Cost of Incarceration is Not Permissible Factor in Deciding Whether to Impose Imprisonment
UNITED STATES V. PARK, NO. 13-4142-CR (2D CIR. JULY 9, 2014)
Convicted of filing a false corporate tax return, Park was sentenced to three years’ probation, including six months’ home detention. The district court (Judge Block) explained that it was imposing this sentence — below the 15-to-21 month Guidelines range of imprisonment — solely because of the “government shut-down” in place at the time of sentencing. The court said that it was not imposing imprisonment “only because of the economic plight that we are facing today.”
The Appeals Court struck down the sentence saying that the lower court should not have considered the cost of incarceration at all.
“You hold it too long, you ‘seized’ it”
Circuit Issues Important New Fourth Amendment Decision:
UNITED STATES V. GANIAS, NO. 12-240-CR (2D CIR. JUNE 17, 2014)
The Court of Appeals held that the government violates the Fourth Amendment when it indefinitely retains computer files that were seized pursuant to a search warrant and not returned within a reasonable time.
Agents, pursuant to a warrant, copied all files from a computer with intent to only “seize” the files that the search warrant allowed to be seized. The government was required to turn over the other files within a reasonable time after it had searched through the files for the relevant ones. It did not.
Later, the agents came to think that the defendants may have been involved in tax offenses, too. So they thought they should look at some of those irrelevant files that had been hanging around the office and had never been returned within a reasonable time. They obtained a second search warrant to look for tax related matters.
The Second Circuit held that retaining those files which yielded the useful evidence for an unreasonable time and that were not responsive to the first warrant was an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Therefore the Court suppressed the “fruits” of the second warrant because that search should never have occurred.
Hey, this guy’s stoned!
UNITED STATES V. TAYLOR, NO. 11-2201-CR(L) (2D CIR. MAY 23, 2014)
In December 2013, a panel of the Court of Appeals issued an opinion, vacating three defendants’ convictions relating to a conspiracy to rob a pharmacy in Manhattan. The panel ruled that the post-arrest statements of one of the defendants were not voluntary because he was “largely stupefied” when he made them and because his interrogators took undue advantage of his condition. Because the error was not harmless as to him or as to the other defendants, the Court vacated the convictions of all three defendants. The Court found it unnecessary to decide whether the admission into evidence of Taylor’s statements against his co-defendants violated Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968). [The case of Bruton barred using a confession of one defendant against another without putting the confessing defendant on the stand to preserve the non confessing defendant’s right to confront his accuser]
In March 2014, the panel granted the government’s petition for a panel rehearing, withdrew its original opinion, and issued a revised opinion. The new decision once again vacated all three defendants’ convictions, and again found Taylor’s post-arrest statements involuntary. But this time the panel reached the Bruton issue and resolved it in favor of the co-defendants.
Be careful of what you wish for!
– David Zapp, Esq.