Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction for the murder of Special Agent James Terry Watson. Agent Watson - as an Assistant Attaché for the United States Mission in Colombia - was an internationally protected person (an IPP). Defendant, a citizen of Colombia, pleaded guilty to offenses of kidnapping conspiracy and murder of an IPP. Defendant argued that his prosecution in this country for offenses committed in Colombia contravened the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Applying the arbitrary-or-unfair framework, the court concluded that defendant's prosecution in this country was not fundamentally unfair where kidnapping and murder are "self-evidently criminal." Furthermore, the IPP convention alone gave defendant notice sufficient to satisfy due process. The court rejected defendant's contention that because the United States Code provisions implementing the IPP Convention require knowledge of the victim’s IPP status that Bello did not possess, those provisions cannot have put him on notice that he was subject to prosecution in this country. Accordingly, there is no merit to defendant’s mens rea contention - nor his broader claim that the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause precluded his prosecution in this country - and the court must uphold his kidnapping conspiracy and murder convictions. View "United States v. Bello Murillo" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of communicating a false distress message to the United States Coast Guard and was sentenced to 14 months in prison, as well as ordered to pay restitution for the costs incurred by the Coast Guard in responding to the specious communication. Defendant was drunk on a boat when the Coast Guard found him in a restricted marine area. Defendant told the Coast Guard that he had a fight with another man and threw him overboard. After the Coast Guard's rescue efforts could not find the man, defendant admitted that he had taken some medication that may have caused him to imagine that another man was on the boat. The rescue efforts cost the Coast Guard $117,913. The court rejected defendant's argument that the district court lacked the statutory authority to issue a restitution order. The court concluded that the text and all reasonable inferences from it provide a clear rebuttal to defendant's proposed construction of 14 U.S.C. 88(c)(3). The court held that an order of restitution may issue under section 88(c)(3) as part of a criminal sentence. The primary purpose of the statute was to preserve for legitimate purposes the Coast Guard’s finite budget. It would defeat that purpose to mandate that the Coast Guard expend even more resources in separate civil actions to recoup false distress call costs. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Serafini" on Justia Law

Movant seeks pre-filing authorization to pursue a successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 petition for habeas relief. Movant argued that the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Johnson produced a new rule of constitutional law made retroactive by that Court, and that he is entitled to seek relief under the new rule. The court granted the request for authorization to file a successive section 2255 motion because application of Johnson to 18 U.S.C. 16(b) as incorporated into the Sentencing Guidelines might render the career-offender residual clause that was applicable at the time movant was sentenced unconstitutional, and because the rule in Johnson is substantive with respect to its application to the Sentencing Guidelines and therefore applies retroactively. View "In Re: Creadell Hubbard" on Justia Law

The district court granted defendant's motion to dismiss an indictment charging him with illegal reentry by a deported alien in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326(a), (b)(2), concluding that the underlying removal order was invalid because DHS failed to explain to defendant in his native language either the removal charges against him or his right to contest the charges or obtain legal representation. The court agreed with the government that, even assuming the administrative removal proceedings were procedurally defective, defendant failed to establish prejudice. In this case, the government contends that even if DHS had provided defendant a Spanish language translation of the removal charges and his right to contest them, it would not have made a difference - he still would have been removed to Mexico. The court concluded that defendant failed to establish that his order of removal was “fundamentally unfair” under section 1326(d). Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "United States v. Lopez-Collazo" on Justia Law

Petitioner challenged the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2241 habeas petition. Petitioner appealed the computation of his federal sentence, and, more specifically, the refusal of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to designate nunc pro tunc a state facility for service of his federal sentence. Although the court found no error in the district court’s analysis of the BOP’s sentencing calculation, the court concluded that the district court overlooked a two-pronged flaw in the BOP’s exercise of its broad discretion in denying petitioner’s requested nunc pro tunc designation. The court held that, in its consideration of the fourth statutory factor under 18 U.S.C. 3621(b), the BOP misapplied 18 U.S.C. 3584(a). That is, in the face of the federal sentencing judge’s silence as to the court’s intention, the BOP invoked a presumption that the unelaborated federal sentence should be deemed to run consecutively to the later imposed state sentence. The court concluded that the presumption relied on was inapplicable in this case. Because the court concluded that the BOP abused its discretion, the court affirmed the judgment in part, vacated in part, and remanded with instructions that the district court remand petitioner's request for a nunc pro tunc designation to the BOP for further consideration. View "Mangum v. Hallembaek" on Justia Law

Defendant conditionally plead guilty to one count of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug crime, and then appealed the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his residence. The court concluded that defendant has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the investigator omitted information from the search warrant affidavit - material information about the reliability of the confidential informant who was the primary source of the information used to establish probable cause - with at least a reckless disregard for whether these omissions made the application misleading. Because these omissions were material to a finding of probable cause, defendant has established a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights under Franks v. Delaware. Therefore, the district court erred in denying defendant’s suppression motion. The court reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress, vacated defendant's conviction and sentence, and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Lull" on Justia Law

Defendant conditionally plead guilty to being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, and then challenged the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence recovered after a stop-and-frisk. The court rejected defendant's version of the facts as well as his accompanying legal argument that he was seized before he reached for his pocket. The court also concluded that the police had reasonable suspicion based on a tip from a 911 call, defendant was found in the area in which the gunshot was reported in a high-crime area, defendant failed to respond or make eye contact with the officers, and defendant's performance of a security check gave credence to the anonymous tip and gave the officers reason to suspect that defendant was the man of whom they had been warned. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Foster" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon and was sentenced as an armed career criminal based on his three prior convictions for felony common law robbery in North Carolina. The court affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress the handgun found in defendant's vehicle during a traffic stop, and the district court's denial of defendant's motion for a new trial. The court concluded, however, that defendant's prior offense of North Carolina common law robbery is not categorically a violent felony. Therefore, the court held that the district court erred in sentencing defendant as an armed career criminal. The court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Gardner" on Justia Law

After defendant was convicted of charges related to the kidnapping of his estranged wife, the district court sentenced him to 295 months in prison and also required him to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 42 U.S.C. 16911 et seq. The court rejected defendant's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel because such claims are not addressed on direct appeal; the district court did not err in admitting evidence of prior acts where the evidence was relevant to issues other than character or propensity and the probative value outweighed the danger of unfair prejudice; and, the district court did not err in requiring defendant to register as a sex offender under SORNA, because aggravated sexual abuse involves a sexual act or sexual contact with another and defendant thus was convicted of a criminal offense that has an element involving a sexual act or sexual contact with another. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Faulls" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the district court's dismissal of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and challenges several aspects of his capital convictions and death sentence. The court rejected petitioner's claim that the Virginia circuit court’s refusal to appoint a prison-risk-assessment expert compels relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254(d), because petitioner identified no clearly established federal law requiring the appointment of a nonpsychiatric expert. The court also rejected petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claims related to counsel's investigation and presentation of mitigating evidence where the court found neither deficient performance or prejudice under Strickland v.Washington. The court concluded that petitioner's underlying claim was insubstantial under Martinez v. Ryan and therefore he has not shown cause to excuse his procedurally defaulted claim that counsel was ineffective for stipulating at the guilt phase of trial that petitioner was a prisoner in lawful custody at the time of the alleged capital murder. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Morva v. Zook" on Justia Law