Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of second-degree murder and witness tampering for his role in the hazing and in covering up information about Army Sergeant Juwan Johnson’s death. Defendant was the leader of a group called "Brothers of the Struggle" (BOS), which was made up of members of the U.S. Army and Air Force at Ramstein but was not affiliated with the military. The BOS regularly initiated new members by beating them up in a ritual known as a “jump-in.” During a typical jump-in, approximately six members of the BOS hit the initiate for about six minutes. An autopsy report revealed that blunt force injuries inflicted during the initiation caused Johnson's death. The court rejected defendant's challenges to the sufficiency of the government’s evidence at trial. The court concluded, however, that the government misstated the law in its closing argument. Because the misstatement implicated a central issue - the state of mind with which defendant acted - and was not sufficiently cured, the court reversed defendant's murder conviction. Finally, the court rejected defendant's remaining claims of evidentiary errors. Therefore, the court affirmed the witness-tampering conviction. View "United States v. Williams" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for unlawful possession of 100 grams or more of PCP with intent to distribute. The court affirmed the conviction, but reversed as to the district court's imposition of the career-offender enhancement pursuant to USSG 4B1.1(a). In this case, the district court's plain error under the residual clause affected defendant's substantial rights because his sentence cannot be saved under the elements clause. The unlawfulness of his sentence necessarily affects the fundamental fairness and integrity of his conviction. Defendant is entitled to a resentencing without the career-offender enhancement. Accordingly, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Sheffield" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. 1962(d). The district court sentenced defendant to 156 months in prison. The court agreed with defendant that the case should be remanded to the district court for resentencing in light of a retroactive amendment to section 2D1.1 of the Guidelines. The court concluded that, with the promulgation of Amendment 782, the lower adjusted offense level for the drug conspiracy makes a difference. The amendment reduces defendant’s base offense level for the drug conspiracy from 28 to 26. Without the three-level leadership bump that defendant now contests, his adjusted offense level would remain 26. As before, the adjusted offense level for the murder conspiracy (36) would continue to serve as the starting point. But, unlike before, the combined offense level in that circumstance would be 36 (instead of 37). After the reduction for acceptance of responsibility, defendant’s final offense level would be 33 (instead of 34), with a lower sentencing range of 135 to 168 months. In light of that potential effect, the court concluded that resentencing is appropriate to enable defendant to challenge the application of the leadership adjustment in calculating his Guidelines range. Accordingly, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. The court affirmed as to defendant's remaining contentions of error. View "United States v. Melgar-Hernandez" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to a drug possession charge and completed his term of imprisonment in 2008. Before the expiration of his four year term of supervised release, defendant pled guilty to new charges in 2012 and was sentenced to 150 months in prison. The district court that presided over his previous drug conviction revoked defendant's supervised-release term and sentenced him to the statutory maximum of 36 months in prison, to run consecutive to the 150 months imposed for the new charges. Defendant appealed. The court held that 18 U.S.C. 3624(e), which provides that “[a] term of supervised release does not run during any period in which [a] person is imprisoned in connection with a conviction for a Federal, State, or local crime,” does not toll a supervised-release term during a period of pretrial detention if the defendant is later convicted of the charges on which he is held and receives credit toward his sentence for the time served in pretrial detention. Therefore, because the district court lacked jurisdiction to revoke defendant's term of supervised release and to impose a further period of incarceration, the court vacated the district court's order revoking the supervised-release term and sentencing defendant to 36 months’ imprisonment. View "United States v. Marsh" on Justia Law

Defendants Thaxton Young, Jesse Young, and Gerry Burnett challenged their convictions for conspiring to distribute heroin in Washington, D.C. Defendants raised numerous issues on appeal. The court concluded that the district court should not have based Burnett's sentence, in part, on conduct that occurred before he joined the conspiracy. Because the error was plain where Burnett would have been sentenced to a lower base offense level, the court reversed and remanded for resentencing. The court affirmed the judgments of convictions and sentence in all other respects. View "United States v. Burnett" on Justia Law

Defendants Williams, Edwards, and Bowman appealed their convictions for participating in a cocaine distribution scheme. Defendants challenged their convictions on multiple grounds. The court held that the district court erred in admitting portions of Agent Bevington’s lay opinion testimony and that this error was not harmless. Therefore, the court reversed Williams’s conviction and remanded his case to the district court for further proceedings. The court did not reach Williams’s other challenges to his conviction other than to hold that the district court did not err in denying his motion for a judgment of acquittal. The court affirmed the remaining judgments of conviction. View "United States v. Williams" on Justia Law

Defendants Martinez Vega and Cuevas, affiliated with a left-wing guerilla group called FARC, were indicted with more than 50 other individuals for conspiring to commit crimes associated with the importation, manufacture, and distribution of cocaine into the United States. After defendants' extradition to the United States, defendants were convicted for violating 21 U.S.C. 812, 952, 959, 960, and 963. The district court then sentenced Martinez Vega and Cuevas to 330 and 348 months’ imprisonment, respectively. The court concluded that the proffered circumstantial evidence is sufficient to support the jury's guilty verdicts; the district court did not err where the mens rea jury instructions unambiguously and accurately reflected the state of the law; and defendants' failure to show any prejudice, let alone substantial prejudice, is fatal to their prosecutorial misconduct claim. The court vacated Martinez Vega’s sentence and remanded to the district court for resentencing in view of the legally required elements for a “manager or supervisor” enhancement where the district court failed to make the required findings on the second and third elements. The court affirmed in all other respects. View "United States v. Vega" on Justia Law

After defendant was found guilty of the lesser-included offense of possession with intent to distribute a detectable amount of PCP, he appealed the denial of his motion to suppress. The court concluded that defendant was seized when the officer touched him and instructed him to "hold on" and defendant complied. In this case, no reasonable person in defendant’s position and subject to the officer's directives would have believed that he was free to go on about his business. The Government asserts that defendant walked quickly toward a certain neighborhood, made furtive gestures, and recognized the police. Based on the facts on the record, the court concluded that the officers had no reasonable, articulable suspicion justifying their stop of defendant. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Castle" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of conspiring with her boyfriend to extort money from a prominent doctor with whom defendant had previously had an affair. The district court denied defendant's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, holding that defendant was not prejudiced by trial counsel’s failure to introduce expert testimony on battered woman syndrome. The district court therefore did not need to (and did not) decide whether counsel’s performance was constitutionally deficient. The court concluded, however, that defendant was prejudiced by trial counsel’s failure to introduce expert testimony on battered woman syndrome. In this case, the duress instruction would have given jurors a legal basis upon which to vote not guilty, and the expert testimony on battered woman syndrome would have supported both elements of defendant’s duress defense. The factors here add up to a reasonable probability that the jury would have had a reasonable doubt respecting guilt if expert testimony on battered woman syndrome had been presented at defendant’s trial. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for the district court to decide whether counsel was constitutionally deficient in failing to present such testimony. View "United States v. Nwoye" on Justia Law

Defendants Knight and Thorpe were convicted of charges related to the kidnapping and burglary of a couple. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia prosecutes both federal offenses and most D.C. Code offenses. It may prosecute combined federal and D.C. Code charges in either U.S. District Court or D.C. Superior Court. The court concluded that there was no Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(b), violation. In this case, because the January arrests were for D.C. Code offenses, those arrests did not trigger the Speedy Trial Act’s 30-day clock. Therefore, the court affirmed as to the Speedy Trial Act issue. The court affirmed Thorpe's sentence and concluded that his sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable. Finally, the court remanded for the district court to address Knight’s and Thorpe’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in the first instance. View "United States v. Knight" on Justia Law