On October 30, 2017, the 11th Circuit vacated and remanded a 60-month sentence in United States v. Mathews. In Mathews, the defendant, a VA nurse, altered medical records to cover up his lack of care for a veteran recovering from surgery. The veteran ultimately died as a result. The defendant pleaded guilty. While on pretrial release, the
On October 19, 2017, in a per curiam decision, the Fifth Circuit reversed a restitution award where the purported victim had received the services contracted for. In so holding, the Fifth Circuit noted that restitution was not punitive in nature. This is in conflict with some circuits that hold restitution is punitive in nature. The
On October 20, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court’s denial of a defendant’s claim that his attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to inform the defendant of a plea offer for 15 years in a sex trafficking case. The defendant went to trial, lost, and
On October 11, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed an 18-month sentence imposed on a 71-year-old defendant who was addicted to drugs and had violated the terms of his supervised release. The district court erroneously relied on an uncorroborated statement by the government that drug addicts required 18 months of
In a large-scale cocaine trafficking appeal of a life sentence, the First Circuit reversed and remanded where the district court failed to address the defendant’s argument for a downward variance from his life sentence based on the sentences of his co-conspirators, which were considerably less, ranging from 46 to 210 months. The First Circuit emphasized