Commercial Litigation Update

In a rebuke of the Department of Justice, the Third Circuit recently overturned money laundering conspiracy convictions for a reverse distributor pharmaceutical company, Devos Ltd., and two of its former executives, CEO Dean Volkes and CFO Donna Fallon. The Third Circuit’s opinion, United States v. Fallon, affirmed other convictions against the company and individuals but ordered a resentencing and a recalculation of the sums subject to forfeiture.

Most have heard the cliché “don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.” For many criminal defendants, however, a significant factor in the time served is not just the crime committed, but rather the so-called “trial penalty.”

A “trial penalty” describes situations where a defendant chooses to proceed to trial instead of accepting whatever plea deal the Government had offered and receives a significantly lengthier sentence than she would have received had she not gone to trial. Often the “trial penalty” results in a defendant receiving a much lengthier ...