Criminal Litigation Research Examples

Real Criminal Litigation research prompts, run end to end in Midpage — each with the full exchange, linked authorities, and citator treatment.

• Felon in Possession After Rahimi

  Where the circuits stand on as-applied Second Amendment challenges to the felon-in-possession ban, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), after Bruen and Rahimi — the text-and-history framework requiring the government to prove consistency with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation — the Third Circuit’s en banc holding in Range that the statute cannot constitutionally disarm a food-stamp-fraud offender who poses no physical danger — the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Duarte aligning with the Fourth, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits to uphold the ban as applied to non-violent felons — the Eighth Circuit’s refusal to entertain felony-by-felony litigation — and the Sixth Circuit’s middle path treating § 922(g)(1) as facially valid while placing the burden on the defendant to prove non-dangerousness.

• Compassionate Release After Rutherford

  What qualifies as an extraordinary and compelling reason under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) after Rutherford v. United States — the Supreme Court’s holding that the disparity created by Congress’s nonretroactive change to § 924(c) stacking can never support compassionate release, alone or in combination with other factors — the partial invalidation of USSG § 1B1.13(b)(6)’s unusually-long-sentence provision — the companion Fernandez rule channeling conviction-validity attacks to § 2255 — the displacement of the McCoy line of circuit authority — immediate applications by the Eighth Circuit and the district courts — and the grounds that survive: medical condition, age, family circumstances, and rehabilitation weighed only in combination.

• Geofence Warrants After Chatrie

  How courts treat geofence warrants and Google Location History after Chatrie v. United States — the Supreme Court’s holding that acquiring Location History from Google is a Fourth Amendment search because users retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell-phone location information — the rejection of any short-duration grace period and of the third-party doctrine as applied to Location History — the pre-Chatrie split between the Fifth Circuit’s categorical general-warrant holding in Smith and the Fourth Circuit’s en banc good-faith-only affirmance — the probable-cause and particularity showings that sustained the January 6 Capitol geofence in Rhine, including judicially supervised multi-step deanonymization — and the good-faith exception’s continuing role while the warrant-requirements questions are litigated on remand.

• Obstruction After Fischer

  How courts have applied Fischer v. United States’ narrowing of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) — the Supreme Court’s holding that the residual “otherwise” clause is limited by the evidence-tampering offenses enumerated in (c)(1), so the government must prove the defendant impaired the availability or integrity of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding — the Yates contextual-reading and lenity backdrop — § 2255 vacaturs and judgments of acquittal for January 6 defendants whose conduct halted the certification without targeting the electoral ballots — the specific-intent showing required for attempt liability — and prosecutions that survive because creating false evidence and manipulating records remain within the narrowed statute.

• ACCA Occasions After Erlinger

  Who finds the ACCA different-occasions facts after Erlinger v. United States — the Supreme Court’s holding that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that prior offenses were committed on separate occasions under section 924(e) — the narrow Almendarez-Torres exception and the limited office of Shepard documents — the Wooden timing, location, and character factors the jury now applies — the circuits’ agreement that Erlinger error is not structural but is reviewed for harmlessness, with the government bearing the burden beyond a reasonable doubt and sentences vacated where it cannot carry it — and the emerging consensus that Erlinger announced a new procedural rule that does not apply retroactively to cases on collateral review under section 2255.

• Substitute Experts After Smith v. Arizona

  How courts apply Smith v. Arizona’s holding that a substitute expert who conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support of an opinion introduces those statements for their truth — the Crawford and Bullcoming line barring surrogate testimony on testimonial forensic certifications — the primary-purpose question Smith remanded over when lab reports and analyst notes are testimonial — the Massachusetts rule that an opinion dependent on a non-testifying analyst’s testimonial hearsay is barred even if the expert reviewed protocols and the case file — the survival of independent opinions built on raw machine-generated data that is not hearsay at all — and Rule 703’s basis-evidence pathway, which cannot define the constitutional inquiry.

• Fraudulent Inducement After Kousisis

  Whether wire-fraud liability can rest on a fraudulent-inducement theory after Kousisis v. United States — the Supreme Court’s holding that a defendant who induces a transaction under materially false pretenses violates section 1343 even without seeking to cause net economic loss, the loss-agnostic text of the wire-fraud statute, the property-object requirement that keeps regulatory interests and bare information outside the statute under Kelly and Ciminelli, materiality’s role as the demanding limiting principle that separates everyday misstatements from actionable fraud, and post-Kousisis circuit decisions rejecting benefit-of-the-bargain and no-economic-harm defenses.