Atlanta Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

Here at beloved K&L we do a fair number of appeals in criminal cases, mostly in federal court but occasionally in the state court system. Winning an appeal in a criminal case is always hard, it takes lots of work to understand what happened in the lower court, it takes even more time and energy…

My law partner Carl and I represent lots of people who are charged with federal crimes, both here in Atlanta and throughout the country.  Each of us recently had cases where we believed that our clients were innocent.  In each case, we also each faced federal prosecutors who aggressively went after our clients.  All charges…

Of all the rules governing criminal cases I have learned over the past 33 years, the Brady rule is the most troubling.  Brady teaches that the government violates the due process rights of a criminal Defendant if the prosecution fails to reveal exculpatory evidence to the defense.  Unfortunately, it is the prosecutor and the police…

Handling criminal cases, mostly in the federal courts in Atlanta, throughout Georgia, and in many other states, is how we spend most of our time, as anyone who reads this blog knows. The single biggest decision in most of our cases is whether the client should, or should not, plead guilty.  Even when we are…

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the root word of “fascination” as “to transfix or hold spellbound by an irresistible power.”  Since 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States has on all least 13 occasions directly addressed various aspects of the federal gun crime found at 18 U.S.C. §924(c).  A total of forty-three Supreme Court…

As a criminal defense lawyer I often get questions as to whether there is a difference between a “regular” guilty plea and a “nolo” plea.  Technically, the latter is from the Latin phrase, “nolo contendre”, more or less translating into “no contest.”  A few days ago the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh…

Whether here in Atlanta or other places, Carl and I represent a lot of folks who eventually face a sentencing hearing at the end of a federal criminal case.  Anyone whose spare time has brought them here knows that we chat about federal sentencing a lot, whether to analyze or to criticize how it is…

Here we go again, another federal criminal case which on appeal goes to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit here in Atlanta, and that court rejects the Defendant because the specific argument was not brought up in the trial court. We have written about this issue many times, the need for…

A recent state court criminal case here in Atlanta is very similar to a federal criminal case we handled in Savannah last year.  In each case, one person made a demand against another person, and the demand arose out of civil litigation.  Prosecutors in each case alleged that the “demand” was actually the crime of…

We represent many people who are under investigation for (or who later face) federal criminal charges.  In the past week the national news media are having spasms over the fact that the head of the FBI decided to publicly acknowledge that his agents are looking at emails scoured from a laptop sometimes used by the…