Sterling v. Blanche — 2d Cir. (Oct 14, 2026)

The Sixth Circuit hears United States versus Cody Littleton. Littleton pleaded guilty to firearm and drug offenses in federal court in northern Ohio. He is appealing the resulting criminal judgment. One distinction helps with the search-and-seizure discussion: voluntary consent to a search does not automatically remove the consequences of an earlier unlawful seizure. Courts also ask whether the connection between the illegality and the evidence has been sufficiently broken, a doctrine called attenuation. That is a separate question from whether the consent was voluntary.

The Ninth Circuit hears United States versus Powell. Trenton Powell was convicted of federal child-exploitation offenses involving sexual abuse images. The district court found that three charged photographs were taken inside his home and ordered his interest in the home forfeited to the government. This appeal concerns that property order, not his convictions. Criminal forfeiture takes property as part of a criminal sentence, rather than compensating a victim. Title Eighteen, Section Twenty-two Fifty-three covers property used to commit or promote specified offenses. The required legal connection between the property and the crimes is called a nexus. Powell's lawyer will argue that taking handheld-phone pictures indoors does not sufficiently connect the house itself to the offenses, and that uncharged abuse cannot substitute for that link. The government will maintain that the home's privacy and its role in bringing the victim there helped facilitate the charged offenses.

The Ninth Circuit hears Gumusyazici versus the United States. She was a passenger in a car driven by her sister on a reservation road. The car skidded toward a utility pole near a curve. Her sister steered away, and the car left the road and rolled over, seriously injuring her. She sued over allegedly unsafe road design, including the absence of a guardrail. The road was maintained by a tribe under a federal transportation agreement. The district court ruled for the government without a trial, treating design decisions as protected and finding insufficient evidence that negligence caused the crash. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows certain negligence suits against the United States. Its discretionary-function exception protects discretionary choices that can involve public-policy balancing, even when discretion is abused. Her representatives will argue that this was an ordinary engineering-safety problem, not protected policymaking. They will also distinguish causing the skid from failing to limit her injuries. The government will contend that these road-design choices involve balancing safety, cost and tribal community values.

The Ninth Circuit hears United States versus American Horse. American Horse was prosecuted in Montana on sexual-abuse charges after two girls reported abuse. This appeal concerns the remedy for late disclosure of evidence favorable to the defense. Under Brady, prosecutors must disclose evidence favorable to the accused that is material to guilt or punishment. That includes evidence that can undermine a witness's credibility. A continuance postpones a trial to give more preparation time. The lawyers will debate when that is an adequate remedy, and when prosecutorial misconduct calls for dismissing the indictment instead. Abuse-of-discretion review gives the trial judge latitude to choose among legally permissible remedies.

The D.C. Circuit hears Al Moumin versus the Republic of Iraq. Al Moumin is a former Iraqi environment minister. She says Iraq stopped paying her pension. She alleges that Nouri al-Maliki, then Iraq's senior vice president, later hired her to provide consulting services from the United States. Instead of a salary, she says, he promised to restore her pension. She says she did the work for more than a year but was never paid. She sued Iraq, which invokes sovereign immunity: a foreign state's general protection from being sued in American courts. The district court dismissed her standalone pension claim but let her consulting claim survive an initial motion to dismiss. That was not a finding that the agreement existed or that Iraq owed her money. Iraq will argue that this was personal political work and that al-Maliki lacked authority to bind the government. Al Moumin will contend it was government consulting covered by the commercial-activity exception to immunity. She will also ask the court to revive her separate pension claim.