In United States v. Perez, No. 22-10267 (Nov. 14, 2023) (Jordan, Lagoa, Ed Carnes), the Court affirmed Mr. Perez's sentence. While on bond pending trial, Mr. Perez was convicted of two felonies--violating 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(n) and 922(j).  The government informed him that, pursuant to § 18 U.S.C. § 3147, it was going to seek a ten-year consecutive sentence.  In relevant part, § 3147 provides that, if a person commits a felony offense while on pretrial release, he “shall be sentenced, in addition to the sentence prescribed for the offense, to . . . a term of imprisonment of not more than ten years,” with the additional term to be “consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.” Here, the § 922(n) conviction carried a statutory maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, while the § 922(j) conviction carried a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.  Run consecutively, that resulted in a total maximum sentence of 15 years, notwithstanding the consecutive 10 years' tacked on pursuant to § 3147.  Mr. Perez objected to the 10-year consecutive sentence, asserting that there was an Apprendi error because (a) the 10-year sentence exceeded the maximum sentences permitted for his underlying offenses of conviction, and (b) the [...]

In United States v. McCall, No. 21-13092 (Oct. 27, 2023) (Rosenbaum, Branch, Brasher), the Court affirmed the denial of Mr. McCall's motion to suppress.   The Court considered how the exclusionary rule's good faith exception applies to the search of a cloud storage account.  The warrant in question--for Mr. McCall's iCloud account--permitted a search of almost all of the account's data, with no time limitation.  In affirming the denial of the suppression motion, the Court noted that although Fourth Amendment standards are largely settled, their application to developing areas of technology are not, and law enforcement officers operating in good faith may struggle to apply existing standards to new circumstances.  Here, though the government conceded that the iCloud warrant fell short in certain respects, reasonable officers could have believed it to be valid.   Of note, with regard to a warrant's particularity, the Court noted that the preferred method of limiting the scope of a search warrant for a cloud account will usually be time-based.  In the Court's view, by narrowing a search to the data created or uploaded during a relevant time connected to the crime being investigated, officers can particularize their searches to avoid general rummaging. As a result, cloud or data-based warrants [...]

In United States v. Dunn, No. 22-11731 (Oct. 10, 2023) (Jordan, Rosenbaum, Hull), the Court affirmed the denial of Mr. Dunn's motion to dismiss his indictment. Mr. Dunn was arrested on a criminal complaint at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic--on March 10, 2020--but was not formally indicted until December 1, 2020.  He argued that the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss his indictment for failure to indict him within 30 days from his arrest--as required by the Speedy Trial Act. The Court found that the pandemic-related continuances in 2020--that continued grand jury sessions five times in the ends of justice spanning March 26, 2020 to November 16, 2020--were not an abuse of discretion and were within the ends-of-justice exception to the Speedy Trial Act. https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202211731.pdf https://defensenewsletter.blogspot.com/

In United States v. Steiger, No. 22-10742 (Oct. 3, 2023) (William Pryor, Jill Pryor, Coogler (N.D. Ala.)), the Court vacated Mr. Steiger's sentence and remanded for resentencing. Mr. Steiger appealed his sentence of 20 years' imprisonment following the revocation of his probation.  The Guidelines recommended a sentence of 12 to 18 months imprisonment. The Court vacated and remanded for resentencing because the district court did not give any reason for why it was imposing an above-guideline sentence, as required by § 3553(c)(2) and United States v. Parks, 823 F.3d 990 (11th Cir. 2016).  The Court reiterated that it had adopted a per se rule of reversal for   §3553(c)(2) errors.  Thus, because the district court's statements at sentencing were not sufficiently specific to allow the Court to understand why it imposed an above-guideline sentence, the Court vacated and remanded.  The Court rejected the government's suggestion that it look at the context and record from the entire revocation proceeding to glean the reasoning for the sentence imposed. Chief Judge William Pryor concurred, but urged the Court to rehear the case en banc to reconsider Parks, which requires a per se rule of reversal for  § 3553(c)(2) errors even when a defendant fails to object to the explanation [...]