United States v. Monell

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and of possessing with intent to distribute cocaine base. Defendant appealed, arguing primarily that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained by police officers in searching his apartment, as the warrant was not supported by probable cause. The First Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence, holding (1) assuming the invalidity of the warrant, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied to the evidence found in the apartment; (2) the district court did not err in denying Defendant’s Batson challenge to a peremptory juror strike; (3) the district court did not err in admitting testimony by a government expert witness; (4) Defendant waived his challenge to the district court’s ruling that the government could introduce recorded prison conversations as rebuttal evidence if Defendant called a certain individual as a defense witness; and (5) the district court did not rely on a clearly erroneous factual finding in selecting Defendant’s sentence. View "United States v. Monell" on Justia Law