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Dec 01

Protecting Cooperators in Federal Plea Agreements in the EDNC

A significant number of federal cases involve cooperation by defendants facing long federal sentences or mandatory minimums that can only be removed through cooperation and the filing of 18 U.S.C. 3553(e) motions. Given that federal prosecutions and federal defendants often rely upon cooperation, and given the real dangers that can come to cooperators, the Government...

Nov 13

Making It Up As the Supreme Court Goes Along

I'm going to write some article on how the Supreme Court and "originalist" jurisprudence makes up history as it goes along. Take for example Bruen, the recent Supreme Court case that struck down New York's 1905 law that prohibited unlicensed carry of firearms. The Supreme Court's position is that, essentially, at the time the Second...

Oct 02

Midnight Express: A Film About Prison to Beat All Prison Films

Midnight Express, a 1978 film by Alan Parker, is a fictionalized account based on a true story of an American caught trying to smuggle a couple of kilograms of hashish out of Turkey. Caught, he attempts to cooperate only to find out that cooperation doesn't get him home immediately. He pleads guilty and is sentenced:...

Aug 07

Federal Career Offender Guidelines Always Uncertain

Federal criminal law is generally a sentencing practice, since the overwhelming majority of federal criminal cases result in either guilty pleas or in convictions. The result is complicated litigation surrounding the application of the Sentence Guidelines, the system of advisory directives handed down by the United States Sentencing Commission since the 1980s. Much of that...

Jun 29

The Criminal System is Not Ready for Abortion-Related Prosecutions

Regardless of your view on abortion, changes in the law and the emergence of a new area of criminal law will necessarily result in unexpected developments. This feature of the law is nothing new. Law in general, and criminal law in particular, almost always develops in response to events in the world that require actors...

Jun 25

SCOTUS and the New Old Criminal Laws

The Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade this month will result in a cascade of new criminal issues across the country and in North Carolina. Consistent with Roe's ban on prohibitions of pre-viability abortions, North Carolina's criminal law carves out an exception that permits abortion during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy in N.C.G.S. 14-45.1: (a) Notwithstanding...

May 29

The Assembly: The Evolution of Damon Chetson

From the Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper, The Assembly: In 1991, Damon Chetson, a University of Pennsylvania freshman and Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer, covered the murder of a Penn student that Philadelphia police pinned on 21-year-old Chester Hollman III. Twenty-seven years later, the Conviction Integrity Unit formed by Philadelphia’s controversial new district attorney, Larry Krasner, found...

Feb 20

The Cryptocurrency Fraud

Cryptocurrency has long been advertised as a method by which people can avoid government snooping while carrying on secure transactions. People engaged in either vaguely criminal or outright criminal conduct have gravitated to the Dark Web - through software like the Tor Browser - 3D printing (to create firearms that supposedly cannot be tracked) and...

Feb 04

Board Certified Specialist – Criminal Lawyer

The North Carolina State Bar's Board of Legal Certification has re-certified Damon Chetson as a specialist in state and federal criminal law after a thorough review of his application for recertification and upon recommendation of the speciality committee. Mr. Chetson's certification status will continue for a five-year period. Mr. Chetson was first certified in 2016...

Jan 30

The Halscott Megaro Show

UPDATE: Jaime Halscott has apparently decided to go into the IT and computer repair field, which makes sense because it couldn't possibly be the law. The first... misrepresentation: Jaime has worked his entire career to build successful software and technology companies. Most recently, Jaime was a Director at a Windows management software company, ScriptLogic, where...

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