Criminal Practice

  • July 31, 2025

    Texas Court Allows Habeas Relief In Misdemeanor Fine Case

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday ruled that defendants facing only fines can be eligible for pretrial habeas corpus relief, saying complaints, preliminary convictions and appellate bonds can constitute "restraint" under state law.

  • July 31, 2025

    Senate Panel OKs Bill To Elevate Tribal Border Agents' Roles

    The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has advanced a bill aimed at strengthening border security and expanding career opportunities for Native American law enforcement agents on tribal lands through the Shadow Wolves program.

  • July 31, 2025

    Witness' Use Of 'Fraud' Doesn't Cancel TV Sports Exec's Verdict

    The First Circuit rejected arguments by a former executive at the cable channel for the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins that a witness' use of the word "fraud" and testimony about his lavish spending tainted the jury that convicted him of a fake invoice scheme.

  • July 31, 2025

    Nonlawyer Indicted For Filing False Immigrant Asylum Forms

    A Pennsylvania woman falsely claimed to be an immigration attorney and filed false asylum claims for immigrant clients, according to an indictment federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

  • July 31, 2025

    Mass. Court Allows Concurrent Resentencing In Murder Case

    Massachusetts' highest court has ruled that prosecutors may seek two concurrent life sentences with parole eligibility in a double murder case after outlawing life without parole sentences for defendants who committed crimes between the ages of 18 and 20-years-old.

  • July 31, 2025

    1st Circ. Denies Marathon Bomber's Bid To DQ Trial Judge

    The First Circuit on Thursday denied a request by convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to have the judge who presided over his 2015 trial removed from conducting a probe into whether some of the jurors who sentenced him to death were biased.

  • July 31, 2025

    New Evidence Not Enough To Get Texas Inmate Off Death Row

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected a death row inmate's habeas corpus petition, finding that although he claimed new evidence shows his victim's death during a robbery was unintentional, the information wouldn't have altered his conviction or sentence.

  • July 31, 2025

    Ill. Jury Convicts Forex Trader In $230K Fraud Scheme

    A Chicago federal jury on Thursday convicted an Illinois man of duping investors with promises to deliver considerable profits by trading their money on the foreign exchange market, when he really spent most of their investments on himself and was barred from trading securities in the state.

  • July 30, 2025

    US Atty Swap Was 'Calculated' To Evade Senate, NJ Court Told

    The reappointment of Alina Habba from interim to acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey was an unconstitutional maneuver "calculated to bypass Senate confirmation," a defendant seeking dismissal of his drug trafficking indictment told a federal judge Wednesday, while prosecutors opposed the motion as a "dispute over titles, not authority."

  • July 30, 2025

    Wash. Ex-Officer's Conviction Upheld In Plot To Shoot Him

    A former Washington corrections officer cannot overturn conspiracy convictions for persuading his sister to shoot him at work, a state appellate panel has ruled.

  • July 30, 2025

    High Court Urged To Review Ineffective-Counsel Case

    A man who threatened to sue his civil lawyer for malpractice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his case and find that such a situation creates an automatic conflict of interest when the same lawyer was also defending him in a criminal case.

  • July 30, 2025

    9th Circ. Upholds Life Sentences In Kidnapping Case

    The Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday that a man must continue to face two life sentences for his role in the kidnapping of a California medical marijuana dispensary owner who the kidnappers wrongly believed had $1 million buried in the Mojave Desert.

  • July 30, 2025

    Calif. Sens. Slam Trump's US Atty 'Hijacking' To Keep LA Ally

    California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff issued a statement Wednesday condemning the Trump administration's decision to "circumvent the law" and appoint Bill Essayli as acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, in a move echoing the recent appointment of Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

  • July 30, 2025

    Husband's Rape Conviction Upheld By Ohio Appeals Court

    An appeals court panel in Ohio has refused to overturn the conviction of a man accused of raping his wife, after the state's Supreme Court reversed an initial decision by the lower appellate court to vacate the conviction for lack of evidence.

  • July 30, 2025

    'Peace Promoter's' Bitcoin Sentencing Upheld At 1st Circ.

    A church founder and self-described "peace promoter" must serve an eight-year sentence, the First Circuit affirmed, rejecting his argument that the U.S. Department of the Treasury overstepped its bounds by charging him with tax evasion and a slew of other crimes tied to a Bitcoin operation he founded in 2014.

  • July 30, 2025

    Ill. Forex Trader Spent Investors' Money On Himself, Jury Told

    An Illinois man fraudulently obtained at least $230,000 from investors with promises to return or even double their investments by trading on the foreign exchange market, but instead spent most of their money on personal expenses like designer clothes, restaurant meals, gym membership fees and credit card bills, prosecutors told a Chicago federal jury Wednesday.

  • July 30, 2025

    Unauthorized Blood Draw Upends Fatal Crash Sentence In Pa.

    In a precedential ruling, the Pennsylvania Superior Court held that the rights of a man convicted of vehicular homicide while driving under the influence of alcohol were violated because hospital staff took it upon themselves to conduct a blood draw without a warrant from law enforcement.

  • July 30, 2025

    3rd Circ. Says Quote From Earlier Case Doesn't Nix Sentence

    A federal judge who gave a Dominican citizen a stiffer sentence after a second arrest improperly failed to warn the defendant that he would quote from the first sentencing, but the Third Circuit on Wednesday denied a do-over because the defendant didn't show that having notice would have changed the outcome.

  • July 30, 2025

    Calif. Residents Urge Justices To Take Up Jury Trial Question

    A group of Humboldt County, California, property owners is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the group's appeal over the dismissal of its Seventh Amendment claim for a jury trial in a suit against the county alleging the county wrongly targeted the owners for illegal cannabis growth, saying the justices should reject the county's argument that the question is not ripe.

  • July 30, 2025

    DWI Test Legal Despite Old Notice, Texas Appeals Court Says

    A Texas appellate panel has found that a state trial court made a mistake in deciding to suppress blood test evidence showing a woman was drunk when she crashed into a parked trailer on an early morning in 2023.

  • July 29, 2025

    Conn. Prosecutors' Misstatements Doom Murder Conviction

    A Connecticut man who confessed to killing his apartment superintendent will get a second murder trial after the state's top court ruled in a split opinion Tuesday that prosecutors misstated the law about the defense's central theory during closing arguments and rebuttal.

  • July 29, 2025

    2nd Circ. Says Russian Helped Oligarch Dodge Sanctions

    A lower court correctly denied a Russian citizen's bid to dismiss an indictment purporting that she joined in a conspiracy to help an oligarch evade sanctions imposed by former President Barack Obama against people who contributed to the national emergency in Ukraine, a Second Circuit panel has found.

  • July 29, 2025

    9th Circ. Won't Renew Suit Over Wash. Ban On 'DIY' Rape Kits

    A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday refused to revive a constitutional challenge to Washington state's ban on self-administered DNA evidence collection kits for sexual assault survivors, concluding that the plaintiff company failed to show the law illegally restricts commercial speech.

  • July 29, 2025

    Calif. Panel Rejects Stricter Standard For Resisting Arrest

    A California appellate court panel has upheld a man's conviction for resisting arrest, refusing his invitation to overturn case law and make it harder to prove "willful" resistance.

  • July 29, 2025

    Ga. Urges 11th Circ. To Undo Cash Bail Reform Law Injunction

    Georgia's governor and attorney general encouraged the Eleventh Circuit to reverse a district court ruling temporarily blocking enforcement of the state's cash bail reform law, arguing the lower court wrongly found the act of paying bail to be inherently expressive.

Expert Analysis

  • DOJ-HHS Collab Crystallizes Focus On Health Enforcement

    Author Photo

    The recently announced partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to combat False Claims Act violations, following a multiyear trend of high-dollar DOJ recoveries, signals a long-term enforcement horizon with major implications for healthcare entities and whistleblowers, say attorneys at RJO.

  • How Courts Are Addressing The Use Of AI In Discovery

    Author Photo

    In recent months, several courts have issued opinions on handling discovery issues involving artificial intelligence, which collectively offer useful insights on integrating AI into discovery and protecting work product in connection with AI prompts and outputs, says Philip Favro at Favro Law.

  • Series

    Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

    Author Photo

    Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

  • APA Relief May Blunt Justices' Universal Injunction Ruling

    Author Photo

    The Administrative Procedure Act’s avenue for universal preliminary relief seems to hold the most promise for neutralizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA to limit federal district courts' nationally applicable orders, say attorneys at Crowell.

  • Opinion

    Prosecutors' Duty To Justice Sometimes Demands Mea Culpa

    Author Photo

    Two recent cases — U.S. v. Lucas and U.S. v. Echavarria — demonstrate that prosecutors’ special ethical duty to seek justice can sometimes be in tension with other obligations and incentives, but it nonetheless requires them to concede their mistakes in the interests of justice, say Eastern District of Texas law clerk Ian Stephens and Texas A&M University law professor Jemila Lea.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Skillful Persuasion

    Author Photo

    In many ways, law school teaches us how to argue, but when the ultimate goal is to get your client what they want, being persuasive through preparation and humility is the more likely key to success, says Michael Friedland at Friedland Cianfrani.

  • FCA Working Group Reboot Signals EHR Compliance Risk

    Author Photo

    The revival of the False Claims Act working group is an aggressive expansion of enforcement efforts by the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services targeted toward technology-enabled fraud involving electronic health records and other data, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

  • Litigation Inspiration: How To Respond After A Loss

    Author Photo

    Every litigator loses a case now and then, and the sting of that loss can become a medicine that strengthens or a poison that corrodes, depending on how the attorney responds, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • New Interpol Silver Notice Could Be Tool For Justice Or Abuse

    Author Photo

    Interpol has issued dozens of Silver Notices to trace and recover assets linked to criminal activity since January, and though the tool may disrupt organized crime and terrorist financing, attorneys must protect against the potential for corrupt misuse, say attorneys at Clark Hill and Arktouros.

  • Justices' Resentencing Ruling Fortifies First Step Act Tools

    Author Photo

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Hewitt v. U.S. ruling clarifies that resentencing after vacatur must reflect the law in effect at the time of the new sentencing, ultimately strengthening the strategic tools available to defense attorneys under the First Step Act, says Benson Varghese at Varghese Summersett.

  • The Metamorphosis Of The Major Questions Doctrine

    Author Photo

    The so-called major questions doctrine arose as a counterweight to Chevron deference over the past few decades, but invocations of the doctrine have persisted in the year since Chevron was overturned, suggesting it still has a role to play in reining in agency overreach, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Unpacking Enforcement Challenges Of DOJ's Bulk Data Rule

    Author Photo

    Now fully effective, the U.S. Department of Justice's new data security program represents the U.S.' first data localization requirement ripe for enforcement, but its implementation faces substantial practical challenges that may hinder the DOJ's ability for wide-ranging or swift action, say attorneys at Cleary.

  • Series

    Playing Mah-Jongg Makes Me A Better Mediator

    Author Photo

    Mah-jongg rewards patience, pattern recognition, adaptability and keen observation, all skills that are invaluable to my role as a mediator, and to all mediating parties, says Marina Corodemus.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Navigating Client Trauma

    Author Photo

    Law schools don't train students to handle repeated exposure to clients' traumatic experiences, but for litigators practicing in areas like civil rights and personal injury, success depends on the ability to view cases clinically and to recognize when you may need to seek help, says Katie Bennett at Robins Kaplan.

  • Opinion

    Juries Are Key In Protecting The Rule Of Law

    Author Photo

    Absent from the recent discourse about U.S. rule of law is the crucial role of impartial jurors in protecting the equitable administration of justice, and attorneys and judges should take affirmative steps to reverse the yearslong decline of jury trials at this critical moment, says consultant Clint Townson.

Want to publish in Law360?


Submit an idea

Have a news tip?


Contact us here