NEW YORK EXPERIENCE, SMALL TOWN ATTENTION

In a multi-defendant Organized Crime case, Ms. Laser was the only attorney to get her client released on bail despite that he faced charges of Racketeering, Murder, and Extortionate Extension of credit.

Recently, Ms. Laser won a new trial in Federal District Court in the Eastern District of New York. The client faced over 20 years in jail for his convictions on a number of counts of home-invasion robberies with guns, and money laundering.

After finding convincing alibi evidence – including cell-site telephone evidence and work and school records – Ms. Laser submitted to the court a 74-page brief detailing her findings. Lengthy hearings were conducted, where she cross-examined the federal Case Agent on the case about the government’s shoddy investigation, and the questionable identification testimony of the informants, and cross-examined the trial attorney about his failures in investigating the defense.

The Court granted a new trial and immediately released the client, who had been incarcerated for fully 41-months up until that point. He is now happily home with his wife, and working at his Union-electrician job in New York.

In an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Ms. Laser obtained the release of a client serving over a decade in federal prison, who had been mistakenly released for over two years. When he was re-incarcerated, the government sought to have that time when he was mistakenly at liberty tacked on to the end of his prison term. Ms. Laser successfully argued that the client should not suffer because of the government’s own error, and those two years were counted as part of his sentence, resulting in his immediate release.

Ms. Laser tried and obtained acquittals in 8 out of 10 counts of (computer-related) child pornography offenses (the remaining two counts were undecided by the jury). After she challenged the retrial of those two remaining counts on double jeopardy grounds, the case was settled with two misdemeanor, non-sex crime counts. Ms. Laser’s defense of the case involved extensive computer expert investigation and testimony as to the true content and viewing history of the alleged child images.

Ms. Laser achieved a full dismissal of a First-degree felony prosecution of numerous counts of sexual abuse of a minor. A 50-year old businessman, with no prior criminal record, was accused by a young relative who had recently watched a video in a school lesson about sex abuse. She then proclaimed that the client – her uncle – had done the same to her.

First, Ms. Laser got the client out on bail. Then, she enlisted the premier and most-lauded expert in child interviewing in the State, who also had decades of experience in law-enforcement. That expert thoroughly analyzed how the police and Child Services had mishandled their interviews of the child-witness, and testified at a preliminary hearing that the interviews were deeply flawed and unreliable.

In addition, Ms. Laser successfully achieved pre-trial suppression the client’s two-hour interrogation by the police, where he had not been represented by counsel. Ms. Laser won a constitutional challenge to that interrogation and the court excluded the client’s statements from admission as evidence at trial.

Pursuant to those two devastations of its case, the State dismissed all the charges.

In another appeal, before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Ms. Laser successfully achieved a resentencing in an Organized Crime prosecution for attempted homicide. The Appeals Court agreed with Ms. Laser that the sentencing court wrongly found serious bodily injury for a gunshot wound that in fact caused no significant or lasting harm.

In a recent case involving felony charges of narcotics possession, Ms. Laser so thoroughly cross-examined the arrested officer at the Preliminary Hearing, for that officer’s failure to conduct an adequate investigation of the involvement of her African-American client, that all charges were reduced to minor misdemeanors.

Ms. Laser won a full dismissal in another case prosecuted by the State of New York, with innumerable charges of gun possession, where a huge cache of automatic rifles and pistols were found at a business in Brooklyn. After getting the client (who owned the business) out on bail, she immediately investigated the scene of the raid on the business. With that information, and a careful survey of relevant Fourth Amendment cases, she successfully argued in a lengthy brief that the search and seizure of the guns could not result in the arbitrary arrest of whoever happened to be on the premises at the time of the raid.

In a civil case – where Ms. Laser’s client, a golf course developer, sued the well-driller for inadequate and shoddy work, Ms. Laser took the case against the well-drilling company to trial. After a lengthy and expert-intensive trial, Ms. Laser’s client prevailed. She additionally obtained an award of all of her client’s attorneys’ fees. She prevailed and the award was affirmed in the Utah Court of Appeals.