Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction for food-stamp fraud by giving cash back on a purchase with a USDA Electronics Benefit Transfer (EBT) food-stamp card. The court concluded that it was unnecessary to decide whether admitting Exhibit 7, a translated transcript of selected portions of a recording from the device the confidential informant wore during the sting operation, into evidence without having the original translator testify regarding its content violated the Confrontation Clause because any alleged error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt; the district court did not violate Federal Rule of Evidence 106 in excluding Exhibit 7; the linguist's use of a pseudonym did not deny defendant the opportunity to effectively conduct cross-examination and no Confrontation Clause violation occurred; and there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict as to Count II. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Mohamed" on Justia Law

Defendant conditionally pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing child pornography and subsequently appealed the district court's rulings. The court concluded that defendant's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated where a reporting requirement, standing alone, did not transform an Internet service provider, such as AOL, into a government agent whenever it chooses to scan files sent on its network for child pornography; defendant did not demonstrate a contested issue of fact that warranted a hearing; and the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting the motion to quash the subpoena duces tecum that he served on AOL where the subpoena requests were not sufficiently specific. View "United States v. Stevenson" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute marijuana and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized from the search of his residence and his statements arising from the search. The court affirmed the conviction, concluding that law enforcement satisfied the triggering conditions of the anticipatory warrant by maintaining direct visual surveillance of a confidential informant's vehicle entering and leaving defendant's residence where the driveway leading up to the house was part of the residence. View "United States v. Donnell" on Justia Law

Defendant was acquitted of sexual abuse of an incapacitated person but convicted of kidnapping. On appeal, defendant argued that his acquittal on the sexual abuse count required an acquittal on the kidnapping count as a matter of law. The court concluded that the district court did not plainly err in issuing the first supplemental jury instruction where a jury could have validly concluded that defendant was guilty of kidnapping the victim to prevent her from reporting the sexual assault, despite concluding that defendant was not guilty of sexual abuse; the second supplemental instruction was correct, despite not restating all of the elements of the kidnapping, and the district court was careful to include a second paragraph stating that the instructions should be taken as a whole; the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal where there was sufficient evidence to find defendant guilty of kidnapping; and the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion for a new trial where the district court properly considered the victim's testimony as probative of defendant's motive, properly considered the testimony of witnesses who corroborated the victim's testimony, and defendant's argument that the kidnapping conviction could not stand on its own lacked merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Ford" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, four former inmates, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, seeking monetary and injunctive relief for detention beyond their release dates. The court affirmed the district court's grant of qualified immunity to the DOC Director on the individual capacity damage claims because, under the circumstances, the law did not fairly warn him that the amount of time spent recalculating thousands of release dates, including plaintiffs', recklessly disregarded their constitutional right to release. View "Scott v. Baldwin" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence stemming from his plea of guilty to one count of abusive sexual contact with a child. At issue was whether defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel when his attorney failed to object to the government's alleged breach of the plea agreement. Determining that the court had jurisdiction to consider the appeal under the separate document requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58(a), the court concluded that, even assuming that defendant could show that his counsel's performance at sentencing was deficient, he failed to adequately allege that he was prejudiced. Accordingly, the district court did not err in declining to hold an evidentiary hearing on defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion and the court affirmed the judgment. View "Jeffries v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit tax fraud. On appeal, the government challenged defendant's sentence as substantively unreasonable and defendant cross-appealed, challenging her convictions. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to prove that defendant knowingly and intentionally joined in an agreement to defraud Best Buy; the evidence was sufficient to prove that defendant willfully committed affirmative acts constituting tax evasion and that a tax deficiency resulted; the evidence was sufficient to sustain defendant's tax fraud conspiracy since the evidence showed that she knowingly and intentionally entered an agreement with her husband to evade taxes and that she took an overt act in furtherance of the agreement; the evidence at trial was not "materially different" from the facts in the indictment and, therefore, no variance occurred and the district court did not err in denying her motion for acquittal on that basis; the district court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting defendant's claim that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence; and the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant a new trial based on admission of Government Exhibit 17. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendants convictions. In regards to defendant's sentence, the court remanded for the district court to provide a fuller explanation of the sentence. View "United States v. Cole" on Justia Law

Defendants were convicted of charges stemming from a series of attempted robberies and the robbery of an armored car service. Defendants appealed their convictions and Defendant Gilbert appealed his sentence. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find the existence of a single conspiracy; the district court did not abuse its discretion by limiting the cross-examination of Defendant Platt regarding his knowledge of a murder committed by the armored car driver because there was no prejudice; the court affirmed the district court's denial of Defendant Person's motion to suppress eyewitness identification where the photographic lineup was not impermissibly suggestive; and the district court did not clearly err by applying a two-level enhancement for abuse of trust under U.S.S.G. 3B1.3 because Gilbert used his special knowledge or access to facilitate or conceal the offense. Accordingly, the court affirmed the convictions and sentence. View "United States v. Gilbert" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence from a search that led to his arrest for drug and firearm possession charges, and motion for a hearing to challenge the truthfulness of the factual statements in the application for the search warrant. The court agreed with the district court that many of defendant's challenges highlight, at most, minor discrepancies or omissions that do not establish deliberate or reckless falsehood. Even for those few instances where the district court agreed with defendant that the affidavit contained a misrepresentation, defendant provided no evidence suggesting that the misrepresentations were deliberate or reckless. Finally, even if the court were to assume the challenged affidavit contained deliberate or reckless falsehoods, defendant's arguments for a Franks v. Delaware hearing would still fail because the affidavit established probable cause even absent any misrepresentations and including the omitted information at issue. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Arnold" on Justia Law

Defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty to a charge of failing to update his registration after he moved from Missouri to the Philippines under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 18 U.S.C. 16911 et seq. On appeal, he challenged the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment. The court reversed, concluding that the text of SORNA did not extend registration requirements to defendant's situation where Missouri was not a "jurisdiction involved" after defendant changed his residence to somewhere in the Philippines and defendant was not required by the federal statute to update the Missouri registry. View "United States v. Lunsford" on Justia Law