Maryland Criminal Attorney Blog

Maryland Criminal Attorneys are commonly called upon to represent defendants who are charged with domestic violence assaults. As I have noted in previous blogs on the subject of domestic violence, there was an explosion of new domestic violence arrests in this country after the OJ Simpson acquittal in 1994. Police officers were encouraged to aggressively enforce the law in domestic cases where they previously might have considered these cases family matters and not law enforcement matters.

Additionally special domestic violence police units and prosecution teams were created throughout the country and new laws were enacted to allow the police and prosecutor to more aggressively pursue perpetrators of domestic violence. For instance in Maryland, new laws were enacted to allow for the warrant-less arrest of those suspected of domestic assaults under certain circumstances - even when the defendant is only suspected of committing a misdemeanor. Unfortunately, some people have taken advantage of these new laws and the new tactics of the police and prosecutors to have others falsely arrested. I had just such a case in Baltimore County Circuit Court this week.

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I recently wrote a blog about the recent and dramatic change in the federal DOJ policy regarding the disparity between federal sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine. http://www.marylandcriminalattorneyblog.com/2009/06/the_disparity_between_federal.html On May 1, 2009, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released a Memorandum to all U.S. Attorney’s Offices instructing all federal prosecutors to inform sentencing courts “that the Administration believes Congress and the Commission should eliminate the crack/powder disparity . . .” and that prosecutors should not object to variances in sentencing to achieve that result.

The new DOJ memorandum gives federal criminal defense lawyers a powerful new tool to fight the draconian sentences that clients have faced for federal crack cocaine offenses.

Most recently, I convinced a federal judge in Maryland that the new DOJ Memo not only reduced the sentencing “regular” 2D1.1 guidelines for crack cocaine offenses, but it also reduced the Career Offender Guidelines under section 4B1.1. I argued that the DOJ Memo applied across the board to all disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Because my client was charged with conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of crack, the maximum possible punishment for the offense was life under 18 U.S.C. §841(b)(1)(A). The maximum possible penalty, however, for a similar offense involving powder cocaine was only 20 years under §841(b)(1)(C). This difference caused the career offender guidelines to drop from level 37, to level 32 because the career offender guidelines are keyed directly to maximum possible sentence for the charged offense.

Continue reading " DOJ Eliminates Crack Cocaine Disparity!!! " »

Baltimore Maryland Criminal Lawyer. I blogged last week about cases in which narcotics detectives essentially manufacture felony drug cases by asking defendants caught with prescription drugs if they intended to give or share the pills with someone else and if they answered in the affirmative, charging them with possession with the intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance (CDS). In that blog I posited the question, "are the police really looking to make progress in the war on drugs or just stat to further their own careers?" I was retained in case recently that caused me again to think the detective's goal may be the latter.

In this case the police arrested an individual for possessing illegal prescription drugs. Instead of just charging the individual and moving on to the next case they chose to make him an informant and offer him the opportunity to "work off his charge". I certainly don't have a problem with what the police did up to this point. Informants are an essential investigative tool that have been used by law enforcement since the beginning of time. The problem I have is the way in which they used this informant which was to get him to set someone up who was otherwise not predisposed to sell drugs.

Continue reading " Man Chargd with Possession With Intent to Distribute Own Prescriptions " »