Extraordinary victory in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

On August 6, 2014, partner Clifford Ashcroft-Smith secured an extraordinary victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Frazier, 577 F.App’x 271 (5th Cir. 2014). The Court reversed a multimillion dollar criminal restitution judgment, which was part of an expansive $20.5 million Dallas Cowboys Football themed mortgage fraud case involving a former NFL player and ten co-defendants. Ashcroft-Smith’s winning efforts, which spanned nearly two years of hard work, included the overwhelming task of navigating through several thousand pages of transcripts and roughly 17,000 pages of trial exhibits.

Historically, there is less than a single digit percentage chance of winning this type of case in the Fifth Circuit. The victory is incredible not only because of the rare success of proving plain error, but even more so because Ashcroft-Smith was able to overcome the unique challenges of an appeal waiver and other complexities to advance an issue of first impression never before considered.

The issue focused on correcting the trial court’s improper application of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 as Congress had intended it to be applied across the nation. As Ashcroft-Smith noted in response to his success, the most important consideration is to always do the right thing, defend the client, and ensure that the law is properly applied.