Appeals
We believe that presenting a strong appeal is an art form. You must be able to tell a story and bring life to the tale of the trial.
Our attorneys have briefed and argued appeals in the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal throughout the country, including briefing and filing Petitions for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States in numerous cases. Additionally, we have represented defendants in post-conviction litigation before the district courts and the appellate courts.
Further, as trial attorneys we bring a unique understanding in identifying, isolating, and presenting issues on appeal. We are meticulous in digesting the trial record, including familiarizing ourselves with all pre-trial, trial, and post-trial motions. We work to identify and understand the most significant appellate issues to maximize the persuasiveness of the presentation.
Our attorneys stay current with developments in the law to successfully select which issues should be presented for appellate review after extensive legal research of the relevant issues.
Examples of issues we have litigated in appeals in various United States Courts of Appeal and in Petitions for Writ of Certiorari in the United States Supreme Court include:
Whether a law enforcement officer may give lay opinion testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 701 based on overall investigation of the case; that is, testimony not personally known to the officer and testimony based on facts not presented to the jury.
Whether the district court erred by not limiting statements of third-party declarants offered under the state-of-mind exception permitted by Federal Rule of Evidence 803(3).
Whether the district court erred in not suppressing the Appellant’s electronic data files searched by federal agents without a warrant and all the fruits of that illegal search, and further erred in failing to analyze the scope of the search necessary to deny to an individual the protection of the Fourth Amendment under the private search doctrine as it applies to electronic data files.
Whether the district court’s sentence was procedurally erroneous under Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 128 S. Ct. 586 (2007), in applying the Sentencing Guidelines.
Whether the district court abused its discretion in entering an order of restitution in light of its procedural error when it calculated the Sentencing Guidelines range for loss.
Whether the prosecution’s duty-to-discover under Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 115 S. Ct. 1555 (1995) extends to its cooperating witness, who covertly provides information to the government pursuant to a plea/cooperation agreement and who possesses exculpatory information, or is a limitation of the prosecution’s duty-to-discover to only police officers and government agents a violation of the government’s obligations under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and Brady v. Maryland.
Whether the district court abused its discretion by denying the Appellant’s motion for mistrial in response to the government’s eliciting irrelevant and unduly prejudicial testimony from a government witness, and whether the government’s eliciting of this testimony was intentional.
Whether the district court should rely on actual loss versus intended loss at sentencing.
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