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White-Collar Sentencing Under the Amended Guidelines: Fewer Steps, Same Dance
FEATURED
November 12, 2025
White-Collar Sentencing Under the Amended Guidelines: Fewer Steps, Same Dance
By: Robert Ward
For years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Guidelines Manual has guided courts through a three-step process to determine the sentence to be imposed. At a high level, that process looked like this: First, the court would calculate the guideline range based on relevant offense conduct and related factors, along with the defendant’s criminal history. Second, the court would consider the Sentencing Commission’s policy statements or commentary relating to “departures” from the guidelines as well as the defendant’s specific personal characteristics. Third, and finally, the court would consider the statutory factors set out in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) in determining the sentence to be imposed (whether within the guideline range or varying in either direction). As of November 1, 2025, this three-step…
Personal Information Flo-wing out of Control
October 20, 2025
Personal Information Flo-wing out of Control
By: Lauren Scribner
In September, a nearly $60 million settlement was reached in Frasco, et al v. Flo Health, Inc., Meta Platforms, Inc., Google, LLC, and Flurry, Inc. The case,[1] a class action filed in 2021, alleged inter alia that Flo Health Inc. (“Flo”), a popular women’s health tracking application estimated to have over 38 million monthly users, invaded the privacy of its users by sharing personal and…
New Laws for AI Developers: California’s Fork in the AI Regulatory Road
October 16, 2025
New Laws for AI Developers: California’s Fork in the AI Regulatory Road
By: Steven Hess
AI Regulation and The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act Artificial intelligence (“AI”) products have become an increasingly significant aspect of U.S. innovation, growth, and development. Generative AI is being used to predict the structure of proteins and other biomolecules in pharmaceutical research,[1] to simulate wargames for the U.S. military,[2] and to drive an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars of growth in sectors from…
Appeals Court Limits Scope of ‘Intended Loss’ in Sentencing Guidelines
September 27, 2011
Appeals Court Limits Scope of ‘Intended Loss’ in Sentencing Guidelines
By: Ifrah Law
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit recently considered what type of proof is required for a sentence enhancement based on “intended loss” under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The court held that a loss enhancement applies only to losses the defendant purposely sought to inflict, not losses the defendant merely knew would occur or possible losses the defendant may have contemplated. To most…
No Attorney’s Fee Award for This Type of Prosecutorial Misconduct
September 22, 2011
No Attorney’s Fee Award for This Type of Prosecutorial Misconduct
By: Ifrah Law
The case of United States v. Shaygan recently made the news when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned a district court’s award of $600,000 in attorney’s fees to a defendant who was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct. The misconduct was indeed egregious — including recording conversations between a lawyer and a defense investigator, violating discovery orders, and vexatiously filing a superseding…
Prosecutors’ Misconduct Is More Than Just ‘Honest Mistakes’
September 8, 2011
Prosecutors’ Misconduct Is More Than Just ‘Honest Mistakes’
By: Ifrah Law
A federal judge in the District of Columbia recently ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice will be allowed to retry star pitcher Roger Clemens on perjury charges after a mistrial was declared earlier this summer when the prosecution made reference to inadmissible evidence in open court. The government claimed that its violation of court orders was done inadvertently and was not an instance of…
Judge Delivers Rebuke to Prosecutors in Sentencing NSA Official
August 17, 2011
Judge Delivers Rebuke to Prosecutors in Sentencing NSA Official
By: Ifrah Law
The recent sentencing of a government intelligence official saw a dramatic and unusual rebuke of the U.S. Department of Justice by a federal judge. Four years after searching the home of National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who was suspected of illegally leaking classified information to a reporter, and more than year after actually indicting him on 10 felony counts, the government dismissed those charges…
Major FCPA Case in Jeopardy Because of Prosecutors’ Errors
August 5, 2011
Major FCPA Case in Jeopardy Because of Prosecutors’ Errors
By: Ifrah Law
In late June, U.S. District Court Judge Howard Matz of the Central District of California, the judge in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) case against Lindsey Manufacturing Co. and two of its executives, invited both sides to submit briefs on the question of whether the defendants’ convictions should be dismissed. It had been revealed in post-verdict proceedings that the government violated a court order…
