Federal criminal defendants must fight a battle against the largest and most powerful organization in history, the U.S. government. At the very least, hopefully, they have a trusted attorney to fight with them.
That right of criminal defendants to choose their own lawyers is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and ensures the integrity of the adversarial justice process. Yet prosecutors are increasingly using a procedure called “asset forfeiture”—which freezes assets suspected of being tied to crime—to deny defendants the funds they need to retain the lawyer of their choice.
In January 2005, Kerri Kaley, then a sales representative with a New York-based medical device company, was informed that she was the target of a grand jury investigation in Miami. She was suspected of stealing prescription medical devices from hospitals and selling them on the black market. Kerri and her husband Brian (also under investigation) hired counsel to represent them in what turned out to be a two-year investigation. During that period, their lawyers interviewed witnesses, reviewed countless documents, researched legal issues, and conferred with the prosecutors.
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