Fourth Amendment

When and for how long may a passenger be detained during a traffic stop? "So long as law enforcement retains the ‘need to control the scene’—here, for at least the duration of a consent search of the vehicle—the longstanding interest in officer safety outweighs any additional intrusion created by investigatory detention to a passenger’s personal liberty." That's the lesson of United States v. Gurule. The Gurule Court also held that law enforcement's frisk of Mr. Gurule during this traffic stop was reasonable.

Conditions of Release

A person may move to amend the conditions of his or her pretrial release under 18 U.S.C. § 3145(a)(2). Fed. R. Crim. P. 59(a)'s framework (for appeals from matters referred to a magistrate) does not apply to this type of motion. And thus, in United States v. Doby, the Tenth Circuit held that the district court erred in denying Mr. Doby's Section 3145 motion to amend as untimely under Rule 59.

Predicate Offenses

An Oklahoma felony conviction for conspiracy to shoot with intent to kill is not an ACCA predicate, despite its inclusion of an overt-act element. United States v. Wartson (unpublished). Read Wartson for a good discussion of how the categorical approach works under the ACCA's element-of-force clause (the predicate offense must do more than merely involve the use or threatened use of force, it must include an element of force).

Federal Expungements

Federal expungements of arrests, acquittals, and convictions, though rare, do exist, at least for now in the Tenth Circuit. Want to know more? Read United States v. Trzaska(unpublished).