This month Ellen S. Podgor reviews Quiet Counsel: Looking Back on a Life of Service to the Law by Larry D. Thompson.

This month Victoria Nadel reviews The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin.

What's Really So Important About an Effective Compliance Program?

The Threat to a Witness's Right to Counsel

Don't Take the Money and Run

Criminal customs and trade fraud prosecutions have become a high priority for the Department of Justice. What will these prosecutions look like? Fortunately, people charged with customs and trade fraud have substantial room to raise defenses.

How Categories of Exculpatory Evidence Can Be Conflated to Delay Production, and How Defense Counsel Can Fight Back

Some circuit courts take the position that if evidence falls into the category of both Brady and Jencks, then Jencks takes precedence over Brady. The result? Core Brady evidence is not turned over in a timely manner. How can defense lawyers challenge the delay?

Pending Trial and Post-Conviction

Barry Boss and Samantha Rubin Stratford have turned their focus to gun possession and the white collar defendant. Developing Second Amendment case law and the government’s priorities provide pathways for defense counsel to argue in favor of nonviolent clients maintaining gun ownership prior to and after conviction.

With the decision in United States v. Snyder, the U.S. Supreme Court continues to illuminate the field regarding what constitutes public corruption. For defense attorneys, Snyder marks a pivotal shift in public integrity prosecutions and offers new avenues for challenging 18 U.S.C. § 666 charges based on timing and intent.

Michael Rosensaft and Nicholas Liotta review prosecutions, speeches, executive orders, and rulemaking to determine whether sanctions enforcement is a priority for the government.

An Account of NACDL’s Efforts Combating Overcriminalization

A few weeks after her confirmation, Attorney General Pamela Bondi issued a series of memoranda framing a process and substance road map for issues on which her Justice Department will focus. What will be the significance of these memos for white collar clients?

Did the Ruan case drastically change how the government enforces the Controlled Substances Act? Jurors are no longer instructed to consider physicians’ subjective “good faith” in prescribing controlled substances that are then billed to health care benefit programs. Physicians must pivot and argue for other instructional safeguards to protect themselves against conviction.

During its 2023-2024 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed criminal penalties for people who are homeless; blocked the ATF’s regulation of bump stocks; ended Chevron deference, a landmark doctrine of administrative review; and decided that U.S. presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for core constitutional acts taken during their tenure in office. Criminal defense lawyers will talk about these cases for years to come.

Speaking indictments are indictments that contain more facts and allegations than the law requires. These lengthy narratives permit the government to favorably influence the public perception of a case and impact the jury at trial. How can defense attorneys push back against speaking indictments?

Photo above: Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks during a press conference after Donald Trump is indictment on criminal charges by a federal grand jury in the 2020 election interference case in Washington, DC on Tuesday, August 1, 2023. | Credit: Bonnie Cash/UPI/Newscom