Articles Posted in Appeals

Last Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the Eleventh Circuit‘s decision in Holland v. Florida. The Court held, as have all Courts of Appeal, that the AEDPA‘s statute of limitations in habeas corpus cases is subject to equitable tolling. The Court further held that the Eleventh Circuit’s per se rule regarding when…

Last week the Supreme Court decided Berghuis v. Smith in favor of the government. The Court held that criminal defendant Smith was not entitled to federal habeas corpus relief on his claim that the jury selection process had violated his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the…

The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Berghuis v. Thompkins. The Court will decide what the default rule ought to be where a suspect confirms that he understands his rights, but neither waives nor invokes them. In this case, Thompkins was read his Miranda rights and confirmed that he understood them, but then was…

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in another honest services fraud case: Skilling v. United States. Jeffrey Skilling, of Enron notoriety, is challenging his conviction for honest services fraud and the venue of his trial. The honest services fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, expands the definition of a scheme or artifice to…

Last month the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Velez, a federal criminal case in which the lower court dismissed a money laundering charge based upon payments of legal fees. The Eleventh Circuit sits here in Atlanta, but also hears oral arguments in Montgomery, Alabama, and Jacksonville and Miami, Florida.…

Last Friday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals decided U.S. v. Nacchio, a white collar criminal case involving insider trading by the former CEO of Quest Communications. The Court held that, in calculating Mr. Nacchio’s gain for purposes of sentencing, the district court must determine the proceeds related to his insider information, rather than simply…

As we discussed in this post, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear media mogul Conrad Black’s appeal regarding whether the honest services fraud statute applies in a purely private setting where the defendant’s conduct risks no foreseeable harm to the putative victims. We are very interested in the outcome of this…

Last Tuesday, in Abuelhawa v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that using a cell phone to make a misdemeanor purchase of drugs does not “facilitate” a felony drug distribution crime. The government charged Mr. Abuelhawa with six felony charges, one for each cell phone call, for facilitating the sale of drugs, although his two,…

Eleventh Circuit case law, the controlling federal law here in Georgia, is at risk of changing next fall, when the Supreme Court will likely decide a criminal case and resolve a split among the circuit courts of appeals. The mail fraud and wire fraud laws are the bread and butter for federal prosecutors bringing white…

In a potentially huge decision for criminal law in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court in Atlanta held that twenty-one days was an unreasonably long time for law enforcement to wait before obtaining a search warrant after seizing a man’s computer hard drive. Because the circumstances of this case, United States…