Criminal Procedure — continuances

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — continuances

It was not an abuse of discretion to deny a defendant’s multiple motions for continuances.

“The district court also determined that Volpentesta had not adequately shown how he would be prejudiced by the court’s denial of his motion for a continuance or how a continuance would satisfy his needs. Volpentesta claimed that the image files could contain emails showing his good faith efforts to resolve issues with home buyers, exculpatory photos of work done properly, and payment records. But Volpentesta has yet to offer more than conjecture at what could be in the files, not what he knows them to contain. Even now, in his briefing before this Court, Volpentesta states that he had ‘hoped to find’ the items listed above in the image files, and that he ‘believed that the computers contained’ this vaguely exculpatory evidence. Given the high degree of uncertainty that these files contained anything that would have aided Volpentesta’s defense, we find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s finding that a continuance would do little to satisfy Volpentesta’s needs and that denying Volpentesta’s last-ditch effort to delay trial would not prejudice him.”

Affirmed.

11-2187 U.S. v. Volpentesta

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Kapala, J., Darrow, J.