Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his sixteen-level sentencing enhancement under USSG 2LL1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii) based upon a prior conviction for assaulting a federal officer and inflicting bodily injury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 111 (a)(1) and (b). As an issue of first impression, the court found that defendant's conviction under section 111(a)(1) and (b) necessarily required proof that he used, attempted to use, or threatened to use physical force against the person of another. Therefore, a conviction under section 111(a)(1) and (b) for assaulting a federal officer and inflicting bodily injury constitutes a crime of violence under section 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Hernandez-Hernandez" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for failing to maintain an oil record book aboard a foreign-flagged merchant sea vessel, in violation of 33 U.S.C. 1908(a) and 33 C.F.R. 151.25. The district court denied defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The court reversed, concluding that the plain language of 33 C.F.R. 151.25 states that only the “master or other person having charge of the ship” has a duty to maintain the record book. The government concedes that defendant was not the “master or other person having charge” of the vessel at issue. The court vacated the conviction and remanded for entry of acquittal. View "United States v. Fafalios" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's 2014 amended judgment reflecting the dismissal in 1998 of one of five counts of which defendant was convicted and sentenced, without conducting a resentencing hearing and enabling defendant to rely on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey, and Alleyne v. United States, to challenge his two mandatory life sentences. The court concluded that, because the entry of the amended judgment was not the imposition of a new sentence, and the sentence modification did not make the sentence more onerous, defendant’s presence was not required under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 43, and defendant was not entitled to a hearing at which he was present, represented by counsel, and had the opportunity to be heard. United States v. Hadden, like the case here, addressed whether resentencing was required after a 18 U.S.C. 924(c) conviction and consecutive sentence were vacated and the other counts and sentences were left undisturbed. The court further concluded that the district court was not obligated to resentence defendant on the basis that the sentencing package had become unbundled. Because defendant’s convictions and sentences became final before Apprendi and Alleyne were decided, the law of the case doctrine precluded him from relying on them to challenge his sentences on other counts of which he had been convicted. Defendant was not entitled to a resentencing hearing before the district court entered the amended judgment so that he could make Apprendi- and Alleyne-based challenges to the sentences on other counts. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Clark" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted by a jury of several criminal offenses relating to a scheme to steal and resell over-the-counter (OTC) medication, brand-name baby formula, and similar goods. The court concluded that the district court did not err in denying the motion to suppress evidence found in his warehouse where defendant offered no evidence to rebut testimony or show that he withdrew his oral consent. Therefore, the consent and plain-view exceptions justified all of the observations used to obtain the search warrant. The court rejected defendant's argument that the search warrant was invalid under Franks v. Delaware where most of the alleged inaccuracies that defendant identifies are simply not misstatements or omissions. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant. Finally, the court concluded that the district court did not err when it estimated the loss amount attributable to defendant's crimes to be $2,931,057.30, resulting in an eighteen-level enhancement, and the district court did not plainly err in imposing separate $100 special assessments for each of defendant's obstruction-of-justice convictions. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Danhach" on Justia Law

Respondents appealed the district court's grant of habeas relief based on the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause. At issue on appeal is whether the Supreme Court's decision in Bullcoming v. New Mexico clearly establishes as federal law that, when the prosecution introduces a forensic laboratory report in evidence, the criminal defendant has a right to confront the analyst who performed the underlying analyses. Because Bullcoming does not clearly establish that, when the prosecution introduces a forensic laboratory report containing a testimonial certification - made for the purpose of proving a particular fact - the prosecution cannot do so through the in-court testimony of a technical reviewer who signed the report and was more involved in the testing and report preparation than was the witness in Bullcoming, the court reversed and rendered judgment denying the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. View "Grim v. Fisher" on Justia Law

Defendant conditionally plead guilty to being a felon in possession and reserved his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress with respect to the search of his automobile and his post-arrest statements. The court concluded that, even if use of a police dog presents a greater intrusion than a typical open-fields search, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in sights or odors existing in an open field, in plain view or smell, which do not require a physically invasive inspection. In this case, the dog sniff was permissible. The court concluded however, that the district court did not make factual findings about whether exigent circumstances were present sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the automobile exception. Therefore, the court vacated the judgment and remanded for further proceedings. Because the court remanded for further proceedings, the admissibility of defendant's post-arrest statements may be reconsidered if an alternative basis to justify the search of his vehicle is presented to the district court and accepted. View "United States v. Beene" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of illegal reentry into the United States and the district court applied a twelve-level enhancement to defendant's base offense level based on the district court's determination that defendant's 2004 conviction for aggravated menacing in Delaware was for a crime of violence under USSG 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). The court concluded that the offense qualifies as a crime of violence because aggravating menacing is an offense under state law that has as an element the threatened use of physical force against the person of another. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Ovalle-Chun" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison, filed a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas corpus relief. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely and denied petitioner's request for a certificate of appealability (COA). However, this court granted a COA on the question of whether petitioner's federal habeas petition was untimely following the Supreme Court's unexplained denial on direct appeal of his apparently untimely petition for certiorari. The court affirmed the district court's judgment, declining to read the Supreme Court’s apparent practice of denying late petitions without explanation, rather than simply refusing to file them, as reviving the direct review of tardy petitioners for purposes of section 2244(d)(1)(A). In this case, that petitioner eventually filed a petition for certiorari, a year late, does not mean that the limitations period did not begin to run when he missed the deadline for doing so - or that he does not fall into Gonzalez v. Thaler’s second category of petitioners, those who do not pursue direct review all the way to the Supreme Court because “no petition is filed.” View "Catchings v. Fisher" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence for unlawful presence in the United States after previous deportation, arguing that the district court erred by relying on a docket sheet and a Disposition of Arrest and Court Action to impose a sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2L1.2. In this case, the district court found that the docket report contains a significant amount of detail regarding the proceedings in the 2003 case, and the two documents strongly corroborate one another. Both identify the defendant as “Juan Ortega Calderon,” indicate that he pleaded nolo contendere to a single charge of assault with a deadly weapon, and show he was sentenced to 180 days in jail and thirty-six months’ probation. Furthermore, defendant has presented no evidence challenging the veracity of the information contained in these documents. Therefore, the court concluded that the evidence bears sufficient indicia of reliability and the district court did not clearly err. The court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Ortega-Calderon" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, seeks a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge the district court’s dismissal of his federal petition on two grounds: (1) his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to sufficiently investigate, develop, and present mitigating evidence and (2) his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge whether the murder was committed during the commission of a robbery. The court concluded that, on each of the grounds raised by petitioner, the record does not reflect that his trial counsel’s representation fell below the standard of diligence required. Nonetheless, petitioner failed to demonstrate that counsel's performance prejudiced him. Because petitioner has failed to raise a debatable question as to the effectiveness of either his trial counsel or state habeas counsel, he has neither shown that the court should consider his unexhausted claim nor that reasonable jurists could debate the merits of his underlying argument. Accordingly, the court denied the application for a COA. View "Chanthakoummane v.Stephens" on Justia Law