Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant challenged his conviction for conspiracy to steal trade secrets and perjury. The Government contended that defendant, who worked on research and development, conspired to steal Dow Chemical's trade secrets regarding a type of chlorinated polyethylene (CPE) and sell that information to Chinese companies for his own profit. The principal issue on appeal concerned the propriety of the court's ruling excluding the testimony of defendant's engineering expert. Because of the witness's training and experience as a chemical engineer and his broad experience in chemical plants, the court concluded that the district court abused its discretion in excluding his opinion testimony related to the manufacturing of CPE. However, given the overwhelming evidence that defendant and his co-conspirators stole trade secrets and that defendant believed he was stealing trade secrets, the court concluded that the exclusion of the witness's testimony did not affect the verdict. Further, there was sufficient evidence to support defendant's perjury conviction. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Liu" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to illegally reentering the United States after deportation. On appeal, defendant challenged his sentence, contending that the district court erred in imposing supervised release and in failing to explicitly address his arguments in favor of a downward variance. Considering the sentencing hearing in this case, the court concluded that the district court supplied a sufficiently particularized explanation of its decision to impose supervised release. The court's review of the record as a whole confirmed that the district court considered defendant's mitigation arguments, weighed the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors and provided a reasoned basis for its decision. Accordingly, defendant had not shown that the district court committed significant procedural error in declining to explicitly address his arguments for a shorter sentence. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Becerril-Pena" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, applied for state habeas relief. The district court granted petitioner a certificate of appealability limited to the question of whether the trial court denied him a fair trial by not dismissing, sua sponte, Juror Number 12. The court concluded that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' decision denying relief on petitioner's juror bias claim was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court. Petitioner had not cited any Supreme Court precedent establishing state trial courts have a duty to sua sponte dismiss a purportedly biased juror; no Supreme Court precedent established an obligation for a trial judge to dismiss a juror for bias where no party objected; and petitioner's claim was barred by Teague v. Lane. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Washington v. Thaler" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his conviction and sentence for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine and conspiracy to possess and distribute pseudoephedrine. Defendant primarily argued that some of the evidence against him - the pseudoephedrine logs - were introduced in violation of the business records exception to the hearsay rule and the Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause. The court affirmed the conviction because the purchase transaction logs conformed to Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 803(6), and because the Supreme Court's decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts approved the use of nontestimonial business records without a live witness. The court also found no reversible error in the refusal of a safety valve sentence reduction and affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Towns, Jr." on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2554 application challenging his guilty-plea conviction for intoxicated manslaughter with a vehicle. Pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's deferential standard, the court concluded that petitioner was not entitled to habeas relief on his claim that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance in allowing the State's plea bargain offer to lapse; that trial counsel violated his right to self-representation when he denied his request to proceed pro se at trial; and that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance regarding his right to self-representation by refusing to withdraw from the case and by having a conflict of interest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's habeas petition. View "Miller v. Thaler" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to illegal reentry of an alien previously removed subsequent to a conviction for commission of an aggravated felony in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326(a) and (b)(2). On appeal, defendant contended that neither his Florida convictions for burglary and sexual battery constituted a crime of violence. The court concluded that defendant's sexual battery conviction constituted a crime of violence within the scope of the enumerated category of "forcible sex offenses" pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2L1.2 cmt. n. 1(B)(iii). Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Garza-Guijan" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for a number of drug and firearm offenses. To the extent that the descriptions of the charged offense conduct in defendant's indictment were ambiguous, the court held that any such ambiguity was cured by the captions. As a result, defendant's indictment contained all the elements of the offenses charged, described them with the requisite particularity, and was specific enough so as to preclude any double jeopardy concerns. Therefore, the court declined to reverse defendant's convictions on Counts 2 and 4. The court also held that the district court's instructions to the jury in no way broadened the basis of convictions beyond the indictment and they did not amount to a constructive amendment; the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to strike a juror; the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining a lesser-included-offense jury instruction of simple possession; because of the extremely limited impact of the objected-to question on the trial proceedings and the substantiality of the evidence presented, the Government's question did not prejudice defendant; and the court rejected defendant's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence on the firearms counts. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Cooper" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983 against defendants, claiming that officers violated their right to freedom from excessive force and the officers acted in furtherance of a City official policy of racial profiling and discrimination. At issue was whether the officer at issue should be granted qualified immunity for his use of force against two of the plaintiffs. The officer fired his pistol at one plaintiff three times, striking him once in the chest and causing serious injury. Because no genuine dispute of material fact existed for whether the officer at issue directed deadly force against that plaintiff and non-deadly force at another plaintiff was objectively unreasonable in the light of clearly-established law, the Rule 54(b) judgment in favor of the officer was affirmed. View "Tolan, et al v. Cotton, et al" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of three counts of child sex trafficking, one count of conspiring to harbor illegal aliens, and six counts of alien harboring. Defendant appealed. The court concluded that the jury instructions correctly stated the three essential elements of child sex trafficking under 18 U.S.C. 1591(a); the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions on all three counts of child sex trafficking; and the district court properly calculated defendant's 360-month Guidelines sentence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the convictions and sentence. View "United States v. Garcia-Gonzalez" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base or crack cocaine. Defendant appealed. The court rejected defendant's challenge to the district court's denial of his pro se request to withdraw his guilty plea. The only potentially meritorious issue was whether defense counsel's refusal to file the motion was in fact constitutionally deficient and prejudiced defendant. However, the court need not resolve that issue in order to conclude that the district court's decision was soundly based. Defendant will have to file an 18 U.S.C. 2255 petition in order to explore the ineffectiveness claim properly. The court also rejected defendant's request for resentencing under the Fair Sentencing Act, Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, based on Dorsey v. United States. View "United States v. Minor" on Justia Law