Sitting here in Atlanta, I really like when I find out about bright, energetic lawyers handling federal criminal cases all around the country. One such case is Burrage v. United States, where this past Tuesday the United States Supreme Court agreed to review important questions as to what it means when “death results” from drug…
Continue reading ›Like our federal cases here in Atlanta and throughout the country, it is important to keep in mind how a federal sentencing hearing takes place. The various phases of the federal sentencing process require the Defendant’s attorney to not only know the law, but also to know the procedure, so that “objections” are properly preserved.…
Continue reading ›Hallelujiah! The Supreme Court yesterday continued its recent string of protecting all of our rights by reinvigorating the reach of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that police need a search warrant to get incriminating evidence from a suspect. Yesterday’s case involved the forcible removal of blood from a drunk driving suspect. By an 8-1 margin the…
Continue reading ›In an amazing opinion issued in Atlanta by the Eleventh Circuit, the court reversed a series of federal criminal convictions because the indictment did not even charge a crime. And, they did so even though none of the lawyers for either side bothered to address whether the indictment properly charged a federal criminal offense! The…
Continue reading ›Both in federal criminal cases here in Atlanta and around the country, as well as in the state court proceedings we handle throughout Georgia, we occasionally deal with issues relating to “Double Jeopardy,” the portion of the Fifth Amendment that says prosecutors only get one bite at the apple. Yesterday, by a 8-1 vote, the…
Continue reading ›Good lawyering in federal criminal cases often requires that the attorney not only be a student of the law, he or she needs to also recognize when a particular issue might be a current “loser” but the higher courts are waiting to change the rule. That might turn out to be the situation in Alleyne…
Continue reading ›Here in Atlanta, in both federal court and in state court criminal cases, we regularly see situations where the police stop a person’s vehicle, and walk a drug detecting dog around the car. If the dog “alerts”, the police contend they have sufficient grounds, or “probable cause”, to search the vehicle. I am currently litigating…
Continue reading ›Federal criminal trials almost always involve the question of “knowledge”, meaning that the prosecution is obligated to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendant “knew” about some fact. In US v. Vana Haile, the Eleventh Circuit here in Atlanta showed how the issue of “knowledge” can change, depending on the facts and the specific…
Continue reading ›The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes the well-known protection against double jeopardy. Some lawyers and lay people might not realize that there is sort of a “little brother” to the protection against double jeopardy, which is called the rule of “collateral estoppel.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, down…
Continue reading ›A few hours ago the Atlanta-based United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed a former county attorney’s mail fraud and money laundering convictions based on a “material variance” between the allegations in the indictment and the proof at trial. The money laundering charges were based on the underlying fraud case, so these…
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