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Opening Appellate Brief filed in U.S. v. Thomas

U.S v Michael Thomas, No. 16-41264 (5th Cir.) Last night in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals we filed the Opening Appellant Brief in U.S. v. Michael Thomas. In June of 2016, in an important CFAA case regarding the definition of unauthorized damage, a jury convicted Michael Thomas of a single count felony violation for causing damage to his employer’s computer by deleting data, despite the fact that he had full authorization to delete data on the system. At sentencing Judge Amos Mazzant III departed downward from the government’s sentencing recommendation of 41 months and sentenced Mr. Thomas to the time he served in pre-trial detention, which was 4 months, and 3 years supervised release. Here’s the brief: 15 Opening Brief 2017-02-23 U.S. v. Thomas (377) Filed  ]]]]> ]]>

Road to Nowhere

In Liminae: The Road to Nowhere

It takes us about six hours to drive to the rural state jail (that’s owned by two judges) the Feds contracted with to hold our client. Accused of computer crimes, he can’t effectively review evidence in jail – there’s no practical access to computers in the gulag. They’ve seized all his assets claiming they’re the ill-gotten gains of crimes the government can’t identify, and their computer forensics – if you can call them that – have no scientific basis and are full of basic errors and typos. In my decade as a federal criminal defense lawyer doing computer cases across the country, I’ve never come across a case where the government was so completely off.

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Guilty Until Proven Innocent

A defendant’s view from the trenches of federal criminal court This post is originally published to Substack. You can read and follow us there. https://torekeland.substack.com/p/guilty-until-proven-innocent

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