Lawyers for two men charged with facilitating the massive trade in online poker took aim at the government last week, insisting that Congress exempted financial institutions from liability for processing gambling monies and did not include poker in its definition of gambling.

The 11th Circuit has vacated a child pornography defendant’s 17 1/2-year sentence, ruling that the government had to prove the defendant sent pornography to a child — not an unidentified adult posing as one — in order to hit the defendant with an increase found in federal sentencing guidelines.

A special prosecutor’s report investigating allegations of misconduct in the investigation and prosecution of the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens reveals “systemic concealment” of evidence but does not recommend that any of the government’s lawyers face criminal charges, a federal judge said Monday.

A New Jersey law firm has agreed to settle FTC charges that it helped its client, a mortgage modification company, engage in unfair, abusive and deceptive marketing practices.

Black convicted offenders are the racial group least likely to earn relief from mandatory minimum sentences for assisting the government, according to a major study of mandatory minimum penalties by the U.S.