The defense of people charged in criminal cases has always been a primary focus of my law practice. Since I first knew I wanted to be a lawyer as a young boy, the trial and appeal of criminal cases was simply what it is I thought lawyers do. I studied the work of the great criminal lawyers, sat in local courtrooms watching every trial I could and getting to know the judge so that I could ask questions about what I had seen in the courtroom. I visited the United States Supreme Court and watched intently every oral argument I could, focusing on the cases with criminal law issues. In graduate law school I focused on criminal law issues and when I have had a chance to teach law school and continuing legal education classes, I have taught in the areas of criminal law and procedure and related evidentiary issues most frequently.

My very first trial as a young lawyer of 25 was a capital murder case, second-seating a more experienced lawyer during the trial and then calling on every skill and emotion I had to handle the sentencing phase myself, convincing a jury that minutes earlier had returned a verdict of guilty, to spare the defendant’s life. I followed that immediately with victories in rape, theft, and armed robbery cases, learning my way around the courtroom while under fire. I also immediately began handling the appeal of criminal cases tried by other lawyers and learned never to give up, winning my very first case by taking it up to the Alabama Supreme Court and getting a 9-0 victory reversing a conviction and 35 year sentence, after the intermediate appellate court had rejected the same arguments. I followed that with wins in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Eleventh and Second Circuits and then in many other courts.

I will always remember the great honor I felt when I received a call from the legendary Frank Johnson, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, telling me about a murder case argued before a panel on which he sat which reversed the conviction, only to be overruled by the full court sitting en banc. I was so thrilled when he told me that he had been following my work and that he felt the defendant needed a lawyer like me to take his case to the United States Supreme Court. I was crushed when the Supreme Court declined to review the decision, but learned again how valuable determination could prove to be; for I continued on the case and obtained the defendant’s release before the Parole Board, showing the Board that even the prosecutor questioned the case he had put on against the defendant in securing his conviction at trial.

In recent years my practice has focused more on the defense of white collar and complicated racketeering cases in New York and other parts of the country; but I continue to keep my hand in the kinds of cases that I started with, representing people without the means to retain a lawyer and litigating cutting edge issues that impact on how the criminal law develops and how those charged with crimes, presumed to be innocent, will be treated.

White Collar

In recent years, my practice in the criminal law area has focused significantly on the defense of people accused of committing white collar crimes, including securities, real estate, mail, insurance, tax, and wire fraud, as well as money laundering, criminal trademark infringement charges and other non-violent crimes, along with related criminal and civil forfeiture cases. At times I have been retained prior to the filing of any formal charges and have been successful in demonstrating why no criminal charges were appropriate. In most cases I have been retained after the client has been indicted and often only after it seems clear the case will be going to trial. I also have been retained to handle the appeal of convictions in white collar cases.

For example, I represented the founder and CEO of a securities firm who had been accused of securities related crimes and money laundering in the Eastern District of New York, arising out of one of the most far-reaching securities prosecutions in that district. The defendant had entered a guilty plea to a securities count on the advice of counsel and then discovered outrageous government misconduct in the investigation that had led to his prosecution, including the government’s use of his attorney as an informant, the government’s post-indictment insertion of his accountant into defense meetings for the specific purpose of reporting defense strategy to government counsel, and other unlawful practices. I took over the case from Yale Law School professor Steven Duke for the appeal and to handle the related forfeiture proceedings which involved a good deal of money. Eventually, we convinced the trial court to dismiss the government’s forfeiture Complaint. I associated the country’s leading forfeiture expert as co-counsel.

In another appeal, I was retained to represent a New York doctor who was convicted in the Southern District of New York of fraud in connection with his billing practices. At sentencing in the case, the trial judge revealed to the parties that he owned stock in the insurance companies which claimed to be victims in the case and which had driven the prosecution. The judge recused himself, after finding recusal to be mandatory, and then withdrew his recusal at the government’s request. Six months after hearing oral argument in the case, the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals that heard the case concluded that its members had to recuse themselves based on their ownership interest in the insurance companies at issue and the case was re-argued in June of 2003. I served as co-counsel in the case with Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz. The case resulted in new grounds for a downward departure under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, now known in the Second Circuit as the “Lauersen Doctrine.”

In 2002, I was retained by a financial consultant on the West Coast who was the subject of a federal grand jury investigation in New York concerning a major securities fraud (“pump and dump”) scheme and tax charges. I associated New York attorney Peter Fleming, Jr. in the case and together we devised a strategy we hoped would help the client avoid indictment. The investigation turned out to be very broad, leading to many separate indictments in highly publicized cases involving a great deal of money and many separate initial public offerings. Against tremendous odds, our client avoided indictment and he has been able to return to his business and has stayed out of the media. The turning point in the case occurred after my research into a complicated issue of international law and a treaty between the United States and a relevant foreign country made it clear that the primary case the government was investigating, the securities violations, would be barred under the treaty.

I also have served as a consultant to retained counsel in several cases. For example, in a celebrated case in the New York area, the founder and CEO of a large New York based electronics retailer was arrested after evading the authorities for a long time overseas and was extradited to the District of New Jersey, where he was convicted of various securities charges and given a lengthy prison sentence. The defendant retained me to review and revise his appellate attorney’s brief in the case. The conviction was reversed for judicial bias.

Another case I took on appeal, involved a lead defendant who was convicted in the Eastern District of North Carolina on 18 counts of money laundering and the interstate receipt of stolen property. In a 2-1 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed and dismissed the conviction on 17 of the 18 counts, with Judge Niemeyer arguing in dissent that all counts should have been reversed. This appeal and the related case which resulted in the return of the defendant’s improperly seized funds and other property dealt with two cutting edge legal issues which have sharply split circuit courts of appeals around the country.

When the founder and CEO of the nation’s largest operator of day care centers was indicted on securities charges, based on dealings his company had with well known financier Michael Milken, the defendant asked me to represent him for the trial of the case. I was unable to take on the representation at that time, as I was involved in the trial of another case and did not feel that I could devote the necessary attention to this very important case. The defendant ended up negotiating a plea deal, represented by the very able attorney Bobby Lee Cook. By the time of the sentencing, my schedule permitted me to get involved and we succeeded in minimizing the sentence so that the defendant served a total period of incarceration of 6 months in a federal prison camp.

In another recent case, the federal government announced the return of a multi-count indictment, charging several people, including the very popular Mayor of a town in Alabama, with bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy. If proved, the charges would have meant the end of the Mayor’s political career and a significant period of incarceration. The Mayor retained me to represent him and maintained his innocence of all charges. Because of his position as an elected official I faced the dual task of trying to favorably resolve the charges, while keeping the case in as low a profile as possible. The case was set for trial on a very short schedule. Through an intensive investigation which I conducted myself, I put together facts which I believed demonstrated the Mayor’s innocence. On the eve of trial, all charges against the Mayor were dismissed, based on the government’s conclusion from all the evidence that we had gathered, that the Mayor was innocent and had absolutely no involvement in the allegedly illegal conduct.

I served as lead trial counsel in the federal District of New Jersey securities prosecution of a popular nationally syndicated radio talk show personality and author and for his related tax case brought in the Southern District of New York. Both cases were resolved in advance of trial.

I served as appellate counsel in a money laundering prosecution before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The case raised novel issues of statutory interpretation under 18 U.S.C. § 1956, the right to withdraw a guilty plea, and ineffective assistance of counsel.

I served as appellate counsel for the defendant in a case in the Second Circuit that involved a unique criminal tax prosecution. The case raised issues of first impression under 21 U.S.C. § 7202, including the statute’s applicability to the conduct at issue and applicable defenses. This undoubtedly was a factor in obtaining an extremely rare ruling by the Court of Appeals in granting bail pending appeal, overruling the trial court on that issue.

From 2005 through 2008, I served as lead counsel for the defense of officers and directors of a large publicly traded company facing allegations of fraud with losses of $200 million claimed by the government. The claim was that the company’s officers had inflated its receivables and inventories to obtain larger extensions of credit and had committed securities fraud, arson, and insurance fraud in carrying out and covering up the scheme. The case was brought in the Eastern District of New York, required the review of well over a million documents and the use of forensic accountants and other experts, and finally settled shortly before the trial was about to begin.

Since 2007, I have been representing the lead defendant on post-conviction review in a case in the Eastern District of New York that was alleged to have been an $800 million telephone and internet fraud scheme. The client entered into a plea agreement to an $80 million fraud and was sentenced to 9 years in prison and a $15 million forfeiture. I have been litigating a Section 2255 motion for him, seeking to vacate the judgment of conviction and sentence on various constitutional grounds including the unlawful concealment by the government of exculpatory evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel. In 2009, I also filed a petition for writs of error Coram Nobis and Audit Querela specifically seeking to vacate the forfeiture judgment on grounds that the statute under which it was ordered (CAFRA) was not even in effect at the time of the underlying conduct.

I also have represented people who have been served with subpoenas to testify before a grand jury and I have provided advice in responding to the subpoena in a manner appropriate to the situation. These cases have ranged across the spectrum, from a person accused of running guns for the Irish Republican Army who elected to invoke his 5th Amendment right in the face of questioning, to a star employee of an international pharmaceutical company for whom a full statutory immunity agreement was negotiated with the subpoena eventually withdrawn.

From 2006-2008, I represented the defendant in a criminal trademark infringement case brought in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. The government alleged that the defendant, an owner of one of the most successful and well respected companies trading luxury goods in the secondary market, had imported and sold counterfeit Prada handbags. In preparing the case for trial, I traveled throughout Europe interviewing witnesses and investigating the secondary market for Prada and other trademarked luxury goods and then engaged in extensive motions practice. On the day of jury selection, the government dropped all 15 felony counts and reduced the case to two misdemeanors which did not charge any connection with counterfeit goods.

Also in 2009, I represented a person who was the subject of an investigation into contracting practices at NASA and claims of ethical and criminal violations in the contracting process. While in the end, the client was not indicted, just being the subject of an intrusive search and the seizure of delicate computer hardware and unique software was deeply disturbing and a critically important part of the representation was dealing with those kinds of issues and their impact on the client’s personal and professional life.

In another 2009 case, which I agreed to take on appointment by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, I was able to get a conviction for aggravated identity theft, entered on a guilty plea, reversed, based on a failure by the lower court properly to understand the elements of the offense.

Racketeering, Narcotics Cases, and International Law

I have represented at the trial, appellate, and post-conviction levels, several defendants accused of violating the anti-racketeering laws. These cases often raise complicated legal and factual issues and the stakes always are high. The following are some examples of such cases.

In one case the government alleged that the defendant was one of the leaders of the so-called Israeli Mafia, operating in New York. A documentary was aired on television in Israel in 2009 purporting to reflect the story of this group and a feature film and documentary are in the works in the United States for production in 2010. In this case, the defendant faced a multi-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York subjecting him to a sentence of life imprisonment. He was charged with a murder and a leadership role in major international narcotics trafficking between Asia and the United States. I took over the representation in the trial court from two other lawyers. Through some exhaustive investigative work and pre-trial motions all murder and murder related charges were dismissed and a plea was negotiated on the narcotics related racketeering charges, giving the defendant credit for the time he served awaiting trial and a far less severe overall sentence than he had faced. Then, by effectively using a transfer treaty that exists between Israel and the United States, I was able to secure the defendant’s return to his home country and today he is living a productive life in a legitimate business and has become deeply religious.

I also represented a man in the Southern District of New York who the government alleged was the leader of the so-called Russian Mafia operating in this country and charged with running a racketeering enterprise. The case was resolved through a plea negotiation and the defendant was released from prison after a short period of time. Following this case I represented another Russian national who was the European Heavyweight division champion in boxing, but who the government alleged was part of a racketeering murder conspiracy, also in the Southern District of New York. On the eve of trial, the government reduced the case to a much less serious charge and the defendant pled guilty and returned home. I have also represented a Georgian national at trial in the Eastern District of New York in a narcotics trafficking case and have been asked to represent several other Russians charged with racketeering.

Several of the international narcotics trafficking cases I have handled at trial and appellate levels have had some of the most interesting legal issues I have litigated.

For example, I represented a defendant from Trinidad for the appeal in his marijuana importation case arising out of the Eastern District of New York. I argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that in a case in which the amount of marijuana involved is neither charged in the indictment nor found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the statutory maximum sentence that can be imposed for a marijuana count is either one year or five years, but not longer. The government argued that drug quantity was a matter of relevant conduct for a sentencing judge to find and that a sentence up to life imprisonment could be imposed without a jury’s findings regarding quantity. The Court ruled in favor of my client, finding that the maximum sentence that could be imposed on a count of marijuana importation or trafficking under such circumstances was five years.

In another case with Israeli defendants charged in a multi-count indictment alleging a complex narcotics importation conspiracy, I served as co-counsel for the lead defendant at trial and represented him alone on appeal. At trial, we succeeded on some of the counts against him, but lost on some narcotics trafficking charges. The trial court in the Eastern District of New York refused to permit the defense theory of “Entrapment by Estoppel” to go to the jury for its consideration. On the appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the convictions, setting aside the defendant’s 30 year sentence and the convictions of all defendants, recognizing the defense of “Entrapment by Estoppel” for the first time. All defendants went home and returned to productive, law-abiding lives in Israel. The case was the subject of a long feature article in Penthouse Magazine, written by a Pulitzer prize winning journalist.

The defendant in another case I handled on appeal was alleged by the government to be a major international narcotics trafficker. He was extradited from Egypt and was convicted in the Eastern District of New York and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was represented at trial by one of New York’s highest profile criminal defense lawyers. After agreeing to take on the appeal, I learned that the trial lawyer himself had been indicted on federal criminal charges and at the time of his client’s trial, was awaiting sentencing in his own case; yet he never revealed anything about this to the client. I appealed the defendant’s conviction on various constitutional theories. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the conviction on Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel grounds and ordered a new trial, based on the trial attorney’s clear conflict of interests. Again, the defendant returned home to a law-abiding life. This case turned out to be a landmark decision, cited around the country. The Court for the first time recognized bases for automatic reversal for certain conflicts of interests. I have continued to litigate conflict cases and to serve as a consultant to other lawyers on these issues in cases around the country.

A case I handled in the Eastern District of Michigan for some 12 years was remarkably similar. The defendant in this case, from a well respected Detroit family, was accused of running a tough narcotics ring in the Detroit area. He was convicted and was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being represented at trial by Detroit’s most prominent criminal defense attorney. The attorney, the government, and the trial court concealed from the defendant that the attorney was being prosecuted by the same U.S. Attorney’s office that was prosecuting the defendant at the same time he was representing the defendant. The attorney was convicted and sentenced to prison following the client’s trial. I sought a new trial for the defendant based on the attorney’s conflict of interests. Twenty-seven hearings were conducted in the case over six years. Discovery was permitted, including depositions of the agents and prosecutors involved, and a final hearing on the merits was held in September 2003. On August 19, 2004, a federal judge found the conviction unconstitutional and vacated it, ordered the client released from prison, and convened proceedings to consider massive sanctions against the prosecution for misconduct in the post-conviction proceedings, which included a lack of candor with the court, withholding evidence and more. The government refused to drop the underlying criminal case and I had to continue litigating it for 5 more years. Finally, in 2009, the government dropped all charges. Meanwhile, the defendant graduated with honors from the University of Michigan, returned to his family business, started a family of his own, and plans to attend law school.

In two racketeering murder cases in the Eastern District of New York, with well respected New York attorney John Mitchell assisting with the motions practice, I represented a man alleged to be the acting boss of an organized crime family and another alleged in dramatic hyperbole by the government to be the world’s most powerful Mafioso, running an international empire. In both cases shortly before trial, after some extensive motions practice on important legal issues, the defendants entered pleas to lesser charges with an agreed upon sentence far below what they were facing. In the latter case I took over the representation for trial from Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz who had represented the client abroad in his extradition proceedings. The events at issue in the latter case were the subject of a popular Hollywood movie. The defendant is the subject of a book.

I served as lead trial counsel in another murder racketeering case tried for many weeks in the Southern District of New York. The government alleged that the defendants committed a murder to further their position within the Latin Kings gang. The Government put on testimony from a purported eyewitness, the alleged leader of the gang, the gang member who allegedly provided the murder weapon to my client, and others who claimed that my client had confessed on five different occasions. Nevertheless, the case ended in a hung jury with the vote 11-1 for acquittal.

I represented the lead defendant in the appeal of a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in which the government alleged that the organization my client was accused of running was perhaps the largest heroin distribution enterprise ever in New York. The case involved compelling issues of police corruption and government misconduct with an entire DEA squad disbanded for stealing drugs and money from people it was investigating; but the conviction was upheld. The defendant is now seeking to challenge his conviction based on newly discovered evidence of jury tampering by a co-defendant who was acquitted.

I have handled several other cases raising international law issues, have successfully pursued several treaty transfer efforts by foreign nationals seeking to serve their sentences in their home countries, and have consulted on such matters and on extradition matters in other cases.

I have also filed several petitions seeking review on certiorari before the United States Supreme Court and currently have such a petition pending which raises an important and recurring evidentiary issue on which courts around the country have split. I have filed amicus briefs in support of parties in the United States Supreme Court in both criminal and civil cases and currently have one before the Court.

I have at all times since opening my practice stayed involved with capital litigation in Alabama, serving either as trial counsel, appellate counsel, post-conviction counsel, or local counsel for one of the firms recruited to help litigate these difficult cases to which the State devotes precious few resources for defense services.