Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant pleaded guilty to bribing an ICE employee to grant Lawful Permanent Resident status to an alien and for furnishing a forged passport. On appeal, defendant claimed that he did not understand the plea proceedings. There was no indication that after the district court learned that defendant took medications, it endeavored to ascertain whether they could impact his ability to proceed. This critical omission precluded a finding that defendant's plea in the bribery case was knowing and voluntary, and dictated that the plea be vacated. In regards to the forged passport plea, the district court committed plain error by improperly conflating the proceedings, assuming defendant was taking the same medications at the time of the next plea, and that he remembered the proceedings from the plea that happened sixteen months earlier. Accordingly, the court need not address defendant's remaining claim because it concluded that neither of his pleas was knowing and voluntary. The court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Tien" on Justia Law

Defendants, former executives of the retail drugstore chain Duane Reede, appealed their convictions for securities fraud. Defendants had executed a number of schemes to inflate the company's earnings in quarterly and annual financial statements filed with the SEC. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the testimony of non-expert witnesses. The court also concluded that Defendant Tennant's claims that his conviction should be overturned for insufficient evidence to prove his knowledge of the fraud and that it was error for the district court to give a conscious avoidance jury instruction were without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Cuti" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against defendant, the officer who arrested her, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion for summary judgment. The court concluded that the record established uncontroverted facts that, taken together, provided probable cause for the arrest and prosecution of plaintiff. Therefore, defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions for the district court to grant defendant's motion for summary judgment. View "Stansbury v. Wertman" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for several counts of production of child pornography, committing a felony offense involving a minor while being required to register as a sex offender, and possession of child pornography. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion to suppress all of the evidence. The court affirmed the district court's determinations that the officers lacked probable cause to search for evidence of child pornography and that the warrant was facially overbroad. However, the court vacated the judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings because the court found deficient the factual and analytical record as to whether the warrant was severable and whether the images of child pornography were seized in plain view. View "United States v. Galpin" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his securities fraud conviction for insider trading. The court held that the district court properly analyzed the misstatements and omissions in the government's Title III wiretap application under the analytical framework prescribed in Franks v. Delaware; the alleged misstatements and omissions in the wiretap application did not require suppression; and the district court's jury instructions on the use of inside information satisfied the "knowing possession" standard. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Rajaratnam" on Justia Law

Defendant, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty to robbery after illegally reentering the United States. At issue on appeal was whether the district court plainly erred by sentencing defendant to, inter alia, a three-year term of supervised release even though U.S.S.G. 5D1.1(c) provided that district courts "ordinarily should not impose a term of supervised release in a case in which... the defendant is a deportable alien who likely will be deported after imprisonment." The court held that the district court adequately explained why it sentenced defendant to a term of supervised release where "an added measure of deterrence and protection" was needed in defendant's case. Even assuming arguendo that the district court erred by not adequately explaining its reasons for imposing a term of supervised release on defendant, in the circumstances presented here, it did not "plainly err" because the alleged error did not affect his substantial rights. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Alvarado" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for threatening to assault or murder three Seventh Circuit judges with the intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with them in the performance of their duties or to retaliate against them on account of their performance of official duties. On a blog post, defendant declared that the judges deserved to die for their recent decision in a Second Amendment case. The court affirmed the conviction, holding that the evidence was sufficient, that the jury was properly instructed regarding a "true threat," and that defendant was not prejudiced by any error. The court found defendant's remaining arguments to be without merit. View "United States v. Turner" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a national of India and lawful permanent resident in the United States, pled guilty to one count of receiving Medicare kickbacks and one count of income tax evasion. On appeal, petitioner challenged the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of error coram nobis to vacate his tax evasion conviction on the ground that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in connection with his criminal defense attorney's advice as to the deportation consequences of pleading guilty to that count. The court concluded, based on the entire record, that the district court did not err in concluding that petitioner failed to establish that, if counsel had recommended withdrawal of the plea, petitioner would have accepted that recommendation in order to go to trial. The court also concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that the petition was untimely. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Chhabra v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq., alleging that defendants' denial of his leave request from prison for the treatment of his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) violated his constitutional rights. The district court denied defendants' motion for summary judgment and defendants appealed. The court concluded that, even assuming, arguendo, that on plaintiff's version of the facts, a reasonable jury could find a violation of his Fourteenth or Eighth Amendment rights, the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because no reasonable jury could conclude, on the record here, that it would have been objectively unreasonable for a public official in the position of these defendants to believe that he or she was acting in a manner consistent with plaintiff's rights to equal protection and to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Spavone v. N. Y. State Dep't of Corr. Servs." on Justia Law

Defendant sought a hearing under United States v. Monsanto to recover restrained monies to fund his counsel of choice in a civil action. The court held that a defendant seeking a Monsanto or Monsanto-like hearing must demonstrate, beyond the bare recitation of the claim, that he or she had insufficient alternative assets to fund counsel of choice. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion because the district court gave defendant ample opportunity to demonstrate that he had insufficient unrestrained assets to fund his defense with counsel of choice in his parallel criminal case - which he failed to do. View "United States v. Bonventre" on Justia Law