, Robinson argued that he was entitled to a hearing on the matter under Franks v. Delaware<\/em>, 438 U.S. 154 (1978).<\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit nonetheless affirmed, determining that, even had the omitted information been included, there would still have been a sufficient showing of probable cause to support issuance of the search warrant.\u00a0 Lurking in the background of the case, of course, is a legitimate concern about\u00a0jilted lovers\u00a0lying to cops about criminal activity in order to harrass their former significant others.\u00a0 But it seems to me that the police have every incentive to screen these messy cases out of the system as quickly as possible, and little reason (in this context) to\u00a0withhold key information bearing on credibility when seeking a search warrant.\u00a0 In any event, the particularities of the Robinson <\/em>case were such that the withheld information did not seem especially important (e.g., the cop’s affidavit did disclose the existence of another pending criminal charge against Evans).<\/p>\n

Although the Seventh Circuit’s\u00a0resolution of the\u00a0Fourth Amendment issue\u00a0seems perfectly reasonable, I find the prosecution of the case a bit troubling.\u00a0 Robinson <\/em>nicely illustrates how the combination of an expansively defined federal crime (felon in possession) and a cozy relationship between local police and federal prosecutors can result in the conversion of a routine domestic disturbance into a federal conviction, which typically entails a much longer sentence than a state conviction.\u00a0 (These cases are especially troubling when they trigger the fifteen-year mandatory minimum of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which does not seem to have been applied to Robinson.)\u00a0 Once upon a time, there were clearer lines demarcating what were federal cases (typically white-collar stuff, organized crime, and crime with a real interstate or international component to it) and what were state cases (typically public disorder offenses, violent crime, and routine property offenses).\u00a0 As is indicated by the phrase, “Don’t make a federal case out of it,” there was a sense that federal prosecution was reserved for only the most serious offenses.\u00a0 As we have gotten away from this tradition\u00a0and entered an era of far more complex federal-state law enforcement relationships — a trend I have explored in some of my scholarship<\/a> — I fear there have been significant costs in terms of public accountability and perceptions of arbitrariness.<\/p>\n

This is the second in what will be an ongoing series of weekend posts reviewing new Seventh Circuit opinions in criminal cases.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seventh Circuit issued only one new\u00a0criminal opinion in the past week.\u00a0 In\u00a0United States v. Robinson, the defendant’s ex-girlfriend (Evans) reported to a Milwaukee police officer that Robinson had a gun in his home, a\u00a0charge that was later confirmed after the officer obtained a warrant to search Robinson’s residence.\u00a0 Robinson was then convicted in federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,53,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-federalism","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}