Last year, I had a series of very critical posts about Judge Jack Weinstein’s opinion United States v. Polizzi, in which Judge Weinstein gave the defendant a new trial in light of his own prior decision not to instruct the jury about the mandatory minimum sentences that would be applied. Today the Second Circuit reversed Judge Weinstein on this issue in an opinion by Judge Katzmann:
[W]e do not conclude, as the government urges, that a district court may never instruct the jury on an applicable mandatory minimum sentence. Rather, without deciding whether it would have been within the district court