Correspondent
Capitol Hill correspondent, covers legislative and political stories.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court dismissal of a contract dispute between music managers and a record label. The court held that the plaintiffs failed to plead fraudulent inducement with sufficient particularity and that amending the complaint would be futile.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a conviction and sentence where the district court failed to submit the Armed Career Criminal Act occasions inquiry to a jury. The court held that the error was harmless because the evidence that the prior offenses occurred on separate occasions was overwhelming.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied petitions for writ of mandamus filed by families of crash victims challenging a non-prosecution agreement between the Department of Justice and Boeing.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed an appeal filed by Leonard W. Houston regarding a district court order denying his motion to amend a complaint. The court held that the order in question was neither a final order nor an appealable interlocutory or collateral order.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentence of a defendant convicted of drug-related offenses and maintaining a drug premises. The court found sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict and determined the district court did not clearly err in applying the drug-house sentencing enhancement.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the criminal judgment and sentence of Tyrone Kelly. The court rejected Kelly's challenges to his drug trafficking conviction and the resulting forty-five-month imprisonment term.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a federal sentence that included a career-offender enhancement based on prior Delaware drug convictions. The court held that the state statutes punished completed deliveries, even when those deliveries involved attempted transfers.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a sixty-six-month sentence for a felon in possession of a firearm and upheld revocations of supervised release. The court remanded two related appeals to correct a clerical error in the judgment that listed violations not found by the district court.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed a conviction for illegal reentry after deportation. The court found no clear and obvious error in the district court's handling of the defendant's guilty plea.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed a sentence imposed after the mandatory revocation of supervised release. The court held that the district court did not plainly err by considering the need to promote respect for the law as a dominant sentencing factor.
