In 2013, a United Arab Emirates citizen named Hamid Mohamed Ahmed Ali Rehaif was admitted to the United States through a student visa to attend the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. He was academically dismissed from the institute in…
Category: Federal Criminal Law
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Fraud
Those who are elected to public office in this country take what is called “an oath of office.”
They are given responsibilities and have the trust of the public that elected them. When they fail
in their responsibilities and break…
2022
Category: Drug Trafficking | Federal Criminal Law | Guns | Uncategorized
This past February, Houston’s city officials allocated 44 million dollars to combat increasing violence in the state’s largest city. At a news conference announcing the allocation of the violence-fighting funds, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner stated:
“Violent crime is a public…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law
There is a mistaken belief sometimes that you are convicted of a crime and serve your sentence, then you will have paid your debt to society – and that’s the end of it. But that is far from the end.…
2022
Category: Appeals | Criminal Law | Federal Criminal Law | SCOTUS
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right to effective assistance of counsel at both the trial and appellate level. A defendant raising an ineffective assistance claim in a post-conviction proceeding must meet a two-prong…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Hate Crime
Terrorism is a serious charge in the United States. While some associate terrorism with planes flying into buildings or bombs exploding, acts of teror can take on many forms.
Today Americans must deal with domestic terrorism as part of…
2022
Category: Death Penalty | Federal Criminal Law
The death penalty is generally a state matter. Until the thirteen executionswere carried out during the Trump presidency, there had not been a federal execution since 2003.
President Joe Biden stated last year that there would be no executions…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Federal Fraud | Fraud | Wire Fraud
Before 2010, federal prosecutors routinely used the honest services component of the federal fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, to criminalize the failure of public officials and corporate executives to report their financial gains from business dealings with corporate or…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law
There are 403 chapters in the United States Code. Each chapter has statutes that prohibit offenses specific to each chapter. Many, if not most, of these federal statutes cover crimes that are often complex. They can be confusing, which is…
2022
Category: Federal Criminal Law | Obstruction of Justice
Obstruction of justice may appear in dramatic movie courtroom scenes, but it can, and sometimes is, charged as a real criminal offense—one that carries significant consequences – especially when charged at the federal level.
What sort of actions constitute “obstruction…