Last week at the Tenth Circuit:

"Take prescribed medication as directed"

This stock condition of supervised release got the axe last week from the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Malone:

We consequently take this opportunity to make it clear that this condition, on its face, is an impermissible infringement into a defendant’s significant liberty interests without the justifying support of particularized findings.

* * *
Probation offices and courts in this circuit must be precise and discerning in their imposition of such conditions and may only include a broad mandate to ‘take prescribed medication as directed’ when it is accompanied by particularized findings that justify it.

Multiplicity of child-pornography charges

In United States v. Elliott, the Tenth Circuit held that 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B) (the child-pornography statute) precludes “distinct charges for each electronic device or medium simultaneously possessed.” In other words, five charges for possessing child pornography on five devices, in the same place, at the same time, violates the rule against multiplicity. For purposes of this analysis, possession of a Dropbox account is treated as found not where Dropbox’s servers are located, but “in the same location as the device from which it is accessed.”