Brown v. United States may refer to:
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights. The amendment serves as a limitation upon the state or federal government to impose unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants before and after a conviction. This limitation applies equally to the price for obtaining pretrial release and the punishment for crime after conviction. The phrases in this amendment originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. It "is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent".
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 states currently have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums.
Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), is the first landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution was interpreted to prohibit criminalization of particular acts or conduct, as contrasted with prohibiting the use of a particular form of punishment for a crime. In Robinson, the Court struck down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics.
Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405 (2005), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that the use of a drug-sniffing police dog during a routine traffic stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even if the initial infraction is unrelated to drug offenses.
Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court decision relating to the open fields doctrine limiting the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers focusing on criminal procedures. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case that considered two Fifth Amendment privileges related to a criminal defendant’s rights against self-incrimination in a Federal District Court. The court ruled that a defendant who waives the guilty plea does not also waive the privilege during the sentencing phase of the trial, and that the court cannot draw an adverse inference from the defendant's silence when determining facts related to the crime which affect the severity of the sentence.
United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378 (1992), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that "a[n]…offense and a conspiracy to commit that offense are not the same offense for double jeopardy purposes." The Supreme Court rejected the Tenth Circuit's reversal of Felix's conviction, finding that the Court of Appeals read the holding in Grady v. Corbin (1990) too broadly.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299 (1932), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States set an important standard to prevent double jeopardy.
Watson v. United States, 552 U.S. 74 (2007), is a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court had earlier held in Smith v. United States (1993) that the exchange of a gun for drugs constituted "use" of a firearm for purposes of a federal statute imposing penalties for "use" of a firearm "during and in relation to" a drug trafficking crime; in Watson, the court decided that a transaction in the opposite direction does not violate the same statute.
Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is an American lawyer and jurist who is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office that same year. She is the first black woman and the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court. From 2021 to 2022, Jackson was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), was a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision that "declared that any traffic offense committed by a driver was a legitimate legal basis for a stop."
McNeill v. United States, 563 U.S. 816 (2011), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that, regarding whether an offense under State law is a serious drug offense for purposes of federal sentencing, courts must consult the maximum term of imprisonment for the offense at the time of conviction.
Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, 566 U.S. 318 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that officials may strip-search individuals who have been arrested for any crime before admitting the individuals to jail, even if there is no reason to suspect that the individual is carrying contraband.
United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194 (2002), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified the applicability of Fourth Amendment protections to searches and seizures that occur on buses, as well as the function of consent during searches by law enforcement. During a scheduled stop in Tallahassee, Florida, police officers boarded a Greyhound bus as part of a drug interdiction effort and interviewed passengers. After talking to two of the passengers and asking if they could "check [their] person", officers discovered the two passengers had taped several packages of cocaine to their legs. At trial, the passengers argued that officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures because the police engaged in coercive behavior and never informed them that their participation in the drug interdiction efforts was voluntary.
Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U.S. 599 (2012), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that clarified the limits of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Supreme Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar retrial of counts that a jury had previously unanimously voted to acquit on, when a mistrial is declared after the jury deadlocked on a lesser included offense.
Shular v. United States, 589 U.S. ___ (2020), is an opinion of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that, under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, the definition of “serious drug offense” only requires that the state offense involve the conduct specified in the statute. Unlike other provisions of the ACCA, it does not require that state courts develop “generic” version of a crime, which describe the elements of the offense as they are commonly understood, and then compare the crime being charged to that generic version to determine whether the crime qualifies under the ACCA for purposes of penalty enhancement. The decision states that offenses defined under the ACCA are "unlikely names for generic offenses," and are therefore unambiguous. This renders the rule of lenity inapplicable.
Brown v. United States,, is a United States Supreme Court case about the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The Supreme Court affirmed both courts of appeals, holding that a state drug conviction counts as an ACCA predicate if it involved a drug on the federal schedules at the time of that conviction.