The Eleventh Circuit recently vacated the sentence of a defendant after determining that the district court improperly found that he was a leader in a drug conspiracy for purposes of the Sentencing Guidelines. That erroneous finding had increased his sentence by four levels. In US v. Martinez, the defendant, Martinez, pled guilty to conspiring to […]
The Court of Appeals of Georgia recently had to determine if a suspect could be briefly detained where the facts showed that he was driving slowly and looking into the woods of an area where an alleged car thief was hiding. The court held that on these facts alone a person could not be detained. […]
The Court of Appeals of Georgia recently ruled that an eight year delay between the time of a defendant’s arrest date and trial date was presumptively prejudicial. The court went on to find that the state failed to rebut this presumption, and upheld the trial court’s dismissal of charges based on the right to a […]
The DeKalb County Recorder’s Court was plagued by a ticket scam earlier this year which led to the indictments of three employees and five other individuals. A grand jury recently concluded that the court is haunted by lax oversight and leadership problems which continue to make it vulnerable to fraud. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has […]
The Court of Appeals of Georgia has held that a conspirator’s statements made after his arrest which incriminate a co-conspirator are only admissible against the conspirator who made the statements, since such statements effectively end the conspiracy. The court also held that allowing statements from the interrogation of a non-testifying conspirator is a violation of […]