Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals holdings

It was an interesting & productive week in the Sixth Circuit last week…

In U.S. v. Presto, last Tuesday, a sentence including lifetime supervised release imposed for the receipt & possession of child pornography transported in interstate commerce by the Eastern District Court of Tennessee was upheld, covering a lot of Booker groundwork in substantiation of the “Prosecutorial Remedies & Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act.”

Two days later, the Court vacated an appellant’s sentence, reversing the district court in Tennessee and remanding the case in Nichols v. U.S .for resentencing. In an appeal contenting ineffective counsel, the Court concluded that “because Apprendi cast the constitutionality of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines into considerable doubt,
and the enhancements to appellant’s Guidelines range directly represented circumstances called into question by Apprendi, counsel was constitutionally ineffective in failing to preserve the Sixth Amendment challenge to the appellant’s sentence.”