In this post last year, we discussed Yeager v. United States, a white collar federal criminal case on appeal to the Supreme Court. The case involved the prosecution wanting to re-try a defendant who had been acquitted on some counts, but the jury had remained undecided on other counts. Because…
Yesterday the Supreme Court eliminated a federal protection of criminal defendants’ right to counsel. Criminal defendants here in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as the rest of the country, now may be interrogated by police even after they secure representation by defense lawyers, if they don’t specifically request the lawyers’ presence…
Because our offices are in Atlanta, our firm primarily handles federal criminal cases in Georgia. However, we also have experience in Florida, as well as Alabama. Two of us have lived and worked in Florida and spent a lot of time driving on I-95, where the events relevant to this…
On Monday the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Flores-Figueroa v. United States, resolving a split in the circuits in favor of criminal defendants. The Court held that a federal aggravated identity theft statute requires the government to prove that the defendant knew that the means of identification that he…
We first discussed Dean v. United States in December, when the Supreme Court agreed to review the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion of the federal case. During a robbery of a bank in Rome, Georgia in 2004, Christopher Michael Dean accidentally fired his gun while taking money from a teller drawer. No…
In 1996, in United States v. Mejia, the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court in Atlanta, Georgia, held that a court order granting a criminal defendant’s motion for additional time to file pretrial motions tolled the Speedy Trial clock for the duration of the extension of time. Last July, the Eight…
Last Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in the Farias-Gonzalez case, which originated in a metro-Atlanta area of DeKalb County, Georgia. Judge Cox wrote for the Court, which held that identity-related evidence is not suppressible when offered in a criminal prosecution only to prove who the…
As you may remember, we have been closely following United States v. Svete, which involves the federal criminal mail fraud statute, in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in here Atlanta, Georgia. In this post back in April 2008, Paul Kish explained the facts of the case and the original…
Did you know that, even after a jury has acquitted a criminal defendant of charged crimes, a federal court judge may still consider that conduct at sentencing? This unfair and disrespectful-to-juries rule of law is barred by nearly every state, but is permissible in federal courts. We hope the U.S.…
Although we do not normally report on decisions issued in federal criminal cases that do not directly apply to matters in Georgia, Florida, or Alabama, a case that was recently decided by a federal appellate court that sits in Louisiana (the Fifth Circuit) is certainly interesting and therefore worth mentioning.…