Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Sudan, petitioned for review of the BIA's final order affirming the IJ's order of removal and denial of petitioner's application for waiver of inadmissibility under section 209(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1159(c). The court held that the IJ and the BIA committed no error in determining that petitioner was a violent or dangerous individual subject to In re Jean's heightened, "extraordinary circumstances" standard for determining whether to grant a discretionary section 209(c) waiver of inadmissibility. The court held, however, that the IJ and the BIA erred by failing to consider evidence of the country conditions in Sudan and the hardship petitioner individually would suffer upon removal to Sudan. Accordingly, the petition was granted in part, denied in part, and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant appealed her conviction for aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1028A(a)(1). Defendant argued that section 1028A(a)(1) could not be applied to her conduct because that provision did not cover the theft of a person's identity when that person was no longer living. The court held that, viewed together, the text, structure, and purpose of the statute make plain the meaning of section 1028A(a)(1)'s text: the provision criminalizes the use of a real person's identity, regardless of whether that person is currently living. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Petitioner was convicted on three counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to death in Florida's state courts. On collateral review, the district court granted in part petitioner's federal application for writ of habeas corpus, finding that trial counsel was ineffective during the penalty phase of the trial by failing to present substantial mitigating evidence to the jury, and by failing to object to the prosecutor's closing argument to the jury that petitioner preferred a death sentence over life imprisonment. The district court rejected the remainder of the petition, holding, among other things, that trial counsel was not ineffective during the guilt phase of the trial. The court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief as to petitioner's guilt-phase ineffectiveness claims; vacated the district court's grant of habeas relief concerning petitioner's penalty-phase ineffectiveness claims; and remanded for the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on those claims.

Defendant pleaded guilty to drug offenses on the high seas and was sentenced to concurrent imprisonment terms of 120 months, pursuant to the statutory mandatory minimum sentence. Defendant appealed, contending that the district court erred in imposing the sentence. The court affirmed because the offenses for which defendant was convicted did not appear in the 18 U.S.C. 3553(f) list of specified offenses that triggered safety-valve relief.

In this capital case, the State of Florida appealed the district court's order granting habeas relief to petitioner on his claim that the admission of a videotape of his custodial interrogation by law enforcement officers, when he never received any Miranda warnings, yielded prejudicial constitutional error. The court reversed the judgment of the district court, concluding that the district court engaged in its own factfinding process, failed to accept as correct some of the unrebutted factual findings of the Florida Supreme Court that credited significant pieces of the State's case against petitioner; afforded precious little weight to other pieces of evidence that the Florida Supreme Court fairly relied upon; and ignored entirely still other evidence incriminating petitioner. Accordingly, the court concluded that the admission of the videotaped interrogation amounted to harmless error under the "actual prejudice" standard for collateral review set forth by the Supreme Court in Brecht v. Abrahamson.

Plaintiff appealed from a district court order dismissing his 42 U.S.C. 1983 civil rights action against the Attorney General of Florida and the State Attorney for Florida's Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. Plaintiff claimed that the State prevented him from gaining access to physical evidence for purposes of DNA testing, in violation of his procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation and compulsory process, and his Fourteenth Amendment right of access to the courts. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of all the claims for failure to state a claim or for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction where the Supreme Court had recently made it clear that there was no freestanding constitutional right to access evidence for DNA testing, and that the federal courts could only upset a state's postconviction DNA access procedures if they were fundamentally inadequate to vindicate substantive rights.

Defendant pleaded guilty to 17 counts of tax-related offenses and was sentenced to 27 months in prison. On appeal, defendant argued that the district court erred by refusing to group all of his counts into a single group pursuant to U.S.S.G. 3D1.2(b) or (d) as "counts involving substantially the same harm." The court agreed and held that all 17 of defendant's counts should have been grouped under section 3D1.2(d) because their offense level was determined largely on the basis of the amount of loss, the underlying offenses were of the same general type, and grouping served section 3D1.2's principal purpose of grouping closely related counts. Accordingly, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing.

Petitioner, a Florida prisoner on death row, appealed from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner argued that the trial court erred in sentencing him to death because his sentence was unconstitutionally disproportionate pursuant to the Eighth Amendment and the Supreme Court jurisprudence laid out in Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona. Petitioner also argued that his trial counsel was ineffective at the guilt phase and at the penalty phase, and that the trial court erred in denying his claim that trial counsel was operating under a conflict of interest by delegating the primary responsibility for litigating petitioner's case to counsel for his co-defendant. The court held that the Florida Supreme Court's resolution of petitioner's case was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Therefore, petitioner's habeas petition was denied.

Defendant was before the court of a single incident of extreme domestic violence. At issue was whether the single incident of battery justified termination of supervised release. Defendant was present and represented by counsel; he neither objected nor did he or his counsel indicate by words or even body language that any language of the court's crystal clear holding was less than fully understood; and given the simple issue before the district court, the evidence and the reasons for revoking supervised release were clear. The court concluded that nothing more was required by the Constitution and affirmed the judgment.

Petitioner, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, has lived in the United States since 1972 and in April 2004, he pleaded guilty to, and was sentenced to 96 months imprisonment for, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine. At issue was whether the district court properly denied his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion as successive and whether Padilla v. Kentucky announced a retroactively applicable new rule of law. The court held that the district court failed to issue Castro v. United States warnings when it recharacterized petitioner's July 2008 motion as a section 2255 petition. However, the court affirmed the district court on the ground that petitioner's July 2010 petition for post-conviction relief was untimely under section 2255. Accordingly, the court affirmed.