Atlanta Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

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…

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.…

Here in Georgia a Defendant was stopped by the police, who thereafter found 1.3 grams of marijuana. Because of our State’s relatively harsh drug laws, he was forced to plead guilty to drug distribution, although his lawyers were able to get the conviction expunged if the Defendant successfully completed a period of probation. However, the…

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…

Many public corruption investigations turn into federal criminal cases, here in Atlanta and around the country. Our firm is involved in several of these matters right now. Most of these “white collar” cases result in our clients being charged with some variety of fraud. The feds almost always resort either to the mail or wire…

In a earlier posts, I wrote about the Supreme Court’s “dog sniff” cases, the former in which the Defendant was stopped while driving his truck and a drug dog eventually alerted to the presence of dogs, the latter case where (based on a “tip”) the police walked a drug detector dog on the Defendant’s porch,…

As I noted in this post, on Tuesday the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Kaley v. United States, a case calling on the Justices to answer the question of whether the Sixth and Fifth Amendments afford a Defendant the right to a pretrial hearing to challenge the seizure of her assets under the federal forfeiture…

Defending federal crimes is always difficult, whether the client is a “white collar” defendant charged with fraud or whether prosecutors charge other crimes, like drug violations. However, the defense is made more difficult in federal court by virtue of the prosecutor’s ability to sometimes freeze and then forfeit all of the Defendant’s assets. Making it…

Here in Atlanta, the local federal Court of Appeals just affirmed a conviction in a mail fraud and bribery white collar case out of Jacksonville, Florida. The case is but the latest saga in the long-running debate over the contours of “honest services fraud”, the species of fraud so often used by federal prosecutors when…

I came across this story about two Defendants in New York who were appealing to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals their convictions for “insider trading”, which as we all know is a rarely prosecuted federal crime arising out of a securities investigation that usually starts with the SEC. These Defendants also argued on appeal…