Elizabeth accepts white collar criminal defense cases and state and federal criminal appellate cases including habeas corpus actions in the jurisdictions listed.
She is a partner in the law firm of Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors for Justice 360, Vice-Chair of the Amicus Committee for the Fourth Circuit for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), and serves on the White Collar Crime Committee of the American Bar Association (ABA).
Hobbs Act extortion charges can be confusing for non-attorneys and for attorneys who don’t practice white collar criminal defense in the federal criminal courts. The Hobbs Act covers two categories of crime – it covers robberies when there is federal jurisdiction, but it also covers extortion which can include bribery by public officials. What is extortion under federal law, ...
When most people think of a federal criminal appeal, they are thinking in terms of guilt or innocence – can I get my conviction overturned? Many appeals, however, are not appeals of the verdict at all – they are federal sentencing guidelines appeals where our job is to correct mistakes that the court made during the ...
Mr. Laurance Freed got into some trouble trying to keep his rather costly real estate business in business. He did so by making material misrepresentations to bankers, lenders, and the City of Chicago. And he did so repeatedly, it appears. So much so that the Government ultimately tried and convicted him of bank fraud (18 U.S.C. §1344), ...
In U.S. v. Farrell, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an attorney’s convictions for money laundering, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, and the evidence against him consisted in part of recordings made by his clients. Although I discussed Farrell’s charges and the evidence against him in another blog post, there are several questions that ...
The first rule of criminal defense practice is: the lawyer should never be the one who goes to jail… So, how does a defense lawyer cross the line and become a “consigliere” to a criminal enterprise, exposing him or herself to criminal prosecution? An attorney in Maryland was charged and convicted of money laundering, obstruction of justice, and ...
The three defendants in US v. Ayelotan were sentenced to the statutory maximum (115, 95, and 25 years, respectively) after they were convicted for online romance scams that may have cost the alleged victims more than $50 million. What is a catfish scam or online romance scam, and how do people fall for it? How can you avoid ...
