Elizabeth Franklin-Best PC

Section 1983 applies only to officials acting under color of state law. That limitation is the first thing a person in federal custody needs to understand when suing over what was done to them. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides no remedy against a federal officer, a Federal Bureau of Prisons employee, or a federal contractor. The federal analogue is a Bivens action, implied by the Supreme Court in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), which has been narrowed severely: the Court has recognized an implied federal damages remedy in only three contexts, and in Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022), it held that extending Bivens to any new context is disfavored wherever Congress might be better positioned to weigh the remedy. Of the three surviving contexts, the one that matters most in federal prison litigation is Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980), permitting an Eighth Amendment claim for inadequate medical care against federal prison officials.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents people in federal custody and is candid about which routes are realistic. Where the objective is release, correction of a sentence computation, or reversal of a disciplinary finding, the remedy is a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 or an administrative filing — not a damages action, and it is usually far faster. Where the objective is damages for a constitutional injury in a federal facility, the claim is a Bivens claim within a narrow surviving category, and the firm says so at the outset rather than filing something foreclosed. Section 1983 remains the correct vehicle for a client injured by state or local officers, and the firm coordinates with civil rights counsel in those cases.

The deadline is 14 days, which is why most of the calls this firm receives about a federal appeal are urgent. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b)(1)(A), a criminal defendant’s notice of appeal must be filed in the district court within fourteen days after the later of entry of the judgment or order being appealed or the filing of the government’s notice of appeal. Rule 4(b)(4) permits the district court to extend that period by up to thirty days for excusable neglect or good cause. Beyond that, the appeal is gone — though the failure to file one may itself be an ineffective assistance claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. evaluates that in every case where the window has closed.

Where the appeal is timely, the firm handles it from the notice forward: designating and obtaining the record, ordering transcripts, docketing statements, briefing extensions, the opening brief, the reply brief, and oral argument, where the court grants it. Two threshold questions shape everything that follows. First, what was actually preserved below, because an issue raised for the first time on appeal is reviewed only for plain error. Second, what the plea agreement’s appeal waiver does and does not cover — most waivers preserve challenges to a sentence exceeding the statutory maximum, to ineffective assistance, and to certain constitutional claims, and the scope of a waiver is itself litigable.

The firm also handles cross-appeals, government appeals, petitions for rehearing and en banc rehearing, and appeals from denials of post-conviction relief, which require a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) before the court of appeals will reach the merits. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best has handled appeals for more than twenty years and practices in the United States Courts of Appeals nationwide.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best serves as Co-Chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Curiae Committee for the Fourth Circuit, and the firm’s appellate work extends beyond individual representation to address the questions that divide the circuits. That matters to individual clients for a concrete reason: a question on which the courts of appeals disagree is a question worth briefing carefully and preserving deliberately, because a circuit split is the principal ground on which the Supreme Court grants certiorari under Supreme Court Rule 10.

Recent history shows why the firm tracks these divisions rather than only the controlling law of one circuit. The circuits split over whether U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6) allowed a non-retroactive change in law to support compassionate release, with the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits holding the Sentencing Commission had exceeded its authority; the Supreme Court resolved that split against the defense in Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, 607 U.S. ___ (2026). The circuits also divided over whether AEDPA’s bar on previously presented claims applied to a federal prisoner’s successive motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h); the Court resolved that one in the defense’s favor in Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, 607 U.S. ___ (2026). Knowing which way a question is trending and which circuits have already answered it is the difference between a brief that preserves a viable argument and one that concedes it.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best was recognized by Best Lawyers in America® in 2027 for Appellate Practice and also chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360.

More federal appeals are won on sentencing error than on anything else, for a structural reason: sentencing is where the most calculation happens, and calculation produces reviewable mistakes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. concentrates a substantial part of its appellate litigation there.

The recurring issues are guideline miscalculation; enhancements applied without adequate factual support or under the wrong legal standard; loss and restitution determinations under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1; drug type and quantity findings; career offender designation under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 and challenges to the predicates supporting it; role adjustments; obstruction enhancements; and denial of the safety valve. Layered on top are the two forms of unreasonableness — procedural, where the district court miscalculated the range, treated the Guidelines as mandatory, failed to address a properly raised argument under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), or gave no adequate explanation; and substantive, where the sentence imposed cannot be justified on the § 3553(a) factors even though the process was clean. Procedural claims succeed far more often, and the firm briefs them first.

The firm also handles resentencing on remand, which is a distinct proceeding with its own strategy because both the guideline landscape and the client’s institutional record have usually changed since the original hearing, and appeals from the denial of a compassionate release motion or a sentence reduction, which are reviewed for abuse of discretion and are reversible where the district court ignored a properly raised argument or gave no reasoned explanation.

Best Lawyers in America® recognized Elizabeth Franklin-Best in Appellate Practice in 2026 and again in 2027, and in 2027 also in Criminal Defense: White-Collar and Criminal Defense: General Practice — three simultaneous categories, all earned through Best Lawyers’ confidential peer review survey, in which lawyers evaluate others practicing in the same area and region. No fee, submission, or self-nomination is permitted. She is separately ranked in Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, a ranking produced through independent client and peer interviews rather than peer balloting, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. holds the same South Carolina ranking. She is Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rated.

The substance behind those recognitions is more than twenty years of appellate work and more than twenty-four years in criminal law. She began as trial counsel at the Richland County Public Defender’s Office, then served as appellate counsel at the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, Appellate Division, where she reviewed hundreds of trial records for preserved error and argued before the South Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The South Carolina Public Defender Association named her Public Defender of the Year in 2010 for that work. She then spent seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, litigating capital post-conviction and federal habeas cases, and founded her own federal practice in 2019.

She chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360, serves as Co-Chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Committee for the Fourth Circuit, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Developing Your Winning Strategy. The firm’s appellate practice is exclusively federal, covering direct appeals, sentencing appeals, appeals from denials of post-conviction relief, and petitions for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Federal bank fraud carries an unusually punishing combination of exposure and time. 18 U.S.C. § 1344 authorizes up to thirty years’ imprisonment and a $1,000,000 fine, and 18 U.S.C. § 3293 gives the government ten years to bring charges rather than the ordinary five, so conduct a client believed was long past is frequently still chargeable. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these cases, which are usually charged alongside false statements to a financial institution under 18 U.S.C. § 1014 and aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A.

The litigated questions are whether the institution was federally insured, whether the scheme was actually directed at the bank rather than at another party, and intent. The § 1028A count deserves separate attention: it carries a mandatory two-year term that must run consecutively, and after Dubin v. United States, 599 U.S. 110 (2023), a defendant “uses” another person’s means of identification only where that use is at the crux of what makes the conduct criminal — not where it is incidental to an otherwise completed offense. At sentencing, the controlling issue is the loss under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, which the firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense practice addresses.

Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best spent seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC. At this capital defense firm, her practice was post-conviction and federal habeas litigation for clients under a death sentence and clients sentenced to life for conduct as juveniles. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. accepts capital post-conviction matters selectively and in coordination with capital-qualified trial and state post-conviction counsel.

The issues in this posture are unlike ordinary appellate practice. Whether trial counsel conducted an adequate mitigation investigation is the most frequently litigated and most frequently successful capital post-conviction claim, under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), and Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003), which holds that counsel must either investigate the client’s social history reasonably or make a reasonable decision that further investigation is unnecessary. Jury selection under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), and death qualification under Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412 (1985), generate their own body of error. Intellectual disability under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), and competency to be executed under Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), each carry distinct standards.

One development has made this work substantially harder and clients should hear it plainly: in Shinn v. Ramirez, 596 U.S. 366 (2022), the Supreme Court held that 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2) generally bars a federal habeas court from holding a hearing or considering new evidence on an ineffective assistance claim the petitioner failed to develop in state court — even where the failure was state post-conviction counsel’s own negligence. Developing the mitigation record early is now close to determinative.

Federal child pornography sentencing is one of the few areas where the Sentencing Guidelines themselves are a recognized ground for a lower sentence. Because U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2 was written largely in response to congressional directives rather than through the Sentencing Commission’s usual empirical process, courts may vary from it based on policy disagreement alone — the Third Circuit so held in United States v. Grober, 624 F.3d 592 (3d Cir. 2010), and the Ninth and Tenth Circuits have reached the same conclusion. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates that variance argument at sentencing and on appeal.

The statutory framework drives the rest. Production under 18 U.S.C. § 2251 carries a fifteen-year mandatory minimum. Receipt and distribution under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252 and 2252A carry five-year minimums with twenty-year maximums, escalating sharply with qualifying priors. Simple possession carries up to 10 years, or 20 years if the material involved a victim under 12. The contested issues are knowing receipt versus passive possession, the distribution enhancement involving file-sharing software, the number-of-images calculation, forensic attribution of the device and account, and the validity of the search — all of which are addressed in the firm’s Search and Seizure practice. Restitution in these cases is governed by Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434 (2014), which requires an amount keyed to the defendant’s relative role in the causal process rather than the victim’s full losses.

Federal sexual abuse offenses are graded by the degree of force or coercion involved and by the victim's capacity to consent, and the grading determines the sentence far more than anything else in the case. 18 U.S.C. § 2241 reaches aggravated sexual abuse — by force or threat, by rendering a victim unconscious or incapacitated, or involving a child under twelve — and carries thirty years to life. Section 2242 reaches sexual abuse involving lesser threats, incapacity to appraise or decline, or absence of consent. Section 2243 reaches a minor aged twelve to fifteen who is at least four years younger, a ward in official detention, or a person in federal custody abused by a federal officer, and carries up to fifteen years; it also provides an affirmative defense of reasonable belief the victim had reached sixteen, which the defendant must prove by a preponderance. Section 2244 covers abusive sexual contact, with penalties tracking whichever of the preceding sections the conduct would have violated had it involved a sexual act as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2246.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles appellate and post-conviction work in these cases. The recurring appellate issues are the sufficiency of the jurisdictional element, admission of prior acts evidence under Federal Rules of Evidence 413 and 414, expert testimony on delayed disclosure, the § 2243 reasonable belief defense where it was available and not presented, and the interaction between the conviction and the disqualifying offense list at 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(D), which controls First Step Act eligibility and is addressed in the firm’s Prison practice.

The constitutional claims that matter most to Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C.’s clients arise after conviction, inside a federal facility, and they are usually litigated through channels that look nothing like a civil rights lawsuit. Deliberate indifference to a serious medical need violates the Eighth Amendment. A disciplinary sanction imposed without the notice, hearing, and written findings that the Due Process Clause requires is unlawful. Retaliation for filing an administrative remedy or a grievance is actionable. Being subjected to sexual or physical abuse by someone with custody or control is both a constitutional injury and, under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(4), an independent ground for a sentence reduction.

The firm pursues these through the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Remedy Program and, where that fails and the relief sought is release or correction of custody, by petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the district of confinement. That route is generally faster and more effective than a damages action, because a federal prisoner’s damages remedy runs through Bivens rather than 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and has been narrowed almost to vanishing — see the firm’s 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 entry. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360, which represents people facing the death penalty and serving extreme sentences.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best’s civil rights work is both institutional and individual. She chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360, a nonprofit representing people facing capital punishment and serving extreme sentences in South Carolina. She serves as Co-Chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Curiae Committee for the Fourth Circuit — a role in which the object is the rule the court adopts rather than the outcome of one case.

The through-line connecting that work to the firm’s federal post-conviction practice is the Sixth and Eighth Amendments. Seven years of capital post-conviction and federal habeas litigation at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC established the methodology: read the entire record, assume it is incomplete, and find what was never developed. The same discipline drives the firm’s present work on ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, on categorical challenges to sentencing predicates after Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), and on juvenile sentencing under the Miller v. Alabama line — described in the firm’s Juvenile Criminal Defense entry. The South Carolina Public Defender Association named her Public Defender of the Year in 2010 for appellate advocacy on behalf of indigent defendants.

The most important development in federal computer crime law was the narrowing of the statute, and cases charged under the older theory remain vulnerable on appeal. In Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021), the Supreme Court held that a person “exceeds authorized access” under 18 U.S.C. § 1030 only by obtaining information from files, folders, or databases that are off-limits to them — not by misusing information they were entitled to access. Violating an employer's computer use policy is not itself a federal crime. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. raises that argument wherever the indictment rests on improper purpose rather than improper access.

The firm defends against and appeals the full range of these charges: unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer under § 1030; access device fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1029; aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A, with its mandatory consecutive two-year term; and wire fraud counts based on electronic conduct. The recurring litigable issues are attribution of conduct to a particular person rather than to a device or an account, the reliability of forensic device examination, and the particularity of warrants for whole devices and cloud accounts — see the firm’s Search and Seizure and Forensic Evidence practices. Sentencing turns on the loss and sophisticated means provisions of U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1.

Nearly every federal post-conviction claim is constitutional, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates them on direct appeal, on collateral review under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and in Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative proceedings.

Two grounds account for most of the firm’s caseload. The first is ineffective assistance of trial or appellate counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), which requires both performance falling below an objective standard of reasonableness and a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different — a two-part test on which the prejudice half is usually where the case is won or lost. The second is the government’s suppression of evidence: under Brady v. Maryland, the prosecution must disclose material exculpatory evidence, and under Giglio v. United States, that obligation extends to information impeaching a government witness, including cooperation agreements and benefits conferred. A Brady or Giglio violation discovered after judgment can restart the § 2255 clock under § 2255(f)(4), because the limitation period runs from the date the supporting facts could have been discovered through due diligence.

The firm also litigates Fifth Amendment due process claims, including involuntary pleas; Fourth Amendment suppression claims; Confrontation Clause claims; and Eighth Amendment claims regarding conditions of confinement and medical care. Vagueness doctrine has been unusually productive here: Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), struck the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause, Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016), made that holding retroactive on collateral review, and United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), did the same for 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B).

Constitutional claims on collateral review are governed by procedural rules that can foreclose a meritorious claim entirely. The firm treats those rules as the first question rather than the last: procedural default and its cause-and-prejudice exception, the one-year period in § 2255(f), the certificate of appealability required by 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), and the successive motion gate in § 2255(h) — which Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), materially widened by holding that AEDPA’s bar on previously presented claims does not apply to federal prisoners.

A federal criminal case has a longer arc than most clients expect, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C.'s work is organized around the fact that decisions made at each stage constrain what is possible at the next.

It begins before charges: a target letter, a grand jury subpoena, an agency interview request. It proceeds to indictment and arraignment, detention or release under the Bail Reform Act, discovery, suppression and dismissal motions, and the Speedy Trial Act clocks under 18 U.S.C. § 3161. It resolves by plea or trial — and if by plea, the agreement’s appeal-waiver and cooperation terms set the boundaries for every subsequent filing. Sentencing follows, driven by the presentence report and the guideline calculation, and that calculation becomes the fixed baseline for any future motion for a sentence reduction. Then, a direct appeal on a fourteen-day fuse. Then, collateral review under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, on a one-year fuse. Then the sentence itself: designation, programming, earned time credits, and release planning are administered by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And finally, where the courts are exhausted, executive clemency.

The firm concentrates on the second half of that arc, which is the half that most firms leave. It serves clients nationwide from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and it takes only federal matters — the reasoning is set out in the firm’s Federal practice.

A federal criminal appeal is won or lost on the standard of review long before the merits are reached, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. builds its briefs around that fact. Whether an issue was preserved in the district court determines everything: a preserved question of law is reviewed de novo, a preserved discretionary ruling for abuse of discretion, a factual finding for clear error, and an unpreserved issue only for plain error — which requires error that is clear and obvious, that affects substantial rights, and that seriously affects the fairness or integrity of the proceedings, a standard that defeats most claims raised under it. Structural error affecting the trial framework changes the analysis again.

The firm's practice is to determine, for every candidate issue, exactly what happened below, exactly which standard therefore applies, and what that standard requires the appellant to show — and then to brief only the issues that can carry that burden. Scattering ten issues across a brief when two are reviewable is the most common failure in federal criminal appellate practice, and it costs the two.

Typical issues include jury instruction error, evidentiary rulings under Federal Rules of Evidence 403, 404(b), and 702, suppression rulings, sufficiency of the evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, Brady and Giglio violations, and guideline misapplication. Where an issue was not preserved, and plain error will not carry it, the firm evaluates whether the same claim is stronger as ineffective assistance under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, where the analysis runs through Strickland rather than through preservation — the two routes are addressed together in the firm’s Post-Conviction Remedies practice. Elizabeth Franklin-Best was recognized by Best Lawyers in America® in 2027 for Appellate Practice.

Clients who have been through a state prosecution are frequently unprepared for how differently a federal case proceeds, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. spends real time addressing that gap because misunderstanding it can lead to bad decisions.

Federal investigations are longer and quieter. By the time an indictment issues, the government has often spent a year or more assembling documentary and electronic evidence through grand jury subpoenas that the target never sees. Federal detention is governed by the Bail Reform Act, which includes rebuttable presumptions of detention for certain offenses with no state analogue. Federal discovery under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 is narrower than in many state systems, and there is no general right to depose government witnesses. Diversion is rare. Acquittal rates are low, and the overwhelming majority of federal cases are resolved by plea. Sentencing is driven by the Guidelines and by mandatory minimums that remove the discretion a state judge would have, and cooperation under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1 or 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) is frequently the only route below a statutory floor. There is no federal parole for offenses committed on or after November 1, 1987, so a sentence is served nearly in full, subject to good-conduct time and earned-time credits.

The firm handles federal matters from the investigation stage forward and concentrates on appeals and post-conviction relief. Its lawyers are admitted to the United States Courts of Appeals and before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Best Lawyers in America® recognized Elizabeth Franklin-Best in Criminal Defense: General Practice in 2027, and the firm handles the full range of federal criminal matters. In a federal case, the offense of conviction usually matters less to the outcome than three things that sit alongside it, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. organizes its defense around those three.

The first is the statutory minimum. Mandatory minimums under 21 U.S.C. § 841 for drug quantity, under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) for firearms, and under the Armed Career Criminal Act at 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) can set a floor that no mitigation can reach. The only routes below it are the safety valve at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) and substantial assistance.

The second is the prior record. Career offender designation under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, the enhancement provisions of 21 U.S.C. § 851, and the Armed Career Criminal Act predicates all turn on a categorical comparison of the elements of a prior statute of conviction against a federal generic definition — not on what the client actually did. That analysis is technical, frequently gets done wrong, and is where a decade of exposure is often found or lost. See the firm’s Nonviolent Crimes entry.

The third is the quantified guideline driver: loss under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1 in a fraud case; drug quantity and type under § 2D1.1; and tax loss under § 2T1.1. These are contestable, and contesting them at sentencing also preserves the record for any later motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2).

The firm defends and appeals drug, firearms, fraud, tax, computer, and violent offenses, and — unusually for a federal defense practice — carries the matter through the Federal Bureau of Prisons administration and, where the courts are exhausted, into a clemency petition. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best has practiced criminal law for more than twenty-four years.

Best Lawyers in America® recognized Elizabeth Franklin-Best in Criminal Defense: White-Collar in 2027, and she is ranked in Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, as is Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. The firm represents individuals — executives, physicians, professionals, business owners, and public officials — in federal white-collar matters, and it represents them from the target letter through appeal and post-conviction relief.

The charge set is familiar: mail and wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343, bank fraud under § 1344, health care fraud under § 1347, securities fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1348 and Rule 10b-5, money laundering, tax offenses under Title 26, public corruption under 18 U.S.C. §§ 201 and 666 and the Hobbs Act, and racketeering under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968. What distinguishes the defense is that the government’s theory in these cases is more often vulnerable than its evidence, and the Supreme Court has spent a decade narrowing those theories. McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016), limited “official act” to a formal exercise of governmental power. Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. 391 (2020), held that the fraud statutes protect property, not regulatory choices. Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), invalidated the right-to-control theory of wire fraud, and Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), rejected informal “dominance and control” as a source of honest services duty. Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), held that 18 U.S.C. § 666 bans bribes, not gratuities. The line runs in both directions, though: Kousisis v. United States, 605 U.S. 114 (2025), confirmed that a fraudulent inducement theory survives Ciminelli and that wire fraud requires no proof of net economic loss.

Federal white-collar investigations unfold over months or years before charges are filed, so the firm’s work often begins with document preservation, privilege review, and negotiation with the prosecuting office — as described in the firm’s Government Investigations practice. At sentencing, the decisive issue is nearly always loss and the related enhancements under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1.

Most of what determines a federal case is decided before anyone is charged, and by then the client has usually already made three or four choices without counsel. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. advises targets, subjects, and witnesses during that period.

The choices that matter are identifiable. Whether to speak with agents who appear without notice, and the client should understand that a false statement to a federal agent is itself a felony under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, independent of whatever the investigation concerns. Whether to respond to a target letter and how. Whether to produce documents, assert privilege, or negotiate scope. Whether to proffer, and on what terms, understanding that statements made under a proffer agreement become usable if its conditions are breached. Whether to pursue cooperation, which can produce a substantial assistance motion under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1, but creates obligations that cannot be withdrawn once undertaken. And whether to make a pre-indictment presentation to the Assistant United States Attorney, arguing that charges should not be brought, or should be brought differently.

The firm handles this work with agencies including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the IRS Criminal Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the United States Postal Inspection Service. Grand jury subpoena practice and immunity are addressed separately in the firm’s Grand Jury entry.

For a non-citizen, the sentence is frequently not the worst consequence of a federal conviction, and post-conviction work in these cases is often aimed at the judgment rather than the term of imprisonment. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles that work.

The central claim is ineffective assistance. Under Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010), defense counsel has a Sixth Amendment duty to advise a non-citizen client about the deportation consequences of a plea — correct advice where the consequence is clear, and at a minimum, a warning of risk where it is not — and there is no distinction between affirmative misadvice and silence. Lee v. United States, 582 U.S. 357 (2017), establishes that prejudice can be shown by a reasonable probability that the client would have rejected the plea and gone to trial, even absent a viable defense, where deportation would follow either way. Two limits matter: Chaidez v. United States, 568 U.S. 342 (2013), holds that Padilla announced a new rule and does not apply retroactively to convictions final before March 31, 2010, and the motion remains subject to the one-year period in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f). The firm also litigates claims that counsel failed to negotiate an immigration-safe alternative charge when one was available.

Non-citizens in federal custody face a second problem unrelated to the validity of the conviction. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(E), a prisoner subject to a final order of removal cannot apply First Step Act earned time credits even where the programming was completed and the credits were earned. The firm litigates the resulting computation and placement disputes through the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Remedy Program and, where necessary, under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the district of confinement. It coordinates with immigration counsel rather than substituting for it.

Customs enforcement operates on two tracks at once, and the civil track is often the more consequential one. 19 U.S.C. § 1592 imposes civil penalties scaled to culpability: for fraud, up to the domestic value of the merchandise; for gross negligence, the lesser of the domestic value or four times the lawful duties, or 40% of the dutiable value where no revenue was lost; for negligence, half those figures. Prior disclosure to Customs and Border Protection substantially mitigates exposure, which makes the timing of any disclosure one of the earliest and most important decisions in a customs matter.

The criminal track runs through 18 U.S.C. § 542, entry of goods by false statement, carrying up to two years, and 18 U.S.C. § 545, smuggling, carrying up to twenty years, and forfeiture of the goods. Section 545 contains a provision that defendants are rarely warned about: unexplained possession of smuggled merchandise is by itself sufficient evidence to support a conviction unless the defendant explains it to the jury’s satisfaction. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles the criminal exposure — classification and valuation disputes recast as fraud, country-of-origin and transshipment allegations, and the parallel-proceeding problem that arises when a civil penalty case and a criminal investigation proceed together. The forfeiture of merchandise is addressed in the firm’s Forfeiture practice.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best spent seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, a capital defense firm, litigating post-conviction and federal habeas cases for clients on death row and those sentenced to life as juveniles. The South Carolina Public Defender Association named her Public Defender of the Year in 2010, and she chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360, a nonprofit representing people facing capital punishment and serving extreme sentences.

Capital post-conviction is the most demanding form of collateral review, and it is where the methodology this firm applies to every case was built: read the entire record, assume the mitigation investigation was incomplete, and develop what was never developed. It is also where the procedural architecture of federal habeas is litigated at its most consequential — exhaustion, procedural default, the AEDPA limitation period, and the deference standard in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

Two features of the federal capital system are worth stating plainly. 18 U.S.C. § 3599 guarantees appointed counsel and investigative and expert services to indigent federal capital defendants through every stage, including habeas and clemency proceedings, and imposes experience requirements on post-judgment counsel — five years at the bar and three years of felony appellate or post-conviction litigation. And the Eighth Amendment categorically bars execution for conduct committed under eighteen (Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)) and for intellectually disabled defendants (Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002)). The firm’s current practice is exclusively federal, and it accepts capital matters selectively, in coordination with capital-qualified counsel.

Federal drug sentencing is driven by quantity and by prior convictions, not by conduct, and both are contestable. Under 21 U.S.C. § 841, drug type and quantity set mandatory minimums of five, ten, or more years before any guideline calculation begins, and under 21 U.S.C. § 851, a prior qualifying conviction — properly noticed by the government, which is itself frequently litigable — can double that floor. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these cases.

The issues that move sentences are specific. Whether more than a cooperator’s estimate supports the quantity attributed to the client. Whether relevant conduct quantity under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3 was reasonably foreseeable to this defendant rather than to the conspiracy generally. Whether a § 851 notice was timely and correctly served. Whether the prior conviction categorically qualifies as a “serious drug felony” under current law — an analysis that turns on the elements of the state statute and that fails surprisingly often where a state schedule reaches a substance the federal schedules do not. Whether the safety valve at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) applies, which is the principal route below a statutory minimum, and which the First Step Act broadened. And whether the drug quantity table at U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 was applied to the correct substance, purity, and conversion ratio.

The firm also represents people already serving federal drug sentences. Sentence reductions following a retroactive guideline amendment run under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) — a different mechanism from First Step Act earned time credits, which are addressed in the firm’s Prison practice — and both are re-screened against each amendment cycle.

Federal embezzlement cases are documentary, and they are won or lost on intent and on amount rather than on whether money was moved. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals charges under 18 U.S.C. § 656 (embezzlement by a bank officer or employee), 18 U.S.C. § 666 (theft or bribery involving an organization receiving more than $10,000 in federal funds, with a $5,000 transaction threshold), 18 U.S.C. § 641 (theft or conversion of government property), and 18 U.S.C. § 664 (embezzlement from an employee benefit plan).

The defense usually lives in three places. First, intent: whether the government proved an intent to defraud rather than poor recordkeeping, commingling without concealment, unauthorized-but-repaid transactions, or a genuine dispute about the client’s authority to make the transfers. Second, the accounting: the government’s figure is typically prepared by a forensic accountant using records the client also has access to, and independently reconstructing it often reduces it. Third, the guideline drivers — loss under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, the abuse-of-position-of-trust enhancement under § 3B1.3, which applies precisely to the fiduciary posture that makes these cases chargeable, and the number of victims. The restitution order that follows will outlive the sentence and is addressed in the firm’s Restitution practice.

Federal environmental statutes reach individuals, not only companies, and two features make that reach unusual. First, they designate the “responsible corporate officer” as a liable person under the statutory definition, meaning a manager can be prosecuted for a violation he did not personally commit. Second, the Clean Water Act criminalizes negligent violations: 33 U.S.C. § 1319(c)(1) makes a negligent discharge a misdemeanor carrying $2,500 to $25,000 per day or up to a year, doubling on a repeat conviction, with knowing violations reaching three years. A criminal charge that requires no proof of intent is rare under federal law, and clients are often unaware that such a charge exists.

The rest of the framework escalates sharply for knowing conduct. Under 42 U.S.C. § 7413(c), a knowing Clean Air Act violation carries up to five years, and a knowing endangerment up to fifteen. Under 42 U.S.C. § 6928(d) and (e), RCRA violations carry up to 5 years’ imprisonment for knowing violations and up to 15 years for knowing endangerment, with fines of up to $250,000 for an individual. A knowing violation of MARPOL or the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships is a Class D felony under 33 U.S.C. § 1908. That statute allows a whistleblower to receive up to half of any fine, a structure worth understanding before internal reporting occurs. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these charges, with attention to the knowledge element, permit interpretation, causation, and the reliability of the sampling and monitoring data on which the government relies.

The False Claims Act is the government’s principal civil fraud tool, and its arithmetic is what makes it dangerous: 31 U.S.C. § 3729 imposes treble damages plus a per-claim civil penalty, so a billing practice repeated across thousands of claims produces exposure unrelated to the amount actually obtained. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents individuals whose conduct is the subject of False Claims Act allegations, including in the health care, federal contracting, and grant contexts.

Two elements decide most cases. Materiality, which, after Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 579 U.S. 176 (2016), is a “demanding” standard not satisfied by minor noncompliance or by a bare label calling a requirement a condition of payment — what matters is whether the government would actually have refused to pay had it known. And scienter, which United States ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu, 598 U.S. 739 (2023) held to be subjective: the question is what the defendant actually knew or believed at the time, not whether an objectively reasonable person could have read an ambiguous requirement the defendant’s way. Since the Affordable Care Act’s 2010 amendment at 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(g), a claim resulting from an Anti-Kickback Statute violation is automatically a false claim, which is why health care matters so often carry both theories. The firm’s concern is the criminal exposure that runs alongside — addressed in the firm’s False Claims Act Litigation and Health Care Fraud entries.

What makes False Claims Act litigation distinctive for an individual defendant is that it rarely proceeds alone. A qui tam complaint is filed under seal; the government investigates while the defendant may not even know the case exists; and the same conduct is frequently under review by an Assistant United States Attorney on the criminal side and by an agency’s Office of Inspector General on the administrative side. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles the criminal dimension of that problem.

The parallel-proceeding posture yields decisions without a clear answer. Civil discovery obligations collide with the Fifth Amendment privilege, and an assertion of privilege in the civil case can support an adverse inference there, while a waiver can supply the criminal case. Cooperation with the government in a civil matter may resolve it favorably and simultaneously build the criminal file. A settlement that resolves civil liability does not resolve criminal exposure, does not bind the Office of Inspector General on exclusion under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7, and does not prevent a later state licensing action. Sequencing and coordination across all three tracks is the actual work.

The firm handles the criminal charges these matters generate — health care fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1347, Anti-Kickback Statute violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b, false statements under 18 U.S.C. § 1035, and mail and wire fraud — along with appeals and post-conviction relief where a conviction has already been entered.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. practices nationally in federal courts. Every matter the firm takes arises under federal law, in a United States District Court, a United States Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative system, or the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice. The firm does not handle state prosecutions, state appeals, or state post-conviction proceedings.

That limitation is deliberate. Federal practice operates under its own procedural rules, sentencing system, and institutions, and the differences are not merely cosmetic. Federal sentencing is driven by the Guidelines and by mandatory minimums rather than by broad judicial discretion. Federal appellate deadlines are shorter than most state equivalents — fourteen days for a criminal notice of appeal under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b)(1)(A). Federal collateral review is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 2255, with a strict one-year limitation period and a court-of-appeals gatekeeping requirement for any second motion. There is no federal parole for offenses committed on or after November 1, 1987, so a federal sentence is served nearly in full, subject only to good conduct time and to earned time credits under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3632 and 3624(g) — a difference that surprises clients more than any other. Sentence administration is handled by a single national agency with its own Administrative Remedy Program, risk assessment instrument, and credit rules. Executive relief runs through a single office under a single set of regulations at 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1-1.11.

Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted in New York and South Carolina, in the United States Courts of Appeals, and before the Supreme Court of the United States. The firm accepts matters nationwide from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Criminal tax cases turn on a single element, which is why they are defensible when the numbers look bad. Willfulness under the tax statutes means the voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty. Under Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), a genuine good-faith misunderstanding of what the law requires negates it — even where that misunderstanding was objectively unreasonable. A belief that the tax laws are unconstitutional does not. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. builds these defenses around what the client actually understood, documented through returns, correspondence with preparers, and the accounting the client relied on.

The charge set runs from misdemeanor to felony: willful failure to file, pay, or keep records under 26 U.S.C. § 7203; subscribing a false return under § 7206(1) and aiding in the preparation of a false return under § 7206(2), each a felony carrying up to three years; corruptly obstructing administration of the tax code under § 7212(a), which after Marinello v. United States, 584 U.S. 1 (2018), requires a nexus to a particular pending or reasonably foreseeable IRS proceeding rather than to routine return processing; evasion under § 7201, addressed separately in the firm’s Tax Evasion Defense entry; and conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371, the so-called Klein conspiracy.

Sentencing is driven by tax loss under U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1 and the table at § 2T4.1, and the loss figure is contestable — unclaimed deductions, basis, and the treatment of civil fraud penalties all bear on it. The firm coordinates with tax counsel and accountants when civil liability must be resolved alongside criminal exposure and handles related IRS Criminal Investigation and voluntary disclosure questions described in its Litigation and Controversy - Tax entry.

Federal firearms charges carry the least intuitive sentencing consequences in the federal system, and two features explain why. First, a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) — using, carrying, or possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence or a drug trafficking offense — runs consecutively to every other sentence imposed, so a firearm count attached to an underlying offense can double the exposure the underlying conduct alone would never support. Second, the enhancements turn on a categorical comparison of prior convictions against federal generic definitions rather than on anything about the present case, which is where the litigable issues are.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals possession by a prohibited person under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), § 924(c) counts, and the Armed Career Criminal Act’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Two vagueness decisions continue to generate relief: Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), struck the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause and Welch v. United States made it retroactive on collateral review; United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), struck § 924(c)(3)(B)’s residual clause. Where a predicate no longer categorically qualifies, the sentence may be vulnerable under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

One population needs a specific warning. The First Step Act ended mandatory stacking of § 924(c) counts prospectively, but Congress did not make that change retroactive. In Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), the Supreme Court held that the resulting disparity cannot by itself support compassionate release. People serving pre-2018 stacked sentences, therefore, need a different theory — § 2255 relief, predicate challenges, or a commutation petition — and the firm evaluates all three. It also litigates constructive possession, the nexus element, the interstate commerce element, and suppression of the search that produced the weapon.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has two halves, and individuals are frequently charged under the half they were not worried about. The anti-bribery provisions at 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1 and § 78dd-2 prohibit corrupt payments to foreign officials to obtain or retain business, subject to a facilitating payments exception for routine governmental action — which expressly does not cover decisions to award or continue business — and affirmative defenses for payments lawful under local written law or constituting bona fide business expenditures. The accounting provisions at 15 U.S.C. § 78m(b)(2) require issuers to keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect transactions and to maintain adequate internal accounting controls, and knowing circumvention or falsification is separately prohibited. The accounting counts require no proof of bribery, which is why they carry so many resolutions.

Jurisdictional reach is a real defense. In United States v. Hoskins, 902 F.3d 69 (2d Cir. 2018), the Second Circuit held that the government cannot use conspiracy or accomplice liability to reach a foreign national outside the statute’s enumerated categories of covered persons unless that person acted as an agent of a domestic concern.

Clients should understand that the enforcement environment is currently in flux: a February 10, 2025, Executive Order directed the Attorney General to pause new FCPA investigations and enforcement actions and to revise enforcement guidelines. The statute was not amended or repealed; the limitations periods continue to run, and prior conduct remains chargeable if the posture changes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. advises individuals accordingly and handles the related internal investigation and parallel proceeding issues described in its Government Investigations entry.

Forensic developments are among the most productive sources of federal post-conviction relief, and the reason is a timing rule most people never learn about. The one-year period for a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 runs from the latest of four dates, and § 2255(f)(4) starts the clock on the date the facts supporting the claim could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence. New test results, a laboratory misconduct disclosure, a discipline-wide validity finding, or the withdrawal of an analyst’s conclusion can each be the fact that opens a fresh one-year window on a conviction that has been final for a decade. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., evaluates that question rather than assuming a case is closed.

The admissibility side is the other half. Whether a forensic discipline satisfies Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert, whether the analyst applied the methodology validly, and whether the conclusion was stated more confidently than the underlying science supports are all litigable — and several pattern-matching disciplines, including firearms and toolmark comparison, bite mark analysis, hair microscopy, and arson origin and cause, have been substantially reassessed since many federal convictions became final.

The firm’s work here includes obtaining and independently reviewing bench notes, calibration and validation records, and proficiency testing data rather than the summary report; retaining independent experts; seeking post-conviction testing where evidence remains available; litigating claims that trial counsel failed to challenge unreliable forensic testimony under Strickland; and pursuing Brady and Giglio claims where the government withheld information about an analyst or a laboratory. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best spent seven years in capital post-conviction litigation, where forensic reinvestigation is a core discipline.

Forfeiture routinely reaches the assets a client needs to mount a defense, and it operates under rules that surprise almost everyone. Criminal forfeiture proceeds under 21 U.S.C. § 853 and 18 U.S.C. § 982 and is entered as part of the sentence, governed procedurally by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2. Civil forfeiture proceeds in rem against the property itself, which is why the case caption names an asset rather than a person and why the burdens are allocated differently. Third parties with an interest in forfeited property assert that interest in an ancillary proceeding, and innocent owner litigation is frequently the only route by which a spouse, a business partner, or a lender can recover anything.

Two constitutional limits do real work. In Honeycutt v. United States, 581 U.S. 443 (2017), the Supreme Court held that § 853(a)(1) does not permit joint and several forfeiture liability — a defendant may be required to forfeit only property he personally obtained, which frequently cuts a co-conspirator’s forfeiture exposure dramatically. And Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. 146 (2019), confirmed that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to civil in rem forfeitures that are at least partly punitive. Pretrial restraint presents a separate problem: in Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5 (2016), a fractured Court held that freezing a defendant’s untainted assets, as distinct from assets traceable to the alleged offense, cannot be used to prevent him from retaining counsel of his choice — a result reached without a single controlling rationale, and one Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates on that basis.

Where a forfeiture is legally sound but its practical effect is disproportionate, remission of forfeiture is one of the four forms of executive clemency available under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 through 1.11, and the firm prepares those petitions alongside pardon and commutation petitions — see its Pardons entry.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best is ranked in Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. holds the same ranking in South Carolina. The firm represents individuals under investigation by the Department of Justice and by federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the IRS Criminal Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the United States Postal Inspection Service.

The problem that defines this work is not the criminal investigation in isolation — it is that the same conduct is usually examined on two or three tracks at once. A civil enforcement action, an agency administrative proceeding, a licensing board inquiry, and a grand jury investigation can all be live simultaneously, and each has its own discovery rules, timeline, and consequences. That creates Fifth Amendment problems that the criminal case alone would not: testimony compelled or volunteered on the civil side can be used in the criminal case, while asserting the privilege on the civil side can support an adverse inference there. Managing sequence across tracks is the substance of the representation.

The firm’s work includes responding to target letters and subpoenas; document preservation and production; privilege assertions, including in joint and common-interest arrangements; representation in agency interviews and proffer sessions; and negotiation with the prosecuting office before a charging decision. The strategic question is never cooperation in the abstract — it is what the government already has, what the realistic exposure is, whether cooperation would produce a meaningful benefit under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1 or 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e), and what obligations it creates that cannot later be withdrawn.

Three features of federal grand jury practice matter more than anything else, and clients are rarely told about them until they have already made a decision. First, a subpoena is presumed reasonable — under United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 292 (1991), a motion to quash for irrelevance must be denied unless there is no reasonable possibility the material sought will produce information relevant to the general subject of the investigation, a far weaker standard than applies to trial subpoenas. Second, the grand jury is an accusatory body, not an adjudicatory one: United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36 (1992), holds that there is no obligation to present substantial exculpatory evidence and no right to have it presented. Third, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) imposes secrecy on jurors, court personnel, and government attorneys — but expressly not on witnesses, who remain free to disclose their own testimony.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents targets, subjects, and witnesses in these proceedings: responding to subpoenas for testimony and documents, asserting and preserving privilege, negotiating the scope of production, evaluating whether a client should testify at all, and preparing those who will testify. Counsel may not accompany a witness into the grand jury room, which makes preparation and the practice of stepping out to consult the entire mechanism of representation.

Immunity is the decision that most often determines what happens next. Under Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972), use and derivative use immunity is coextensive with the Fifth Amendment privilege and is therefore sufficient to compel testimony over a self-incrimination objection — the government need not offer transactional immunity from prosecution for the offense itself. But once a witness shows he testified under such a grant, the government bears the burden of proving that any evidence it later uses came from a wholly independent source, which is an enforceable and frequently underused protection.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates federal habeas corpus under both 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and 28 U.S.C. § 2241, and the choice between them determines where the case is filed and what can be raised. Getting it wrong can be permanent.

A motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 challenges the validity of the conviction or sentence and is filed in the district court that imposed it. Grounds include ineffective assistance of trial or appellate counsel, a plea that was not knowing and voluntary, prosecutorial misconduct, newly discovered evidence, a sentence imposed in violation of law, and newly recognized retroactive rules of constitutional law. The deadline is one year under § 2255(f), running from the latest of four dates: when the judgment became final; when a government-created impediment to filing was removed; when the Supreme Court initially recognized the right asserted, if made retroactive on collateral review; or when the facts supporting the claim could have been discovered through due diligence. Identifying which trigger applies is frequently the most consequential judgment in the entire case, and the difference between them can be years.

A petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 attacks the execution of a sentence — how the Federal Bureau of Prisons is carrying it out — and is filed in the district of confinement rather than the sentencing district. Typical claims involve sentence computation and good-conduct time; First Step Act earned-time credit calculations; prior-custody credit; denial of pre-release custody or home confinement; and due-process failures in disciplinary proceedings.

The firm’s habeas practice includes procedural default and timeliness analysis, evidentiary hearing practice, certificate of appealability litigation under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), applications to the courts of appeals for authorization to file a second or successive motion under § 2255(h), and appeals from denials under both statutes. That last area changed in 2026: in Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), the Supreme Court held that AEDPA’s bar on relitigating previously presented claims under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(1) does not apply to a federal prisoner’s second or successive § 2255(h) motion, and that the Court retains certiorari jurisdiction to review a court of appeals’ refusal to authorize one. Anyone whose successive motion was refused because the claim had been raised before was refused under a rule that does not govern federal prisoners. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best spent seven years concentrating on capital post-conviction and federal habeas litigation before founding the firm.

Two provisions make federal health care fraud harder to defend than clients expect, and both concern what the government does not need to prove. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1347, which carries up to ten years — twenty if serious bodily injury results, life if death results — the government need not show the defendant knew his conduct violated any particular statute. And under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(h), a person need not have actual knowledge of the Anti-Kickback Statute or specific intent to violate it; it is enough that the remuneration was solicited, received, offered, or paid knowingly and willfully. Since the Affordable Care Act’s 2010 amendment at § 1320a-7b(g), a claim resulting from a kickback is automatically a false claim under the False Claims Act.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these cases. The recurring issues are medical necessity and who was entitled to make that determination; whether documentation deficiencies establish criminal intent or merely reflect poor practice; whether an arrangement fits within a statutory or regulatory safe harbor; statistical extrapolation of loss from a sampled set of claims; and the loss and victim-count enhancements under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1. Two consequences frequently matter more to the client than the sentence: mandatory exclusion from federal health care programs under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7, carrying a five-year minimum and escalating to permanent exclusion on a third offense, and state licensure action. Both are addressed in the firm’s Professional Licensing and Occupational Licensing entries.

Not every criminal case against a health care professional is a billing case. A significant share are prescribing prosecutions, in which a physician, nurse practitioner, dentist, or pharmacist is charged under 21 U.S.C. § 841 with dispensing a controlled substance outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose — the same statute used against street distribution, applied to a licensed practitioner. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these matters.

The element that decides them is the practitioner’s state of mind, and the government’s proof is usually built from three sources: prescription monitoring program data, patient files selected for their irregularities, and a testifying expert who reviews a sample and opines that the prescribing fell outside professional norms. Each is contestable. Volume alone establishes nothing. A chart that looks thin often reflects documentation practice rather than intent. And an expert who reviews 20 files out of 10,000 is opining on a sample chosen by the government.

The firm also handles false statements relating to health care matters under 18 U.S.C. § 1035, patient harm allegations arising from the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act or Conditions of Participation issues recast as criminal conduct, and the parallel Drug Enforcement Administration registration proceedings that typically accompany a prescribing investigation — a track that can end a practice long before the criminal case resolves.

Federal homicide jurisdiction is limited, and the jurisdictional element is frequently the strongest issue in the case. 18 U.S.C. § 1111 defines first- and second-degree murder but reaches only conduct within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Section 1112 covers manslaughter — up to fifteen years for voluntary, upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion, and up to eight years for involuntary. Section 1114 covers the killing of a federal officer or employee and carries extraterritorial reach. Section 1117 covers conspiracy to murder and requires an overt act. And 18 U.S.C. § 1959 — the VICAR statute — reaches murder, kidnapping, maiming, and assault committed as consideration for, or to gain entry into, an enterprise engaged in racketeering activity affecting interstate commerce, which is how many state-level homicides become federal cases.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles appellate and post-conviction work in these matters. The recurring issues are whether the jurisdictional predicate was actually established; whether the enterprise and racketeering activity elements of a VICAR count were proven as to this defendant rather than to the organization; sufficiency of the malice or premeditation finding; the availability of a heat of passion or imperfect self-defense instruction; and prejudicial spillover in multi-defendant trials. Where the sentence is life or a term functioning as life, the firm evaluates the remedies described in its Post-Conviction Remedies and Pardons entries.

Whether a conviction makes a non-citizen deportable turns on the elements of the statute of conviction, not on what the client actually did — and that technical rule is where the defense lives. Under Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. 500 (2016), and Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254 (2013), the categorical approach looks only at a statute’s elements and never at the underlying facts. The modified approach exists solely to identify which alternative element of a divisible statute formed the basis of conviction. Under Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184 (2013), ambiguity must be resolved in the non-citizen’s favor, and immigration courts may not conduct fact-specific inquiries into actual conduct. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., applies that analysis before a plea where possible and afterward where necessary.

The stakes are set by 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43), which defines “aggravated felony” through a long enumerated list, and by 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2), which makes an aggravated felony deportable at any time after admission. Two thresholds recur: a term of imprisonment of at least one year converts several offense categories into aggravated felonies, and a loss exceeding $10,000 does the same for fraud and tax offenses. A plea that looks favorable, measured in months, can be the worst outcome once removal exposure is factored in.

One remedy is worth knowing about and is frequently overlooked. Section 1227(a)(2)(A)(vi) provides that the moral turpitude, aggravated felony, and high-speed flight deportability grounds do not apply where the non-citizen has received a full and unconditional presidential or gubernatorial pardon. That waiver does not extend to the controlled substance ground, and pardon effects are not uniform across collateral consequence regimes — but where it applies, it is decisive. The firm coordinates with immigration counsel and does not appear in removal proceedings.

A distinct body of Eighth Amendment law governs people sentenced for conduct committed as children, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles appellate and post-conviction matters for that population. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best litigated post-conviction cases for juvenile offenders serving extreme sentences during seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, and she chairs the Board of Directors of Justice 360, which represents people serving extreme sentences imposed for conduct as children.

The line of authority is well developed, and its limits matter as much as its holdings. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), categorically bars the death penalty for conduct committed before age 18. Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), bars life without parole for juvenile non-homicide offenses and requires some meaningful opportunity for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), bars mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles and requires that a sentencer consider youth, immaturity, and capacity for change; it does not bar discretionary life-without-parole sentences. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016), made Miller retroactive on collateral review. And Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. 98 (2021), held that no separate finding of permanent incorrigibility and no on-the-record explanation are constitutionally required, so long as the sentencing scheme is discretionary.

In federal practice, the harder question is what follows. Because there is no federal parole for offenses committed on or after November 1, 1987, a long-term sentence of years can function as life without parole. The Third Circuit has held that the Eighth Amendment reaches such de facto life sentences for juvenile offenders; other circuits have not adopted that rule, and it remains an open, circuit-dependent question. The firm also litigates the question of how a juvenile prior conviction counts in the criminal history calculation and in career offender analysis under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, handling proceedings under the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 5031–5042.

Most criminal tax cases begin as civil matters, and the decisions made while they are still civil determine whether they remain civil. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. advises individuals at that stage, when the objective is to keep an examination from becoming a referral.

The warning signs are identifiable: an examination that goes quiet, a revenue agent who stops requesting documents, the appearance of an IRS Criminal Investigation special agent, or the issuance of a summons to a third party rather than to the taxpayer. Once a fraud referral is made, the civil examination is generally suspended, and anything the taxpayer said or produced before that point is available. The firm counsels clients on the choices available while the matter remains civil — amended returns, voluntary disclosure, agreed adjustments, and the civil fraud penalty under 26 U.S.C. § 6663 as an alternative to prosecution — and on the ones that foreclose options.

Two related areas carry outsized exposure. Foreign account reporting under 31 U.S.C. § 5321 produces willful FBAR penalties calculated per account per year that can exceed the account balance itself, and the willfulness standard there is litigated differently than in the criminal statutes. And the parallel-proceeding problem is acute in tax matters because the same records are demanded on both tracks. The firm’s criminal tax defense is described in its Federal White Collar Crimes and Tax Defense and Tax Evasion Defense entries, and it coordinates with tax counsel and accountants throughout the process.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. accepts engagements as federal appellate and post-conviction counsel on referral from other lawyers and structures them so the referring relationship is not disturbed.

Referring counsel generally arrives in one of four situations. A trial lawyer has a conviction he intends to appeal and wants appellate counsel who reads records for a living. A lawyer whose client is now in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody has a sentence computation, First Step Act earned time credit, disciplinary, or placement problem that requires familiarity with the Administrative Remedy Program and, if that fails, a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the district of confinement. A lawyer is facing a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 that alleges his own ineffective assistance, which creates a conflict requiring independent counsel for the client — and where trial counsel and appellate counsel were the same lawyer, the claim may be unraisable until someone else takes the file. Or a lawyer has a client seeking a pardon or commutation and wants counsel who files with the Office of the Pardon Attorney under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 through 1.11 rather than a non-lawyer consultant.

Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the United States Courts of Appeals and before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the firm handles matters nationwide. It does not accept state court referrals, does not solicit the referring lawyer’s other clients, and defines the scope of its engagement and the continuation of the referring lawyer’s role in writing at the outset.

Mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 and wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 are the most frequently charged federal fraud statutes. Their breadth is the point: a single email, text, or interstate transfer supplies the jurisdictional element, and each transmission can be charged as a separate count, so the count structure of an indictment reflects the government’s charging choices rather than the scope of the conduct. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals these cases.

The litigated elements are the existence and scope of a scheme; whether the government proved a specific intent to defraud rather than a failed business decision; materiality; and the use of the wire or mailing in furtherance of the scheme. The Supreme Court has narrowed some fraud theories substantially — Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), invalidated the right to control theory, and Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. 391 (2020), held that the statutes protect property rather than regulatory choices. But the narrowing has limits: in Kousisis v. United States, 605 U.S. 114 (2025), the Court held that wire fraud requires no proof that the victim suffered a net economic loss, so a defendant who induced a transaction through material false pretenses may be convicted even without seeking to leave the victim worse off. Materiality remains the operative limit.

At sentencing, the decisive figure is loss under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1, which typically drives the guideline range more than any other factor and is contestable on both the actual loss and intended loss theories — addressed in the firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense practice.

Mental health arises in a federal case at four distinct points, and the applicable standard is different at each. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates all four.

Competency to stand trial is governed by 18 U.S.C. § 4241 and by Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960), which asks whether the defendant has sufficient present ability to consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings — orientation to time and place is not enough. A competency finding is decided by a preponderance and does not prejudice a later insanity defense. Where the government seeks to medicate a defendant involuntarily solely to restore competency, Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), requires that the treatment be medically appropriate, unlikely to compromise trial fairness through side effects, and necessary to further an important governmental interest after considering less intrusive alternatives; such an order is immediately appealable.

Insanity is a narrow affirmative defense under 18 U.S.C. § 17, requiring that a severe mental disease or defect rendered the defendant unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts, with the defendant bearing the burden of proving it by clear and convincing evidence. This allocation makes the defense rarely successful and often better deployed as diminished capacity evidence bearing on mens rea.

At sentencing, mental health is a mitigating factor under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and can support a departure. And after sentencing, it bears on Federal Bureau of Prisons medical designation, treatment access, and — where a condition substantially diminishes the ability to provide self-care in a correctional setting — the medical grounds for a sentence reduction under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(1), described in the firm’s Parole Hearings entry.

Whether an offense counts as violent or nonviolent is not a descriptive question in federal sentencing — it is the question that determines whether a defendant is designated a career offender, with the designation routinely adding a decade or more to a prison term. Under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, a defendant is a career offender if he was at least 18 at the time of the instant offense, the instant offense is a felony that is a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense, and he has at least two prior felony convictions of either kind. When applicable, the offense level is set at or near the statutory maximum, and the criminal history category is automatically set to VI.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. challenges these designations at sentencing, on appeal, and collaterally, and the contested ground is almost always the predicates. Does the prior conviction categorically match the § 4B1.2 definition, analyzed by the elements of the statute of conviction rather than by the client’s actual conduct? Is the statute divisible, and if so, what do the limited approved documents establish about which alternative element was the basis of conviction? Does a state-controlled substance statute reach a substance absent from the federal schedules, so that it cannot qualify at all? Were two prior offenses counted separately when they should have been treated as a single sentence under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a)(2)? Were the priors committed before the client turned eighteen or outside the applicable time window?

Related enhancements turn on the same categorical analysis, and the firm litigates them together — the Armed Career Criminal Act under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) and § 924(c)’s crime of violence definition, both addressed in the firm’s Firearms and Ammunition entry. The Sentencing Commission’s 2025–2026 amendment cycle includes proposed changes to the § 4B1.2 definitions underlying career offender status, and the firm monitors that cycle because a revised definition can open both sentencing arguments and, if the amendment is made retroactive, relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2).

Not every federal prosecution is a financial case, and the cases that are not tend to be driven by statutory minimums and categorical enhancements rather than by loss tables. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals federal drug, firearms, violent crime, immigration-related, and computer offenses.

Three mechanisms account for most of the exposure in these cases, and none of them responds to conventional mitigation. Statutory minimums under 21 U.S.C. § 841 and 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) set floors a sentencing court cannot go beneath except through the safety valve at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) or a substantial assistance motion. Prior-conviction enhancements under 21 U.S.C. § 851, the Armed Career Criminal Act, and the career offender guideline operate through a categorical comparison of statutory elements that have nothing to do with the present offense. And consecutive sentence provisions — § 924(c) most prominently, along with the mandatory two-year term for aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A — stack terms rather than absorbing them.

The firm’s approach in these cases is therefore front-loaded onto the technical questions: whether the minimum is actually triggered, whether the enhancement predicates survive categorical analysis, and whether the consecutive count was correctly charged. Those questions are also the ones most likely to survive as appellate issues and to support relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 if the law changes afterward. Sentencing mitigation for this population is described in the firm’s Violent and Nonviolent Crimes entry.

Evidence located outside the United States is obtainable, and the mechanism depends on who wants it. The government uses mutual legal assistance treaties, which run agency to agency and which — critically for a defendant — toll the statute of limitations under 18 U.S.C. § 3292 for up to three years while a request is pending, and support Speedy Trial Act exclusions of up to a year under 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(8). A defendant has no equivalent access to the treaty process, which is a structural asymmetry that Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates directly.

What a defendant does have is 28 U.S.C. § 1782, which permits a district court to order a person residing or found in its district to give testimony or produce documents for use in a proceeding before a foreign or international tribunal. This provision reaches pre-accusation criminal investigations and preserves applicable privileges. However, ZF Automotive US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd., 596 U.S. 619 (2022), holds that it does not extend to private commercial arbitration. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 15 permits a deposition to preserve testimony when a witness is unavailable; in practice, it is the principal means of obtaining testimony from a foreign witness who will not appear. Letters rogatory remain available and remain slow. The Hague Evidence Convention governs civil requests in participating states.

The firm handles related issues: challenging the adequacy of an MLAT-based tolling order; contesting the authenticity and chain of custody of foreign-obtained records; litigating the admissibility of evidence gathered under foreign procedures that would not satisfy the Fourth Amendment; and cross-border privilege questions where the applicable rule differs by jurisdiction.

A federal conviction carries consequences that no sentence can fully capture, and those consequences often last longer than the sentence itself. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. advises clients on those consequences and on the narrow set of remedies that address them.

In practice, the most severe is exclusion from federal health care programs. 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7 requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to exclude anyone convicted of a program-related offense, patient abuse or neglect, felony health care fraud, or a felony controlled substance offense — a minimum of five years, ten years on a second offense, and permanent exclusion on a third. Reinstatement is not automatic when the period ends; it requires an affirmative application and written approval from the Office of Inspector General.

Clients ask whether a pardon fixes this, and the honest answer is layered. A presidential pardon does not erase the conviction as a historical fact — the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has said so directly, and 42 C.F.R. § 1001.2 defines “convicted” for exclusion purposes without regard to whether the record was expunged or otherwise removed. So a pardon should not be expected to terminate a mandatory exclusion on its own. Pardon effects are regime-specific rather than uniform: in the immigration context, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(vi) does recognize a pardon waiver for certain deportability grounds. What a pardon reliably does is remove legal disabilities arising from the conviction and serve as official federal recognition of rehabilitation, which carries real weight before licensing boards exercising discretion. That work is described in the firm’s Pardons entry.

Executive clemency is the President’s authority under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution to grant relief from federal convictions and sentences, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents clients across all four of its forms. A pardon addresses a completed sentence and removes civil disabilities arising from the conviction. A commutation shortens a sentence still being served without disturbing the conviction. A remission cancels or reduces a fine, restitution obligation, or forfeiture. A reprieve postpones the execution of a sentence. All are petitioned through the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1-1.11.

The eligibility rules differ by form, and the difference decides which petition a client can file. Under 28 C.F.R. § 1.2, no pardon petition should be filed until at least five years after release from confinement — or five years after conviction where no prison term was imposed — and generally not while the petitioner is on probation, parole, or supervised release. However, the regulation permits a waiver in exceptional circumstances. Under 28 C.F.R. § 1.3, no commutation petition should be filed at all if other forms of judicial or administrative relief are available, absent a showing of exceptional circumstances. In practice, that means direct appeal, motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, compassionate release motion, sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), and First Step Act time credit litigation should be exhausted or clearly foreclosed first. The petition must account for what was pursued and why the courts could not intervene. Because the firm litigates each of those remedies itself, the commutation petition it files rests on a documented procedural history rather than a reconstruction.

A pardon does not expunge, erase, or seal a federal conviction, and the firm says so at the first meeting. The Department of Justice states it directly: after a grant, both the conviction and the pardon appear on the record. What a pardon does is remove legal disabilities arising from the conviction — the right to vote where it was lost, eligibility for certain offices, service on a federal jury, and, in appropriate cases, firearm rights — and stand as official federal recognition of rehabilitation, which carries weight in professional licensing, bonding, immigration, and employment. Because there is no general federal expungement statute for a valid conviction, and because federal courts generally lack authority to expunge one on equitable grounds, a pardon is not one federal record relief option among several. It is essentially the only one. Its effects are regime-specific, though, and the firm is precise about that — see its entry on Occupational Licensing.

Clemency applies to federal offenses only. The constitutional grant extends to offenses against the United States, with state convictions requiring clemency from that state’s governor or clemency board; a client with both needs two separate applications under two different sets of rules.

Clemency practice is administrative advocacy rather than litigation. The petition is a written case presented to career Department of Justice staff who investigate independently, notify victims where 28 C.F.R. § 1.6 requires it, solicit the views of the prosecuting United States Attorney’s Office and — for commutations — the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and route a recommendation through the Deputy Attorney General to the White House. It rewards the same discipline as the Federal Bureau of Prisons' administrative litigation: complete documentation, an accurate procedural history, and candor, because the investigation surfaces any discrepancy. A strong commutation petition establishes the disparity between the sentence imposed and what the same conduct would draw today, the institutional and disciplinary record, completion of programming including the Residential Drug Abuse Program and First Step Act productive activities, medical circumstances where relevant, a verified release plan with confirmed housing and employment, and letters of support — including, where obtainable, from the sentencing judge or the prosecuting office, which carry disproportionate weight.

Clients should understand three things at the outset. The regulations in 28 C.F.R. Part 1 are advisory internal Department of Justice guidance under § 1.11 and do not create any enforceable rights. There is no deadline by which the President must decide, and petitions routinely remain pending for years. And a clemency denial is a matter of unreviewable executive discretion, so there is no appeal. A pardon must be accepted to take effect, and a tendered pardon may be refused — Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915) — while a commutation may be granted without the recipient’s consent, Biddle v. Perovich, 274 U.S. 480 (1927). The firm does not work with non-lawyer pardon consultants and advises clients against doing so because the disclosures a candid petition requires are privileged when made to a lawyer but not when made to anyone else.

Federal parole was abolished for offenses committed on or after November 1, 1987, but the United States Parole Commission retains jurisdiction over a defined population. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents people within it: federal offenders whose conduct predates November 1987, District of Columbia Code offenders, prisoners transferred to the United States under international treaty, and military offenders serving sentences in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That authority is not permanent — Congress has repeatedly extended it, most recently through January 30, 2031 — and anyone with a pre-1987 sentence should understand that the framework governing their release is subject to reauthorization.

For everyone else in federal custody, the question a parole hearing used to answer is now answered by different mechanisms, and the firm handles those as well. The principal one is compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). Relief requires extraordinary and compelling reasons, consistency with the Sentencing Commission’s policy statement at U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13, support from the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), and a finding that the defendant is not a danger to the community. Before filing in the sentencing court, the defendant must either exhaust Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative remedies after asking the warden to file on his behalf, or wait thirty days from the warden’s receipt of that request — whichever comes first.

The available grounds narrowed in 2026. In Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), the Supreme Court held that a sentencing disparity created by a change in law Congress declined to make retroactive — the First Step Act’s amendment to § 924(c) stacking being the leading example — cannot constitute an extraordinary and compelling reason, and invalidated U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6) to that extent. Compassionate release itself remains fully available on the other grounds: medical circumstances, including terminal illness, a serious impairment substantially diminishing the ability to provide self-care, and a condition requiring long-term or specialized care the Federal Bureau of Prisons is not providing; age of at least sixty-five combined with serious age-related deterioration and either ten years or seventy-five percent of the term served; family circumstances, including death or incapacitation of the only available caregiver for a minor or disabled child, or incapacitation of a spouse, registered partner, or parent; having been the victim of sexual or physical abuse in custody at the hands of someone with custody or control; and the catch-all for circumstances similar in gravity. Rehabilitation alone cannot qualify, though it strengthens a motion built on a qualifying ground.

These motions turn on documentation rather than argument, and the firm builds them accordingly: complete institutional medical records, an independent medical opinion where the Federal Bureau of Prisons record understates the condition, the full programming and disciplinary record, and a verified release plan with confirmed housing and continuity of care. A denial is reviewable in the court of appeals for abuse of discretion, and because eligibility turns on present circumstances, a renewed motion is available when the facts materially change. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has written a full practitioner’s guide to this area: Federal Compassionate Release: A Complete Guide to Early Release from Federal Prison.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles the full sequence of federal relief after judgment, and the order in which those remedies are pursued frequently determines whether any of them succeed.

The judicial remedies are a direct appeal in the court of appeals; a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, due within ninety days of the judgment; a motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255; a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenging execution of the sentence; compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A); a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) where the Sentencing Commission has designated a guideline amendment retroactive under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.10(d); and relief under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 35 and 36 where applicable. The administrative remedies are Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Remedy Program filings, First Step Act earned time credit disputes — a mechanism entirely distinct from § 3582(c)(2), and the two are routinely confused — Residential Drug Abuse Program removals, disciplinary appeals from Disciplinary Hearing Officer findings, and prerelease custody and home confinement placement. The executive remedy is clemency: a commutation petition for a client still serving, a pardon petition once a sentence is complete.

Sequencing matters for two concrete reasons. First, the deadlines are not comparable. The § 2255 one-year limitation is strict and usually forecloses relief permanently if missed, whereas compassionate release has no deadline and can be sought again as circumstances change. Second, 28 C.F.R. § 1.3 provides that a commutation petition should not be filed while other judicial or administrative relief remains available, absent exceptional circumstances — so seeking clemency early both weakens the petition and squanders the faster remedy.

Two 2026 Supreme Court decisions reset parts of this analysis in opposite directions. Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), held that a disparity created by a non-retroactive change in law cannot be an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release, narrowing a theory many pending motions relied on. Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), held that AEDPA’s bar on previously presented claims does not apply to a federal prisoner’s second or successive § 2255 motion, widening a door many practitioners treated as closed. A file correctly closed in 2024 is not necessarily correctly closed now.

The most common problem the firm encounters is a client who was told, after sentencing or an unsuccessful appeal, that nothing further could be done, when, in fact, a deadline remained open, or a remedy was never evaluated. The firm’s post-conviction review begins with the judgment, docket, appellate decision, sentence computation, and institutional record. We produce a written assessment of every remedy still available, including the deadline governing each, even when none apply.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents defendants from arraignment through disposition, and the post-indictment period is when the record governing every later stage is built.

The Speedy Trial Act runs first. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3161, an indictment must be filed within thirty days of arrest, and trial must begin within seventy days of indictment or first appearance, subject to the exclusions in subsection (h) — pretrial motion pendency, competency proceedings, interlocutory appeals, codefendant joinder, transfers, and ends of justice continuances. Those continuances require specific on-the-record findings, and Zedner v. United States, 547 U.S. 489 (2006), holds both that a defendant cannot prospectively waive the Act’s protections, because it serves the public interest and not only his own, and that there is no harmless error review when the required findings are absent. The remedy under § 3162 is dismissal, with or without prejudice, and the choice between them turns on the seriousness of the offense, the circumstances of the delay, and the impact of reprosecution.

The rest of the firm’s work in this phase covers detention and release under the Bail Reform Act; discovery under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, Brady, Giglio, and the Jencks Act, including motions to compel where production is incomplete; motions to suppress; motions to dismiss for defects in the indictment, venue problems, limitations bars, or multiplicity; motions in limine and Daubert challenges to government experts; severance in multi-defendant cases; and plea negotiation, including the appellate waiver and cooperation terms that determine what can be challenged later.

Preservation is the through-line. An objection not made here is reviewed on appeal only for plain error, and a guideline finding not objected to at sentencing becomes the baseline for any later motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). Because the firm’s core practice is appellate and post-conviction, it litigates this phase with an unusually concrete sense of which decisions will still matter in three years.

For a licensed professional, a federal investigation is two problems at once, and the board proceeding often moves faster than the criminal case. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, attorneys, accountants, financial advisers, and other licensed professionals in federal matters, with attention to the licensure consequences from the first meeting rather than after judgment.

Several tracks can run simultaneously, and each carries its own trigger. A state licensing board may act on an indictment alone, before any adjudication of guilt. The Drug Enforcement Administration may move to suspend or revoke a registration on an immediate suspension order, which can close a practice within weeks. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General may propose a permissive exclusion. The Securities and Exchange Commission or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority may bar an individual from association. And under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7, a conviction for a program-related offense, patient abuse or neglect, felony health care fraud, or a felony controlled substance offense triggers mandatory exclusion with a five-year minimum.

The consequence for the criminal defense is that the plea itself becomes a licensure decision. Whether a disposition is a felony or a misdemeanor, whether it is a program-related offense, whether it involves a controlled substance, and how the factual basis is worded can each determine whether exclusion is mandatory or discretionary and whether a license survives. The firm negotiates with that in view and coordinates with licensing counsel rather than substituting for it. Restoration and reinstatement after conviction are described in the firm’s Occupational Licensing entry.

Federal public corruption law has been narrowed more sharply over the past decade than almost any other area of federal criminal law, and that narrowing is frequently where the defense is. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals charges under 18 U.S.C. § 666 (theft or bribery involving an organization receiving more than $10,000 in federal funds), 18 U.S.C. § 201 (bribery and gratuities involving federal officials), the honest services provision at 18 U.S.C. § 1346, and the Hobbs Act’s extortion under color of official right theory at 18 U.S.C. § 1951.

The controlling line of authority is specific and cumulative. McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016), holds that an “official act” must be a formal exercise of governmental power on a pending question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding, or controversy — arranging meetings, hosting events, and making calls do not qualify without more. Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. 391 (2020), holds that the federal fraud statutes protect property interests, not a government’s regulatory choices. Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), holds that a private citizen owes an honest services duty to the public only through an actual agency relationship, not through informal dominance and control. And Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), holds that § 666 is a bribery statute only — it does not criminalize gratuities given to state or local officials for past acts absent a corrupt quid pro quo agreement.

Whether the government’s theory survives that line is often the entire case, and it is a question that can be raised on a motion to dismiss, at trial, on appeal, and — where a conviction predates the controlling decision — under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The firm litigates it at each stage.

The qui tam mechanism is what makes the False Claims Act different from every other federal fraud statute, and its procedure is what makes it dangerous to an individual before he knows he is a target. Under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b), a private relator files suit in the government’s name under seal and serves the complaint on the government but not on the defendant. The government then investigates — often for years, with extensions of the seal — while the defendant may have no idea the action exists. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents individuals during and after that period.

Three features of the process bear directly on the defense. The sealing is often the first sign of a qui tam action, followed by a civil investigative demand, a subpoena, or an interview request that appears without explanation. How the individual responds then shapes everything that follows. The government’s decision to intervene drives the case’s trajectory: declination does not end it, as the relator may proceed alone. And under United States ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, 599 U.S. 419 (2023), the government may move to dismiss a qui tam action over the relator’s objection so long as it intervened at some point, thereby making it a live and underused strategy to persuade the government of the case’s weakness even after declination.

Because the same conduct is nearly always under criminal review as well, the firm’s engagement centers on criminal exposure and sequencing across tracks — as described in its False Claims Act Litigation entry. The related retaliation provisions are addressed in the Whistleblowers entry.

Qui tam exposure concentrates in three sectors, and the theory varies by sector rather than by statute. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles the criminal dimension of each matter.

In health care, the theories are billing for services not rendered or not medically necessary, upcoding, unbundling, and — most often — kickbacks, which, since the Affordable Care Act’s 2010 amendment at 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(g), are automatically false claims. Physician self-referral under the Stark Law at 42 U.S.C. § 1395nn compounds the problem; unlike the Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark imposes strict civil liability without any requirement to prove intent to induce referrals.

In federal contracting and grants, the theories are defective pricing, failure to comply with contract specifications, Buy American and country-of-origin misrepresentation, small business and set-aside eligibility misstatements, and labor standards noncompliance. The False Claims Act’s implied certification theory, validated in Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 579 U.S. 176 (2016), is the usual vehicle — but Escobar also imposed a demanding materiality requirement that a great many of these claims cannot satisfy, and materiality is where a contracting-side defense typically lives.

In customs and trade, allegations of undervaluation, misclassification, and transshipment increasingly take the form of reverse false claims — an obligation to pay duties that was avoided rather than a claim for payment — with the criminal counterpart described in the firm’s Customs Violations entry. Across all three sectors, the firm’s focus is on the individual’s criminal exposure and the licensure and exclusion consequences that survive any civil settlement.

A regulatory investigation is not a criminal case, and treating it like one — or failing to treat it like one — is one of the two most common and most expensive mistakes. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents individuals before federal agencies, where an administrative proceeding, a civil enforcement action, and a criminal referral are all possible outcomes of the same inquiry.

Three features distinguish this work. First, the compulsory process is different: agencies issue administrative subpoenas and civil investigative demands under their own authorizing statutes, without a grand jury, and the standards for resisting them differ from those governing grand jury subpoenas. Second, cooperation is more consequential than in a criminal investigation because most agencies operate formal or informal credit frameworks in which self-disclosure and remediation materially affect the outcome, and a decision to self-disclose is nearly irreversible. Third, the same statements made to satisfy an agency can be used in a later criminal case, which makes the Fifth Amendment posture a threshold decision rather than an afterthought.

One structural change has altered the landscape. In SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024), the Supreme Court held that the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial when an agency seeks civil penalties for fraud, because such penalties are punitive rather than remedial and do not fall within the public rights exception to Article III adjudication. That reasoning is not confined to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it has reshaped where and how agencies choose to bring penalty actions. The firm’s related work is described in its Government Investigations and SEC Investigations entries.

Restitution is the part of a federal sentence that outlives the sentence. Under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act at 18 U.S.C. § 3663A, restitution is mandatory for many offenses; it is often set at an amount the client can never pay, and it survives release and supervision. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates it at sentencing, on appeal, and afterward.

The contested issues are causation and amount. Restitution reaches only losses directly and proximately caused by the offense of conviction, which, in a fraud case, means the government cannot simply adopt an aggregate figure or an intended loss theory imported from the guideline calculation under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1. Offsets for the value the victim actually received, collateral recoveries, insurance payments, and amounts recovered through forfeiture all reduce the figure. Joint and several liability among co-defendants raises apportionment questions under 18 U.S.C. § 3664(h). Lagos v. United States, 584 U.S. 577 (2018), limits reimbursable investigation and proceeding expenses to government investigations and criminal proceedings, excluding a victim’s own private investigation and civil or bankruptcy litigation costs — a limit that removes substantial sums from many corporate victim claims. And Dolan v. United States, 560 U.S. 605 (2010), holds that missing the ninety-day determination deadline in § 3664 does not strip the court of the power to order restitution where it made clear before the deadline that restitution would be ordered.

After judgment, the firm handles payment schedule modifications under 18 U.S.C. § 3664(k) for material changes in economic circumstances, disputes in the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program when the Federal Bureau of Prisons collects at a rate not ordered by the court, and challenges to enforcement actions and liens. Where the obligation is not legally challengeable, remission of a fine or restitution obligation is a form of executive clemency under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 through 1.11 — see the firm’s Pardons entry.

RICO converts otherwise separate offenses into a single prosecution, and that consolidation produces both the government’s advantage and the defense’s openings. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals charges under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961 through 1968.

Three elements carry the litigation, and each has a controlling case. The enterprise: under Boyle v. United States, 556 U.S. 938 (2009), an association-in-fact enterprise requires a common purpose, relationships among the associates, and longevity sufficient to pursue that purpose — but no hierarchy, no chain of command, and no formal structure, which makes this element easier for the government to establish than defendants expect. The pattern: under H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229 (1989), predicate acts must be both related and continuous, either over a closed period or with a threat of continuation, and neither multiple schemes nor an organized crime nexus is required. And participation: under Reves v. Ernst & Young, 507 U.S. 170 (1993), § 1962(c) liability requires participation in the operation or management of the enterprise’s affairs, which extends to lower-level participants acting under direction but not to outside professionals performing their ordinary duties. This distinction matters greatly to a lawyer, accountant, or consultant charged alongside a client.

The firm also litigates variance and prejudicial spillover in multi-defendant RICO trials, severance, the validity of individual predicate acts, and the forfeiture consequences that follow a RICO conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1963. Where a predicate has since been invalidated — as with the § 924(c) residual clause after Davis — the conviction may be vulnerable under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates Fourth Amendment issues at the district court level and, more often, on appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress, where legal conclusions are reviewed de novo and factual findings for clear error, making the record developed at the suppression hearing decisive.

The recurring questions are whether the client had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place or thing searched; whether a warrant was supported by probable cause and adequately particularized; whether a warrantless search fits a recognized exception; whether an investigative stop was supported by reasonable suspicion and stayed within its justification; and two doctrines that decide more suppression motions than any others. Under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), a defendant who makes a substantial preliminary showing that the affiant knowingly or recklessly included a false statement necessary to the probable cause finding is entitled to a hearing, and if the remaining affidavit is insufficient, the warrant is void. Under United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), the good faith exception saves evidence obtained under a warrant later invalidated — unless the affiant lied or was reckless, the magistrate abandoned neutrality, the affidavit was so lacking in indicia of probable cause that reliance was unreasonable, or the warrant was facially deficient. Those four exceptions to the exception are where most of the litigation actually happens.

Digital searches now generate most of the issues in federal practice. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), requires a warrant to obtain historical cell site location information. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), requires a warrant before searching a phone incident to arrest. And in Chatrie v. United States, 605 U.S. ___ (2026), decided June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held that obtaining a person’s Google Location History is a Fourth Amendment search, resolving the geofence warrant question that had divided the Fourth and Fifth Circuits — while leaving open, on remand, whether a given multi-step geofence warrant satisfies probable cause and particularity at each stage and whether the good faith exception applies. Those remaining questions are live, and the firm litigates them. Border searches of electronic devices remain a separate matter: no circuit currently requires a warrant for a manual search at the border.

A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation follows a defined path, and knowing where a matter sits on that path determines what an individual should do. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents individuals throughout all such proceedings.

It generally begins informally, with a document request and no compulsory process. It becomes formal when the Commission issues an order of investigation authorizing the staff to issue subpoenas for documents and testimony — and the existence of a formal order is itself informative about how the staff views the matter. Testimony is taken under oath, on the record, with counsel present, and it is the single most consequential event in most investigations, because an inaccurate answer can convert a securities case into a false statement case under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 or an obstruction case. If the staff intends to recommend enforcement, it issues a Wells notice, and the response is the last opportunity to persuade the staff before a recommendation goes to the Commission.

Two features require particular care. First, the Commission routinely coordinates with the Department of Justice, and the same testimony given to satisfy the staff can support a parallel criminal case, which makes the Fifth Amendment posture a threshold decision to be made before the first interview rather than after. Second, the forum has changed: in SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024), the Supreme Court held that the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial when the Commission seeks civil penalties for fraud, thereby moving penalty actions out of in-house administrative proceedings and into federal district court. The related criminal charges are described in the firm’s Securities Fraud entry.

Federal securities fraud is charged under two overlapping regimes, and the choice between them affects what the government must prove. Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), with Rule 10b-5 and the criminal penalty provision at 15 U.S.C. § 78ff, requires willfulness. The freestanding securities and commodities fraud statute at 18 U.S.C. § 1348, added in 2002 and carrying a maximum penalty of up to 25 years, was drafted to avoid the technical requirements of the Exchange Act regime and is increasingly the government’s preferred vehicle. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals both.

Insider trading has the most developed doctrine and the most defensible elements. Under United States v. O’Hagan, 521 U.S. 642 (1997), the misappropriation theory reaches trading on confidential information in breach of a duty owed to the source of the information rather than to shareholders. Under Dirks v. SEC, 463 U.S. 646 (1983), tippee liability is derivative: it exists only where the tipper breached a fiduciary duty, and a tipper breaches only by receiving a personal benefit from the disclosure. Salman v. United States, 580 U.S. 39 (2016), holds that a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend satisfies that benefit requirement without any pecuniary exchange, which is a real limit as well as an expansion, because the relationship must actually be established.

In non-insider cases, the litigated elements are materiality, scienter, and — at sentencing — the gain and loss calculation that drives the guideline range under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1. Nearly every criminal securities matter runs alongside a Commission enforcement action, and the firm coordinates the two rather than treating them separately; see its SEC Investigations entry.

The Guidelines govern federal sentencing — a system of offense levels, criminal history calculations, and enhancements that can result in a sentence far longer than the underlying conduct suggests. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. provides full sentencing representation, with the work divided into two halves.

The first is technical and occurs before the hearing: obtaining and reviewing the presentence report line by line; filing written objections to the offense-level computation, criminal history calculation, and each enhancement; and litigating disputed facts under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32. This matters twice. An unobjected-to guideline finding is very difficult to disturb on appeal, and the calculation made here becomes the fixed baseline for any future motion for a sentence reduction.

The second is the sentence mitigation case, and it is documentary rather than rhetorical: departure and variance motions grounded in specific factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), a sentencing memorandum, treatment and medical records, verified employment and education history, documented caregiving obligations, evidence of restitution paid, and letters from people who can speak to conduct rather than to character in the abstract. Where appropriate, the firm works with a sentencing mitigation specialist to develop a full social history and address collateral consequences directly, since a sentence’s true severity often includes immigration exposure, loss of licensure, and forfeiture that the guideline range does not capture. Because the firm also runs a Federal Bureau of Prisons consulting division, sentencing advocacy extends into judicial recommendations on facility designation, Residential Drug Abuse Program eligibility, and medical designation — far easier to obtain at sentencing than to litigate afterward.

The firm handles sentencing appeals in which the district court misapplied the Guidelines, failed to address a properly raised argument, or imposed a sentence that was procedurally or substantively unreasonable, as well as resentencing on remand. It also handles sentence reductions after judgment. Where the Sentencing Commission lowers a guideline range and designates the amendment retroactive by listing it at U.S.S.G. § 1B1.10(d), a person already sentenced may move under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). The most recent such amendment is Amendment 821, effective November 1, 2023, with reductions effective no earlier than February 1, 2024: Part A eliminated the two-point criminal history addition for status points for defendants with six or fewer points and reduced it to one for those with more, and Part B created U.S.S.G. § 4C1.1, a two-level decrease for zero-point offenders meeting listed non-aggravating criteria. Retroactivity determinations for several 2024 and 2025 amendments remain unresolved as of mid-2026. Because these cycles unpredictably create new eligibility and are routinely missed by prisoners and counsel who closed the file, the firm re-screens existing and former clients against each one.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. prepares petitions for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States in federal criminal and post-conviction cases. Founding attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the Supreme Court bar.

The deadline is ninety days from entry of the judgment of the court of appeals, under 28 U.S.C. § 2101(c) and Supreme Court Rule 13, and a Justice may extend it for good cause by up to sixty additional days. Two details cost petitions every term. The ninety days run from the entry of judgment, not from the denial of rehearing, unless a timely rehearing petition was actually filed. And the deadline is not subject to the mailbox conventions that govern lower courts.

Supreme Court Rule 10 states plainly that review is “not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion,” granted “only for compelling reasons.” What satisfies that standard in practice is a conflict: a genuine split among the courts of appeals on an important federal question, a circuit decision conflicting with this Court’s precedent, or an important unsettled federal question a circuit has now decided. Rule 10 also states that certiorari is “rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law,” which describes most petitions filed and is why most are denied. The firm’s counsel is correspondingly direct: it will say when a case presents a genuine circuit split worth petitioning, and when it does not, because a petition filed without one is an expense rather than a strategy.

The firm’s Supreme Court work also extends to collateral review, where a jurisdictional question was resolved in favor of federal prisoners in 2026. In Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), the Court held that 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E)’s bar on certiorari review of a court of appeals’ refusal to authorize a second or successive application applies to state prisoners under § 2254 and not to federal prisoners under § 2255(h) — so the Court retains jurisdiction to review those denials, an avenue counsel had widely assumed was closed. Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), decided the same Term, is the reason the firm tracks the Court’s criminal docket case by case rather than annually: it eliminated a compassionate release theory on which a great many pending motions in the lower courts had been built. Amicus practice and circuit split monitoring are described in the firm’s Appellate entry.

Not every criminal tax charge is an evasion charge, and the distinction matters because the elements and the exposure differ. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals the full range of Title 26 offenses short of evasion.

Submitting a false return under 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1) is a felony carrying up to three years, and it requires no tax deficiency at all — a materially false statement on a return signed under penalty of perjury is sufficient, which is why the government charges it when the deficiency itself is hard to prove. Aiding or assisting in the preparation of a false return under § 7206(2) reaches return preparers and advisers, and does so regardless of whether the taxpayer knew. Willful failure to file, pay, or keep records under § 7203 is a misdemeanor carrying up to a year, and is frequently the disposition that a negotiated resolution produces. Corruptly obstructing the administration of the tax code under § 7212(a) is a felony carrying up to three years, but Marinello v. United States, 584 U.S. 1 (2018), requires a nexus in time, causation, or logic between the conduct and a particular pending or reasonably foreseeable IRS proceeding, so the statute does not reach routine return processing. Indictments charged on the older, broader theory remain vulnerable.

Across all of these, the controlling element is willfulness — the voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty under Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991) — and the guideline driver is tax loss under U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1 and the table at § 2T4.1. The firm’s evasion practice is described in its Tax Evasion Defense entry and, for the civil track, in its Litigation and Controversy - Tax entry.

Tax evasion under 26 U.S.C. § 7201 is the most serious Title 26 offense, carrying up to five years per count and a fine of up to $100,000 for an individual, and it requires the government to prove three things: an affirmative act of evasion, a substantial tax deficiency, and willfulness. Each is contestable, and the first is the one that clients least expect. Failing to pay is not evasion — evasion requires an affirmative act, such as concealing assets, using nominees or cash, keeping a second set of records, or making false statements to a revenue agent. A case built solely on nonpayment is, at most, a § 7203 case.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. represents individuals from the IRS Criminal Investigation referral stage through trial, sentencing, and appeal. The recurring defenses are willfulness under Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), where a genuine good faith misunderstanding of what the law requires — even an objectively unreasonable one — negates the element; reliance on a return preparer or accountant, which is a species of the same defense and which depends on what the client actually disclosed to the professional; the deficiency computation itself; and the government’s method of proof, since a net worth or bank deposits reconstruction requires the government to establish an accurate opening position and to negate non-taxable sources of funds, and both frequently fail on close examination.

Sentencing turns on tax loss under U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1 and § 2T4.1, and the loss figure is litigable — unclaimed deductions, basis, and the treatment of civil penalties all bear on it. The firm coordinates with tax counsel and accountants when civil liability must be resolved alongside criminal exposure.

Federal sentencing does not fall into the categories a charge label suggests. Two defendants convicted of the same offense — violent or nonviolent — routinely receive very different sentences, and the difference is the record built before the hearing. The guideline range is where a federal sentencing begins, not where it ends: the court must impose a sentence sufficient but not greater than necessary under the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) sentencing factors, and Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. builds the record that makes a below-guideline sentence both persuasive at the hearing and defensible on appeal.

Mitigation that works is documentary. Treatment records rather than assertions of remorse. Psychological and neuropsychological evaluations where a condition bears on culpability or the need for treatment rather than incarceration. Verified employment and education history. Documented caregiving obligations, particularly where a dependent has no other available caregiver — a fact that also becomes relevant later under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(3) if circumstances change. Evidence of restitution actually paid. Letters from people who can describe specific conduct rather than general character. Where appropriate, the firm works with a sentencing mitigation specialist to develop a full social history, which, in a case involving childhood trauma, untreated illness, or addiction, is frequently the difference between a guideline sentence and a variance.

The other half of the work is the § 3553(a) argument itself: unwarranted disparity with similarly situated defendants, the actual need for deterrence given this person’s history, and the proportionality of the guideline range to the conduct. Where the district court fails to address a properly raised § 3553(a) argument, that failure is procedural error and is reviewable — see the firm’s Appellate Litigation entry.

Federal violent crime prosecutions expose defendants to mandatory minimums and consecutive enhancements that frequently exceed what the underlying conduct alone would produce. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. defends and appeals charges under the Hobbs Act at 18 U.S.C. § 1951, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Armed Career Criminal Act at 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), carjacking under 18 U.S.C. § 2119, and the VICAR statute at 18 U.S.C. § 1959.

The firm’s appellate practice has particular depth in the categorical analysis these statutes require, because that is where the exposure is actually created and where it can be undone. A conviction under § 924(c) requires a qualifying crime of violence, and in United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), the Supreme Court held § 924(c)(3)(B)’s residual clause unconstitutionally vague — which invalidated a substantial number of predicates and continues to support relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), did the same for the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause, and Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016), made that holding retroactive on collateral review. Whether an offense qualifies under the surviving elements clause turns on the elements of the statute of conviction rather than on the facts, and Hobbs Act robbery, attempt offenses, and conspiracy counts have each generated their own body of litigation on that question.

The firm litigates these issues at sentencing, on appeal, and collaterally, including the § 924(c) count structure, the career offender designation under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, and the enhancements for bodily injury, weapon discharge, and victim vulnerability. For clients already serving stacked pre-2018 § 924(c) sentences, the available remedies changed in 2026 — see the firm’s Firearms and Ammunition entry.

Federal whistleblower law matters to an individual under investigation for a reason rarely discussed: the person who reported the conduct has statutory protections, and the organization’s response to that person often becomes evidence in the case against everyone else. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. handles the criminal and enforcement exposure arising from whistleblower activity.

The three regimes differ in ways that determine what a reporter can and cannot claim. The False Claims Act’s anti-retaliation provision at 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h) entitles an employee, contractor, or agent to reinstatement with the same seniority, double back pay with interest, and costs and fees, with a three-year limitations period. Dodd-Frank’s securities program at 15 U.S.C. § 78u-6 pays awards of ten to thirty percent of monetary sanctions collected in covered actions exceeding $1,000,000 and provides parallel anti-retaliation relief — but under Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers, 583 U.S. 149 (2018), those protections apply only to someone who reported the violation directly to the Securities and Exchange Commission, so internal-only reporting is not enough even where Sarbanes-Oxley required it. The IRS program under 26 U.S.C. § 7623 pays mandatory awards of 15 to 30 percent when the target’s gross income exceeds $200,000 and disputed proceeds exceed $2,000,000. Still, it provides only an award mechanism— it contains no anti-retaliation cause of action comparable to the other two, a gap reporters are routinely unaware of.

The firm’s work is the exposure that follows: the criminal referral that a whistleblower report generates, the obstruction and witness-tampering risk posed by any response to the reporter, and the parallel civil and administrative proceedings described in its Qui Tam Law and Government Investigations entries.

In nearly every federal white-collar sentencing, one number matters more than everything else combined: loss under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1. The base offense level for most fraud offenses is six or seven. The loss table extends to 30 levels. So the difference between a well-litigated loss figure and one adopted from the government’s sentencing memorandum is frequently the difference between probation and a decade. Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. litigates that figure as the central event of the sentencing.

The contestable questions are specific, and they recur. Whether the government is using actual loss or intended loss, and whether an intended loss theory reflects anything the client actually intended rather than the face value of a scheme that was never going to succeed. Whether credits against loss have been applied for the value the victims genuinely received, for collateral recoveries, for insurance payments, and for amounts recovered through forfeiture. Whether gain is being used as a proxy for loss when loss is simply difficult to calculate, which the guideline permits only where loss cannot reasonably be determined. Whether loss attributable to a conspiracy has been assigned wholesale to a peripheral participant rather than limited to what was reasonably foreseeable to that person under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3. And whether the enhancements layered on top actually apply — number of victims, sophisticated means, abuse of a position of trust under § 3B1.3, and role in the offense.

Two consequences of getting this right extend past the hearing. The loss figure drives the restitution order, which survives the sentence, and the guideline calculation entered at sentencing becomes the fixed baseline for any later motion for a sentence reduction. The firm’s charge-specific practices are described in its entries on Mail and Wire Fraud, Bank Fraud, Securities Fraud, Health Care Fraud, and Embezzlement.