Public Defense

In United States v. Grant, No. 09-1760-cr (2d Cir. April 8, 2010), the court ordered a Jacobson remand so that the district court could clarify an ambiguity in its decision on a motion to suppress that was material to the circuit's consideration of whether police officers had the defendant's implied consent to enter his apartment.

In United States v. Orozco, No. 08-4043-cr (2d Cir. April 1, 2010), the defendant appealed a condition of supervised release requiring him to notify the probation department of any "significant romantic relationship" to which he did not did not object at the time, but that was was rendered illegal under a later-decided case. The circuit ducked the plain error questions, and remanded instead under Rule 31.2(c) which gives district courts the "power to modify conditions of supervised release at any time to eliminate ambiguity and to adjust them to changed conditions."

In United States v. Ayers, No. 08-6286-cr (2d Cir. March 30, 2010), the court found that a sex offender's challenge to polygraph and voice stress testing as a condition of his supervised release was ripe, even though his claim related only to the use of that information in a future civil commitment hearing, which would only occur if, for some reason, he was reordered to custody.

Full post as published by Second Circuit Blog on April 11, 2010 (boomark / email).