Appeal

A guilty plea does not necessarily mean that a criminal defendant gives up the right to appeal his conviction. If the defendant seeks to challenge the constitutionality of the statute that he pled guilty to violating, he may still have the right to a direct appeal from a district court’s decision. This is the principle…

The Supreme Court is preparing to decide a complex appeal in Moore v. Texas, which involves a defendant who was convicted of murder and sentenced to execution but claims that he is intellectually disabled. Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in 2002 in Atkins v. Virginia, it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to execute…

Plea deals may seem like the most opportune way for a criminal defendant to avoid having to serve the maximum sentence that he could receive for his offenses. However, the government typically has the upper hand in this situation and requires that the defendant relinquish his right to appeal the sentence. In United States v.…

Federal courts are obligated to error on the finding that a constitutional right has not been waived in a criminal case. This is true for a defendant’s right to a jury trial. What is ordinarily a mundane issue of federal criminal procedure recently ended up generating an overturned conviction in a fraud case. In United…

April brought us the bomber who terrorized Austin, Texas, for two weeks with random mail-bomb attacks. That type of domestic terrorism, however, is nothing new. Domestic Terrorism: The D.C. Sniper Case in 2002 Rewind to October 2002 in the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia area. As you may recall, the so-called D.C. Sniper terrorized that entire region for three…