Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Petitioner asserted that he was high on cocaine at the time he shot a law enforcement officer to death. At issue was whether there was a reasonable probability that the jury would have found petitioner incapable of forming a premeditated design to kill had his trial attorney actively pursued a defense of voluntary intoxication. Because petitioner failed to carry his burden of proving that he was prejudiced by trial counsel's failure to pursue a voluntary intoxication defense, the district court erred in granting federal habeas relief on his guilty phase claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Because the district court's grant of an evidentiary hearing on the penalty phase claim was interlocutory in nature and no exception to the final judgment rule applied, the court lacked jurisdiction to review that decision. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Reaves v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law

Defendants each pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to steal government funds and one count of theft of government funds. The convictions stemmed from their participation in a scheme that involved submitting fraudulent tax returns to the IRS using stolen Social Security numbers, receiving refund checks from the federal government, and depositing these proceeds in various bank accounts of corporate entities controlled by them. On appeal, defendants challenged their sentence. The court concluded that the district court did not err in imposing the six-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(2)(C) for a crime involving 250 or more victims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Philidor" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted for being a deported alien found in or having reentered the United States without permission. At issue on appeal was whether the sentencing judge erred when he applied the modified categorical approach and determined that defendant had committed a prior "crime of violence" under U.S.S.G. 2L1.2. Defendant's prior convictions were for a State of Florida crime, "aggravated battery," consisting of battery upon a pregnant victim whom the perpetrator knew or should have known was pregnant. The court concluded that defendant committed a prior crime of violence when he admitted that the way he committed aggravated battery on a pregnant victim was by striking the victim. Therefore, the district court properly imposed a sixteen-level sentencing enhancement and the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Diaz-Calderone" on Justia Law

Petitioner, seeking habeas relief, contended that he was mentally incompetent to be executed under the Supreme Court's decision in Panetti v. Quarterman. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 28 U.S.C. 2254, "reflects the view that habeas corpus is a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems, not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal." The court concluded that there was no extreme malfunction in petitioner's case. The Florida Supreme Court properly applied Panetti's "rational understanding" standard, considered conflicting expert testimony about the nature and severity of petitioner's mental illness, and made a determination about his competency to be executed that was by no means beyond any possibility for fair-minded disagreement. Accordingly, AEDPA required that federal habeas relief be denied and the court affirmed that denial. View "Ferguson v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an Orthodox Jew serving time as a prisoner of the State of Florida, filed a complaint against defendants alleging violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq. Plaintiff claimed that defendants violated his right to practice his religion because they would not give him a strictly kosher diet. The court concluded that plaintiff's claims were not moot because Florida has not unambiguously terminated its policy which deprived plaintiff of kosher meals; while safety and cost could be compelling governmental interests, defendants have not carried their burden to show that Florida's policy in fact furthered these two interests; and defendants have not carried their burden of showing that Florida's policy of not providing kosher meals to prison inmates was the least restrictive means to further the cost and security interests they asserted. Because defendants failed to satisfy their burden at summary judgment, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to them and remanded for further proceedings. View "Rich v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections, et al" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of several drug-related offenses, filed a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleging, inter alia, ineffective assistance of counsel. At issue on appeal was whether the district court violated the rule laid down in Clisby v. Jones, that district courts resolve all claims for relief presented in a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition regardless of whether relief was granted or denied. The court concluded that the district court violated Clisby by failing to address the ineffective assistance of counsel claim the magistrate judge overlooked. Despite a party's failure to object to a magistrate judge's conclusions on legal issues, the court's precedent did not foreclose a party's ability to seek de novo review on appeal. Therefore, the court vacated and remanded. The court suggested that it should, in the exercise of its supervisory powers, adopt a new rule that attached consequences to the failure to object to a magistrate judge's report and recommendation. View "Dupree v. Warden, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to conspiring with others to traffic in unauthorized credit card numbers with the intent to defraud, using and trafficking unauthorized credit card numbers with the intent to defraud, possessing 15 or more unauthorized credit card numbers with the intent to defraud, and possessing a re-encoding machine with the intent to defraud. At issue was whether the government presented sufficient evidence that 250 or more persons or entities were victimized by the fraud scheme in which defendant participated. Because the government failed to put on any evidence that there were more than 250 or more victims, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for the district court to resentence defendant with a 2-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(2)(A) rather than a 6-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(2)(C). View "United States v. Washington" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's denial of his Motion for Modification or Reduction in Sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), based on Amendment 750 to the Sentencing Guidelines. At issue was what drug quantity the district court found defendant responsible for at his initial sentencing hearing in 2007. The district court needed to know those original drug quantity findings in order to determine if Amendment 750 actually lowered the guidelines range upon which defendant's original sentence was based. The court vacated the district court's order and remanded for further proceedings because both the United States Probation Office's and the government's memos in 2011 contained inaccurate or at least incomplete information about the 2007 drug quantity findings at the original sentencing. Further, the district court did not use the Addendum to the Presentence Investigation Report. On remand, the district court should determine what drug quantity findings it made, either explicitly or implicitly, at defendant's original sentencing hearing. View "United States v. Hamilton" on Justia Law

Petitioner was serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend when he murdered a fellow inmate. A jury convicted him of malice murder and imposed a death sentence. This case came before the court on petitioner's application, under 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(3)(A), for permission to file a second or successive federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254 in the district court. The court denied the application because petitioner's claim of mental retardation, proposed in his successive petition, was already presented in his first petition and was barred by the statutory prohibition in section 2244(b)(1). Further, petitioner's mental retardation claim challenged only his eligibility for a death sentence, and not whether he was "guilty of the underlying offense," and thus did not fall within the narrow statutory exception in section 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii). View "In re: Warren Hill, Jr." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a handgun. At issue on appeal was whether defendant's sentence was properly enhanced by his prior 2006 felony conviction for possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun. The court held that possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun qualified as a crime of violence under the Sentencing Guidelines and affirmed defendant's sentence. View "United States v. Hall" on Justia Law