Recent Criminal Law Decisions

This case in four words: loose lips claim clips.

John Bloch III was prohibited by law from owning firearms for two very good reasons: he was a felon, and he was previously convicted of felony domestic violence (that's § 922(g)(1) and § 922(g)(9). When the police responded to reports of shots fired at his girlfriend's apartment, the wise move would've been silence.

But then there was booze.

No one ever said that a jail cell should be comfortable, but Richard Budd claims in a civil rights lawsuit that pretrial detention conditions in the Edgar County, Illinois Jail were downright unlivable.

Budd alleges that he was subject to unconstitutional conditions of confinement as an Edgar County pretrial detainee, and that the sheriff was deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. After a video conference to screen Budd’s complaint, the district court dismissed his action for failure to state a claim. The court, however, never prepared a transcript of the proceedings and it failed to issue a written statement of reasons for the decision.

According to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Budd’s claims were actionable.

Guy Westmoreland may be one of "the bad guys," but he got a pretty rough deal from the government.

First he moved for a new murder trial after learning that an Illinois State Police agent had an affair with his wife while the state was building a case against Westmoreland. Then, the district court waited eight years to deny his motion.

Though the cops and the district court weren't very cool about the case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to offer relief.

James Nduribe, who was wanted for heroin offenses, led authorities on a 5-year chase across three continents. Eventually, the law caught up to Nduribe in Amsterdam, and he was extradited to the U.S. to face charges.

The trial court sentenced Nduribe to an additional twenty-two months of imprisonment for obstruction of justice. On appeal, Nduribe argued that his conduct didn’t constitute obstruction, merely flight. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t buy it.

David Michael Craig sounds like a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad person.

Let's qualify that. Craig pleaded guilty to four counts of producing child pornography. He produced those images by photographing his repeated sexual assaults on a friend of his daughter's. He obtained additional images of her by threatening to kill her unless she photographed herself in sexually explicit poses and emailed him the images.

The abuses began when she was 11 years old and continued until she was 14.

There’s been a lot of talk about search and seizure lately, thanks to the recent Supreme Court dog sniff searches case. While the Nine are tasked with deciding whether Americans have a right to privacy regarding their illegal activities, the appellate courts are still considering the classic Fourth Amendment issue: curtilage.

This week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reminds us that exigent circumstances trump curtilage rights in Fourth Amendment claims.

Nicolai Quinn pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, and was sentenced to 97 months' imprisonment. While his plea agreement contained a promise not to appeal the conviction and length of imprisonment, it didn't stop him from appealing his sentence of supervised release.

And so we turn to Quinn's supervised release challenge in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Indiana has a sex offender registry. That's not surprising. Most states do.

But the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that Indiana's sex offender registry violates due process.

That is surprising.

So where did Indiana go wrong with its registry?

A jury convicted David Swanson of a number of fraud, tax, and money laundering offenses. He was sentenced to 180 months' imprisonment, which included a § 3B1.1(a) enhancement. Swanson appealed, replacing his trial counsel with new counsel who represented him in his first appeal, at resentencing, in a second appeal, and before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

A focus of Swanson's sentencing hearing was his objection to the PSR's use of the 2001 guidelines and whether the variances between that version and the 1998 edition, proposed by Swanson's trial counsel, mattered. The Seventh Circuit agreed, and Swanson was re-sentenced. This time, the district court gave him 151 months' imprisonment.

George Ryan has to serve the rest of his prison term, according to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Chicago-based court denied the former Illinois governor's appeal seeking release from prison on Monday, reports The Associated Press.