Top Federal Lawyer Michael Leonard obtains no prison time sentence for client in federal prosecution in Boston. Mike Leonard of Leonard Trial Lawyers, along with Sami Azhari of Azhari LLC, represented the Defendant in this prosecution brought by the United States Attorneys’ Office for the District of Massachusetts. Their client, a former federal postal worker, was charged with the theft of government monies. The Defendant faced a Federal Sentencing Guidelines range of 10 to 16 months. Moreover, the federal prosecutor urged the Court – Judge Burroughs – to impose a term of incarceration in the federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) within that range. Mr. Leonard and Mr. Azhari crafted a Sentencing Memorandum in which they emphasized various 3553 factors in mitigation, including their client’s substantial pre-charge employment history; the obstacles that he overcame in is youth; his post-charge efforts and successes at rehabilitation; and the statistical/empirical probability that he would not engage in recidivist conduct. During his oral argument during the sentencing hearing on Thursday, September 8, 2023 in federal court in Boston, Michael Leonard emphasized those and other particularized circumstances that he indicated made a term of incarceration greater than necessary to achieve any of any legitimate aims of sentencing. After back and forth between the attorneys and the Court, and after the Defendant’s allocution, Judge Burroughs ejected the Government’s request that the Defendant serve a period of incarceration within the BOP. This was a tremendously satisfying outcome.
Michael Leonard
Leonard Trial Lawyers
Septermber 8, 2023