Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant Abraham Fisch, a criminal defense attorney, was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and tax evasion. Defendant and Lloyd Williams, a former FBI informant, would approach defendants who had criminal charges pending against them and told the defendants to pay them large sums of money as purported legal fees. Fisch and Williams promised to use the money to pay off federal officials but, in actuality, had no such government contacts. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of the offenses; Fisch failed to make out a Fifth Amendment violation based on the denial of a hearing regarding the lis pendens on his home; Fisch failed to establish a Sixth Amendment violation by the government's seeking a lis pendens on his home as an asset traceable to his criminal proceeds; Fisch failed to make the requisite showing of prosecutorial misconduct; the court rejected Fisch's challenges to the jury instructions; and the court rejected Fisch's challenges to the district court's post-trial forfeiture orders. The court declined to address Fisch's ineffective assistance of counsel claims on direct appeal. Accordingly, the court affirmed as to all issues except the denial of Fisch's ineffective assistance of counsel claims. View "United States v. Fisch" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence and conviction for filing false liens or encumbrances. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant where a jury could conclude from the filings at issue that defendant was attempting to file false liens or encumbrances; the district court did not abuse its discretion by answering a jury note where, among other things, responding would have conflicted with the jury instructions; and the district court did not err by adding a six-level enhancement under USSG 2A6.1(b)(1) for threatening or harassing communications where there was evidence that defendant threatened to file liens. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Jordan" on Justia Law

After defendant was convicted of failure to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 42 U.S.C. 16911 et seq., he was sentenced to a prison term followed by ten years of supervised release. On appeal, defendant challenged five conditions of supervised released. The court found that the district court acted within its discretion by imposing a special condition requiring defendant to undergo sex offender treatment; the district court abused its discretion by imposing a special condition prohibiting purchase, possession, or use of sexually stimulating materials; the district court also erred, as a matter of law, by imposing a special condition requiring defendant to "follow all other lifestyle restrictions . . . imposed by the therapist"; the judgment must be reformed to omit a special condition prohibiting defendant from "residing or going to places" frequented by minors without permission from his probation officer because that special condition was not pronounced orally at sentencing; and the judgment must be reformed to omit a "standard" sex offender treatment condition that largely overlapped with, but materially differed from, the similar "special" condition that was orally pronounced at sentencing and included separately in the written judgment. Finally, the court rejected defendant's challenges to a discrete aspect of the treatment condition, concluding that the district court retained its power to sentence defendant and did not improperly delegate it to the doctor. View "United States v. Huor" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of charges related to his involvement in a murder-for-hire scheme. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by allowing defendant's former cell-mate to testify because defendant failed to point to any evidence showing that the government affirmatively enticed the cellmate to solicit any information from defendant. The court concluded that the mere presence of some conflicting evidence in the record does not render a jury verdict improper, and the court rejected defendant's challenges to the credibility of the witnesses where their criminal history, drug problems, trustworthiness and past relationships with defendant all came out at trial and were presumably considered by the jury. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal. The court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Bates" on Justia Law

Defendants Perry, Chapman, and Boyer appealed their convictions for various offenses related to their participation in a drug trafficking conspiracy. The Government cross-appealed the district court's calculation of the mandatory minimum sentence on one of Perry's two convictions under 18 U.S.C. 924(c), arguing that the district court erred in failing to impose the 25-year mandatory minimum. The court concluded that the district court erred in declining to apply the 25-year mandatory minimum sentence required by section 924(c)(1)(C) to one of Perry's section 924(c) convictions where, applying the rule of lenity, the lowest mandatory minimum sentence should be considered the first conviction. Therefore, the court vacated Perry's sentence and remanded for resentencing. The court otherwise affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Chapman" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his 135 month sentence after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting a bank robbery. The court concluded, assuming arguendo that the district court procedurally erred by applying a six-point enhancement pursuant to USSG 2B3.1(b)(2)(B) for using a firearm during the robbery, any error was harmless. In this case, the district court stated "to the extent that I erred in the application of the enhancement of plus six, the sentence would still be the same." Because the district court made it abundantly clear that it would have imposed this sentence regardless, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Sanchez" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after being convicted of one count of enticing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual conduct. The court affirmed the district court's application of a two-level pseudocount enhancement under USSG 2G1.3(d)(1) because defendant intended to entice more than one minor, even if that minor was fictitious; vacated the mental health treatment condition where the district court offered no explanation for its decision; and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Billups" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his 78-month term of imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to illegal reentry. The court concluded that, although the district court erred by counting one of his prior convictions twice when calculating his sentencing guideline range, the court elected not to exercise its discretion to correct the error where there was no discrepancy between the sentence and the correctly calculated range. The court also concluded that defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable where the district court evaluated defendant's history and characteristics and needed the sentence to further the objectives of 18 U.S.C. 3553(a). Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Rosales-Mireles" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of murder and sentenced to death by legal injection, sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to allow review of the district court's rejection of his most recent federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner argued that the district court erred by affording deference to the state court's determination of federal law— specifically, by applying the deferential standard of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2253. The court denied the COA, concluding that, even under a de novo standard of review, no jurist of reason could disagree with the district court's resolution of his constitutional claims or conclude that the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further. View "Ruiz v. Davis" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after being convicted of illegal reentry. The court concluded that the district court did not err by applying a crime-of-violence (COV) enhancement under the sentencing guidelines based on defendant's conviction of rape in California. The court explained that the elements of conviction under the California Penal Code 261(a)(3) match the definition of forcible sex offense under the guidelines pursuant to USSG 2L1.2cmt. n.1(B)(iii). The court rejected defendant's arguments to the contrary and affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Alay" on Justia Law