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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals is often quiet, but it occasionally reveals unexpected truths. We’re hopeful that one of those truths in 2013 will be that the court really does heart boobies. But for now, we’re looking at the past instead of the future. Here are three of the more interesting criminal law rulings that the Philadelphia-based court issued in 2012. 1. Poisoning Your Husband’s Mistress is a Chemical Weapons Offense According to the Third Circuit, the federal government didn’t overreach when it prosecuted a woman under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act for attempting to poison her love rival....

Defendant’s conviction and sentence for illegal reentry into the U.S. are affirmed where: 1) the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure permitted authentication of official documents under Fed. R. Evid. 901; and 2) defendant’s prior California offense of assault with a deadly weapon or by means likely to produce great bodily injury constituted a crime of violence under U.S.S.G. section 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). Read US v. Estrada-Eliverio, No. 07-50191 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted May 7, 2008...

The #MeToo movement has led to a broad awareness of just how widespread sexual harassment and sexual assault are. Since the allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein surfaced three years ago, countless women across the world have come forward to share their stories. Unfortunately, many continue to pay a professional price for speaking up. A new study shows that in the time since the #MeToo movement caught fire, more than 70% of people reporting workplace sexual harassment faced retaliation for doing so....

Ji Cheng Ni has been in the U.S. since 2001, despite the fact that an Immigration Judge ordered him removed in 2003. Ni has two children, and argues that he should get a second shot at removal proceedings based on China’s one-child policy. Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Ni claims that he will faced forced sterilization under the one-child policy if he returns to his home in Fujian Province....

In an antitrust action claiming that plaintiffs overpaid for defendant’s pulse oximetry sensors because defendant used improper marketing agreements and made its sensors incompatible with generic products, summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where: 1) there was no evidence that defendant foreclosed competition in a substantial share of the sensor market; and 2) the undisputed evidence showed that defendant’s patented sensor design was an improvement over the previous design. Read Allied Orthopedic Apps....

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal has upheld a lower district court’s preliminary injunction barring federal restrictions on city and state governments that pass or enforce immigration sanctuary policies. Specifically, the injunction, which was initially granted last September, stops the United States Department of Justice from withholding federal law enforcement grants as a consequence for cities that have immigration sanctuary policies. The Seventh Circuit affirmed extending the injunction to enjoin two additional requirements the feds sought to force on local law enforcement....

In an action claiming that defendant denied plaintiff a promotion based on his race, summary judgment for defendant is reversed where: 1) the record reflected genuine issues of material fact with respect to the failure to promote claim; and 2) the district court, in applying the legal standard governing hostile work environment claims, failed to consider the record evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Read Aulicino v. N....

US v. Juvenile Male, No. 09-940, involved the government’s appeal from the Ninth Circuit’s order reversing the district court’s order requiring defendant to register as a juvenile sex offender and to keep his registration current under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The Supreme Court certified the following question to the Montana Supreme Court: “Is respondent’s duty to remain registered as a sex offender under Montana law contingent upon the validity of the conditions of his now-expired federal juvenile supervision order that required him to register as a sex offender, see Mont....

What was Colonel Vance Spath thinking as he presided over the case of an alleged al Qaeda operative? Spath was serving as a military judge in Guantanamo Bay, where Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri was facing capital charges. The case dragged on for four years. But In re: Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Al-Nashir came back to haunt Spath, who retired last year. He was thinking about a conflict of interest that he should have disclosed from the beginning....

The Seventh Circuit decided two criminal matters, both involving defendants’ challenge to their sentences and a civil suit against a well known children’s clothing retailer accused of deceptive pricing. In US v. Angle, No. 08-2087, the court faced a challenge to district court’s significant upward departure in sentencing a defendant convicted of child pornography crimes, on appeal for the fourth time. In affirming the sentence, the court pointed to the several reasons given by the district court in imposing an above-range sentence plus “pattern of abuse” adjustment....

This post was updated on March 24, 2022 No doubt you’ve heard the jokes by now about “old millennials.” If this is you, you need to be thinking about retirement and estate planning. While those born in the early 80s are right in the thick of it, millennials from the 90s can still get ahead of the pack. And if you’re a Gen-Zer older than 18, it’s time for you to start thinking about this too....

Salil Parulekar must have thought he was pretty smart. He had a management job at Tesla, overseeing the company’s relationship with global suppliers. When he saw Tesla was cutting off one supplier, he figured out a way to impersonate another supplier and divert $9.3 million to himself. At least that’s how prosecutors described the scheme in United States of America v. Parulekar. For Parulekar, it means he’ll have to figure out how to avoid 20 years in prison and about $2....

When it comes to elections and corruption in Illinois, the jokes write themselves. “Vote early, vote often” is the most famous. Most Land of Lincoln residents would approve of the state taking a break from being the butt of the rest of the nation’s jokes for a while. But no such luck. A U.S. District Judge decided last week that dirty tricks by rival campaigns are in fact OK if voters know about them....

The video game industry wants California to pay its bills, bills, bills. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and Entertainment Merchants Association filed a motion in the Supreme Court on Monday asking for reimbursement of over one million dollars in legal expenses they incurred in fighting a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors. Last month, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association that the law violated the First Amendment right to free speech....

They’re just gluttons for punishment, aren’t they? After two and a half hours of arguments yesterday on the topic of same-sex marriage, the justices today opted for some lighter fare: the death penalty. Richard Glossip, along with two other Oklahoma inmates, contends that the three-drug cocktail that state uses for lethal injections violates the Eighth Amendment. After sodium thiopental became unavailable for executions, Oklahoma switched to another drug called midazolam which hasn’t been FDA approved for inducing the type of coma-like state sodium thiopental did....

This post was updated on January 19, 2023. Presidents Day is celebrated in the United States with a three-day weekend on the third Monday in February, but it hasn’t always been that way. The holiday began unofficially during President George Washington’s lifetime and continued after his death as a celebration of the first president on his February 22nd birthday. So, how did the national celebration of George Washington’s birthday come to be known as “Presidents Day”?...

Last month Jared Fogle attempted to convince the court that his 188-month sentence had been unjustifiably enhanced and should be reduced. The case made headlines in particular because of the controversial theory his lawyer pushed: fantasizing about having sex with minors is not a crime. Now, the Seventh Circuit has affirmed the district court’s ruling, effectively closing the door to further calls for mercy unless an appeal to SCOTUS is made....

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or, as she is affectionately known by her throngs of fans, the Notorious RBG, recently made headlines after making a public appearance on stage Off-Broadway for an encore performance that delighted the audience. Unfortunately, the Justice’s love of opera hasn’t driven her to perform. Rather, she agreed to talk to the director of the Off-Broadway show “The Originalist,” which is about Justice Antonin Scalia. Though her name only comes up once in the play, it is no secret that she and the late Justice were great friends....

New York state has been leading the fight against a very specific kind of art theft: ancient artifacts. A gilded Egyptian sarcophagus worth $4 million; Marble sculptures stolen during Lebanon’s civil war; Hindu and Buddhist statues taken from Cambodia; 33 relics from Afghanistan; 248 pieces from India including numerous bronze religious figures; 104 antiquities from Pakistan; over 17,000 artifacts smuggled out of Iraq after the US invasion, including a 3,500 clay tablet inscribed with the Epic of Gilgamesh....

In US v. McConnell, No. 09-3036, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s sentence for possessing a firearm after conviction of a felony, on the ground that defendant’s prior Kansas state conviction for eluding a law enforcement officer constituted a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. section 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). As the court wrote: “Jason McConnell pleaded guilty to one count of possessing a firearm after conviction of a felony, in violation of 18 U....