Jury selection began today in what many are calling a landmark trial in the new field of Internet law. As the first case of its kind, U.S. v. Lori Drew could have a far-reaching impact on the future of anonymity on the web. Lori Drew faces federal counts of Conspiracy...
Omar al-Bashir seized power of the Sudan in 1989, and has ruled ever since as the military dictator of one of Africa’s most ruthless regimes. In the Darfur region of western Sudan, a war has raged for about five years, with government troops and proxy fighters committing massive bloodshed...
As we reported yesterday, the New York Attorney General and the Southern District of New York have teamed up to investigate allegations of wrongdoing with respect to credit-default swaps. The AG’s office is now reported to have subpoenaed trading data and communications from several interdealer brokers, small firms that facilitated...
Three major flat-screen TV and monitor manufacturers have pled guilty to price fixing, in a case brought by the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Sharp, LG Display and Chunghwa will pay $585 million in fines, pursuant to their plea. The DOJ alleged that, as a result of the price-fixing conspiracies, consumers paid...
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury promulgated new rules that prohibit the processing of payments related to Internet gambling. By forbidding financial institutions from processing the payments, the government has essentially outlawed online gambling. What constitutes “online gambling” is left up to state law. A few kinds of...
“The nation’s top white-collar criminal defense practices are receiving a steady flow of inquiries from clients embroiled in the ongoing credit crisis,” reports the National Law Journal. This is consistent with reports we have heard within the white-collar defense community. With the economy continuing to take hits from the financial...
The New York Times reports on a trend of public defenders refusing to take on new cases, on the grounds that their workload is so high that they cannot effectively defend their clients. With budget cuts coming at the same time as caseloads are rising, government-appointed lawyers claim to be...
Milberg LLP partners David Bershad and Steven Schulman were sentenced in federal court yesterday afternoon, each receiving 6 months in prison. Along with two other partners, they had been convicted for offenses arising our of the payment of kickbacks to lead plaintiffs in securities and shareholder class actions, which netted...
The Wall Street Journal today reports on a developing issue in sentencing law: are child porn consumers being sentenced disproportionately high? Justice Department data, referred to somewhat inaptly by the Journal, lumps viewers of child porn with those who distribute it. In the group of those convicted of possessing,...
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has suggested to the Washington Post that the Supreme Court may be getting ready to review “whether the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory discriminatory way, an issue the Court has not taken up for two decades.” Dieter drew...
Guilt or innocence, one might say, is all in the mind. After all, there are very few crimes that can be committed without the requisite mens rea, or mental state. If we’re going to punish someone, their acts cannot have been mere accident. We want to know that they had...
In August, Osama bin Laden’s driver Salim Hamdan was sentenced by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay to 66 months, with credit for time served. It is now reported that, on September 24, the military prosecutors moved for reconsideration of that sentence. Their basis for reconsideration is that the...
This morning, the New York State Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of former Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz. The court held that testimony of an attorney who had investigated the case was not unduly prejudicial, nor was the prosecutor’s comments about that testimony on summation. With respect...
The Supreme Court has denied cert. to a Pennsylvania high court ruling that severely limits what counts as probable cause in that state. The dissent of Chief Justice Roberts succinctly, and creatively, sets forth the relevant facts: North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working...
The long-delayed trial of KPMG executives charged with selling fraudulent tax shelters has at last begun, three years after the indictment. Jury selection began yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, and opening arguments are scheduled for today. The trial is expected to continue into early 2009. Out of 19 original...
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