Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction for possession of a firearm after a felony conviction. The district court denied defendant's motion to suppress the firearm discovered by the police. Defendant argued that he was stopped without reasonable suspicion because the stop was primarily based upon a pair of anonymous 911 calls from the same caller. The court reversed and remanded, holding that there was no reasonable suspicion to support the stop. The government failed to identify the specific and articulable facts that would have justified a stop of defendant at that point in time. Accordingly, the court vacated the conviction. View "United States v. Freeman" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of cocaine offenses and related gun possession. Defendant, pro se, moved to recall the court's mandates related to his conviction, and to reinstate his direct appeal in order to seek relief under the Supreme Court's recent holding in Alleyne v. United States. The court could not authorize defendant's collateral attack where a new rule was not made retroactive to cases on collateral review unless the Supreme Court holds it to be retroactive. The Supreme Court announced the Alleyne rule on a direct appeal without expressly holding it to be retroactive to cases on collateral review. Further, Alleyne does not fall within a category of cases previously held to be retroactive. Defendant's remaining contentions were without merit. Accordingly, the court denied defendant's motion, construing it as one for leave to file a successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion. The court also denied defendant's motion for appointment of counsel as moot. View "United States v. Redd (Shue)" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to cocaine distribution. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of a motion for sentencing modification. At issue was what procedure a district court should follow under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c). The court concluded that the district court must engage in a two-step approach under Dillon v. United States and United States v. Wilson. The court reversed and remanded for the district court to (1) specifically determine defendant's eligibility for a sentencing modification; and (2) consider whether any applicable 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors counseled in favor of a reduction. View "United States v. Bethea" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for conspiring to bomb the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. At issue was whether the Speedy Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment prevented the United States from trying, on criminal charges in a district court, a defendant who was held abroad for several years in the CIA and the Department of Defense while his indictment was pending. The court concluded that the district court did not err in determining, pursuant to the Supreme Court's four-factor balancing test under Barker v. Wingo, that the nearly five-year delay between defendant's capture and his arraignment, during which time he was interrogated as an enemy combatant and detained at Guantanamo Bay, did not constitute a violation of the Speedy Trial Clause; the district court did not err in charging the jury with a conscious avoidance instruction or in formulating that instruction; and defendant's sentence of life imprisonment was neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Ghailani" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed her conviction of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, as well as insider trading. Defendant's scheme was to obtain from her tippers earnings data of their employer companies and convey this data to her tippees before those companies' quarterly financial results were publicly released. The court concluded that the district court did not err in admitting evidence that defendant claimed was recorded in violation of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 2510-22, because the recordings and transcripts at issue were made in the ordinary course of business and admissible under section 2510(5)(a)(i). Furthermore, they were made with the consent of a party to the communication and admissible under section 2511(2)(d). The court also concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of insider trading where the tippers were entrusted the duty to protect confidential information, which they breached by disclosing to their tippee, who knew of their duty and still used the information to trade a security or further tip the information for defendant's benefit, and the tippers benefited in some way from their disclosures. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Jiau" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to possessing with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of crack cocaine. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's imposition of a Guidelines sentence of 300 months' imprisonment. The district court concluded that the applicable Guidelines range under the prior edition of the Guidelines was lower than it was under the then-current edition, and that Amendments 748 and 750 were substantive rather than clarifying. The court affirmed the district court's judgment, agreeing with the district court that Amendments 748 and 750 were substantive rather than clarifying under U.S.S.G. 1B1.11(b)(2). View "United States v. Brooks" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of a substance containing cocaine base. On appeal, defendant challenged his sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The court concluded that defendant was not eligible for a reduction under section 3582(c)(2); the mandatory minimum applicable to defendant had not been displaced, and the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, did not apply to defendant. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Davis (Johnson)" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of charges related to his involvement in a scheme to defraud Chase Bank. At issue in this appeal was the district court's order of forfeiture under 18 U.S.C. 982(a)(2). The court concluded that section 982 required forfeiture of the gross receipts attributable to the criminal violation, not only the profits. The court also concluded that, in light of defendant's near total control over the companies and their assets, defendant "indirectly" obtained the Chase loan proceeds and could be held accountable for criminal forfeiture of those proceeds under section 982. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Peter" on Justia Law

Appellant, a convicted sex offender, appealed a condition of supervised release which required him to participate in an approved program of sex offender evaluation and treatment, which could include plethysmograph examinations, as directed by the probation officer. The court held that this extraordinary invasive condition was unjustified, was not reasonably related to the statutory goals of sentencing, and violated appellant's right to substantive due process. Accordingly, the court vacated the condition. View "United States v. McLaurin" on Justia Law

Defendant, a reputed international arms trafficker was convicted of conspiracy to kill United States nationals; conspiracy to kill United States officers and employees; conspiracy to acquire and export a missile system designed to destroy aircraft; and conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Defendant raised numerous issues on appeal. The court concluded that, in the absence of actual animus or shocking conduct akin to coercion or a violation of defendant's person, an international sting operation of the kind undertaken in this case did not constitute either vindictive prosecution or outrageous government conduct; government application of "coercive political pressure" on a foreign government to secure a defendant's extradition did not render that defendant's prosecution improper; the district court correctly rejected defendant's claim that his prosecution violated the doctrine of specialty; and the indictment sufficiently charged defendant with conspiracy to murder United States nationals and conspiracy to murder United States officers and employees, notwithstanding that the indictment did not refer explicitly to "murder." Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's conviction and remanded for the limited purpose of correcting a clerical error. View "United States v. Bout" on Justia Law