United States v. Constant, No. 14-1066 (1st Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court sentenced Defendant to seventy-four months of imprisonment. Defendant appealed, challenging primarily the denial of his pretrial motion to bar a government witness from identifying him at trial. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction but vacated the sentence, holding (1) the admission of the identification evidence did not violate Defendant’s due process rights, as the existence of the video recording of the witness’s pretrial identification of Defendant in a photo array guarded against the harm that the district court might have otherwise guarded against by excluding the identification; (2) the record is not fully developed to establish Defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance in relation to sentencing, and so Defendant’s sentence must vacated to allow consideration of the Stickland v. Washington issue on remand; and (3) there was no merit to Defendant’s remaining claims.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on March 24, 2016.
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