Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant convicted of distributing crack cocaine, appealed his sentence. The court concluded that the district court did not err in relying on multiple hearsay information to determine defendant's drug quantity for sentencing purposes and did not abuse its discretion in calculating defendant's drug quantity for sentencing purposes. Defendant's remaining claim lacked merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Crawford" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a state prisoner, filed suit challenging the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. 1997e(d)(2), a part of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), as violating his right to equal protection of the laws under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Plaintiff challenged a provision that caps the attorneys' fee award that a successful prisoner litigant could recover from the government in a civil rights action at 150 percent of the value of the prisoner's monetary judgment. The court declined to apply heightened equal protection scrutiny in this case and joined its sister circuits in concluding that section 1997e(d)(2) was constitutional. Congress's goals in enacting section 1997e(d)(2) included reducing marginal or frivolous prisoner civil rights lawsuits and protecting the public fisc. Such goals were legitimate and Congress acted rationally in adopting the provision. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Wilkins v. Gaddy" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e). On appeal, defendant argued that the district court erred in relying on his 2002 South Carolina conviction for the common law crime of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature (ABHAN) to impose a mandatory fifteen-year minimum. The court concluded that ABHAN was not categorically a violent felony and that the modified categorical approach played no part in this matter. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Hemingway" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after pleading guilty to one count of Possession of Child Pornography. The court concluded that the district court improperly applied the five-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2G2.(b)(3)(B), which resulted in improper calculation of defendant's sentencing range. The court declined to adopt the Government's proposed reciprocity rule by applying the enhancement to every Gigatribe distribution offense absent any evidence of the particular defendant's state of mind. The district court's reliance on an improperly calculated sentencing range constituted significant procedural error and the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. McManus" on Justia Law

Defendant conditionally plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion to suppress various statements he made to the police and evidence recovered from his home. The court concluded that the district court's finding - that defendant's registration tag was bent - was not clearly erroneous and that the traffic stop was reasonable. The court concluded that Missouri v. Seibert was inapplicable in this case because the court held that no interrogation had occurred before plaintiff was Mirandized. The officers did not conduct an unwarned custodial interrogation on these facts when a detective asked "what do you mean" after plaintiff voluntarily proffered information. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to possession of a handgun by a felon. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence of the hand gun based on his claim that the frisk violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the objective facts of record supported the reasonableness of the officer's suspicion that defendant was armed and dangerous and thus his authority to conduct a frisk. View "United States v. George" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence and conviction for unlawfully possessing ammunition after being previously convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's conviction; the district court did not plainly err in instructing the jury; but the district court's application of the modified categorical approach to support defendant's sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), was in error. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction and reversed the sentence, remanding for resentencing. View "United States v. Royal" on Justia Law

Defendant, convicted of drug charges and a money laundering conspiracy, appealed the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion. The court concluded that the district court did not err in limiting its review to the 16 claims in the amended petition that were supported by facts and argument, particularly where many of the claims in the amended section 2255 motion were also raised in the original filing and the rest consisted only of vague and conclusory allegations; because a cursory review of the record revealed that the conspiracy charged here indisputably involved quantities of cocaine and cocaine base far in excess of the minimum amounts necessary to sustain the sentences, any Apprendi error did not seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings so as to warrant notice; and defendant's remaining claims regarding ineffective assistance of counsel were without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Dyess" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence stemming from his plea of guilty to unlawful re-entry of a removed alien after an aggravated felony conviction. Defendant challenged the district court's application of a 16-level sentencing enhancement based on the determination that his prior conviction under Maryland's child abuse statute was a "crime of violence" under U.S.S.G. 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). The court reversed and remanded for resentencing, concluding that, in light of its recent decision in United States v. Gomez and the Supreme Court's decision in Descamps v. United States, the modified categorical approach was inapplicable and that under the categorical approach, defendant's prior conviction was not a crime of violence. View "United States v. Cabrera-Umanzor" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for drug trafficking. Defendant argued that police officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they pulled two bags of trash from a trash can located behind his girlfriend's apartment where they found enough evidence to obtain a warrant to search the apartment. The court concluded that the district court did not err in finding as fact that at the time of the trash pull, the trash can was sitting on common property of the apartment complex, rather than next to the apartment's rear door; in this location, the trash can was situated and the trash pull was accomplished beyond the apartment's curtilage; in the circumstances of this case, defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the trash can's contents. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's conclusion that the trash pull did not violate defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. View "United States v. Jackson" on Justia Law