Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs, male inmates, filed suit under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq., challenging an ADOC policy that forbids them from wearing their hair unshorn in accordance with the dictates of their Native American religion. The United States intervened on plaintiffs' behalf. The court affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of the ADOC because the ADOC carried its burden of demonstrating that its hair-length policy was the least restrict means of furthering its compelling governmental interests of prevention of contraband, facilitation of inmate identification, maintenance of good hygiene and health, and facilitation of prison discipline through uniformity. View "Knight, et al. v. Thompson, et al." on Justia Law

Defendants were prosecuted for their involvement in health care fraud and violations of the Anti-Kickback laws regulating Alabama Medicaid. The prosecution involved "factor" medication, which was a special, expensive medication used to treat hemophilia, a blood clotting disease. The parties raised numerous challenges on appeal. The court affirmed the convictions of Jeff Vernon and Butch Brill after review of the extensive trial record and with the benefit of oral argument. The court vacated, however, the district court's Rule 29 acquittal of Chris Vernon on three counts and reversed the alternative award of a new trial, and remanded for reinstatement of the jury's guilty verdicts and sentencing on those counts. View "United States v. Vernon" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed her conviction for knowingly using a fraudulently altered travel document. Defendant, a Haitian national who speaks Creole but not English, argued that the erroneous admission of a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer's trial testimony of what the interpreter said to him violated her Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause rights. Under Crawford v. Washington, the court found that defendant had a Sixth Amendment right to confront the interpreter, who was the declarant of the out-of-court testimonial statements that the government sought to admit through the testimony of the CBP officer. The court concluded, however, that the error was not plain where there was no binding circuit precedent or Supreme Court precedent that clearly articulated that the declarant of the statements testified to by the CBP officer was the language interpreter. View "United States v. Charles" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted by a jury of three counts of attempted armed robbery. One of the jurors was allowed to deliberate and vote on the verdict after missing the second of the three days of trial and all of the testimony presented on that second day. Petitioner's counsel did not object because he did not notice that the juror participated in the jury deliberations. The court concluded that there was no actual prejudice where there was no reasonable probability that if all six jurors, instead of just five, had heard the five prosecution witnesses testify during the second day of trial, petitioner would have been acquitted. Because petitioner's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel did not fit within the narrow bounds of United States v. Cronic or Roe v. Flores-Ortega, and she has failed to demonstrate actual prejudice under Strickland v. Washington, she was not entitled to federal habeas relief on her claim. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of the writ and remanded. View "Castillo v. State of Florida" on Justia Law

Defendant, the founder and former CEO of HealthSouth, was found guilty of federal funds bribery, honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit the latter offenses. Defendant subsequently appealed the district court's denial of his motion for a new trial filed while Siegelman I was before the Supreme Court on certiorari, and the denial of his motion to recuse the trial judge. The court concluded that there was no abuse of discretion in Judge Henkle's denial of the motion to recuse under 28 U.S.C. 455(b) where the judge's ex parte meeting with the Marshals regarding a disputed factual issue did not lead an objective disinterested lay observer to entertain significant doubt about the judge's impartiality and the judge did not have personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding, nor was he likely to be a material witness. Addressing five of the six grounds defendant relied on in seeking a new trial, the court also concluded that there was no abuse of discretion in Judge Fuller's handling of the motion for new trial under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33(b)(1). Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Scrushy" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of murder and robbery, appealed the district court's denial of his motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. 2255. Petitioner contended that: (1) he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his penalty-phase counsel inadequately investigated and presented mitigating background evidence; (2) penalty-phase counsel inadequately investigated and presented mental health evidence; (3) he was denied a fair and impartial jury and a reliable sentencing proceeding in the absence of any record of one juror's voir dire; and (4) he was denied conflict-free section 2255 counsel. Because the court's ineffective assistance analysis required it to weigh the evidence in aggravation against the totality of the available mitigating evidence, the court concluded that petitioner had not satisfied Strickland v. Washington's prejudice prong. The court rejected defendant's remaining arguments and affirmed the judgment. View "Brown v. United States" on Justia Law

Alquwon Johnson committed suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet while in custody at the Jail. Appellee, Alquwon's mother and personal representative, filed suit against corrections personnel working at the Jail at the time of his suicide, as well as others. Appellants subsequently filed this interlocutory appeal, challenging the denial of Alabama's state immunity pursuant to Alabama Code section 14-6-1. Because this appeal depended on questions of unsettled Alabama law, the court certified two questions to the Supreme Court of Alabama. View "Johnson v. Conner, et al." on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on the trial court's refusal to instruct the jury to draw no inference from petitioner's failure to testify. The court concluded that the Florida Supreme Court's harmless error conclusion was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Reviewing the record as a whole and applying the harmless error analysis in Brecht v. Abrahamson, the court concluded that the claimed error did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the jury's capital sentence recommendation. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Burns v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after being convicted of Medicare and Medicaid health care fraud charges. The court concluded that the district court correctly imposed a 20-level loss enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(1) for crimes involving loss between $7,000,001 and $20,000,000; a 6-level victims' enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1 because there were 270 victims in total; and the two-level, sophisticated-means enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(9)(C). The court held, however, that the district court erred in failing to exclude the value of medically necessary goods victims actually received in its restitution. Accordingly, the court vacated the restitution order and remanded for a recalculation because the restitution schedule on which the district court relied did not distinguish between medically necessary and unnecessary oxygen. The court also vacated the district court's imposition of a $3 million fine and remanded for resentencing with respect to the fine amount. View "United States v. Bane" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed his conviction for murdering a female acquaintance in the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary. At issue was whether petitioner's direct appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance by inadequately litigating his trial counsel's ineffective assistance at the penalty phase of his trial. The court concluded that defendant failed to meet his burden of showing that the balance of aggravating and mitigating factors would lead all reasonable jurists to conclude that he suffered prejudice during the penalty phase of his trial. Consequently, a reasonable jurist could conclude that defendant suffered no prejudice during his direct appeal on account of direct appellate counsel's alleged failings in arguing this ineffectiveness-of-trial-counsel claim. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief. View "Brooks v. Commissioner, AL Dept. of Corrections, et al." on Justia Law