Drugs

Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández has been found guilty on charges relating to drug trafficking and weapons possession in a federal jury trial in New York (view full article).

The verdict was announced during the second day of deliberations, after a two-week trial.

Hernández served as a Honduran congressman, congress leader and finally two-term president. He was arrested in February 2022, only weeks after he finished his second presidential term.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued sweeping pardons forgiving possession of marijuana convictions, following the directive of President Joe Biden, who urged state executives to follow his lead in pardoning low-level marijuana offenses (view announcement).

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country (view full article).

If you lend your car to a family member or friend who is stopped and arrested for drug charges while driving your car in Alabama, state law permits seizure of a car “incident to an arrest” so long as the state then “promptly” initiates a forfeiture case.

Feds: Hey Second Circuit, could you issue a revised opinion in this drug sentencing case to make non-precedential a December opinion that found the federal controlled substances list was narrower than New York state's? We want you to make clear that the part that could help out future New York criminal defendants was dictum. Second Circuit: Dictum? We hardly know 'em! (Which is more substantive legal analysis than your bad-faith argument deserves.) We said what we said. And what we said is our holding.

Today, the en banc Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion that will give some drug defendant’s a big help at sentencing. See United States v. Dupree, No. 9-13776 (11th Cir. Jan.18, 2023)(en banc). In Dupree, the Eleventh held that the definition of “controlled substance offense” in USSG § 4B1.2(b) does not include inchoate offenses, such as conspiracy and attempt.  This is another victory for the defense in using the sea change in administrative deference recognized by the Supreme Court in Kisor v.

Defendant: Look, sure, I was just convicted of drug trafficking, and, yes, I testified that I deposited all my legitimate income in the bank while I kept all my drug-trafficking money in cash, and, okay fine, you found a bunch of cash in my house near my drugs and my scale and my notebooks meticulously documenting my drug-trafficking transactions, but that doesn't prove the cash is the proceeds of drug trafficking. District court: You're kidding, right? Forfeiture on everything.

Professors Alison Siegler and Erica Zunkel from the University of Chicago have created at two-part podcast episode focused on stash house stings and compassionate release.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez “engaged in abusive or harassing behavior” constituting a rare finding of judicial misconduct when he ordered a U.S.

AH Datalytics has launched a “Real-Time” crime index, (RTCI), online. (access index). AH Datalytics launched the real-time crime index in an effort to “aid in the need for a faster understanding and visualization of national, state, and local crime trends.” AH Datalytics acknowledges certain crime data is under-reported to police and agencies can fail to provide complete or accurate information.