Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his jury conviction on two counts of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. Defendant contended that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict him of distribution; the district court incorrectly instructed the jury on the definition of distribution; the district court erroneously denied his motion for a new trial; and the district court improperly denied him discovery on software that the FBI used in its investigation into his online file-sharing activities. The court held that the district court erred in denying defendant's discovery requests, but denied the remainder of defendant's challenges to his conviction. View "United States v. Budziak" on Justia Law

Defendant was prosecuted for failing to comply with the sex offender registration requirements set forth in 42 U.S.C. 16913. At issue was the constitutionality of certain key provisions of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Pub. L. 109-248, Tit. I, 120 Stat. 590. Because SORNA violated neither the Ex Post Facto Clause nor defendant's constitutional right to due process, and because Congress acted within its enumerated powers in enacting it, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Mark Steven Elk Shoulder" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to a drug-related offense and received a sentence that included supervised release. On appeal, defendant challenged the requirement that he submit to periodic drug testing during his supervised release. The court dismissed the appeal because defendant's appellate waiver was enforceable and applicable in this case. View "United States v. Mendez-Gonzalez" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's revocation of supervised release. At issue was whether the district court erred in treating a state criminal conviction as a felony rather than a misdemeanor, when the sole categorical difference was a recidivist history. The court concluded that the district court properly considered the conviction as a felony. However, because the district court included a written special condition of supervised release that the court did not include in its oral pronouncement of sentence, the court must vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

HOS was arrested and indicted for various offenses. He claimed that he was a juvenile when these offenses were committed. HOS subsequently appealed the district court's grant of the U.S. Attorney's request to revoke its prior determination as to HOS's age based on a birth certificate the U.S. Attorney had obtained from the Mexican government that indicated that HOS was 23-years-old at the time of the charged offenses. The district judge thus ordered that the case proceed against HOS as an adult. The court rejected HOS's argument that the government was precluded from re-litigating the issue of his age. On the basis of the record before the court, the court could not conclude that the district judge abused his discretion or that his finding that HOS was an adult was clearly erroneous. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order. View "United States v. HOS" on Justia Law

Petitioner claimed that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during the plea-bargaining process. Plaintiff alleged that counsel advised him to reject a plea offer of six years' imprisonment without alerting him that he was being charged with a crime that would qualify as a "third strike" under California law. He later entered an open plea and was sentenced to a three strikes sentence of twenty-five years to life in prison. Without granting an evidentiary hearing, the California Supreme Court summarily denied his state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Following the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the court reversed the district court's denial of the petition for habeas corpus and remanded to the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on petitioner's claims. View "Miles v. Martel" on Justia Law

In Chambers v. Mississippi, the United States Supreme Court clearly established that the exclusion of trustworthy and necessary exculpatory testimony at trial violated a defendant's due process right to present a defense. This clearly established federal law applied at the time the California Supreme Court decided People v. Cudjo, the subject of this habeas appeal. The facts in Chambers were materially indistinguishable from the facts in this appeal. Therefore, the California Supreme Court's decision was contrary to clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court, and the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of petitioner's habeas petition and remanded for further proceedings. View "Cudjo, Jr. v. Ayers, Jr." on Justia Law

Appellant appealed the district court's order granting summary judgment to appellees in this action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983 after appellant spent nineteen years in prison convicted of murders that he did not commit. The court concluded that the district court properly granted summary judgment to appellees on appellant's fabrication-of-evidence claim, and affirmed on that basis. The court reversed, however, the district court's denial of appellant's motion to amend his complaint and remand to the district court with instructions to allow appellant to plead an explicit Fifth Amendment violation. The exceptional circumstances in this case persuaded the court that a remand was necessary to avoid manifest injustice. View "Hall v. City of Los Angeles, et al" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging, among other things, that his constitutional rights were violated by defendants' failure to protect him from other inmates and by defendants' deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. The court concluded that an inmate's lack of awareness of a correctional institution's grievance procedure did not make the administrative remedy "unavailable" for purposes of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a), unless the inmate met his or her burden of proving the grievance procedure to be unknowable. Because plaintiff had not met his burden of proof, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment. View "Albino v. Baca, et al" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for multiple counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and telemarketing fraud against the elderly. The primary issue on appeal was whether the district court committed plain error by admitting certificates of authentication for foreign public and business records by means of affidavit in violation of the Confrontation Clause. Because there was no controlling authority on point, and because the court's cases indicated that the admission of the certificates of authentication did not violate the Confrontation Clause, the court could not conclude that the district court plainly erred. Additionally, the court could not conclude that the district court abused its discretion in conducting voir dire, admitting both a chart summarizing bank records and the underlying records into evidence, or refusing to give defendant's requested informant credibility instruction to the jury. The court also could not conclude that the district court plainly erred in admitting allegedly improper comments by the prosecutor in the closing argument, or re-reading the original jury instructions in response to a question posed by the jury. Because the court did not find any error, there could be no cumulative error. Finally, the district court did not plainly err in referencing defendant's inability to pay restitution to show that it had considered imposing a lesser sentence to facilitate the payment of restitution, or using two Guidelines ranges. View "United States v. Anekwu" on Justia Law