Appellate Practice

I am a seasoned appellate litigator, having previously perfected over 150 criminal appeals in federal appellate courts. Additionally, having also served for the better part of a decade as a career law clerk to a federal judge whose primary focus was civil litigation, I am equally adept at perfecting and arguing appeals from adverse decisions in civil cases.

Representative Case: Stewart v. United States

One example of my appellate work would be the habeas corpus litigation and ensuing appeal in the case of Stewart v. United States, 646 F.3d 856 (11th Cir. 2011). In that case, I unsuccessfully litigated the illegality of a decades-long, “career offender,” drug sentence in district court until judgment was entered denying the habeas corpus petition and affirming the sentence. On appeal, however, I secured a reversal of the district court’s denial and the case was remanded such that the 30-year career offender sentence was vacated in its 9th year and my client was re-sentenced to time served and released from prison immediately.

A Precedent-Setting Win

The Stewart case established new law nationwide. Specifically, the case established the proposition that a habeas corpus challenge to a “career offender” sentence, brought pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 544 U.S. 295 (2005), and articulated in a second or subsequent federal habeas corpus petition is categorically not to be considered a prohibited “second or successive” petition, and that 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)’s gatekeeping provisions against successive petitions do not apply to such claims.

When I briefed and argued this case on appeal, the only appellate case on point was an opinion of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that had reached the opposite conclusion. The Stewart case has since become the leading case on the subject, it has now been cited over 500 times, and its holding has since been adopted by the United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits.