For decades the government has prioritized the prosecution of immigration cases, charging our clients with reentry and illegal reentry.  In many areas, there are times when at least a third or more of our caseload involves immigration offenses. This presentation will cover the fundamentals of defending a client charged with reentry or illegal reentry from the initial appearance through trial. The webinar will provide participants with arguments to raise to secure your client’s pretrial release, guidance on pretrial motions to litigate and defenses at trial.

Presenter:

CHLOE DILLON joined Federal Defenders of San Diego as a trial attorney in the fall of 2012. Before that, she clerked for the Los Angeles Immigration Court for two years, and, prior to law school, she worked at a deportation defense firm in San Francisco, California. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Arizona School of Law in Tucson.  She has lived in virtually every major California city and grew up in a town of 600 people in Eastern California. Chloe has previously trained both the CJA panel and Federal Defenders on the topic of defending 1326 cases, and, in particular, collateral attacks under 1326(d).  She enjoys fighting removal orders almost as much as she enjoys watching Star Trek.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) accreditation for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions. Additional CLE information will be available after the conclusion of this program.

It's a drug jungle out there and it is not getting easier. Discover the caution signs frequently found in federal drug prosecutions and learn techniques to effectively represent clients charged with federal drug offenses from pretrial motions to sentencing. This session will cover issues involving drug identification, drug weight, expert testimony, relevant conduct, conspiracy and co-conspirators, mandatory sentences, safety valve, and strategies for successful plea negotiations.

Presenters:

AKIN ADEPOJU has served as an Assistant Federal Defender in both the Trial and Capital Habeas Units for the Federal Defender Offices for the Western District of Pennsylvania and District of Delaware. He has worked on cases from pre-indictment stages to state and federal capital and non-capital trials. Akin has published scholarly articles and lectures nationally on trial and sentencing advocacy, litigating race and trauma issues, legal writing, and ethics. Before joining the Federal Defender family, Akin was an attorney at the Fair Trial Initiative, where he litigated almost exclusively state capital trial cases in North Carolina. Akin is a cum laude graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, earned his J.D. cum laude from Rhode Island’s Roger Williams University School of Law, where he was a Dean’s Scholar and student-attorney in the Criminal Defense Clinic, and earned his LL.M. from Temple University School of Law as a Public Interest Scholar. He is the recipient of the Feinstein Public Interest Award. Akin serves as Adjunct Professor of Law at Delaware Law School, where he teaches Eighth Amendment Capital Punishment and Advanced Criminal Law courses. Akin was detailed to Defender Services Office in D.C, where he now serves as an Attorney Advisor.

WALTER I. GONÇALVES, JR. was born in Guarulhos, Brazil and raised in Akron, Ohio; Valencia, Venezuela; and Mexico City, Mexico. He became Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona in June of 2015. In the spring of 2018, he became one of two trial team leaders in the Tucson office. Previously, he was Assistant Pima County Public Defender for ten years. He has tried over thirty felony cases to jury, to include charges of first-degree murder, sexual molestation, drug distribution, fraudulent schemes and artifice, and arson.

Over the last several years, he presented at different CLEs on topics such as effective plea bargaining, closing arguments, the art of direct examination, duress and blind mule defenses in border crossing cases, implicit bias, and critical race theory. His practice consists of drug, illegal entry, white collar, and Indian reservation cases. He also writes on race, identity, trial defenses, and other areas in criminal justice.

He has published several law review articles and is finishing a piece on trial penalties and border defenses. He holds a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Southwestern University (cum laude) and Master’s (Latin American Studies) and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Arizona. In his free times he spends time with his spouse, wrangles with his six-year-old twin boys, runs, reads, journals, and is founding member of Tucson rock band, Early Black (est. 2007).

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) accreditation for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions. Additional CLE information will be available after the conclusion of this program.

Although a rigid application of the Sentencing Guidelines is no longer mandatory under Supreme Court precedent, correctly calculating your client’s guideline range is one of the most important steps in obtaining the best possible sentence for your client. In this session of Fundamentals, we will break out into small groups led by skilled facilitators. Using problems from real cases, we will practice applying the main drug offense guideline, §2D1.1.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) accreditation for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions. Additional CLE information will be available after the conclusion of this program.

Hearsay does not have to be a mysterious and threatening topic.  This webinar will provide a roadmap for criminal defense lawyers to navigate their way through hearsay problems.  The presentation will cover what constitutes hearsay (FREs 801 and 802), the major hearsay exclusions (FRE 801(d)) and exceptions (FREs 803 and 804), and what constitutes unavailability under FRE 804. This session will also address the intersection of the hearsay rules and the Confrontation Clause.

This is the second installment of a three-part webinar series on federal evidence.  In the first two parts, Rene Valladares will tackle the thorniest topics frequently encountered by criminal defense lawyers: character, impeachment, and hearsay.  The third part of the series will review a framework that can be used to tackle various evidence problems confronted by criminal defense lawyers.

Presenter: 

Rene Valladares is the Federal Public Defender for the District of Nevada.  He is an adjunct professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Boyd School of Law, and the UNLV Criminal Justice Department. He lectures nationally on various criminal law and procedure topics including evidence and the defense of conspiracy cases. Mr. Valladares serves on the Federal Defenders' Performance Measurement Working Group.  Recently, Rene Valladares wrote a Defender’s Guide to Federal Evidence: A Trial Practice Handbook for Criminal Defense Attorneys, published by NACDL.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) accreditation for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions. Additional CLE information will be available after the conclusion of this program.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

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Please save the date for Trial Skills Workshop: Advocacy Strategies & Skills To Maximize Use Of Experts, one of our newest skills training for attorneys. This TSW will focus on the use of experts for trials and evidentiary hearings. We are very pleased to be hosting an in-person program in San Diego, and our logistics team is making plans for a safe gathering which we will share when we open registration.

This program offers an excellent opportunity for attorneys to learn about the value of experts to (a) help them understand complex areas that impact representation of clients and (b) to develop their courtroom skills, when presenting expert testimony in their cases and cross-examining government experts. Participants will learn from an experienced and highly skilled faculty in both plenary and small-group sessions. During the small-group sessions, participants will practice skills and receive feedback. Areas covered include: (1) identifying and screening experts to support the theory of the case, with practice sessions on screening, interviewing, records collection and qualifying the experts to testify, (2) using the Federal Rules of Evidence to make sure that experts are qualified and the reports and documents that further the defense theory are admitted into the record, (3) cross-examining the government’s expert witness and (4) preparing and examining the defense witness.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) accreditation for this program will be sought in all applicable jurisdictions.

Registration will open in late January.