(Cross-posted from the C.D. Cal. Federal Public Defender Blog.)
In This Edition (to use bookmarks, first click blog post title):
News to Use |Top of the Ninth | SCOTUS Focus | For the Bookworms
Those FSA Enhancements. If you've recently had to deal with the upward adjustments added to §2D1.1 under the Fair Sentencing Act, you might take a gander at this 2011 paper, "Deconstructing the New Guideline Enhancements Implemented in Response to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010," made available by the friendly folks at Defender Services.
Turning the Sentencing Tables. Those same friendly folks have also uploaded this set of tables and analysis laying out the stats on sentencing under §2G2.2. But wait - there's more: SRC's comments to the Commission's proposed priorities for the coming cycle include some deconstruction of the "crime of violence" definition (in particular, burglary as a COV) and the credit card ID theft victim table.
Top of the Ninth - 9th Cir. decisions released during the week.
• Haskell v. Harris (Fourth Amendment) (en banc order to review California DNA-collection law).
• U.S. v. Valdes-Vega (border agents lacked reasonable suspicion that defendant truck driver, who was stopped 70 miles north of border after driving erratically, was smuggling drugs or aliens). See Ninth Circuit Blog's analysis.
• Cook v. Ryan (habeas) (Martinez did not apply to petitioner who chose to represent himself during trial and sentencing, and if it did, there was no merit to petitioner's claim that post-conviction counsel was ineffective).
SCOTUS Focus. A cert petition asking the Supreme Court to rule that states must allow defendants to plead not guilty by reason of insanity is getting some attention. An amicus brief filed in the case is here (via PrawfsBlawg).
For the Bookworms - New books and scholarly articles of note.
• "Statistical Proof of Racial Discrimination in the Use of Peremptory Challenges: The Impact and Promise of the Miller-El Line of Cases as Reflected in the Experience of One Philadelphia Capital Case," David C. Baldus et al., 97 Iowa L. Rev. 1425 (SSRN) (focuses on the lack of clarity concerning the evidentiary framework needed for reliable analysis of statistical evidence in Batson cases, and proposes a model).
• "Acute Suggestibility in Police Interrogation: Self-Regulation Failure as a Primary Mechanism of Vulnerability," Deborah Davis & Richard A. Leo, from Investigative Suggestibility: Theory, Research and Applications, Anne Ridley, ed. (2012) (SSRN) (concentrates on three common but underappreciated sources of IRRD in police interrogation - acute emotion distress, fatigue, and glucose depletion).
• "The Mandatory Meaning of Miller," William W. Berry III, working paper (SSRN) (uses Miller as a springboard for exploring further expansion of the Eight Amendment to proscribe other types of mandatory sentences).
• "Copy-Paste Precedent," Brian Soucek, working paper (SSRN) (drawing on Second Circuit's unpublished case law on "social visibility" in asylum law, argues that staff attorneys' "cut-and-paste" precedents in unpublished memoranda can have more influence than a circuit's precedential statements).
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Suggestions or corrections? Email Michael Drake.
