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On April 24, 2025, Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears partner Hank Asbill secured a dismissal with prejudice under the Speedy Trial Act and the Sixth Amendment in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The original indictment in the criminal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) case was returned against the firm’s client in the Southern District of Florida more than eight years ago, in January 2017. The case was subsequently transferred to the Northern District of Georgia (the location of the government’s entire investigation), where a superseding indictment added two co-defendants and additional charges. Lengthy delays followed from what the district court termed the government’s “highly irregular” litigation strategy of identifying 55 witnesses as “unindicted co-conspirators” and seeking to admit numerous out-of-court statements of those witnesses, many of whom had testified in the grand jury, under the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule. Pre-trial litigation of these issues ultimately resulted in an extra two-year delay while the government pursued an interlocutory appeal. In dismissing the case with prejudice for violations of both statutory and constitutional speedy trial rights, the district court determined that the death or unavailability of several critical defense witnesses during the egregiously lengthy pendency of the case, as well as lost evidence and faded memories, caused serious and specific harm to the defendants’ ability to present a defense.
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