Recently in Criminal Law Category

In case you didn't already know this from watching "Breaking Bad," pharmacies track your pseudoephedrine purchases because the drug is commonly used to make meth.

That's why you get carded when you buy cold meds. It isn't enough for pharmacies to limit customers' pseudoephedrine purchases at a single store because meth-producers could just hop from store to store to buy the amounts they need. The driver's license tracking system arguably makes it harder for producers to get their hands on the drug.

This week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those pseudoephedrine transaction logs are nontestimonial business records, which means that it's pretty easy for the government to introduce the logs at trial.

If Dickie Scruggs had closed up shop after his wins against the asbestos industry and Big Tobacco, he could be enjoying a gorgeous Oxford, Mississippi spring, browsing in the best bookstore in America, and rolling around in the millions he collected as one of the top plaintiffs’ lawyers of his time.

Instead, Scruggs decided that he really needed a win a fee-sharing dispute and persuaded Hinds County Judge Robert “Bobby” DeLaughter to tip the scales of justice in his favor.

Granted, the DeLaughter judicial bribery scandal wasn’t the only time Scruggs reportedly bribed a judge. It’s just the case we’re discussing today because the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Scruggs’ convictions in the DeLaughter matter this week.

Bennie Richardson doesn't deny that he had child pornography on his computer. He just argues that he shouldn't have been convicted for distributing child pornography by storing those images in a shared folder that was accessible on a peer-to-peer computer network.

Is anyone surprised that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with him?

Kenneth Richards was convicted of possessing a cell phone while an inmate, and sentenced to 25 years. After exhausting his state remedies, he moved to file a habeas corpus petition. The district court dismissed his application as time-barred because it was filed after the one-year deadline under 28 U.S.C. §2244.

Richards appealed, arguing that the district court erred in deeming the clerk-of-court-stamped date on his petition as the date he filed the petition. He claimed that Texas law treats the pleadings of pro se inmates as filed at the time they are delivered to prison authorities, not at the time they are stamped by the clerk of court.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that Richards was right in light of Texas’ Campbell v. State ruling.

Here on the FindLaw blog team, we like puppies. We write about puppies. We select pooches as FindLaw Top Dogs. If there are cat people in our group, they are a silent, sadly marginalized minority.

But even though we believe that "puppies" are the answer to any question worth asking, we'll concede that a dog-scent lineup may not be the solution to a police department's criminal investigation problems. Dog-scent lineup supporters say the tests are "a powerful crime-fighting tool helping investigators crack cases." Opponents -- like The Innocence Project of Texas (IPT) -- call the practice "junk science that's being used by prosecutors and judges to convict people," CNN reports.

Jesus Javier Garza violated the conditions of his supervised release and was sentenced to 24 months of imprisonment to be followed by 24 months of supervised release. The advisory Sentencing Guidelines range was 3 to 9 months of imprisonment.

In the course of imposing the sentence, the district court extensively discussed the rehabilitation opportunities that prison terms of varying lengths would afford Garza. On appeal, Garza argued that the district court improperly considered his rehabilitative needs in determining the length of his prison sentence in violation of Tapia v. United States.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with him.

Nelfin Zelaya-Rosales got quite the surprise at his illegal reentry sentencing. Despite the fact that his presentence report recommended a 6-month sentence, the district court opted for an upward departure from the Sentencing Guidelines, and hit him with a 12-month sentence based on his five previous immigration encounters and four prior removals.

According to the Zelaya-Rosales, the sentence was unfair because he didn’t have prior notice. According to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that’s no big deal because there wasn’t a “miscarriage of justice.”

In 2011, Leodegario Resendiz-Moreno pleaded guilty to one charge of illegal reentry. His sentencing range was calculated at a total offense level of 21, which included an upward adjustment based upon the judge’s determination that a prior Georgia conviction for first-degree cruelty to children constituted a crime of violence.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with that finding, and vacated the sentence. Sure, a child cruelty conviction may support the argument that Resendiz-Moreno is a terrible person, but it doesn’t support a finding that he committed a crime of violence.

Here’s why.

This week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that a former New Orleans police officer convicted of manslaughter for a post-Katrina shooting suffered specific and compelling prejudice because a trial court refused to sever his case from two co-defendants' cases, The Times-Picayune reports.

The appellate court vacated his conviction and granted a new trial in the matter.

Perhaps people are capable of change. As individuals, we can forgive, look forward, and move on. Courts don't really do that.

A judge doesn't just let bygones be bygones. She can look to a defendant's past — both convictions and unconvicted arrests— when determining a sentence. And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is okay with that.