Recently in Criminal Law Category

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a defendant's life sentence on child pornography charges on Tuesday, finding that the district court did not take sufficient steps in analyzing the defendant's criminal history before sentencing him as a repeat sex offender.

The New York-based court directed the district court to delve deeper into defendant Flay Rood's criminal history to determine whether his 1991 conviction for sexual abuse of a child qualifies as a triggering offense for a mandatory minimum life sentence as a repeat sex offender.

Evelyn Litwok is a happy woman this week.

Monday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Litwok's tax evasion convictions for the 1996 and 1997 tax years due to lack of sufficient evidence, and vacated and remanded her convictions for mail fraud and tax evasion for 1995 because the counts were improperly joined, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a person doesn’t have to be aware that he’s violating the terms of his supervised release in order to be penalized for violating his supervised release.

In a case involving a man from El Salvador, the New York-based appellate court also clarified that supervised release terms in the U.S. don’t magically disappear when an alien returns to his home country. (Just in case you were considering that argument.)

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals released its opinion in the Sergey Aleynikov appeal on Wednesday, more than six weeks after the court reversed Aleynikov's source code theft conviction.

Aleynikov was convicted in 2010 of stealing trade secrets from his employer, Goldman Sachs, under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA). On appeal, Aleynikov argued that the Goldman Sachs source code at the center of the case was not a "stolen good" within the meaning of the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA), and that it was not related to a product "produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce" within the meaning of the EEA.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals adopted a standard of review for DNA testing appeals this week. The court established in Tuesday's U.S. v. Pitera decision that the question of whether a prisoner is entitled to DNA testing under the Innocence Protection Act is subject to de novo review.

De novo re view, however, was not enough to help Thomas Pitera win his DNA testing request.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has no sympathy for counterfeiters, probably because the court is located close to the Canal Street counterfeit corridor. (The mumbled chorus of "Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton" promises en route to the subway gets old quickly.)

Thursday, the circuit upheld a $3 million infringement lawsuit judgment against the proprietors of one of the largest counterfeiting rings in the U.S., finding that the district court did not err in permitting overlapping civil and criminal trials against the defendants.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued opinions in two high-profile criminal appeals last week.

First, the court reversed Sergey Aleynikov's source code theft conviction last Thursday. A jury convicted Aleynikov in December 2010 of stealing trade secrets and transporting stolen property in interstate and foreign commerce, reports The Wall Street Journal. The court issued a single paragraph in Aleynikov's favor, stating, "Upon due consideration, it is hereby ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the judgment of conviction is reversed on both counts and the matter is remanded to the district court for entry of a judgment of acquittal. An opinion shall follow in due course."

Never send to know for whom the statute of limitations tolls; it tolls for thee the government. Unless a court files an ex parte order suspending the running of the statute of limitations so the government can gather evidence from a foreign country.

And according to a Second Circuit Court of Appeals opinion this week, such ex parte orders are okay.

Some federal laws have ambiguous names. How do titles like the American Dream Restoration Act or the Common Sense Legal Reforms Act indicate the goal of the corresponding legislation?

The No Social Security Benefits for Prisoners Act isn't so murky. As the title would indicate, the law denies social security benefits for prisoners. For good measure, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals clarified this week in a published opinion that title of the Act did not conceal a legislative caveat.

No social security benefits really means no social security benefits.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied a second-degree murder appellant's ineffective counsel appeal on Monday, finding that the lawyer's failure to preserve a claim of insufficiency at the trial level did not prejudice the appellant because there was sufficient evidence to support his conviction.

Appellant Clay Parker was tried in the Albany County Court on a "twin indictment" alleging two counts of second-degree murder, one count for intentional murder and one count for depraved-indifference murder.