BLOG BULLETS: Though it’s the least beneficial of the various bills which have been proposed, one of the sentencing reform bills proposed in this session of Congress has been passed out of committee and has some chance of passing. The bill would significantly narrow the category of prior drug convictions which enhance drug sentences, allows […]

BLOG BULLETS: Ninth Circuit opinions over the past several years have found multiple state controlled substance schedules to be broader than the federal controlled substance schedules, which means the state drug convictions don’t qualify as federal drug priors under the categorical approach. Several of the Ninth Circuit opinions have saved the state convictions by finding […]

BLOG BULLETS: A defendant has a constitutional and statutory right to a jury drawn from “a fair cross-section of the community” and can challenge a grand jury or trial jury if there is “systemic exclusion” of a “distinctive group” in the community from the pool the jury is drawn from. The Ninth Circuit recently overruled […]

BLOG BULLETS: Remember the California drug statutes are broader than generic drug trafficking, both because they include controlled substances the federal statutes don’t include and because some of them, until recently, included non-trafficking conduct. There are also viable arguments the California drug statutes don’t require jury unanimity on the type of controlled substance and don’t […]