Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner Frank O. Loher, convicted of sexual assault and given an extended-term sentence, filed a petition for habeas relief. The district court in Loher VI granted the writ on all three of Loher’s claims: (1) that the trial court violated Loher’s constitutional rights by forcing him to testify; (2) that Loher’s appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance for failing to raise the forced testimony issue; and (3) that the enhancement of his sentence based on judge-found facts violated Apprendi v. New Jersey. The district court ordered Hawaii to release or retry Loher and then the district court stayed that order pending this appeal. The court concluded that the Hawaii ICA’s rejection of Loher’s Brooks v. Tennessee claim was not objectively unreasonable; the court rejected Loher’s challenges to the creation of the post-conviction record and to the Hawaii ICA’s reliance on the facts found on remand; because Hawaii has failed to argue this independent ineffective-assistance-of-appellate-counsel (IAAC) issue specifically and distinctly, it has waived its challenge to the district court’s grant of relief; and the State’s failure to object and its affirmative invitation to adopt the magistrate’s recommendation constitute waiver of its challenge to Loher’s Apprendi claim. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded with instructions. View "Loher v. Thomas" on Justia Law

Defendants, husband and wife, were convicted of charges related to their role as ordained ministers in the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry. Defendants admit to using and distributing large quantities of cannabis, but claim that in doing so they were merely exercising their sincerely held religious beliefs. The court agreed that the government has a compelling interest in mitigating the risk that cannabis from the Ministry will be diverted to recreational users, and that the facts of this case demonstrate that mandating defendants' full compliance with the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq., would help to advance this compelling interest to a meaningful degree. Furthermore, the government could not achieve its compelling interest in mitigating diversion through anything less than mandating defendants' full compliance with the CSA. Therefore, defendant's statutory free exercise rights have not been violated and the court rejected their defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq. The court rejected the wife's claim that she should be exempted from prosecution, even if her husband is not, because he was the founder and leader of the Ministry. The court also rejected defendants' claim that RFRA’s intersection with the CSA violates the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on vague criminal laws. RFRA cannot be unconstitutionally vague because it is not a penal statute or anything like one. Likewise, the rule of lenity is equally untenable. The court further concluded that defendants' contention that their indictments should be dismissed on the theory that the CSA’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is foreclosed by the court's precedent. Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing wiretaps obtained in the course of investigating defendants and the Ministry, and the district court did not clearly err in denying defendants a Franks hearing. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Christie" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of charges related to her participation in an extensive mortgage-fraud conspiracy and was ordered to pay more than $2 million in restitution and to forfeit more than $100 million. The court rejected defendant's contention that the restitution amount was not supported by adequate evidence and that it violated the Eighth Amendment where the district court explicitly stated that it would calculate loss through the method defendant advocates. Defendant's bare speculation on appeal that this process was somehow deficient does not approach her burden of demonstrating clear or obvious error in the court’s restitution calculations. Without error in the loss calculation, defendant's Eighth Amendment claim fails. The court rejected defendant's challenges to the order of monetary forfeiture imposed at sentencing, concluding that defendant's bare assertion that the district court needed more evidence to make an accurate accounting of the loan proceeds falls far short of her burden of demonstrating clear or obvious error in the district court’s calculation.Furthermore, it is not anomalous to order her jointly and severally liable, along with the other participants in that conspiracy, for the total amount of money that was illegally gained by the conspiratorial enterprise. Finally, the court concluded that the order of forfeiture is punitive and therefore subject to Eighth Amendment excessiveness review. The court vacated the order with respect to Count 1 and remanded for reconsideration of that amount in light of the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause. The court affirmed the order of restitution and the amounts of forfeiture ordered on defendant's convictions for Counts 10, 11, 13, and 14. View "United States v. Beecroft" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for interfering with the administration of the tax laws in violation of 26 U.S.C. 7212, presenting fictitious financial instruments in violation of 18 U.S.C. 514, and presenting false claims to the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. 287. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to preclude a judgment of acquittal on the section 514 counts. Because, however, it was not so overwhelming that it negated the prejudice flowing from the lack of any instruction that the financial instruments in question had to be issued “under the authority of the United States,” the court remanded for a new trial. The court also concluded that it was not error for the district court not to instruct the jury that an attempt to reduce tax liability is not a “claim” within the meaning of section 287; the section 7212 charge was timely; the court agreed with the Fourth Circuit that a charge under section 7212 is timely so long as it is returned within six years of an affirmative act of evasion, even if the evasion first began outside the period; the section 7212(a) charge was not duplicitous; and, even if the government’s rebuttal summation had been improper, it was harmless. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. View "United States v. Murphy" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of voluntary manslaughter, challenged the denial of his petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254 as second or successive. The court held that when a petitioner files a new petition while his first petition remains pending, courts have uniformly held that the new petition cannot be deemed second or successive under 28 U.S.C. 2244(b). Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. The court left it to the district court to decide on remand whether the claims alleged in the December 2011 petition reflect permissible amendments to the claims alleged in the June 2007 petition. Petitioner is entitled to litigate the set of claims alleged in the June 2007 petition, including permissible amendments to those claims,under the standard applicable to first petitions. View "Goodrum v. Busby" on Justia Law

After the district court denied Aldridge Currie's claims for habeas relief, it issued a certificate of appealability on his Batson v. Kentucky claim. The prosecutor in Currie's case, David Brown, has a history of unconstitutional race-based peremptory strikes. The court previously held that Brown violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause when he struck three African-American women from the jury of petitioner Aldridge Currie’s first trial. On retrial, the trial judge found that Brown had violated Batson again by striking three African-American prospective jurors. This case stems from Currie’s second retrial, in which Brown was the prosecutor again and where Brown removed one African American juror by using a peremptory strike. The court concluded that “race was a substantial motivating factor” for his strike of the juror at issue here based on Brown’s history of Batson violations and pretextual reasons in this case. The California Court of Appeal’s rejection of Currie’s Batson claim was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts, as it largely ignored the similar extent of drug use in the juror’s social circles and those of the empaneled jurors, and it uncritically accepted Brown’s other stated reasons. Therefore, the district court erred in rejecting Currie's habeas petition. The court reversed and remanded with instructions to issue a conditional writ of habeas corpus. View "Currie v. McDowell" on Justia Law

Defendant was found guilty of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. The district court imposed a mandatory life sentence because defendant had two prior convictions for felony drug offenses. The court concluded that, despite the substantial evidence of defendant's possession for purposes of sale, there was insufficient evidence for a jury to conclude that he tacitly or explicitly made the requisite agreement. Accordingly, the court vacated the conviction. View "United States v. Loveland" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the denial of his motion to reduce his sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the district court properly calculated the guideline range that applied to defendant at sentencing by using the criminal history category applicable to defendant before consideration of a downward departure under USSG 4A1.3. Therefore, defendant was not eligible for a sentence reduction under section 3582(c). View "United States v. Ornelas" on Justia Law

Defendant, convicted of crimes related to his involvement in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy, appealed the denial of a motion to modify his sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The court held that the district court correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to modify defendant's sentence in 2013. In this case, the district court was correct to find that defendant was responsible for more than 8.4 kilograms of crack cocaine. Defendant’s applicable Guidelines range under the drug quantity table, as modified by Amendment 750, would therefore be the same as the Guidelines range before the Amendment. Therefore, the Amendment did not have the effect of lowering defendant's applicable guideline range and modifying defendant's sentence would not be consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Commission. The court also held that the district court did not err when it relied on factual findings from the 2001 sentencing hearing where defendant cites no authority for his contrary assertion that the 2013 court should have ignored factual findings in the 2001 sentencing proceeding because of a possible Rule 32 violation. Finally, the court held that Amendment 782 does not provide a basis for reversing the district court’s denial of defendant's motion because Amendment 782 went into effect after the district court denied defendant's motion in 2013 based on the pre-Amendment 782 drug quantity table. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Spears" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of two murders and sentenced to death, challenged the district court's denial of his habeas petition. The court concluded that the Arizona Supreme Court did not act unreasonably in rejecting petitioner’s Sixth Amendment confrontation claim where his argument is foreclosed by Williams v. New York, which held that the Confrontation Clause does not bar courts from considering unconfronted statements during sentencing proceedings; the court rejected petitioner's claims in relation to the prosecution's rebuttal evidence and concluded that the district court did not err in finding that he suffered no constitutional violation when the prosecution introduced substantial evidence of petitioner's prior crimes during the penalty-phase hearings; any (E)(2) vagueness challenge fails because both the trial court and Arizona Supreme Court applied the narrowed definition of the (E)(2) aggravator to petitioner’s case; the application of the (E)(2) aggravator was in no way contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law; neither the state trial court’s decision to give the (E)(6) narrowing instruction, nor the Arizona Supreme Court’s (E)(6) analysis, was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement; and petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was procedurally defaulted. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Smith v. Ryan" on Justia Law