Correspondent
Capitol Hill correspondent, covers legislative and political stories.
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district court's imposition of a special condition prohibiting a defendant convicted of child pornography offenses from having contact with animals inside her home. The court held that the condition was reasonably related to the defendant's offense conduct and did not constitute an abuse of discretion.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court's resentencing of a defendant convicted of firing at military sites. The appellate court held that the defendant forfeited his primary legal arguments by failing to object at the sentencing hearing and that the remaining challenges lacked merit under the applicable standards of review.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence of Gregory Miller for producing child pornography. The court held that the district court properly denied Miller's motion to withdraw his guilty plea and imposed a thirty-year sentence.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion by the Federal Public Defender to withdraw from representing Cheri Ann Palmer. The court dismissed the appeal after finding no nonfrivolous issues for appellate review.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Lamar Prilliman. The court found the petition moot because the district court had recently issued a ruling on the underlying habeas corpus petition and motion to expedite.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed in part and dismissed in part the sentence imposed on Michael Windom for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that Windom's appeal waiver barred his challenge to the procedural reasonableness of his sentence, while finding no material discrepancy between his oral and written supervised release conditions.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed the revocation of Andre Demarcus Rubell's supervised release and his subsequent sentence. The court held that Rubell's constitutional challenge to the statute was foreclosed by binding precedent.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment revoking supervised release and imposing a nine-month prison sentence. The court found no reversible error in the revocation proceedings or the reasonableness of the sentence despite the appellant's arguments regarding procedural and substantive grounds.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed a district court's upward variance in a supervised release revocation sentence. The court held that the district court did not plainly err by relying on unobjected-to facts in the violation report and the probation officer's testimony.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed a federal drug defendant's sentence of one hundred sixty-seven months in prison. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing a within-guidelines sentence despite the defendant's arguments regarding drug quantity and family circumstances.
