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Bralen Lamar Jordan should consider himself lucky. His case was recently remanded back to the lower federal court to be ruled in favor after he convinced the Eighth Circuit that his convictions for domestic battery and aggravated assault were not violent felonies. How did he do it? Look at the plain language of the law. Violent Felonies In 2014, Jordan, then a convicted felon based on crimes of domestic violence and aggravated assault, was arrested for felony possession of a firearm....

US v. Skoien, 08-3770, concerned a challenge to a conviction of defendant for possessing firearms while on probation for his second misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence. In affirming the conviction, the court held that defendant’s claim that section 922(g)(9) violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment is rejected as a disqualification-on-conviction statute such as section 922(g)(9) is generally proper. Collins v. Gaetz, 09-2212, concerned a challenge to the district court’s denial of defendant’s request for habeas relief from a conviction for first-degree murder of his girlfriend....

There are few pains in life that top dental procedures. Seeking refuge in a cocktail of prescription pills feels like the only way to cope with the unrelenting agony radiating from your face, to keep from silently sobbing in some dark corner. Plaintiff Ruth Baldwin wished she had known a little bit more about those pills she was popping – and more importantly, the dangers that come with their use – before ingesting two bone drugs, Aredia and Zometa, after her dental procedures....

“Your father’s lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times… before the Empire. -Obi-Wan to Luke, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope The Lightsaber has been an iconic weapon of the future for a generation....

A somber moment for the Eighth Circuit, Rosalie Wahl, the first woman to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court, passed away on Monday at age 88. Wahl, who was appointed to Minnesota’s highest court in 1977 by Gov. Rudy Perpich, wrote more than 500 legal opinions during her 17 years there, reports the Minnesota Public Radio. In 2006, when a group commissioned a portrait of Wahl to hang permanently at William Mitchell law school, she recalled a lack of visible female role models in her time....

Ready for June? With only a few more weeks left in this Supreme Court term, there’s going to be plenty of reading on the menu before summer break. But once the June term ends, Supreme Court junkies, after a few weeks of detoxing, are going to be seeking their next fix. Fortunately, there are plenty of books, old and new, to keep you busy until the fall. Books By Justices We could never top SCOTUSblog’s comprehensive list of 351 books by Supreme Court justices, past and present, because damn, that’s a list....

As concerns about COVID-19 continue to be at the forefront, state bar examiners have had tough decisions to make regarding the July 2020 exam. Several states have opted to shorten the exam, replacing 2 or 3-day testing with a single day. Others have moved the exam to September, and some are even offering options to take the exam remotely. Pandemic Forces Bar Examiners to Get Creative Florida canceled its in-person bar exam and will hold the test remotely in August....

Keeping tabs on employees can be a real legal and logistic nightmare. But it’s something that every employer needs to do in some fashion. For in house and general counsel, it may seem like a no-brainer to have monitoring systems in place, such as surveillance cameras as well as methods to track online and computer activity, and even telephone calls. However, those methods need to be carefully considered, and policies need to be crafted, to ensure that company security doesn’t turn into a company scandal....

Aaron Hernandez died in prison on Wednesday, having taken his own life. The former New England Patriots tight end’s suicide came as he was serving a life sentence for murdering Odin Lloyd, the boyfriend of his fiancee’s sister, and just days after he had been acquitted in another double murder case. Hernandez’s may be one of the most famous prison suicides, but it’s not the only one. Every year, hundreds of inmates kill themselves, making it the leading cause of death in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics....

The Second Circuit revived a discrimination case that was originally brought in August of 2014 in which the former student accused his medical school of expelling him based on discrimination. The University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (UBMED) dismissed Dean from the M.D. program after he failed to appear for his third administration of Step 1 of the United States medical Licensing Examination. In Dean’s original suit, he alleged UBMED’s dismissal of him from the school was based on disability and race; he pled violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, 42 U....

The U.S. Supreme Court released its latest orders list Friday, granting certiorari in four cases. And unlike the typical list of snoozers, this list contained a case of national importance: Toca v. Louisiana. Toca is all about clarifying the Court’s Miller v. Alabama decision – the one from 2012 where the Court declared that mandatory minimum life sentences for juvenile offenders were cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment. Since then, federal and state courts and legislatures have split over whether that decision applied retroactively to past convictions (and therefore required resentencing)....

Spying on your spouse used to involve reading their mail, looking for lipstick on their collar, looking at call logs, etc. Some of these spy techniques, though widely used in unhappy marriages, can be actionable offenses. But how culpable are makers of technology that facilitate spying? That is the question at the center of the recent Sixth Circuit case, Luis v. Awareness. Spouse Snooping Software A Florida man named Luis struck up an online relationship with an unhappily married Ohio woman, Mrs....

In a petition for review of the BIA’s order dismissing petitioner’s appeal from an Immigration Judge’s order finding him removable as an alien convicted of an aggravated felony, the petition is granted where petitioner was not convicted of an aggravated felony as his conviction for violating Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice did not categorically involve a depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Read Aguilar-Turcios v....

It’s another bad day for the Fourth Amendment. Two brothers are driving a silver Ford F-150, license plate 8-David-94925. An anonymous caller dials 911 and claims that the truck ran her off the road. Stop. How confident are you that the driver of that truck is engaging in ongoing criminal activity (i.e., drunken driving) at this point? The California Highway Patrol sure wasn’t. A cruiser followed the truck for five minutes, and when no additional signs of intoxication or erratic driving were witnessed, the officers pulled over the vehicle, only to discover 30 pounds of marijuana in the truck bed....

Five appellate courts have considered whether videoconferencing qualifies as “presence” for sentencing. Five appellate courts have ruled that it doesn’t. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to actually consider this issue, but nonetheless ruled this week that a Bin Laden aide was not prejudiced by attending his resentencing via videoconference, reports The Associated Press. The plot was foiled, but not before Salim had severely injured Officer Louis Pepe....

In a civil rights action, district court’s grant of defendants’ motion to dismiss on the pleadings is affirmed where plaintiffs do not state a claim that Moore’s death was proximately caused by the County’s acts, as the death was simply too remote a consequence of the County’s actions to apply the state danger exception and hold the County responsible under federal civil rights law. Read Buchanan-Moore v. County of Milwaukee, No....

Can the court force criminal defendants to take medication to make them competent to stand trial? Apparently, no. At least, not in the Ninth Circuit in this particular case. The Ninth Circuit ruled that a lower district judge should not have allowed the forcible medication of defendant Nna Alpha Onuoha, the former LAX security officer who was accused of making threatening calls over the airport’s phone system, calling for authorities to evacuate....

In Rainey v. Varner, No. 08-1714, the Third Circuit dealt with a defendant’s petition for habeas relief, claiming that his trial and appellate counsel were ineffective for failing to challenge his first degree murder conviction on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to prove his shared intent to kill a jewelry store owner during the robbery. As stated in the decision: “Assuming the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to establish a shared intent to kill, it was nonetheless sufficient to establish the elements of second degree felony murder…had Rainey been retried and convicted of second degree murder, he would have received the same sentence....

What we do know about the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is that it was unprecedented. No former president has ever been targeted by such a law enforcement action. Beyond that fact, however, many questions remain unanswered. By all accounts, the raid was tied to presidential records that Trump took with him to his Palm Beach resort in February 2021 after leaving office. Critics, at least, say this is a clear violation of federal public records law....

“I was frightened, I was stupid, and I was so wrong,” actor Felicity Huffman told a federal court, accepting responsibility for her role in a bribery scheme to help her daughter Sophia get in to college. “I am deeply ashamed of what I’ve done.” What Huffman had allegedly done was pay $15,000 disguised as a charitable contribution to doctor Sophia’s entrance exam results. Huffman pleaded guilty to one federal fraud charge in May, and this week she was sentenced to 14 days in prison....