Blogs

The Federal Judicial Center has created a reference guide for Judges regarding e-Discovery and the issues that arise with digital discovery in criminal cases. The guide gives the Court suggestions how to ensure that defense counsel has the necessary support for managing e-discovery.  The guide also provides suggestions on holding discovery status hearings and what should be asked of the parties.  Most people now have smart phones which have 30-60+ gigabytes of data, tablets which can have 120+ gigabytes of data, and computers which have hard drives containing terabytes of data storage.

Please take note that the United States Sentencing Guidelines are scheduled to change on Sunday, November 1, 2015 absent congressional action to the contrary.  Virtually no one anticipates congressional action to the contrary.  Consequently, the contents of the summary overview and the full-blown amendments the USSC published this past spring will become law in two weeks.  The below links you will find these publications, and can download them to your cellphone, tablet, or computer.

Director of the Bureau of Prisons advised the Senate on August 4, 2015,  "The Bureau has faced some of the significant challenges, most notably the decades of significant growth in the inmate population."  Director Samuels went on to say that "we have recently seen the federal prison population start to decrease for the first time in decades, it remains unsustainably high."  To read the full report, click here. 

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is soliciting applications from persons interested in appointment as Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland.

On June 22, 2015, the Supreme Court, in the case Kingsley v.