This column reports on several significant, representative decisions handed down recently in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Jack B. Weinstein explained the reasons for departing well below the guidelines range in sentencing defendant to incarceration for only two months. Judge Weinstein terminated, rather than revoking, the supervised release of a defendant well on the road to rehabilitation whose marijuana addiction had caused him to violate the terms of supervised release. And Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak, deciding several discovery motions, found communications between a law firm and a retained accountant to be privileged under the circumstances.

Lenient Sentence – Personal and Family Circumstances

In United States v. Smith, 17 CR 221 (EDNY, July 18, 2018), Judge Weinstein stated the reasons for sentencing defendant to two months’ incarceration to be followed by six months’ supervised release where the guideline range was imprisonment for 51 to 63 months and supervised release for one to three years.