by Richard Resch
In 2000, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri convicted Marcus DeAngelo Jones on two felon-in-possession counts under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and one false-statement count under § 922(a)(6). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the convictions …
by Richard Resch
An Introduction to the Labyrinth: The Limits of Federal Habeas Relief
Barry Lee Jones was sentenced to death in Arizona in 1995 for the killing of Rachel Gray, his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter. Rachel died on the morning of May 2, 1994, of peritonitis, an …
by Richard Resch
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts unanimously held that G. L. c. 278A (“Act”), the Commonwealth’s postconviction forensic testing statute, permits digital forensic analysis of a cellphone. The Court rejected the Commonwealth’s contention that the Act applies only to laboratory testing of tangible items testable …
by Richard Resch
Few features of the federal sentencing system have as much practical impact on defendants’ sentences as the issue of relevant conduct. Codified at §1B1.3 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, the relevant conduct provision determines which acts and omissions a court may consider when calculating …
by Richard Resch
On an issue of first impression, the Supreme Court of New Mexico unanimously held that Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution and its exclusionary rule govern the admissibility of evidence in New Mexico courts even where that evidence was seized in another …
by Richard Resch
Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology offered a blunt analogy in a March 2026 NPR interview. Imagine the police want to search your home but lack a warrant. Instead of going to a judge, they hand your landlord a hundred dollars for …
by Richard Resch
When the United States Sentencing Commission lowers a Guideline range, the revision ordinarily applies only to defendants sentenced after the effective date. For the thousands of people already serving sentences calculated under the old, harsher Guideline range, the change might seem irrelevant. But a motion …
by Richard Resch
The Supreme Court of the United States held that police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired a criminal suspect’s Google Location History data through a geofence warrant, concluding that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in records documenting their cellphone’s whereabouts. …
by Richard Resch
The Gold Standard That Isn’t
On the night of November 29, 2012, a group of men broke into a mansion in Monte Sereno, California, and killed its owner, Raveesh Kumra, a 66-year-old Silicon Valley investor. When the county crime lab processed evidence from the …
by Richard Resch
On April 16, 2026, the United States Sentencing Commission (“Commission”) voted to promulgate seven amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (“Guidelines”), all having a proposed effective date of November 1, 2026. These amendments span drug offenses, inflationary adjustments to monetary tables, a major overhaul of …
