The Feds are good, very good.

Their cases are typically the ‘best of the best’, meaning: they get to pick, and they don’t pick cases with big problems. But no case is perfect. There is almost always a problem with any case. The trick is finding it and using it to the client’s full advantage.

Just recently we had a case get Dismissed by the Feds, but it was not without work, and risk and perseverance. The Client was the driver and sole occupant of an SUV stopped by DPS Trooper with many, many stolen IDs, credit cards, social security cards, and other identifying information of many, many victims. The client also had computers, software, blank credit cards, and a scanning device: all the ingredients for making fraudulent credit cards via identity theft.

It looked bad, very bad. Jurors hate these cases. Jurors don’t always understand exactly how it all works, but anything that might affect them, or someone they know, will get them more concerned with what’s for lunch, than how strong is the evidence. So, here we needed to find a weakness in the Government’s case ‘pre-trial’, meaning: before the jury sees it. And we did, see: Motion to Suppress.

A ‘Motion to Suppress’ essentially means we believe there is a Constitutional problem with the case, and this problem is so bad, the case should be thrown out. In this case, the biggest problem I could find was the underlying traffic stop. So the next step is to learn all I can about the law surrounding that fact, draft a Motion to Suppress and a ‘Brief in Support”. The Brief in Support* is what matters, it is what will have the most weight with the Judge and Prosecutor pre-hearing. In this case, it was enough to get the case dismissed before anything else had to happen.

If you would like to learn more, click this link to see a copy the Brief in Support.