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New drug conspiracy opinion from Fourth Circuit.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.)  On June 17, 2009, the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in a drug conspiracy case, addressing the following particularly important issues, in U.S. v. Marc Jeffers. __ F.3d _ (4th Cir., June 17, 2009):  - The Fourth Circuit rejected Jeffers's request for plain error review on the absence of a jury instruction about the possibility of multiple unrelated conspiracies. Jeffers said:  "We have heretofore explained that '[a] single conspiracy exists, when the conspiracy had the same objective, it had the same goal, the same nature, the same geographic spread, the same results, and the same product.' United States v. Johnson, 54 F.3d 1150, 1154 (4th Cir. 1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). Error will be found in a conspiracy instruction 'if the proof of multiple conspiracies was likely to have confused the jury into imputing guilt to [the defendant] as a member of one conspiracy because of the illegal activity of members of the other conspiracy...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).