Criminal Law

Plaintiffs brought a class action lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections challenging an IDOC policy restricting contact between a parent convicted of a sex offense and the parent’s minor child while the parent is on mandatory supervised release, alleging that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court entered judgment in favor of the defendant and plaintiffs appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, finding that while the policy did not violate procedural due process the ban on phone contact violated substantive due process because call monitoring was a viable alternative to an outright ban. (WOOD and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, concurring)

After withdrawing a binding plea agreement because the district court judge refused to accept the sentencing recommendation, defendant was found guilty of possession of a firearm and ammunition as a felon and was sentenced to 120 months in prison. Defendant appealed and raised a number of challenges related to the indictment, plea, and sentencing process. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that defendant’s argument regarding the indictment was not timely and that defendant had not met his burden of establishing good cause for the court to conduct a plain error analysis. The court also found no errors with regard to the plea agreement or the sentence imposed. (WOOD and HAMILTON, concurring)

Defendant was found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm and ammunition and was sentenced to 84 months in prison. Defendant, who was on parole at the time of the offense, appealed and challenged his conviction arguing that the evidence did not support his conviction. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that parolees lack the same armament rights as free persons and that defendant was not a “law-abiding, responsible” person who had a constitutional right to possess firearms. (HAMILTON and KOLAR, concurring)

In a complicated case involving parallel state and federal investigations, multiple warrant applications, two criminal prosecutions, two suppression rulings, and a direct criminal appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed an order of the trial court denying the plaintiff’s motion to vacate his convictions for transporting and possessing child pornography. In its opinion, the Seventh Circuit noted that where there are parallel state and federal prosecutions this creates difficult legal scenarios with regard to the implications of one court's rulings on the parallel case, but that under the facts of this case it was not necessary for the court to take a position as to when a federal official is obligated to inform a federal court of the judicial ruling of a coordinate court. (WOOD and ST. EVE, concurring)

In a tax collection matter, the district court ordered the defendants to pay back taxes connected with unpaid payroll taxes from a business owned by defendants but denied the government’s motion for a permanent injunction. The injunction would have required the defendants to deposit withholding taxes for their business into a bank account using an approved payroll service. The Seventh Circuit reversed and remanded, finding that the trial court erred in denying the motion for injunction because the government had established the required elements for imposition of a permanent injunction, including that the party seeking the injunction suffered an irreparable injury and that monetary damages were inadequate to compensate for that injury.

Defendant appealed and asserted numerous challenges to the district court proceedings that resulted in his conviction and sentence for drug trafficking. This included an argument that his within-guidelines sentence of 420 months was unreasonable. The Seventh Circuit found that defendant’s arguments either were waived or without merit and affirmed the judgment and sentence of the district court. (EASTERBROOK And KIRSCH, concurring)

Co-defendants appealed their sentences following convictions for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. Defendants argued on appeal that the government failed to meet its burden of proving purity of the entire amount of methamphetamine and that the trial court improperly relied on statements of a co-conspirator to calculate total drug weight. The Seventh Circuit vacated the sentence of one of the co-defendants finding a lack of reliable evidence regarding the approximation of weight and affirmed the second co-defendant’s sentence. (WOOD and SCUDDER, concurring)