Criminal Law

In prosecution on Medicare fraud charge, Dist. Ct. did not commit plain error in admitting redacted audio recording of defendant's conversation with undercover investigators. Ct. rejected defendant's claim that Dist. Ct. was required to review complete recording before admitting redacted version, and defendant's only proper remedy would have been to supplement record with remaining portion of recorded conversation. Moreover, said admission did not violate Brady where defendant was party to conversation and would have been aware of any missing exculpatory statements.

Ct. of Appeals granted prisoner's motion to dismiss his appeal of Dist. Ct.'s order dismissing his habeas petition as moot. Prisoner's motion conceded that appeal was moot, and prisoner was not liable for docketing fee where his dismissal motion was filed within time permitted for withdrawal of appeal.

Dist. Ct. erred in sentencing defendant to 168-month term of incarceration based, in part, on finding that defendant possessed 1.5 kilograms of crack cocaine, which, in turn, increased defendant's guidelines sentencing range. Remand was required for new calculation of drug quantity where Dist. Ct. improperly assumed 1:1 conversion ratio when calculating amount of crack cocaine that had been processed from powder cocaine. Moreover, record otherwise suggested that: (1) Dist. Ct. may have double counted amount of crack cocaine from amounts defendant conceded he had possessed; and (2) defendant may have sold some powder cocaine that Dist. Ct. had assumed was later processed into crack cocaine.

In prosecution on wire and mail fraud charges, Dist. Ct. did not err in denying defendant's motion to dismiss his indictment based on alleged Speedy Trial violation stemming from two delays caused by time set aside for filing pretrial motions and for preparing for trial. First delay could not be counted for speedy trial purposes under pretrial motion exclusion set forth in section 3161(h)(1)(D), even though no pretrial motions had actually been filed, and second continuance to prepare for trial was also excludable under ends-of-justice exclusion set forth in section 3161(h)(7)(A)) where defense counsel indicated that he was not ready for trial at earlier suggested date.