Articles Posted in Appeals

Here in Atlanta, we have been involved in many criminal cases in which police arrested people for traffic offenses, then searched their vehicles and found evidence of completely unrelated crimes. The search incident to arrest rule has been unfairly used by police as an investigatory tool since New York v. Belton extended the rule in…

Demarick Hunter is serving a sentence of 15 years and 8 months in federal prison for possessing a firearm. The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) provides for a minimum sentence of 15 years for career criminals who carry firearms. Mr. Hunter’s prior convictions do not qualify him as a career criminal under the ACCA. The…

In a case arising out of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States limited the exclusionary rule by holding that where an unlawful search results from isolated police negligence, the evidence obtained from that unlawful search may still be used against a criminal defendant. The exclusionary…

The United States Supreme Court issued an opinion on Tuesday resolving a split in the circuits regarding whether failure to report for prison is a violent felony for the purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). This federal law provides for a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years or up to life imprisonment for…

On November 14, the United States Supreme Court agreed to review an Eleventh Circuit decision interpreting a federal criminal law. This decision held that firing a gun during a violent crime requires a sentence of at least ten years, even if the gun went off unintentionally. The Eleventh Circuit is located in Atlanta, Georgia and…

Some prosecutors are a little like complaining children, they are never satisfied unless they get their way, and they will continue to whine for a long time until they do. This past Friday, in an appeal involving a white collar federal criminal prosecution the Supreme Court took a case to answer whether federal prosecutors can…

In a federal criminal case out of Atlanta, Georgia, I recently convinced the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that probation was the appropriate sentence for a former bank executive we represented. This is not only a huge win for our client, it also is one more case showing the recent trend…

I recently posted a blog entry about the review on appeal of federal criminal sentences by the the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a court that covers Georgia, Florida and Alabama. Now comes another case, United States v. Pugh, which seems to show that this is still an unresolved issue for federal criminal cases in…

The high profile prosecution of actor Wesley Snipes in Orlando, Florida seems to be an example of the “perfect storm” phenomenon. The combination of publicity, taxes and race has led to a variety of interesting rulings and tactics in this federal criminal tax case. These factors are a lesson to other potential high profile targets…

There are battles brewing over appellate review of federal criminal sentences. The recent decision from the United States Supreme Court in Gall v. United States appeared to end these battles, but recent cases show that the controversy will continue for a while. Let’s go over again for a moment how all this came about, and…