Category: Blog

President Trump granted clemency to hundreds of individuals who were charged with or convicted of actions around the United States Capitol on January 6. WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, […]

Acting (as of the time of this writing) Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice have issued a memorandum regarding charging decisions for accused persons. Let's take a look at this memo and discuss how it affects charging decisions. A Prosecutor's Discretion Generally speaking, federal prosecutors have a wide amount of discretion in […]

Recently President Biden Granted Clemency to hundreds of individuals in the past few weeks; some of which were on Federal Death Row. Let's take a look at what clemency is, how it was used in this case and where we go from here. The President's Clemency Power As explained on our clemency page, the constitution […]

The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) instituted a sweeping change to their e-mail policy that affects inmates and their access to information from newsletters like the federal prison newsletter that I sent from here for the past ten years. Let's talk about what happened and what happens next. How E-mails Used to Work The federal prison […]

Administrative Agencies: What they are and what they do There are several agencies that exist in the government that help the executive branch of government (the president) execute the laws on the books. These places can be called administrative agencies. Many of them are things that you know about or are easy to understand:  The […]

Hess and Koch are Charged and Plead Guilty to a Very Different Type of Fraud Case Hess and Koch, persons who owned and worked at a funeral home respectively, were accused of crimes relating to owning a funeral home. Their funeral home would meet with persons seeking cremations for themselves [in the future] or loved […]

Vinas Pleads Guilty to Offenses Around Murder-For-Hire, Gets Time Served Vinas was implicated in a murder-for-hire case. Undercover officers, working on a tip, contacted Vinas, who indicated that he wanted someone to kill two people for unpaid construction work. Vinas and the undercover met several times to discuss the matter and Vinas paid two deposits […]

Supreme Court holds that Some Jan 6th Defendants May have been Charged Improperly: Fischer, 23-5572 A cold and dispassionate look at one of the statutes used to prosecute Fischer led the Court to determine the statute was improperly used. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Normally, an Law Involving White Collar Crimes The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), […]

United States Sentencing Commission Promulgates Amendments for 2023-2024 Term The United States Sentencing Commission has recently issued new sentencing commission guidelines and amendments, set to take effect from November 1, 2024 unless congress intervenes. This significant development aims to enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of the sentencing process.  In this article we’ll discuss the […]

West:  Wrongfully Sentenced to Life in Prison West was indicted for use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire. The district court sentenced West under the portion of the statute that imposes a sentence of life imprisonment in cases where “death results.”  However the indictment “’did not include any allegation that […]