Drugs

Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) bans gun possession by anyone "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance." Man is pulled over for driving without a license plate. Officers, one of whom is DEA, find guns and marihuana cigarette butts. He's sentenced to nearly four years in prison (and three years of supervised release) for being an "unlawful user" of a controlled substance while possessing a gun. Fifth Circuit: Conviction reversed. The gov't didn't show he was high at the time he was stopped.

Doctor is convicted of running pill mill based on 13 counts of unlawfully dispensing schedule II controlled substances (one count for each unlawful prescription). At trial, the government put on evidence of many prescriptions beyond the ones in the indictment. That evidence came from the government’s statistician and its medical expert.

Law enforcement agents sometimes find unlawul drugs concealed in vehicles attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico. The drivers of these vehicles commonly deny knowledge of the drugs, arguing they are unknowing couriers, aka "blind mules."  Of course, in a prosecution for importation of illegal drugs, the government must prove that the defendant knew she was transporting drugs in order to separate wrongful conduct from innocent conduct. Proving the knowledge element has led to a circuit split:

Car in Hooksett, N.H. is traveling in the right lane and doesn't signal as the 2-lane road turns into a 1-laner. A cop stops the car and finds that the passenger has outstanding warrants and was carrying a bag of drugs. Yikes! But wait! The passenger argues state law does not require a signal when lanes merge, only when a vehicle has to change lanes. And this particular road doesn't drop the right lane but just has the lanes equally blend together. District court: Word.

Delaware physician is convicted on 13 counts of unlawfully dispensing opioids. At sentencing, the gov't puts forward a medical expert who reviewed files for 24 of the 1,142 patients to whom the good doctor had prescribed controlled substances in the last two years, concluding that prescriptions for 18 of the patients were illegal. Extrapolating from the sample, prosecutors argued he should be sentenced based on a drug weight of 106,000 kilos. The doctor argues for 7,500 kilos and the court settles on 30,000 kilos, sentencing the doctor to 20 years in prison. Yikes!

In en banc news, the Fifth Circuit will reconsider its decision that hitching a ride across the border in a car with 283 pounds of marijuana is not necessarily possessing marijuana.

The case is United States v. Campos-Ayala, No. 21-50642.

Given the stakes involved, a judge’s criminal docket should always be a top priority.

According to a team of investigative journalists and attorneys, a Cincinnati federal judge neglected criminal cases for so long that he has a dead person on his docket, and just now ruling on inmate COVID release petitions filed in 2020.