Category Archives/Archivos de la categoría: Articles

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 […]

Oct 4th 2014, New York and Washington, DC, The Economist

Background Information
The following article is about the power of prosecutors. It quotes Judge’s as saying that even they don’t think the power that prosecutors have is just. Unfortunately, this is the world we live in, and its one of the reason why its […]

By Hollie Slade,  Forbes Magazine
Edited by Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

Frederick Hutson is a man who sees business opportunities in everything. By his own admission, this doesn’t always work out for the best. Hutson spent over four years in prison after getting busted for an opportunity he saw in drug trafficking, a huge […]

Background Information

On April 30, 2014, the United States Sentencing Commission submitted to Congress an amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that reduces the guidelines applicable to drug trafficking offenses. Specifically, this amendment reduces by two the offense levels assigned in the Drug Quantity Table, resulting in lower guideline ranges for most drug trafficking offenses. This […]

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MAY 24, 2014

Several recent reports provide compelling proof that the United States “has gone past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” and that mass incarceration itself is “a source of injustice.”

The nation’s prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million, making it the […]

By Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

The United States Sentencing Commission voted to reduce the sentencing guideline levels applicable to most federal drug trafficking offenders.

The Commission voted unanimously to amend the guidelines to lower the base offense levels in the Drug Quantity Table across drug types. The drug guidelines under the amendment would remain linked to statutory […]

By Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

An amazing and rare thing happened in a courtroom in the Eastern District of New York this past week. A defendant who had originally been sentenced to a mandatory 57 years was resentenced (after serving twenty years) to time served. Judge John Gleeson, a District Court Judge in […]

By Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion about the Corrlinks system and the privacy issues related to inmate-attorney correspondence. Below is an edited article that appeared in the New York Times about how the government used inmates’ emails against them at trial.

It seems that some judge’s are […]

June 9, 2014

Dear Counsel:

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York (the “Office”) writes to apprise you of this Office’s policy regarding emails sent by inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center (the “MDC”) to their attorneys using the Bureau of Prisons’ (“BOP”) Trust Fund Limited Inmate Computer […]

NYTIMES Editorial, June 13, 2014

The capacity of cellphones to track people’s movements and provide a vivid picture of their private lives poses a substantial and growing threat to privacy.

That is why a federal appeals court ruling on Wednesday restricting the government’s access to location data stored by cellphone companies is so important. In a case […]

Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

Congress is seeking public comment of weather or not the new two point reduction amendment should be retroactive. This means that as of now, congress does not know if already sentenced defendants (on drug cases) would be able to receive the benefit of the two-point reduction. Congress is asking for […]

By David S. Zapp, Esq.

When a major narcotics trafficker was recently sentenced to ten years in federal court in Florida, most people were aghast. How could this be when so many people much less guilty were serving ten to twenty years in prison? Maybe it was the 130 million dollars that the defendant turned over […]

By Johanna S. Zapp, Esq.

The United States Sentencing Commission voted today to reduce the sentencing guideline levels applicable to most federal drug trafficking offenders.

The Commission voted unanimously to amend the guidelines to lower the base offense levels in the Drug Quantity Table across drug types. The drug guidelines under the amendment would […]

Kerry Kennedy Is Found Not Guilty of Driving While Impaired

By Joseph Berger, The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2014

WHITE PLAINS — After nearly 20 months of buildup, the misdemeanor trial of Kerry Kennedy ended on Friday in a breakneck blur, as jurors took less than two hours to find her not guilty […]

NYTimes editorial, February 21, 2014

The New York State prison system has for years been among the nation’s worst when it comes to the overuse of solitary confinement. At any given time about 3,800 inmates across the state are held in windowless isolation for 23 hours a day, the vast majority for disciplinary […]

Posted October 27, 2010, “To the Point”

“If you had to be a prisoner in the United States, this is certainly the time. Because of the severe economic downturn in the United States, the government will not be able to keep prisoners incarcerated as long as they have. Sentences will need to be lower, “good time” […]