Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Having pled guilty in the District of South Carolina to eight counts of a superseding indictment, Defendant Chadrick Evan Fulks was sentenced to death. The capital sentence was imposed on his convictions of carjacking resulting in death, and kidnapping resulting in death. The federal charges in South Carolina related to the abduction and murder of Alice Donovan on November 14, 2002, in the course of a multistate crime spree engineered by Defendant and his cohort Brandon Basham, following their escape from a Kentucky jail. Three days prior to Donovan being carjacked, kidnapped, and killed, Samantha Burns suffered the same fate in West Virginia at the hands of Defendant and Basham. The district court sentenced Defendant in 2004, and on appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Defendant's sentence. The United States Supreme Court denied Defendant's petition for certiorari. Subsequently, Defendant filed a motion to vacate his conviction and sentence, and requested a new trial. The motion listed thirty-three claims for relief; the district court issued an "exhaustive" memorandum opinion and rejected each claim. Defendant appealed the district court's denial of his motion. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit rejected Defendant's allegations of error by the district court and affirmed the denial of his motion.

Deputy James Elliott stopped Defendant Sean Sowards for speeding along North Carolina’s Interstate 77 after visually estimating that Defendant's vehicle was traveling 75 mph in a 70-mph zone. Although the deputy's patrol car was equipped with radar, he had intentionally positioned his patrol car at an angle that rendered an accurate radar reading impossible. During the traffic stop, Deputy Elliott had a canine trained in drug detection, Ringo, sniff the outside of Defendant's vehicle. When the dog signaled the possible presence of a controlled substance, Deputy Elliott, along with other officers, searched Defendant's vehicle and discovered approximately 10 kilograms of cocaine. Subsequently, a grand jury charged Defendant with possession of at least 5 kilograms of cocaine with intent to distribute. On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress because the police lacked probable cause to initiate a traffic stop based exclusively on the deupty's visual estimate --uncorroborated by radar or pacing and unsupported by any other indicia of reliability-- that Defendant's vehicle was traveling 75 miles per hour in a 70-mph zone. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit agreed and reversed the district court.

A Virginia jury convicted Petitioner-Appellee Leon Winston of capital murder. The court, following the jury’s recommendation, sentenced him to death. Petitioner's direct appeals failed and his conviction became final, at which point he sought habeas relief in state court. The Supreme Court of Virginia denied relief, rejecting Petitioner's requests for discovery and an evidentiary hearing. Petitioner then filed a habeas petition in federal court. The district court granted him an evidentiary hearing to explore whether his trial attorneys were ineffective for failing to raise the claim under "Atkins v. Virginia" (536 U.S. 304 (2002)) that his mental retardation categorically barred imposition of a death sentence. But the court reversed course and held that it was precluded from considering any evidence adduced during the federal proceeding. Looking only to facts presented in the state habeas proceeding and conducting a deferential review of the state-court decision, the court denied Petitioner's petition for habeas relief. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit vacated in part the district court’s decision on appeal, ordering it to conduct a de novo review of Petitioner's ineffectiveness claim while entertaining the evidence offered during the federal hearing. On remand, the district court granted Winston’s petition for habeas relief and vacated his death sentence. Virginia appealed, contending that intervening Supreme Court precedent eroded the foundation of the Fourth Circuit's prior opinion in the earlier case compelling the Court to forgo de novo review and instead accord substantial deference to the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision denying habeas relief. The Fourth Circuit disagreed and found nothing in recent Supreme Court decisions that called into question its reasoning in "Winston I," which, as law of the case. Reviewing Petitioner's ineffectiveness claim de novo, the Court agreed with the district court that Petitioner established that his trial attorneys rendered deficient performance that prejudiced him. The Court therefore affirmed the district court's grant of habeas relief.

Defendant-Appellant Ronald Colson pled guilty to six counts of receiving movies depicting actual female minors engaged in actual and simulated genital and oral sex with adult males, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2). Because Defendant had a prior state conviction which the district court concluded "related to either sexual abuse or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor," the court imposed, over Defendant's objection, a 15-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Defendant appealed his sentence, arguing that the earlier conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under section 2252A(b)(1). He contended that the district court erred as a matter of law because his 1984 conviction did not, when considered under the categorical approach, relate to sexual abuse involving a minor. He noted that under this approach, the sentencing court must, in evaluating whether the conviction qualifies as a predicate offense, focus on the elements of the offense and the fact of conviction, taking the most benign conduct that could support a conviction. According to Defendant, because the Virginia statute under which he was convicted in 1984 arguably covered innocuous depictions of nudity, he could not be subject to a sentencing enhancement requiring a conviction that categorically relates to sexual abuse of a minor, as required by the federal enhancement statute. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit concluded that Defendant misread the requirements for a conviction under the Virginia Code and read too narrowly the scope of convictions that can serve as predicate offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(b)(1). Accordingly, the Court affirmed Defendant's conviction and sentence.

Former co-pastors of the Greater Salem Church in North Carolina Defendants-Appellants Anthony and Harriet Jinwright appealed their convictions and sentences arising from a tax evasion scheme in which they omitted millions of dollars in taxable income from their jointly filed returns. Defendants raised a variety of challenges on appeal. Finding each contention to be without merit, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment.

Petitioners appealed from the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief, contending that, at their sentencing for armed robbery of the Sunday worship services at a North Carolina church, the state trial judge impermissibly made references to religion, thereby violating their rights to due process. The court affirmed the denial of the petition where defendants' choice to target a church during weekly services imbued their crime with an undeniably religious character; crimes of that nature carried special hazards for the freedom of all faiths to worship undisturbed; and the trial judge's comments reflected distinctive harms to the community of the particular crime that defendants chose to commit and was not an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law.

Plaintiff, a Virginia non-profit corporation organized under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, commenced this action against the Commission and the Department of Justice, contending that it was "chilled" from posting information about then-Senator Obama because of the vagueness of a Commission regulation and a Commission policy relating to whether plaintiff had to make disclosures or was a "political committee." Plaintiff asserted that it was not subject to regulation but feared the Commission could take steps to regulate it because of the vagueness of 11 C.F.R. 100.22(b) and the policy of the Commission to determine whether an organization was a political action committee by applying the "major purpose" test on a case-by-case basis. Plaintiff alleged that the regulation and policy were unconstitutionally broad and vague, both facially and as applied to it, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. The court applied the "exacting scrutiny" standard applicable to disclosure provisions and affirmed the district court's finding that both the regulation and the policy were constitutional.

Plaintiff, an inmate, appealed the district court's dismissal of his complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. Plaintiff asserted that the North Carolina Department of Corrections at Alexander Correctional Institute's failure to enforce its grooming policy put inmates at risk for contracting various infections. Plaintiff moved to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) on appeal, despite the fact that the district court's dismissal of the underlying claim was plaintiff's third dismissal for failure to state a claim. Because counting the district court's dismissal as a third strike under 28 U.S.C. 1915(g) would effectively insulate the dismissal from appellate review, the court granted plaintiff's motion to proceed IFP on appeal.

Defendant was convicted of various offenses stemming from an extensive mortgage fraud conspiracy. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's evidentiary rulings, loss calculation, and order directing him to reimburse his court-appointed attorneys' fees. The court affirmed the district court's judgment on the first two issues, but vacated the court's reimbursement order. Defendant also argued that his money laundering convictions must be reversed under United States v. Santos. Applying Santos, as interpreted by United States v. Halstead, to the facts underlying defendant's substantive money laundering convictions, the court agreed and therefore reversed those convictions.

Petitioner, convicted of first-degree murder, appealed the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition. The district court ruled that the petition was time-barred and, in the alternative, the petition was denied on its merits. The court was content to assume without deciding that petitioner's claims were not time-barred. The court held, however, that petitioner's claims lacked merit and affirmed the judgment of the district court.