In United States v. Bradley Cox, the defendant was convicted by a jury in the Northern District of Indiana on charges of sextortion under 18 U.S.C. § 875, coercing minors into sexually explicit conduct under § 2251, and receiving child pornography under § 2252A, based on a scheme in which he used fake Facebook accounts to blackmail victims—including two minors—into providing explicit images by threatening to release hacked photos. Cox appealed, raising Fourth Amendment challenges to a warrantless search of his work computer, Fifth Amendment claims regarding the lack of Miranda warnings during two interviews, Sixth Amendment objections to evidentiary rulings, and an argument that the evidence was insufficient to support the convictions. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the convictions in full. It upheld the searches and statements as constitutionally permissible and concluded that the government presented ample evidence—including Cox’s multiple confessions, forensic links between his devices, commute patterns, and the extortion phone number, plus eyewitness identification—to allow a rational jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, even though other individuals may have had some access to the accounts.
Elizabeth Huston, a subscriber to Good Housekeeping magazine, filed a putative class action against Hearst Communications alleging that the company violated the Illinois Right of Publicity Act (IRPA) by offering to sell and selling mailing lists that included her name, address, and other personal details to data brokers for targeted advertising. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under IRPA, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court held that IRPA requires a plaintiff to allege that the defendant publicly used or held out the plaintiff’s identity for a commercial purpose, such as in connection with selling a product. It concluded that Huston’s identity was not used or held out by Hearst to sell the mailing lists themselves, to promote magazine subscriptions, or in any other manner covered by the statute’s definition of commercial purpose. As a result, the complaint failed to allege the necessary elements of an IRPA violation.
Rock Hemp Corp. sued Adam Dunn and two other individuals in Wisconsin state court over allegedly defective hemp seeds purchased from their business, CBDINC, asserting claims for fraud, misrepresentation, and warranty breaches under a contract containing a binding arbitration clause. After Rock Hemp disclosed in discovery that it sought $250,000 in damages, the defendants removed the case to federal court and moved to dismiss for failure to arbitrate; the district court denied Rock Hemp’s motion to remand, granted dismissal, and later denied reconsideration. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that removal was timely under 28 U.S.C. § 1446 because the initial complaints did not unambiguously state an amount exceeding the jurisdictional threshold, the claims fell within the arbitration clause, and the Rule 60(b) motion improperly introduced new arguments and evidence not previously presented.
In this appeal, Anthony Lomax challenged the district court’s handling of his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, which alleged ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to contest a prior Indiana cocaine conviction that had triggered a sentencing enhancement under 21 U.S.C. § 841, as well as the court’s determination that his 2004 attempted murder conviction qualified as a crime of violence supporting career-offender status under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2. The district court had granted Lomax relief on the § 841 issue by finding him actually innocent of the enhancement, vacated his original 400-month sentence, and resentenced him to 300 months without that enhancement, but it did so without holding an evidentiary hearing on the ineffective-assistance claim and retained the career-offender designation. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that no evidentiary hearing was required because the record already supported granting relief on actual-innocence grounds, and that the attempted-murder conviction remained a crime of violence under Application Note 1 to § 4B1.2, which treats inchoate offenses as qualifying and was unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Taylor.
This case concerned Roman Lloyd, who faced federal charges for credit union robbery and transporting stolen money after a 2019 incident in Illinois. Delays in transporting him for a court-ordered mental competency evaluation caused more than seventy nonexcludable days to pass, violating the Speedy Trial Act; the district court dismissed the original indictment but exercised its discretion to do so without prejudice, allowing the government to promptly refile the same charges. Lloyd then pleaded guilty while reserving the right to appeal the without-prejudice ruling. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, concluding that the district court had properly considered the statutory factors—including the seriousness of the offenses, the circumstances of the delay (such as systemic issues with evaluations and transport), and the impact on the administration of justice—without abusing its discretion in opting for dismissal without prejudice.
Nathaniel Clay and John Knox were convicted in 2010 of conspiring to distribute crack cocaine and heroin and received sentences of 320 and 255 months, respectively. After Congress enacted the Fair Sentencing Act and First Step Act, which retroactively lowered penalties for certain crack cocaine offenses, the defendants moved under § 404(b) for reduced sentences. The district court first ruled them ineligible because their offenses also involved heroin, then alternatively held that even if eligible it would decline to reduce the sentences after weighing the § 3553(a) factors and other information. On appeal the government conceded eligibility, but the Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial, holding that the district court’s discretionary refusal to grant relief was not an abuse of discretion because it had thoroughly considered the relevant statutory and case-specific factors.
