Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and other offenses. The court held that a notary seal can be an "authentication feature" under 18 U.S.C. 1028, and that the district court correctly applied an enhancement for use of an authentication feature under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(11)(A)(ii) when it calculated the advisory guidelines range for defendant's sentence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Sardariani" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for misdemeanor manufacturing, selling, or possessing any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 701. Defendant, a maintenance worker at a Marine Corps base, was issued a yellow card, a card given to employees of the Maintenance Center for the purposes of "quick identification." After defendant misplaced his last yellow card, it appears that he may have created a new yellow card, although defendant insists that it was created by another person. The court reversed the conviction because the evidence introduced at trial did not support the conclusion that the yellow card defendant was convicted of manufacturing or possessing was "of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States." View "United States v. Jackson" on Justia Law

Defendant, a citizen of Mexico, was convicted of a California firearms offense, removed from the United States on the basis of that conviction, and, when he returned to the country, tried and convicted of illegal reentry under 8 U.S.C. 1326. Declining to find that defendant waived his argument, the court concluded that defendant showed good cause to excuse his failure to raise his argument under Moncrieffe v. Holder in the district court. The court rejected the government's position that the court could not consider Moncrieffe in evaluating whether defendant was removable as charged; the court agreed with defendant that any conviction under a state firearms statute lacking an exception for antique firearms is not a categorical match for the federal firearms ground of removal; California Penal Code 12021(c)(1) does not have an antique firearms exception; and a conviction under the statute is not a categorical match for the federal aggravated felony "firearms offense." The government conceded that defendant's conviction was not for a "crime of moral turpitude" - the other potential ground for removal. Accordingly, there was no legal basis for his 2005 removal order. The court reversed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Aguilera-Rios" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of second-degree murder, appealed the district court's denial of his habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The court held that a prosecutor may not suggest that jurors should vote to convict a defendant lest that defendant endanger their neighborhood. Therefore, the court concluded that the final statement made by the prosecutor was improper, but petitioner was not deprived of a fair trial because there was no reasonable probability that the jury would have reached a different verdict without the prosecutorial misstatements. The court also concluded that trial counsel was not constitutionally ineffective for failing to object to prosecutorial misstatements and for objecting to the prosecutor's statements about gang connections where petitioner suffered no prejudice. Finally, the trial court's decision to exclude testimony regarding a statement made by a witness to the victim did not violate the Constitution where there was no evidentiary corroboration at all for the witness statement. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Trillo v. Biter" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for illegal reentry after deportation. The court concluded that the district court's sentencing methodology was proper because the district court adequately considered the Guidelines in fashioning defendant's sentence. Applying the modified categorical approach, the court concluded that the portion of the Arizona statute under which defendant was previously convicted was categorically a forcible sex offense and therefore a crime of violence under the Guidelines. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Quintero-Junco" on Justia Law

Defendants Goldtooth and Tsosie appealed their convictions on two counts of aiding and abetting robbery on the Navajo Nation. As to count 1, the court concluded that no rational juror could have found that defendants had advanced knowledge that the robbery was going to occur. As to count 2, the government acknowledges that defendants could only have been convicted of attempting to rob the victim's money or wallet because nothing was actually taken from him. Because the government failed to prove that Goldtooth or Tsosie possessed the mental state required for the underlying crime of attempted robbery, it necessarily failed to prove that either man had aided and abetted any such attempt. Accordingly, the court reversed the convictions and remanded for entry of judgment of acquittal on both counts. View "United States v. Goldtooth" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed an order certifying a class and a subclass of inmates in Arizona's prison system who claim that they are subject to systematic Eighth Amendment violations. Defendants argued that the district court abused its discretion in concluding that plaintiffs have demonstrated commonality and typicality under Rule 23(a). The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that plaintiffs' claims depend upon common questions of law or fact that are answerable in one stroke. Here, plaintiffs are all inmates in ADC custody and each declares that he or she is being exposed, like all other members of the putative class, to a substantial risk of serious harm by the challenged ADC policies. Therefore, the court concluded that the district court did not err in determining that plaintiffs have satisfied the commonality and typicality requirement of Rule 23(a). Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that a single injunction and declaratory judgment could provide relief to each member of the proposed class and subclass. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Parsons v. Ryan" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to five counts of distributing controlled substances outside the usual course of professional medical practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose. On appeal, defendant argued that his guilty plea lacked a sufficient factual basis, that the government breached the plea agreement and that the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The court concluded that, because the scope of defendant's appellate waiver concerned only his sentence and the issues raised in this appeal concerned only his conviction, defendant did not waive his right to bring this appeal. In a concurrently filed memorandum disposition, the court affirmed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Spear, III" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his conviction for stalking in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2261A. The court agreed with the Eighth Circuit's rationale that, because section 2261A proscribes harassing and intimidating conduct, the statute is not facially invalid under the First Amendment. Defendant's argument that section 2261A(2)(A) is unconstitutionally vague because it does not define "harass" or "substantial emotional distress" is equally unavailing. Defendant's threats, creation of a false Facebook page with sexually explicit photographs of his ex-girlfriend, and emails to her co-workers and friends containing explicit photographs evinced defendant's intent to cause substantial emotional distress. Therefore, defendant's unrelenting harassment and intimidation of his ex-girlfriend was not based on conduct that he could not have known was illegal. Defendant's as-applied challenge was similarly unavailing given his intent to harass and intimidate a private individual by circulating sexually explicit publications that were never in the public domain. Finally, the district court's sentence was reasonable where defendant was not entitled to any downward adjustment premised on acceptance of responsibility or on sentence disparity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Osinger" on Justia Law

After plaintiff served four and a half years in prison and then ordered freed when his petition for a writ of habeas corpus was granted, he filed an action for damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Plaintiff alleged that defendants, acting under color of State law, unlawfully suppressed the criminal history of a confidential informant who was the main witness against him, failed to produce the documents reflecting that criminal history, and thus caused him to be found guilty of several counts of drug trafficking and to be sentenced to a term of ten to twenty-five years. The district court dismissed the action as time-barred because it was not filed within two years of the time plaintiff learned that the confidential informant had an extensive criminal history. The court granted Washoe County's motion to supplement the record and the court took judicial notice of the court documents presented by the motion. Under Heck v. Humphrey, plaintiff's cause of action did not accrue until his conviction was held invalid. Therefore, plaintiff's claims did not accrue until the Nevada court vacated his convictions on December 2, 2008. Since plaintiff commenced his lawsuit on December 1, 2010, less than two years after December 2, 2008, his claim was timely and the district court erred in dismissing it as time-barred. The court rejected Defendant Palmer's argument for dismissing the complaint against him; plaintiff's claims against Washoe County and the City of Reno were dismissed without prejudice; and the court remanded for the district court to consider if and to what extent plaintiff's plea to the crime of Unlawful Giving Away of Controlled Substances affects his section 1983 action. View "Rosales-Martinez v. Palmer" on Justia Law