New York criminal defense attorney Peter E. Brill of Brill Legal Group appeared in an exclusive interview on WHDT World News with journalist Mark Maxwell about a topic that has sparked debate among the legal community. In the October 11 interview, Brill discusses the ethics and ramifications of Donald Trump’s repeated threats to jail Hillary Clinton.

Brill comments on whether there is any legal precedent for a president to launch a targeted investigation against a political opponent. Trump has claimed he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server if he becomes president. The Republican nominee led the audience in chants of “lock her up” during his October 10 rally in Pennsylvania.

In the interview, Maxwell also asks Brill for his views on FBI Director James Comey’s decision to not prosecute the Democratic candidate in the email case and whether he thinks a special prosecutor should have been appointed from the very beginning. Brill, who is one of only two New York attorneys to be certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in Criminal Law, sheds light on the topic by sharing his knowledge of the inner workings of the Justice Department.

Last updated over a decade ago, the guidelines steer judges in financial crime cases toward prison sentences that vary based on the dollar value of ill-gotten gains. Opinions on the revisions ran across the spectrum. On one end, the U.S. Justice Department objected to the revisions, appearing to base their judgment on public opinion. The Department said the move was contrary to “overwhelming societal consensus.”

On the other hand, many defense attorneys at the American Bar Association felt the proposals were too moderate. They have long advocated for softened guidelines and had pushed for broader revisions. Indeed, even some judges have said the recommended prison terms for financial offenders are too harsh.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in United States v. Booker, that all federal sentencing guidelines were advisory. Prior to the decision, they were mandatory — judges’ hands were tied, and the specific mitigating circumstances of each case had no bearing on the punishment imposed. Following Booker, judges would often hand down sentences in fraud cases that fell short of the Sentencing Commission’s guidelines. This illustrates that the recent revisions were probably overdue, especially considering the cumulative effects of inflation on the actual value of fraudulent gains.

Last updated over a decade ago, the guidelines steer judges in financial crime cases toward prison sentences that vary based on the dollar value of ill-gotten gains. Opinions on the revisions ran across the spectrum. On one end, the U.S. Justice Department objected to the revisions, appearing to base their judgment on public opinion. The Department said the move was contrary to “overwhelming societal consensus.”

On the other hand, many defense attorneys at the American Bar Association felt the proposals were too moderate. They have long advocated for softened guidelines and had pushed for broader revisions. Indeed, even some judges have said the recommended prison terms for financial offenders are too harsh.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in United States v. Booker, that all federal sentencing guidelines were advisory. Prior to the decision, they were mandatory — judges’ hands were tied, and the specific mitigating circumstances of each case had no bearing on the punishment imposed. Following Booker, judges would often hand down sentences in fraud cases that fell short of the Sentencing Commission’s guidelines. This illustrates that the recent revisions were probably overdue, especially considering the cumulative effects of inflation on the actual value of fraudulent gains.

U.S. Senators Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that the recent settlement between the U.S. Justice Department and General Motors (GM) showed that stronger legislation is needed. After it was revealed that GM covered up a deadly ignition switch defect, the company agreed to pay $900 million and offer settlements to nearly 300 people who were injured and the families of 124 people who were killed as a result of the faulty switches, which caused vehicles to lose power while in motion. No criminal charges were brought against any GM employees.

The proposed legislation would make it a crime for an officer of a corporation to knowingly conceal information about an action or product that could put workers or the public a risk of serious injury or death. Under the proposed law, violators would face fines and up to five years in prison.

Sen. Blumenthal said that current law does not go far enough in holding corporate officials accountable when they are complicit in cover-ups that cause preventable tragedies. The bill, called the Hide No Harm Act, would also apply to other products, such as defective cribs and body armor, that have caused injuries.

If you need to speak with a auto accident lawyer, Call Joyce & Reyes at 1.888.771.1529 or visit more of http://www.joyceandreyespa.com/.

Judging by the most recent available statistics, any departure from current policy on deportations would be significant. The latest Justice Department analysis shows that immigration offenses made up almost exactly half of all federal arrests made in 2012. More specifically, out of a total of 172,248 suspects who were arrested for a federal offense, 85,458 (or 49.6 percent) were booked for immigration offenses, such as illegal entry, illegal re-entry, alien smuggling and visa fraud.

The newest, preliminary data suggest that the pace of arrests did not slow in either 2013 or 2014. Indeed, the newer figures show that arrests for illegal entry and illegal re-entry picked up over the last two years. The number of arrests for immigration offenses have been on a steady upward trajectory since 8,777 federal immigration arrests were recorded in 1994. And the previous high was set in 2009, when 84,749 people were booked.

According to the philosophy that the White House shared when the president announced his executive action on immigration, the administration would be targeting “felons, not families” for deportation, shielding up to five million undocumented immigrants from an expedited exit from the United States. And it is probably safe to say that those who would be considered families are heavily concentrated among the 60 percent of undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for 10 years or longer.

If put into action, the decision to defer deportations could translate into a measurable drop in federal convictions. Immigration offenses have fueled the bulk of growth in the total number of felons sentenced in courts — 48 percent, as opposed to the second leading contributing factor, convictions for drug offenses, which were responsible for 22 percent of the growth.

But a significant drop in in the number of deportation proceedings could have perhaps its biggest and most beneficial impact on the Treasury. Estimates claim that it costs $8,318 to deport an immigrant. Multiply that figure by the conservative number of four million undocumented immigrants whose deportation would be deferred under the president’s measures, and one would be talking about some serious savings — $33.272 billion, to be exact.

And going one major step further, if none of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants were deported from the United States, the country would save $91.498 billion, which is quite a tidy sum, indeed.

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration lawyer in Texas. Before selecting an attorney, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their information filled web site at http://www.visatous.com.

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Multiple ongoing investigations, including a federal criminal probe, are asking whether the company intentionally concealed the problem and, if so, how long executives knew about it. GM acknowledges that engineers proposed a fix in 2004 and 2005, but the company says upper management only became aware of the problem last year.

Now, some victims and their families want prosecutors to go after the individuals at the company responsible for the delays and alleged coverups. The Associated Press quoted Leo Ruddy, whose daughter died in a recalled Chevrolet Cobalt, saying that prison sentences are the only way to protect the public from corporate negligence.

But it is far more common for corporations as a whole, not individual decision-makers, to be held responsible for wrongdoings. In March, the Justice Department closed a years-long investigation into problems of unintended acceleration in some Toyota cars without filing charges against any individuals at the company. Instead, the company agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle allegations of improper handling of the problem, which was linked to scores of deaths.

Sending an individual to prison requires proving his or her personal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Resolving a charge against a company usually involves an agreement to settle, a much easier task.

Individual prosecutions would probably strike fear in the hearts of corporate executives who might be tempted to cover up product defects. But regardless of the outcome of the GM case, victims and their families can seek compensation for their losses by filing suit against the company.

By Richard LaGarde

Debra Dear, 52, and her husband care for their 31-year-old daughter Lindsey, who has a chromosomal disorder, at their home in the Sandbridge area. Dear looked into housing options for Lindsey in anticipation of the day when she and her husband could no longer look after Lindsey. Finding the existing options lacking, she started a nonprofit organization in 2010 to build a development that met her vision of a safe and enabling environment for her daughter and others like her.

The initiative has received some $3 million in donations and secured a 75-acre plot of land near the intersection of Princess Anne and Sandbridge roads for the housing development, to be called Vanguard Landing. Later, in September, 2013, the city of Virginia Beach reached an informal agreement with the nonprofit to provide a $2.9 million loan at a favorable interest rate.

That agreement set off the controversy, because federal law requires publicly-funded programs for the disabled to provide their services in an integrated community setting whenever possible. Dear says the project, estimated to cost $32 to $40 million to build, will be privately funded and self-sustaining.

Virginia is in the midst of executing a settlement with the Justice Department requiring the state to close four of its five “training centers” – institutions for the developmentally and intellectually disabled – and move the residents to smaller facilities or regular homes. Some parents oppose the settlement, favoring the supervision and oversight of government-run facilities. Others argue that segregated and secluded settings offer less safety and opportunities for rehabilitation.

The elder law attorneys at Hook Law Center assist Virginia families with will preparation, trust & estate administration, guardianships and conservatorships, long-term care planning, special needs planning, veterans benefits, and more. To learn more, visit http://www.hooklawcenter.com/ or call 757-399-7506.

Despite the pharmacy’s claim that it builds relationships “on integrity, price transparency, and ethical business practices,” the lawsuit alleges that, for two years, PharMerica dispensed Schedule II narcotics such as oxycodone “several thousand times” without prescriptions and defrauded Medicare by billing the insurance agency for those drugs. Further, PharMerica filed unsigned doctor’s authorization forms in a storeroom that employees called “the Harry Potter room.”

Former employee Jennifer Buth (nee Denk) filed the whistleblower suit in 2009, according to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.

“The complaint that we are filing today reflects the abiding commitment of the Justice Department to the qui tam process, encouraging people with information about alleged fraud and abuse to report it in a timely and effective manner,” said James L. Santelle, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

On Monday, the pharmacy stated that it will “vigorously defend itself.”

Governmental bodies, of course, purport to have the best interests of those children at heart. But parents – the most important advocates a child can have – are often excluded from court proceedings if they are involved in immigration disputes. These are the proceedings in which parental rights and the child’s future are decided: at least 5000 children nationwide are in foster care because their parents have been detained or deported.

In recent sessions of Congress, lawmakers introduced a bill called the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act. The bill ensures a number of crucial protections for children of immigrants that find themselves embroiled in legal actions.

The bill would:

• Allow parents, soon after their initial detainment, to make phone calls to arrange for someone to take care of their children;
• Require Immigration and Customs Enforcement to consider the children’s best interest when making decisions on the detention, release, or transfer of immigrant parents (this moves the law in line with child custody proceedings in divorces, in which the child’s best interest is always held paramount);
• Allow children to visit or at least call their parents during their detainment;
• Ensure that parents are allowed to participate in their children’s family court hearings;
• Ensure that if parents are required to leave the country, their departure can be coordinated with their children.

The legislation did not pass when it was introduced in previous sessions as a stand-alone bill. However, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) succeeded in adding the bill as an amendment to an immigration reform measure that appears to have quite a bit of momentum behind it. That bill was recently passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 13-5 vote. It would provide most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to citizenship, reform border security, and implement new worker visa rules. And thanks to Sen. Franken, it includes vital protections for vulnerable children who are adversely affected through no fault of their own.

Franken introduced a second amendment that the committee also voted to add to the bill. It would reassign the responsibility to provide lawyers and other advocates to unaccompanied children. That responsibility currently lies with Health and Human Services, but Franken’s amendment would put it in the hands of the Justice Department, which Franken says is better equipped to handle it. According to a press release from the Senator’s office, “as recently as 2012, half of the unaccompanied children who arrived in the country were forced to represent themselves in immigration court.”

Joshua Law is a divorce attorney and Brandon family law lawyer with the Osenton Law Offices, P.A. To learn more, visit http://www.brandonlawoffice.com/

According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Austin, the manufacturers shared information about sales, pricing and production and agreed to rig bids and fix prices for their products sold in the United States. As a result, Dell said, the company was charged inflated prices for disk drives it bought from the manufacturers.

The lawsuit claims that billions of dollars of purchases over several years were affected. The companies are accused of breach of contract and violation of U.S. antitrust laws. Under antitrust law, Dell is seeking triple damages for the overcharges.

Dell is Central Texas’ largest private employer, with about 14,000 workers in the area. The company is the third-largest manufacturer of personal computers in the world, after HP and Lenovo. Optical drives are components of personal computers and Blu-ray and DVD players. In 2011, the Justice Department said that Hitachi-LG pleaded guilty to fixing prices and rigging bids for disk drives, agreeing to pay a $21.1 million fine.

According to the Justice Department, Hitachi-LG and other companies conspired to fix prices for disk drives to be sold to Dell during a period from 2004 to 2009. Hitachi-LG is a joint venture of Hitachi Ltd., based in Tokyo, and LG Electronics Inc., based in Seoul. According to Dell’s lawsuit, four Hitachi-LG executives pleaded guilty to participation in the price-fixing conspiracy.

The lawsuit also names as defendants Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, based in Amsterdam; BenQ Corp., based in Taiwan; Samsung Electronics Co., based in Suwon, South Korea; and Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., both based in Tokyo. The defendant companies declined comment, citing the pending litigation.

The lawsuit comes at a time when Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of the company, is leading a push to take the company private at a bid of $24.4 billion, or $13.65 per share. Other large Dell shareholders have said they are prepared to make a different offer to investors to take over the company, which would then continue to be publicly traded.

Dell, founded in Austin, Texas in 1984, is one of the world’s largest tech companies, employing more than 100,000 people worldwide. The company is listed as number 38 in the Fortune 500 list of top publicly traded and closely held companies.

Gregory D. Jordan is an Austin business attorney and business litigation lawyer. To learn more, visit http://www.theaustintriallawyer.com or call 512-419-0684.