Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2241. Petitioner was subject to the 1976 Parole Commission and Reorganization Act, 18 U.S.C. 4101-4218, because he was incarcerated for an offense he committed prior to the effective date of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, specifically, petitioner was serving a life sentence for the 1976 murder of a U.S. Park Ranger. At issue was whether the U.S. Parole Commission engaged in "unauthorized action" during petitioner's mandatory parole proceedings. The court held that the Commission was engaged in such unlawful action, which impermissibly tainted the Commission's June 14, 2005 decision reopening petitioner's mandatory parole proceedings.

Defendant was indicted in October 2006 of conspiring to "possess with the intent to distribute, and to distribute, 50 grams or more of cocaine base (crack) and 5 kilograms or more of cocaine hydrochloride (powder)." In September 2007, defendant pleaded guilty to the lesser-included offense of conspiracy to distribute an unspecified quantity of both identified drugs. Defendant subsequently appealed substantive and procedural aspects of his 151 months imprisonment. The court held that because there was no basis to disturb the ruling, or any of the other decisions defendant challenged, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

This appeal stemmed from a violent drug conspiracy in South Florida that involved a number of criminals. The four whose joint trial led to this appeal were Daniel "D.V." Varela, Liana "The Negra" Lopez, Ricardo "Rick" Sanchez, and Daniel "Homer" Troya. During their crime wave, Troya and Sanchez carjacked a fellow drug dealer and shot him to death, as well as his wife and their two young children. Lopez and Varela, on appeal, raised several issues, the primary one being that they should not have been jointly tried with Troya and Sanchez. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the motions for severance and proceeding with a joint trial of all four conspirators who resided in the "Thug Mansion." The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Varela's motion to sever the felon-in-possession charges against him from the other charges; by requiring that all four of the defendants agree on the exercise of any peremptory challenges; in denying Varela's motion to suppress the results of the October 25 search of the "Thug Mansion;" and by allowing Varela's former cocaine customers to testify about their dealings with him. The court further held that the mandatory life sentence of life imprisonment that 21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(A) provided did not violate the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in light of United States v. Willis. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Count One of the multi-count indictment in this case charged Robert and Patrick Singletary, and others, with conspiring between 1997 and September 16, 2004, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371, to commit three offenses: (1) to defraud a federally insured bank, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1344; (2) to make false representations with respect to material facts to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001; and (3) to defraud purchasers of residential property and mortgage lenders, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1343. The Singletarys eventually pled guilty to Count One to the extent that it alleged a conspiracy to commit the section 1343 offense in addition to the section 1001 offense. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion in ordering restitution in the sum of $1 million. The court held that the district court failed to determine by a preponderance of the evidence which of the 56 mortgages the loan officers handled was obtained through a false "gift" letter, a false "credit explanation" letter, or a false employment verification form; and where fraud was found, to determine the extent of the actual loss HUD could have incurred due to the mortgage's foreclosure. Accordingly, the court vacated the restitution provisions and remanded for further proceedings.

Martin J. Bradley III and his father, Martin J. Bradley, Jr. (collectively, the Bradleys), owned Bio-Med Plus, Inc. (Bio-Med), a Miami-based pharmaceutical wholesaler that purchased and sold blood-derivatives. This case stemmed from multiple schemes to defraud the Florida and California Medicaid programs by causing them to pay for blood-derivative medications more than once. The Government chose to prosecute the schemes and a grand jury indicted eight individuals, including Albert L. Tellechea, and two companies, Bio-Med, and Interland Associates, Inc. The Bradleys, Bio-Med, and Tellechea subsequently appealed their convictions and raised several issues on appeal. The court affirmed the Bradleys', Bio-Med's, and Tellechea's convictions, and Bradley III's and Bio-Med's sentences. The court vacated Bradley, Jr.'s sentences on Counts I and 54 and Tellechea's sentence on Count 3, and remanded those counts for resentencing. The court reversed the district court's October 4, 2006 order appointing the receiver and monitor, and its supplemental receivership order of May 17, 2007. The court finally held that, as soon as circumstances allowed, the receivership should be brought to an immediate close.

Petitioner appealed the denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging his death sentence after he was convicted of murdering two people. At issue was whether defendant was denied his Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights to effective assistance of counsel when the trial court denied his requests to remove his lawyer and his lawyer's requests to withdraw and when his lawyer failed to investigate and to present mitigating evidence at resentencing in addition to that which the lawyer presented at the original sentencing. The court held that defendant was not denied effective assistance of counsel and in applying the deferential review standard mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), (d)(2), the Florida Supreme Court's ruling was not contrary to, and did not involve an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law and was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. Accordingly, the court affirmed the denial of habeas corpus relief.

This case stemmed from defendant's spree of murder and mayhem that covered three counties of rural Georgia. Defendant was convicted of malice murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. Defendant was sentenced to death and appealed the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. At issue was whether the prosecution's exercise of six peremptory challenges against six black members of the jury venire on the basis of race was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Also at issue was whether certain arguments made by the prosecutor amounted to misconduct that deprived defendant of a fair trial. The court held that the adjudication of defendant's Batson claims and prosecutorial misconduct claims by the Supreme Court of Georgia was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, and was not an unreasonable determination of the facts. Therefore, the court held that, after careful review of the record, defendant's claims lacked merit. The court further held that three remaining claims raised by defendant also failed. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction and sentence.

In May 2010, defendant pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base and two counts of distributing 5 grams or more of cocaine. Defendant's sentencing was scheduled for August 3, 2010, which was the date on which President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 ("FSA"), Pub. L. No. 111-120, 124 Stat. 2372. At issue was whether the FSA applied to defendants who committed crack cocaine offenses before August 3, 2010, but who were sentenced thereafter. The court held that the general savings statute, 1 U.S.C. 109, could not bar application of the FSA to sentencing conducted after its August 3, 2010 enactment. Accordingly, the court remanded defendant's case to the district court for resentencing.

Defendant appealed his felony drug offenses and his sentence enhancement based on two prior felony drug offenses. At issue was whether there was sufficient evidence to support his convictions; whether there were cumulative errors at trial that prejudiced him to the extent that he was entitled to a new trial; and whether the Government properly filed and served its 21 U.S.C. 851 notice of enhanced sentence. The court found that the first two issues lacked merit and focused its analysis on the Government's service of the notice of enhancement. The court held that defendant was not served before trial with a copy of the information in accordance with section 851(a)(1) and therefore, the district court lacked authority to impose an enhanced sentence on Counts I and Counts II. Accordingly, the court vacated defendant's mandatory term of life imprisonment on Count I and ten year sentence on Count II and remanded with instructions to resentence him on those counts without the enhancement. The court affirmed the judgment of the convictions on all counts.

Appellant filed a complaint that Georgia Correctional Health, LLC ("Georgia Correctional") had been deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs while he was detained for nine days in jail. During his detention, appellant received sixteen evaluations from nine different employees of Georgia Correctional before he received a computer tomography scan, which revealed that he had air, bleeding, and fractures in his head that required neurological surgery. At issue was whether appellant failed to present evidence that Georgia Correctional had a policy or custom of deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of pretrial detainees in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court held that appellant had failed to prove a policy or custom based only on his "isolated incident" and that an isolated incident, however unfortunate, did not demonstrate evidence of the county's persistent or widespread policy. Accordingly, the district court's ruling was affirmed.