News

CW attains reversal of 108-month sentence on appeal before the Ninth Circuit in seminal, published opinion

April 2019

Before retaining CW, the client, a prominent Southern California physician, was convicted on multiple counts of healthcare fraud arising from his certification of patients as eligible for hospice care. On appeal, CW argued that the client's 108-month sentence violated the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause because the district court applied the most recent federal sentencing guidelines' manual, although an earlier, less-punitive version applied to all but one count of conviction. The Ninth Circuit reversed, rejecting the government's theory that the continuing offense doctrine permitted sentencing for a scheme to defraud under a single manual, despite the prosecution's election to charge the client with multiple counts arising from independent executions of the alleged scheme.

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