» federal charges

The Third Circuit, in Caldwell has issued a lengthy opinion which clearly explains Federal Rules of Evidence 403 and 404(b) and the law regarding the introduction of evidence of prior convictions in a federal criminal trial. Caldwell was convicted in… Read More

A financial adviser who made more than $250,000 trading on insider information he got from a fellow Alcoholics Anonymous member failed in his bid to overturn his conviction by challenging the validity of the rule he violated. Timothy McGee, who was c… Read More

Third Circuit Spring Recap U.S. v. Velazquez, 749 F.3d 161 (3d Cir. 2014) In U.S. v. Velazquez, the Third Circuit ruled that the government’s minimal efforts to apprehend Velazquez violated his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. In 2005, the… Read More

Last week, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the Third Circuit about … Facebook! Surprisingly enough, this case is not about the company’s privacy policies or about its seemingly arbitrary removal of “offensive�… Read More

Last week was a busy week for the Fourth Amendment in the Courts of Appeal. On the same day that the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the Fourth Amendment covers data obtained from cell towers, the Third Circuit in U.S. v. Stanley ruled that the Fourth Am… Read More

On June 11, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that obtaining data from a cell phone tower without “probable cause” violated the Fourth Amendment. In U.S. v. Quartavious Davis, the Court of Appeals ruled that individuals h… Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that Carol Anne Bond’s assault on Myrlinda Hayes did not violate the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998. Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Hope C. Lefeber explains how the Supreme Court’s d… Read More

In a major test of how to interpret the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether the police need warrants to search the cellphones of the people they arrest. The courts have long al… Read More