Ralph Gene Carloss lived in Tahlequah, Oklahoma—a city in Cherokee County located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. He is an ex-felon who lived in a single-family dwelling located in what was described as a “pretty old area” in…
Category: Federal Criminal Law
2016
Category: Appeals | Federal Criminal Law | Internet Sex Crimes
There is no doubt that Melvin Hubert Holmes took videos of his teenage stepdaughter in various stages of undress without her knowledge. The images were captured in the victim’s bathroom and bedroom. The images depicted the victim in normal, though…
2016
Category: Drug Crime | Federal Criminal Law | Guns
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court in Riley v. California held that the police, acting without a warrant, generally may not examine digital information stored on a cell phone seized during an arrest.
When a defendant is released on…
2016
The U.S. Justice Department prosecutes computer crimes, more commonly known as cybercrime, under three different sections of federal law.
First, there is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), codified in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1030, covers nine…
2016
The difference between federal and state crimes is oftentimes complicated. The charging, and prosecution, mechanisms in both legal jurisdictions are similar in some respects but starkly different in others.
For example, the U.S. Justice Department, through binding policy statements,…
2016
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Guns
Rocky Joe Houston, and his brother Leon, do not like the government, and in particular do not like the police.
In May 2006 the brothers shot and killed Roane County Deputy Bill Jones and his ride-along friend Mike Brown,…
2016
The first thing to know about the raging battle between the U.S. Justice Department and Apple over the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook is that it has nothing to do with individual privacy.
First, the phone…
2016
Category: Federal Criminal Law
THE FEDERAL PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
In 1984, Congress enacted, in a bipartisan manner, the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) following a decade of hearings, arguments and procedural wrangling. The SRA was supported by every U.S. Senator except one—Senator Charles…
2016
Category: Drug Trafficking | Federal Criminal Law
The federal judicial system has a perverse way of treating similarly situated criminal defendants in shameful disparate ways. For example, a federal drug defendant who fights their case at trial will receive a sentence three times more severe than a…
2016
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Illegal Pornography
Federal courts are loathed to reverse a criminal conviction for technical statutory violations. This was evidenced in the January 21, 2016 decision by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Welch.
John Welch was convicted of…