Prurient revelations, brash recriminations and purportedly glaring judicial errors in Tom Goldstein's criminal case have captivated the appellate bar for nearly 19 months, and many of those moments will be center stage in the star attorney's imminent appeal.

Long admired for his pioneering U.S. Supreme Court advocacy and creation of SCOTUSblog, Goldstein is now also known for philandering and a self-described "reckless style of gambling" in poker matches. That style eventually bled over into Goldstein's personal and professional finances, culminating in his conviction on 12 counts involving tax evasion, false tax returns, unpaid taxes and lying to lenders.

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"You have to prove that a judge could not have rationally made that decision, and that ... the judge is wildly wrong — a total abuse of discretion," Anderson Kill PC shareholder Samuel M. Braverman, a veteran criminal defense lawyer, told Law360. "That's a hard thing to get."

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It's not uncommon for the DOJ to emphasize "things that it thinks are salacious," and it "gets a lot of free rein," Braverman told Law360. "Sometimes," he added, "defendants open the door to these sorts of problems."

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