Mobile’s federal courthouse conducts the United States’ criminal business for southwestern Alabama — the Gulf Coast docket of the Southern District of Alabama. It is a compact district with an outsized character: drug-trafficking conspiracies tried to verdict, a fraud share roughly two and a half times the national average, and the pain-clinic prosecution that became one of the most consequential federal drug rulings of the decade.
Below we map the court itself — its one fully staffed courthouse, its bench, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office and its current leadership posture — together with what this district actually prosecutes and how we defend clients in it. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. practices federal criminal defense, appeals, and post-conviction litigation nationwide and represents federal defendants in the Southern District of Alabama through admission pro hac vice. Our principal attorney, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, has appeared in more than 330 federal proceedings — upward of 100 of them appeals — before the U.S. Supreme Court and every one of the twelve federal circuits. This page is one entry in our federal courts directory.
From a DEA agent’s knock in Mobile to a § 2255 deadline years after sentencing, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to size up the case and identify what can still be protected — or undone.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Southern District of Alabama
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How far does this district reach? | Thirteen southwestern Alabama counties in two divisions — the Southern Division at Mobile and the Northern Division at Selma. |
| Is court actually held in Selma? | Selma remains a statutory seat, but the court’s own site notes its Selma office is not staffed full-time; Mobile is the district’s working courthouse. |
| Who runs the U.S. Attorney’s Office? | Sean P. Costello has led it since 2021 under attorney-general and then court appointment; the district has no Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney as of mid-2026. |
| Who reviews convictions from this court? | The Eleventh Circuit — and in Ruan v. United States, the Supreme Court itself took up a Mobile prosecution and changed federal drug law nationwide. |
| Can we take your case here? | Yes. We appear in the Southern District of Alabama pro hac vice and litigate its appeals and post-conviction matters wherever they lead. |
Key Takeaways
- The Southern District of Alabama takes in thirteen Gulf-adjacent and Black Belt counties; Mobile is its fully staffed courthouse, and the court itself notes that the Selma office is not staffed full-time.
- Three district judgeships are authorized under 28 U.S.C. § 133 — as of mid-2026, Chief Judge Jeffrey U. Beaverstock leads the bench, with three senior judges adding real capacity.
- Sean P. Costello has led the U.S. Attorney’s Office under attorney-general and then court appointment since 2021; the district has no Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney as of mid-2026.
- Drug trafficking drove 36.7 percent of FY2024 sentencings here, and fraud, theft, or embezzlement another 20.7 percent — the heaviest fraud concentration of Alabama’s three federal districts.
- Ruan v. United States, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision requiring proof that a prescriber knowingly acted without authorization, began as a Mobile pain-clinic prosecution in this courthouse.
- A January 2026 Mobile jury verdict in a multimillion-dollar cocaine-and-fentanyl conspiracy shows the district still tries major drug cases.
- Rule 4(b) allows fourteen days from entry of judgment to notice an Eleventh Circuit appeal, and § 2255 motions come back to this district for decision.
- We take Southern District of Alabama cases through pro hac vice admission under the court’s General Local Rule 83.3(d) — a streamlined, e-filed process.
The Southern District of Alabama at a Glance
This is the smallest of Alabama’s three federal districts and the one with the strongest single center of gravity. 28 U.S.C. § 81(c) divides its thirteen counties into two divisions — a Northern Division of five Black Belt counties with its statutory seat at Selma, and a Southern Division of eight counties, including Mobile and Baldwin, seated at Mobile. In practice nearly everything happens in Mobile: the court’s own locations page advises that the Selma office is not staffed full-time.
The prosecuting authority is the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama, working from offices on Mobile’s waterfront. As of mid-2026, the office is led by Sean P. Costello, who was appointed by the Acting Attorney General in February 2021 and then by the district court that June — making this one of the districts currently operating without a Senate-confirmed United States Attorney, a fact worth precise attention because leadership posture can shift charging and plea policy.
Appellate review belongs to the Eleventh Circuit, drawing on the same judges who review the Northern and Middle Districts of Alabama. At the trial level, the district’s General Local Rules — GenLR 83.3 governs who may practice — and its judges’ standing orders fill in the procedural detail the national rules leave open.
One Fully Staffed Courthouse: The Bench in Mobile
Congress authorizes three district judgeships for this district under 28 U.S.C. § 133. As of mid-2026, the court’s roster lists Chief Judge Jeffrey U. Beaverstock and District Judges Kristi K. DuBose and Terry F. Moorer in those seats, supported by Senior District Judges Charles R. Butler, Jr., Callie V. S. Granade, and William H. Steele. Three magistrate judges — Sonja Bivins, Katherine Nelson, and P. Bradley Murray — carry the pretrial calendar, with two additional magistrate judges serving on recall.
The senior judges are working judges, not names on a letterhead: the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s own announcements include, for example, a fifteen-year methamphetamine-trafficking sentence imposed by Judge William H. Steele in April 2025. With six district judges realistically available, case assignments in Mobile are less predictable than the three-judgeship allotment suggests — a variable we account for when advising on venue, plea timing, and sentencing posture.
For clients and families, the practical geography is simple: plan for Mobile. Hearings, trials, and sentencings take place at the federal courthouse there, even for cases arising from the district’s northern counties.
Federal Criminal Cases in the District
White-collar investigations, fraud indictments, drug-trafficking conspiracies, firearms charges — the Southern District’s criminal calendar is broad, but the rhythm of a case is consistent from filing to judgment.
Cases surface in different ways here — a target letter to a professional, a sealed indictment unsealed at arrest, a search warrant executed at first light. The initial appearance and arraignment follow quickly, and then come the months that decide most cases: discovery review, suppression and dismissal motions, and the negotiating that ends for most defendants in a plea agreement — and for a meaningful few, in trial. Sentencing closes the district-court chapter. Our federal criminal process hub treats every stage in working detail.
We work each of those phases with the end of the case already in mind — the Guidelines exposure, the appellate record, the § 2255 horizon — because choices made in the first weeks echo at sentencing and for years afterward.
Applied Insight: Ruan is both the cautionary tale and the lesson of this district: a Mobile prosecution traveled from this courthouse to the Supreme Court and rewrote the intent standard for every prescriber case in the country. The issues preserved early in a case are the only ones that can do that kind of work later — an objection never made is an argument never heard.
Ruan v. United States: The Mobile Case That Reshaped Federal Drug Law
Two Mobile pain-management physicians who operated the clinics known as Physicians Pain Specialists of Alabama were convicted after a seven-week federal trial in 2017 on drug-distribution and related counts, and sentenced to more than two decades each. The Justice Department’s own announcements describe the practice as one of the nation’s highest-volume opioid prescribers. It became the rare Southern District of Alabama case to reach the Supreme Court on the merits.
In Ruan v. United States, 597 U.S. 450 (2022), the Court vacated the judgments and held that the “knowingly or intentionally” element of 21 U.S.C. § 841 applies to the statute’s authorization exception: once a licensed practitioner produces evidence that the prescribing was authorized, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew the conduct was unauthorized or intended it to be. The Court refused to substitute an objective “reasonable doctor” test — criminal liability turns on the defendant’s own state of mind, not a hypothetical practitioner’s.
The endgame is instructive too: after remand and further proceedings, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that the two physicians were resentenced to 252 and 240 months. A landmark legal victory did not erase the convictions on these facts — but for every licensed-professional prosecution since, in this district and nationwide, the subjective-intent instruction Ruan requires is now ground zero of the defense. We treat it that way in any case involving prescribers, pharmacists, or other authorization-based defenses.
Drugs, Fraud, and the Gulf Coast Docket
The Sentencing Commission’s FY2024 packet for the district counts 237 sentenced individuals. Drug trafficking led at 36.7 percent — well above the 29.5 percent national share — with firearms at 25.3 percent and fraud, theft, or embezzlement at 20.7 percent, nearly two and a half times the 8.6 percent national figure and the heaviest fraud concentration among Alabama’s three districts. Gulf Coast money — real estate, insurance proceeds, government program funds — generates fraud cases the way the drug corridors generate trafficking cases.
The trafficking docket remains serious and current. In January 2026, a Mobile federal jury convicted three defendants in a multimillion-dollar cocaine-and-fentanyl organization — a continuing-criminal-enterprise prosecution in which, according to the Justice Department, the group moved hundreds of pounds of cocaine from cartel-connected suppliers and used children as couriers. Mobile sits on a working seaport and the I-10 corridor; however the drugs move, the cases land in this courthouse.
Resolution patterns shape strategy: 95.8 percent of FY2024’s sentenced defendants pleaded guilty, judges stayed within the guideline range in 48.9 percent of cases, and substantial-assistance departures under § 5K1.1 ran 15.6 percent — half again the national rate. And in FY2025, the district’s judges decided six compassionate-release motions and granted five. That is a small sample, not a promise — but it says well-supported motions get a genuine audience in Mobile.
Appeals and Post-Conviction Matters
Entry of judgment in Mobile starts a fourteen-day clock under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b), and when that window closes, the conversation usually shifts from direct appeal to collateral attack. While it is open, an appeal moves to briefing before the Eleventh Circuit — and as this district’s own history shows, the right issue from a Mobile courtroom can carry a case all the way to the Supreme Court.
Collateral remedies come home to this courthouse: a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 challenging a Southern District of Alabama conviction is filed in the district itself, ordinarily before the judge who imposed the sentence. That litigation — together with the compassionate-release work described above — is the deepest part of our federal post-conviction practice, and it is genuinely portable: the statute, the case law, and the procedure are federal, whichever courthouse they are applied in.
Appearing in This Court from Out of State
This district draws an unusually clean line in its General Local Rule 83.3: an attorney residing outside Alabama may join the court’s general bar only as a member of the Alabama Bar — otherwise, admission is pro hac vice. The pro hac vice route under GenLR 83.3(d) is e-filed and efficient: a motion, a certificate of good standing issued within thirty days (from a federal court, if the applicant is admitted to one), and a per-case fee. Notably, the court requires no movant’s signature on the pro hac vice application. We handle that process as a matter of routine when we take a Southern District of Alabama case.
The reason cross-district practice works is that nothing in the substantive case changes at the district line — § 841’s intent element, the Guidelines’ drug-quantity tables, and Rule 4(b)’s deadline read identically in Mobile and in Maine. What is local is the texture: which judges sit, how the office charges, what the data says about pleas and departures. That texture is exactly what this page collects.
The credential that matters most is the work itself. Elizabeth Franklin-Best — recognized in Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and ranked by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations — is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and all twelve federal courts of appeals and wrote Reversing Your Criminal Conviction. That record runs deep on exactly the issues a Gulf Coast drug or fraud case raises: a nationwide docket of more than 330 federal proceedings and over 100 appeals, with post-conviction litigation — motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, capital and non-capital habeas, First Step Act § 404 resentencings, Amendment 821 reductions, and compassionate release — at its core, alongside the trial defense and direct appeals these cases demand.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counties make up the Southern District of Alabama?
Thirteen counties in Alabama’s southwestern corner, including Mobile and Baldwin on the coast and five Black Belt counties in the Selma-based Northern Division. The federal courthouse in Mobile is the district’s fully staffed location.
Who is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama?
Sean P. Costello leads the office. He was appointed by the Acting Attorney General in February 2021 and then by the United States District Court in June 2021. As of mid-2026, the district does not have a Senate-confirmed United States Attorney.
Which court hears appeals from Mobile federal cases?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. The notice of appeal is generally due fourteen days after judgment is entered — and as the Ruan case showed, a Mobile prosecution can ultimately reach the United States Supreme Court.
What kinds of cases dominate this district?
Drug trafficking and fraud. In FY2024, drug cases made up 36.7 percent of sentencings and fraud, theft, or embezzlement 20.7 percent — the heaviest fraud concentration among Alabama’s three federal districts. Firearms cases added another 25.3 percent.
Can an out-of-state lawyer appear in the Southern District of Alabama?
Yes, through pro hac vice admission under the district’s General Local Rule 83.3(d): an e-filed motion, a certificate of good standing issued within thirty days, and a per-case fee. Unusually, the court requires no movant’s signature on the pro hac vice application itself.
Does the firm take federal cases in Mobile?
Yes. We defend Southern District of Alabama cases through pro hac vice admission and carry them forward through Eleventh Circuit appeals, motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and compassionate-release litigation when the case calls for it.
What was the Ruan pain-clinic case in Mobile?
Two Mobile pain-management physicians were convicted after a seven-week federal trial in 2017. In 2022 the Supreme Court vacated the judgments, holding that the government must prove a prescriber knowingly or intentionally acted without authorization. After further proceedings, the doctors were resentenced to 252 and 240 months.
Is federal court actually held in Selma?
Selma is the statutory seat of the district’s Northern Division and the courthouse remains on the books, but the court’s own website notes that its Selma office is not staffed full-time. As a practical matter, proceedings take place in Mobile.
How did compassionate release fare in this district recently?
In fiscal year 2025, Southern District of Alabama judges decided six compassionate-release motions and granted five. The sample is small, so the percentage matters less than the practical point: carefully documented motions receive serious consideration here. Nationally, 14.1 percent of motions were granted that year.
What are the mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug trafficking in the Southern District of Alabama?
Drug quantity drives the mandatory minimum. Under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1), trafficking thresholds trigger a five-year floor, and larger amounts a ten-year floor, with a prior qualifying drug felony raising the ten-year minimum to fifteen years. Because drug cases were 36.7 percent of this district’s FY2024 sentencings, contesting drug type and quantity — and preserving safety-valve eligibility — is often where the real sentencing exposure is decided.
Can a doctor or pharmacist be charged with drug trafficking in federal court?
Yes. Licensed prescribers and pharmacists are charged under the same statute, 21 U.S.C. § 841, when the government contends prescriptions fell outside legitimate medical practice — the theory behind the Mobile pain-clinic case that produced Ruan v. United States. After Ruan, the government must prove the practitioner knowingly or intentionally acted without authorization, which makes the defendant’s actual state of mind the center of any prescriber prosecution.
Talk With a Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer
A Gulf Coast federal case can begin with a clinic audit, a seized shipment, or a pre-dawn arrest — and it can end in the Eleventh Circuit or beyond. Wherever your matter stands in the Southern District of Alabama, we offer a paid, one-hour initial consultation to review the record and give you a straight assessment of what can be done.