Recently Texas has enacted a program to certify specialists in criminal appellate law. There has long been board certification in criminal law, so why is there a need for certification in criminal appellate law? Read the rest of this entry »

On March 7, 2011, Clint Broden achieved another appellate victory in a Medicaid fraud/Medicare fraud case when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided United States v. Isiwele.  Mr. Isiwele was convicted at trial and retained Broden & Mickelsen to represent him on appeal.  Read the rest of this entry »

We received a call the other day from a potential client.  Her son was charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child.  The woman spoke at length about the child’s credibility problems and the possible motivations that child might have to make false accusations against her son.  Her son faced life in prison if convicted.  Nevertheless, from the things I was hearing, it sound like her son could have a strong defense at trial.  Then the woman dropped the bombshell.  The case was set for trial the following week. Read the rest of this entry »

It is difficult to say how important character letters are to judges.  Moreover, the importance of character letters differs from judge to judge and from case to case.  Nevertheless, what we generally tell our clients is that well written character letters never hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

Depositions play a key part of civil cases. In only a few states are they common in criminal cases, and they are extremely rare in Federal criminal cases. However, occasionally the situation arises that a critical witness is unavailable to travel to the criminal courtroom in which the trial is being held. When this occurs one party in the criminal case may ask the the court for permission to take the sworn testimony of the witness in a different location and at a different time than that of the criminal trial. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we found out that the Court of Criminal Appeals granted relief to our client Roderick Newton. Mr. Newton was convicted of shooting Jesus Montoya. Allegedly, he and his co-defendant Julian Williams, acted together when they robbed and killed Mr. Montoya. Julian Williams, in exchange for a plea agreement of ten years incarceration, testified that Mr. Newton was the shooter rather than himself.

Broden & Mickelsen and David Finn began representing Mr. Newton during the Federal habeas process. Different lawyers represented Mr. Newton during trial; during his first, or direct appeal; and during the first State habeas process.

Limited to the issues raised in the State habeas process, the Federal habeas was denied. Afterwards, with the assistance of the able lawyers at the Texas Defender Services, and with an scheduled execution looming, we prepared a subsequent State habeas petition, bringing new claims to the State court. One of those new claims were that Mr. Newton was mentally retarded and thus ineligible to receive the death penalty, and the other was that the prosecutor’s office had failed to disclose favorable evidence to the trial lawyers during trial.

To their credit, the post-conviction litigation lawyers of the Dallas County District Attorney’s office discovered that some important evidence had not been turned over during the trial. That evidence consisted of notes of an interview of Julian William that tended to implicate him as the shooter and were contradictory to the testimony that he gave at trial. This fact, and the fact that Mr. Williams had been given such a favorable plea bargain, troubled the lawyers at the District Attorney’s office. They agreed that Mr. Newton essentially should receive a sentence of life imprisonment without parole rather than the death penalty.

Working together, we and the District Attorney’s office fashioned a rather complicated plea bargain. The difficulty was that if Mr. Newton’s sentence was simply converted to a life sentence of imprisonment, pursuant to the laws applicable at the time of his offense, Mr. Newton would have been eligible for immediate parole. Although parole would have been unlikely, the District Attorney’s office wanted Mr. Newton to give up the possibility of parole in exchange for their agreement that he not receive the death penalty.

Although both the District Attorney’s office and our office, on behalf of Mr. Newton, reached a plea agreement, this did not mean the Court of Criminal Appeals was necessarily going to approve of the arrangement. After many months of waiting, yesterday, we, and Mr. Newton learned that he would no longer face execution.

Of course, our hearts go out to the family of Jesus Montoya, and we hope this development does not cause them new pain. As part of the agreement with the District Attorney’s office Roderick Newton agreed to apologize for involvement in Mr. Montoya’s death, and on behalf of Mr. Newton we extend that apology here.

On October 14, 2010, my client, Gayland Bradford, was scheduled for execution. I began representing Gayland about ten years ago. At that time Gayland had been tried once; had his case reversed on appeal; tried a second time; had his case affirmed on appeal; and had his state petition for a writ of habeas corpus denied. I was appointed to represent Gayland in relation to his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Read the rest of this entry »

We have previously bogged on Defending Child Pornography Offenses in Federal Court.  As we explained, federal prosecutors are prosecuting child pornography offenses at an astounding rate both here in the Northern District of Texas and throughout the country.  We also discussed the dramatic changes over the years in the federal sentencing guidelines for child pornography guidelines.  The guidelines have gotten so ridiculous that many times a person who downloads child pornography and makes it available with a file sharing program actually faces a much harsher sentence than a person actually abuses a child.  We recommend you read the full post by CLICKING HERE. Read the rest of this entry »