In Plain Cite

Jonathan discusses recent Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit cases with special guest Emily Harrill from the Federal Public Defender Office in South Carolina.

Jonathan discusses recent Fourth Circuit cases with special guest Josh Carpenter from the Western District of North Carolina.

Jonathan, Rhett, and Lex discuss new rules of evidence and appellate procedure

Jonathan talks about new cases dealing with child sexual exploitation, fraud, and the death penalty with Brian Beck from the Western District of Virginia.

Jonathan and guest Alicia Penn discuss four new Fourth Circuit cases, covering topics including crimes of violence, child pornography sentences, and health care fraud.

In this episode we bring back special guest Emily Harrill to discuss recent Fourth Circuit decisions.

In this episode we discuss recent Fourth Circuit decisions with special guest Emily Harrill from the Federal Public Defender Office in South Carolina.

In this episode we talk about the recent public meeting of the United States Sentencing Commission and what might be in store for the Guidelines.

In this episode we talk about recent Fourth Circuit cases touching on the use of force, prior bad acts, double jeopardy, and coerced statements

Our extern, Brittany, interviews AFPD David Bungard to get a feel for what it's like to practice federal criminal defense for the indigent charged with federal crimes.  David discusses the differences between private and public practice, his experience as a Criminal Justice Act panel attorney, what drew him to defense work, and what day-to-day life is like working in the office of the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of West Virginia.

This week brought the eagerly awaited Supreme Court decision in Beckles, in which the Court held that the Sentencing Guidelines could not be challenged as being unconstitutionally vague. What does Beckles mean in the short term and the long term? Does it tell us anything about the future of other claims based on the Court's 2015 Johnson decision? We dig deep into the opinion and try to figure it out.

Federal Public Defender Christian Capece and Legal Research and Writing Specialist Jonathan Byrne speak with Professor John Pfaff of Fordham University School of Law, author of "Locked In:  The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform."

We look forward to 2017 and proposed Sentencing Guideline Amendments.  Also, a look back at two big stories of 2016, the death of Antonin Scalia and the the continuing ripple of Johnson.

Our team looks at the recent changes to the Sentencing Commission's recommended conditions of supervised release, examine some of the other Guideline amendments that went into effect at the beginning of November, and check in on the state of the Johnson union.

Today, Jonathan and Lex discuss Birchfield, which deals with the fourth amendment and blood alcohol and breath tests; Strieff which focuses on attenuation and the fourth amendment; Luis which touches on seizure of funds before a trial; Ocasio, conspiracy, Hobbs Act extortion; Voisine and misdemeanor crime of domestic violence; and Musacchio, which touches on instructions, appeals, and sufficiency of evidence Looking forward to the 2016 Supreme Court term which begins in October, we preview Bravo-Fernandez and double jeopardy; Moore and the eighth amendment and Steinbeck.

The office's summer interns offer a critique on how Supervised Release works in today's federal justice system and share their ideas on how to improve the same.

A quick discussion of the basics practitioners need to know as the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Johnson decision approaches and, along with it, the deadline for filing 2255 motions seeking relief under it.

On this episode of In Plain Cite, Jonathan, Lex, and Rhett discuss guideline amendments adopted by the United States Sentencing Commission and then bring us some commentary on recent Fourth Amendment rulings made by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Episode 7 of In Plain Cite, our hosts, Jonathan and Lex, take a look at amendments to the US Sentencing Guidelines that were proposed in August 2015. Those amendments would overhaul the definition "crime of violence" in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Johnson, some in ways that would benefit defendants and others in ways that would not. We also catch up on the progress (or lack thereof) of criminal justice reform in Congress as we head into 2016.

Episode 6 of In Plain Cite answers a question from our Criminal Just Act panel.  Lex and Rachel review some of the more important United States Sentencing Guideline amendments that went into effect on November 1, 2015.  The discussion includes changes to the guidelines dealing with Hydrocodone, the Mitigating Role Adjustment, Inflationary Adjustments, Economic Loss, and the Single Sentence Rule.