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If I had a dollar for every time I had to tell a client that their potential habeas corpus claim challenging their state court conviction was procedurally barred I'd be living large. The culprit, more often than not, is the dreaded AEDPA: the "Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996" — a disaster that holds its own against other tragedies of 1996, like the murder of Tupac Shakur, the 1996 Mount Everest disaster and the cloning of Dolly the Sheep. So I thought it

At Levitt & Kaizer, we focus on complex federal litigation, restitution defense, asset protection strategies, and post-conviction financial exposure analysis. Sometimes our most important advice to a client is not how to move forward — but whether to move forward at all.   The Scenario A 61-year-old veteran came to us seeking help after being denied a no-money-down mortgage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Loan Program. The reason? He appeared in the Credi

A special thanks to the many of you who have been following the issue we've raised on appeal in the Second Circuit in U.S v. Pippins, regarding whether a trial judge can prohibit defense counsel from criticizing the government during summation. This was only one of the six issues we raised on appeal but it's the one that has most stuck in my craw, since courts routinely permit the government to sharply criticize defense counsel. It's just another example of the courts applyin

As cryptocurrency continues to dominate financial markets and attract mainstream investors, law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors have stepped up efforts to combat crypto-related crimes. The digital gold rush has reached a tipping point in New York. As of early 2026, the "Wild West" era of cryptocurrency is being met with a sophisticated and aggressive enforcement response from both federal and state prosecutors. If you are being investigatged for allegations relat

Grand jury representation is a niche area of criminal practice. Years ago we interviewed a new client who had been recently charged by the feds after testifying before the grand jury. He looked befuddled, explaining his lawyer - who practiced principally in New York State courts - had told him to testify in the grand jury pursuant to a subpoena, because he would thereby take an "immunity bath," that is, he'd automatically be granted immunity. So what happened? How was he char

Well, it was just a few days ago that I wrote about oral argument in U.S. v. Pippins , an appeal that raised no less than six substantial issues, including whether the trial court properly interrupted defense counsel's summation and made him cleanse his argument and PowerPoint slides of any criticism of the government for using "sneaky" tactics to "train" the jurors. Yesterday, a panel of the Court issued a summary order affirming our client's conviction. The Court's discussi

Original Post In my December 23, 2025, post I discussed an issue we had raised on appeal on behalf of our client, Marvin Pippins, who had been convicted in the EDNY of murder in aid of racketeering, after he killed a gang member he believed had been involved in murdering Pippins' twin brother. I discussed there one of the several important issues the appeal raises, whether the trial judge properly interrupted defense counsel's summation, requiring him to purge his argument an

By Joseph De Gregorio and Richard Levitt (Published in Law360, January 29, 2026) On Dec. 19, Judge Keith Barnes of Utah's Fifth District Court sentenced Mia Bailey to consecutive terms of 25 years to life for murdering her parents — a near-maximum sentence despite documented diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The defendant, now 30, had been diagnosed with autism at age 4 and received ongoing psychiatric treatment throughout her life, in

CAUTIONARY TALES ABOUT RULE CHANGES YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT A couple of years ago I was on trial in the Eastern District of New York. The government called an expert. I patiently waited until the prosecutor finished asking the usual qualifying questions. Then, during voir dire I asked him in which cases he had testified over the past 4 years. There were several. I moved to exclude the expert because the recently enacted 2022 amendments to Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(1)(G) had import

Although the legal system is slow to adapt to scientific advancements, Courtrooms can't stop the march of 'progress,' and slowly but surely, new modes of investigation and courtroom expertise find their way into the legal arena . Here are four you need to know about. STEGANOGRAPHY What is steganography, you ask? Well, look at the photo above, from the cable show Prison Break. Steganography is the art of hiding secret data within ordinary, non-secret files , like images, audi

Yes, Virginia, There is Interest of Justice Remand Authority in Federal Appellate Courts Conventional wisdom suggests that federal appellate courts can only order district courts to reconsider an allegedly excessive sentence if it violates substantive due process, not simply because a sentence reduction may be in the "interest of justice." Not so. 28 U.S.C. § 2106 provides: The Supreme Court or any other court of appellate jurisdiction may affirm, modify, vacate, set aside or

We recently achieved a rare and meaningful result for a longtime client : the expiration of a   federal restitution judgment more than twenty years after sentencing, following decades of litigation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Financial Litigation Unit (“FLU”).   The Original Case and Sentence In 2003 our client was charged in a federal HUD loan-fraud prosecution in the Eastern District of New York. In December 2005, the district judge imposed a non-custodial sentence to

At a recent trial (now on appeal) the district court interrupted my summation and required me to take a lengthy break to cleanse my PowerPoint slides and summation notes of arguments criticizing the government. The court instructed, “Do not impugn the integrity of the government as if they’re trying to pull a fast one.” Was this kosher? The Background What precipitated this prohibition? We were trying a murder case in which the defendant was accused of murdering the victim t

Introduction  When a taxpayer steps forward to correct past mistakes through the IRS’s  Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP) , the IRS is supposed to reward that honesty—not punish it. Recently, we successfully intervened when the IRS issued an unnecessary and improper summons to one of our clients  after  he had already been accepted into the VDP program and was fully cooperating with IRS requests for information.   Background: Client Accepted Into the IRS Voluntary Disclosure

I don't shy away from criticizing federal judges and magistrate judges I believe are incompetent, biased, or lazy , but I prefer, particularly in this Season of Thanks, to recognize those that display all-around excellence. One of the categories we include on our website The Robing Room ( www.therobingroom.com ) is "The Top 10 Federal Judges." Here are a few of the many judged the "best of the best" among federal district judges and magistrate judges. Hon. Thelton E. Henderso

On November 19 the BOP published a seven-minute speech  by recently appointed BOP Director Josh Smith, summarizing the breathtaking failures of the BOP and pledging the dawn of a new age in the broken federal prison system.   Attributing the mess to Biden Emphasizing in one way or another, no less than eight times, the “mess that we've inherited from the Biden administration,” Smith excuses the failures of Trump’s first term as the result of a BOP “plagued by an entrenched d

I occasionally hear from clients — or prospective clients — that they are "sure" the feds are wiretapping them because they hear strange clicks and other stuff when speaking on their phone. Although years ago, in the analog world, there were sometimes telltale signs of wiretapping, nowadays intercepts are digital and you won't hear any clicks or other strange sounds on your phone. Unless, perhaps, you are the type of person that also believes that the feds have planted a rec

Some twenty years ago we founded The Robing Room ( www.therobingroom.com ), which has since become the largest judge-rating website in the country, permitting lawyers and non-lawyers to post reviews of both state and federal judges. We have 36,000 reviews of federal judges and a large multiple of that number for state judges. An ever popular area of The Robing Room is the "Top 10" and "Bottom 10" lists. Check it out! We created and maintain The Robing Room because we believe

During the pandemic many inmates prevailed on compassionate release applications because they were particularly vulnerable to suffering bad outcomes should they contract COVID . With COVID largely -- though certainly not entirely -- in the rear view mirror, what are the principal grounds upon which compassionate release -- which includes reductions of sentence in addition to immediate release -- are granted? Key Factors: Rehabilitation vs. Recidivism My partner Zach Segal and

A colleague, reacting to my recent post about the " Vanishing Reversal Rate in the Second Circuit ," asked me yesterday whether we kept similar stats on the subject of habeas corpus petitions. We don't. But one thing that my partner Zach Segal and I started monitoring a few years ago was the Eastern District of New York's then-abysmal backlog of section 2254 petitions, i.e., habeas petitions brought by state inmates. In substance the EDNY was where § 2254 petitions went to di