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Case Summaries

Criminal Law & Procedure

[05/17] US v. Williams
In a case in which a government agent questioned the defendant in an apartment where he was arrested without first issuing Miranda warnings, and two hours later the defendant confessed at the station house, an order of the district court suppressing the confession is reversed, where the district court erred in suppressing the confession as the product of a deliberate two-step interrogation strategy intended to undermine the defendant's Fifth Amendment rights.

[05/17] US v. Batista
In a prosecution of two individuals in connection with their membership in a narcotics trafficking ring, convictions and sentences are affirmed against numerous contentions, including: 1) as to one defendant, that a) at least one juror slept during parts of the trial, depriving the defendant of due process, b) the district court violated the Court Interpreters Act, c) the district court erred in applying sentencing enhancements, and d) the government had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct during its summation; and 2) as to the other defendant, the sentence was both procedurally and substantively unreasonable.

[05/17] Rodgers v. Marshall
The district court's denial of a petition for habeas corpus is reversed and the case remanded, where: 1) the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated when the state trial court denied his timely request for representation for a new trial motion based on the erroneous notion that once waived, the right to counsel cannot be reasserted; and 2) the defendant was not required to prove prejudice, and a harmless error analysis was not required.

[05/17] US v. David
In a prosecution that resulted in a conviction for conspiring to possess and possessing with intent to distribute a controlled substance, and of conspiring to import and importing a controlled substance, the case is remanded for resentencing so that the district court can reevaluate the various considerations identified by the United States Sentencing Guidelines, including, as appropriate, the nature, chemical structure, and intended neurological effects of the substance contained in the pills at issue, and to thereby determine the most closely related substance referenced in the Guidelines and the appropriate marijuana equivalency of the mixture.

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Securities Law

[05/15] SEC v. Jasper
In an SEC civil enforcement action against the CFO of a publicly traded company who had illegally backdated employee stock options, the district court's remedies and sanctions are affirmed, where: 1) it was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to admit a Form 10-K into evidence, as it was a properly authenticated business record; 2) the district court was within its discretion to admit a number of the defendant's Fifth Amendment invocations and to instruct the jury that it could draw an adverse inference from them; 3) the district court's exclusion of hearsay testimony under FRE 804(b)(1) was not an abuse of discretion; 4) there was no attorney misconduct warranting a new trial; and 5) the defendant had no right to have a jury find all predicate facts to the remedy of disgorgement.

[05/10] City of Omaha Civilian Employees’ Retirement. System. v. CBS Corp.
In a securities fraud suit alleging that the defendants' statements about a company's goodwill and its general financial condition were knowingly or recklessly false, the district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim is affirmed, where: 1) the allegations of the complaint did not plausibly demonstrate that defendants knew or had reason to know, at the relevant time, that it was more likely than not that interim impairment testing would reveal that the goodwill of any specific reporting unit was overvalued; 2) the complaint did not allege that the defendants did not believe in their statements of opinion regarding the company's goodwill at the time they made them; and 3) the complaint did not sufficiently allege reliance upon a fraudulently inflated stock price.

[05/08] Sullivan v. Harnisch
In a state common-law suit by a hedge fund's compliance officer claiming that he was fired because he spoke out about manipulative and deceptive trading practices, and that his dismissal violated a company policy to prohibit retaliation for such conduct, the Appellate Division's dismissal of the claim is affirmed, as: 1) New York common law does not recognize a cause of action for the wrongful discharge of an at-will employee; and 2) the employment relationship did not fit within the exception to the at-will doctrine recognized for lawyers in Wieder v Skala, 80 NY2d 628 (1992).

[04/18] US v. Zangari
In a prosecution of a securities broker for conspiracy to violate the Travel Act, which resulted in a conviction and sentence that included a restitution order under the Mandatory Victim’s Restitution Act (MVRA), the restitution order is affirmed, where: 1) the district court erred in ordering restitution in the amount of the defendant's gain rather than the amount of the victims' loss; but 2) the error would not be noticed, because the defendant failed to object to the restitution calculation before the district court and had not shown that the erroneous restitution order both affected his substantial rights and seriously affected the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.

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