Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant pleaded guilty in 2009 to various drug and firearm offenses and was sentenced to a stipulated plea agreement. In 2014, the Sentencing Guidelines were amended, retroactively lowering the offense levels associated with two of the offenses to which defendant pleaded guilty. In 2015, the district court sua sponte denied defendant a sentence reduction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), on the grounds that defendant's sentence was not based on the Guidelines. Defendant then filed a motion for reconsideration, but the district court denied the motion. The court concluded that the implied prohibition on 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2)-based motions for reconsideration, as recognized in United States v. Goodwyn, is non-jurisdictional. In this case, the government waived its right to object to the district court's failure to deny defendant relief on the grounds that he brought an unauthorized motion for reconsideration. Because the government failed to raise this non-jurisdictional limitation, it was waived on appeal. Applying de novo review, the court agreed with the district court that defendant was ineligible for relief under section 3582(c)(2) because he was sentenced pursuant to a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement that did not use a Guidelines sentencing range. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. May" on Justia Law

Defendant, a citizen of Jamaica, asserted a Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel challenge to his conviction under the criminal counterfeiting statute. The district court determined that, although counsel provided deficient performance, defendant was not prejudice because the district court corrected counsel's deficiencies. In this case, defendant unknowingly pleaded to an aggravated felony that rendered him automatically deportable. Counsel had consulted with an immigration attorney regarding repercussions of defendant's plea to his immigration status, but the immigration attorney gave advice based upon an amended version of the statute that did not apply to defendant's case. Therefore, neither counsel nor the district court informed defendant that he was pleading to a crime that rendered him automatically deportable. The court issued a certificate of appealability and addressed defendant's claim on the merits. The court concluded that defendant received deficient performance under the Sixth Amendment, and that it prejudiced defendant because the district court's warnings, which were general and referenced only a vague "risk" or possibility of deportation, did not cure counsel's deficient performance. The court explained that defendant could demonstrate prejudice by showing a reasonable likelihood that, absent his counsel's error, he could have negotiated a different plea agreement or would have gone to trial instead. Accordingly, the court reversed, vacated, and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Swaby" on Justia Law

After defendant was convicted for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, he appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress. The court explained that it has never required the government to provide a written impoundment-and-inventory policy or elicit step-by-step testimony concerning such a policy to meet its burden under the inevitable-discovery doctrine. The government meets its burden and this court can affirm on inevitable-discovery grounds if the district court can assess the inevitability and reasonableness of a hypothetical inventory search from testimony provided by a law-enforcement official--such as the DEA agent in this case. Because the warrantless search was reasonable, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Bullette, III" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions for conspiring to commit immigration fraud, and aiding and abetting fraud and misuse of immigration documents. The court concluded that there was no error in excluding the testimony of a witness that defendant argued was material and favorable to the defense; the court need not address the issue of whether bad faith was an element of a compulsory process claim because defendant failed to establish prejudice; and, to the extent that defendant styled his argument as a due process claim, the court likewise rejected it. The court also concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting an email listing the names of customers who still wanted to obtain a green card over defendants Federal Rule of Evidence 901 objection; on the record, the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the April 24th email as a witness's statement, rather than hearsay from the translator; and the court rejected defendant's argument that the district court improperly interfered with his presentation of a defense by repeatedly interrupting counsel's questions to witnesses and interfering with counsel's closing argument to the jury, essentially taking on the role of a prosecutor. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Kaixiang Zhu" on Justia Law

Appellant challenged the district court's decision to grant the federal government's motion to dismiss the information filed against him in a juvenile delinquency proceeding without prejudice, and its decision to deny Appellant's motion to dismiss the information with prejudice. Appellant also challenged the district court's decision to authorize the federal government to disclose two confidential documents and Appellant's identity to third-parties, contending that the disclosed information should have been kept private. The court dismissed as interlocutory the appeal over the dismissal of the information without prejudice and the denial of Appellant's motion for dismissal with prejudice; affirmed the district court's authorization of disclosure of the confidential documents; and, because the court believed that the controversy surrounding the disclosure of Appellant's identity was moot on appeal, the court vacated the district court's decision to authorize disclosure of that information. View "United States v. Under Seal" on Justia Law

After defendant pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, he appealed the denial of his motion to suppress evidence of statements he made during a traffic stop and of a firearm that was seized during the stop. The court concluded that the district court did not err in denying the suppression motion, because the traffic stop did not exceed the time reasonably required to complete the tasks incident to the mission of the stop. The court reasoned that the Supreme Court's decision in Rodriguez v. United States did not require courts to second-guess the logistical choices and actions of a police officer that, individually and collectively, were completed diligently within the confines of a lawful traffic stop. In this case, the court held that because the evidence shows that the officers acted with reasonable diligence in executing the tasks incident to the traffic stop, and the stop was not impermissibly expanded in scope or time beyond the pursuit of the stop's mission, the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Hill" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, three death row inmates in Virginia, filed suit alleging that their conditions of confinement amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Death row inmates, among other things, spent 23 hours a day alone; had only non-contact visits and contact visitations with immediate family members were subject to unspecified "extreme circumstances" with the warden maintaining unconstrained discretion to grant or deny such requests; and were barred from joining general population inmates for vocational, educational, or behavioral programming. After plaintiffs filed their complaint, defendants substantially changed the policies governing the conditions of confinement for inmates on Virginia's death row, addressing virtually all of the issues raised in plaintiffs' complaint. The district court concluded that plaintiffs' action was moot. The court agreed with plaintiffs that defendants' voluntary cessation of the challenged practice has not yet mooted this action because defendants failed to meet the Supreme Court's requirement of showing that it was absolutely clear the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur. In this case, nothing bars the Corrections Department from reverting to the challenged policies in the future. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Porter v. Clarke" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence from various offenses arising from his leadership of schemes wherein fraud was systematically utilized to keep his real estate empire afloat. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to convict defendant of the thirteen charges stated in the indictment; the trial court acted well within its discretion by instructing the jury on willful blindness; and defendant's below-Guidelines sentence of 216 months in prison was substantively reasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Vinson" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an inmate who is missing toes on his right foot, filed suit against defendants after he fell and injured himself while ascending the stairs to his upper-tier cell. The district court sua sponte dismissed the complaint based on failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The court held that the district court improperly sua sponte examined defendant's administrative exhaustion requirement. In this case, it was not apparent from the face of the complaint that plaintiff had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The court explained that before Jones v. Bock, this court allowed district courts to sua sponte dismiss an inmate's complaint where exhaustion was not apparent in his pleading, so long as the court gave the inmate an opportunity to address the exhaustion question. In Jones, the Supreme Court held that failure to exhaust is an affirmative defense, and that inmates are not required to specially plead or demonstrate exhaustion in their complaint. After Jones, this Court held that, where exhaustion is not apparent from an inmate's pleading, a complaint may be dismissed on exhaustion grounds so long as the inmate is first given an opportunity to address the issue. The court held that to the extent that Anderson v. XYZ Corr. Health Servs., Inc., allows courts to sua sponte dismiss complaints where exhaustion is unclear so long as an inmate receives only an opportunity to address the issue, it is irreconcilable with Jones and cannot survive. Because the district court erred in this case when it sua sponte examined plaintiff's exhaustion of available administrative remedies, the court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "Custis v. Davis" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to manufacturing child pornography. The district court determined that defendant's previous convictions for taking indecent liberties with children, N.C. Gen. Stat. 14-202.1, constituted a state law "relating to the sexual exploitation of children" and sentenced defendant to 45 years in prison. The court concluded that the district court correctly concluded that defendant's conviction for taking indecent liberties with children under North Carolina law related to the "sexual exploitation of children" for the purposes of the 18 U.S.C. 2251(e) enhancement. The court also concluded that, even assuming the district court committed an error, the error did not affect defendant's substantial rights. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Mills" on Justia Law