U.S. v. Riley, No. 08-50009 (8-13-09). How far can supervised release conditions go? Pretty far, but the 9th is starting to crack back on the overreach. Here, the defendant was convicted of child porn. In addition to the usual SR conditions, restricting material with sexually explicit content and other computer restrictions, the court imposed a restriction on "any material that relates to minors." The 9th (Berzon joined by Hawkins and Clifton) vacate and remand because such a condition is too sweeping. It would deal with any article on children, and does not seem to advance the goals of SR. The concerns about defendant's activities are more than adequately addressed by the other more specific conditions.

Congratulations to AFPD Kurt Mayer of the Central District Calif. (Los Angeles) for the win.

U.S. v. Jackson, No. 08-30231 (8-14-09). The 9th (Tashima joined by B. Fletcher and Thomas) holds that the crack Guideline reduction does not give the right to a retroactive sentence reduction when the previous sentence was a imposed under a mandatory minimum and the sentence below the mandatory minimum was the result of cooperation. The sentence below the mandatory was a result of cooperation allowing the court to sentence without being controlled by the mandatory minimum of 120 months.