Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his sentence after being convicted of distributing crack cocaine. The court vacated the sentence because it found that the district court erred by imposing a career offender enhancement under USSG 4B1.1(a)(3) in light of his two prior California drug convictions. The court concluded that neither of his two prior convictions was for a crime of violence as defined by the residual clause because the convictions do not qualify under the case law that predated Johnson v. United States. Therefore, the court need not address whether the residual clause in USSG 4B1.2(a)(2) is unconstitutionally vague. Because defendant has only one qualifying conviction, the career offender enhancement is not warranted. The court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Lee" on Justia Law

After signing a plea agreement admitting to drug distribution, but before sentencing, defendant disappeared and lost contact with his lawyer. The district court proceeded with sentencing in absentia and imposed a prison term of 120 months. Defendant was subsequently arrested and appealed his sentence as violating the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Due Process Clause to the Constitution. Assuming for purposes of this opinion that due process and Rule 43 are coextensive, the court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it sentenced defendant in abstentia. In this case, the district court made a fact finding that is supported by the record that defendant had "absented himself" from the proceedings, which is a finding of voluntary absence required by Rule 43. Taken together, the facts in the record support both the district court’s determination that defendant was voluntarily absent from the hearing and its decision to proceed with sentencing. Because defendant concedes that due process provides only the protections of Rule 43 and no more, the district court's actions likewise did not violate defendant's constitutional rights. The court rejected defendant's remaining arguments and enforced the appeal waiver, dismissing the appeal. View "United States v. Ornelas" on Justia Law

Patrick Sogbein was convicted of running a conspiracy to defraud Medicare by providing power wheelchairs to people who did not need them. Sogbein’s wife, Adebola Adebimpe, was convicted of participating in the conspiracy by supplying many of the wheelchairs through a medical equipment company that she owned. The court affirmed the district court's application of a two-level enhancement under USSG 3B1.3 for abusing a position of trust with respect to Medicare. The court held that medical equipment suppliers can have the requisite “professional or managerial discretion” for the abuse-of-trust adjustment to apply, if they are responsible for determining the need for the equipment they provide and personally certify the validity of their claims to Medicare. In this case, the district court’s conclusion that Sogbein and Adebimpe’s abuse of their positions of trust significantly furthered the offense was not clearly erroneous. View "United States v. Adebimpe" on Justia Law

Defendant, charged with allegedly making phone calls to authorities at LAX instructing them to evacuate the airport, appealed the district court's order authorizing the BOP to forcibly medicate him to restore his competency to stand trial. In Sell v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that the government may involuntarily medicate a defendant charged with a serious crime to restore that defendant to competency to stand trial. The court held that the district court clearly erred in finding that the proposed course of treatment was in defendant’s best medical interests. The court concluded that the fourth Sell factor is lacking, and the district court clearly erred in finding that the proposed treatment was in defendant’s best medical interest. The record demonstrates that the proposed treatment includes dosages higher than are generally recommended and that the use of a long-acting medication does not conform to the standard of care. Furthermore, the court could not credit the expert's testimony that the medication and dosage was appropriate without exploring and answering the questions posed by contradictory evidence in the record. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "United States v. Onuoha" on Justia Law

Jesse Vasquez was convicted of drug-related crimes for his part in a gang's drug trafficking operations. The district court sentenced Vasquez to life imprisonment because his two prior California felonies qualified him for a mandatory sentence enhancement under 21 U.S.C. 841. Vasquez then successfully petitioned a California court to reclassify one of his prior California felonies as a misdemeanor pursuant to Proposition 47. In this appeal, Vasquez argues that his federal enhancement should be invalidated because he no longer stands convicted of two prior felonies as section 841 requires. The court has previously held that a state granting postconviction relief from a state conviction cannot undermine a federal sentence enhancement based on that conviction. The court has upheld this rule even where a state dismisses or expunges the underlying state conviction the federal enhancement is based on. Therefore, the court affirmed Vasquez's sentence of life imprisonment under section 841. View "United States v. Diaz" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of attempted carjacking, appealed the district court's dismissal of his habeas petition, contending that his conviction was tainted because the jurors' verdict was influenced by something other than evidence admitted during the trial. At trial, the victim professed not to be able to identify defendant and testified that he was drunk and angry at the time of the initial identification. While he testified, a woman sat as a spectator shaking her head. Some of the jurors observed that action, and later said that they believed that the woman was the victim’s mother and that she was directing him not to identify defendant. The court concluded that there is no clearly established federal law sufficiently related to the facts of defendant's case upon which he can rely to support his claim. Therefore, the California Court of Appeal’s decision in defendant's case could not have unreasonably applied clearly established federal law given the lack of holdings from the Supreme Court regarding the potentially prejudicial effect of spectators' courtroom conduct of the kind involved here. The general principles that a jury decides a case based on the evidence produced at trial, and that the rights of confrontation and cross-examination are fundamental to a fair trial, are not sufficient to support a conclusion that the California Court of Appeal unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme Court precedent in concluding that juror misconduct did not occur in this case. Accordingly, the court affirmed the denial of habeas relief. View "Turner v. McEwen" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to both bringing an unlawful alien into the United States and aiding and abetting an offense against the United States. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's application of a six-point upward adjustment to his offense level for “recklessly creating a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person" under USSG 2L1.1(b)(6). The court concluded that the district court did not clearly err in finding that transporting a person by strapping her inside a dashboard was neither safe nor comfortable but rather “extremely precarious” and dangerous, and that this conduct met the criteria of Application Note 5, which indicates that section 2L1.1(b)(6) applies to a “wide variety of conduct,” including but not limited to the listed examples. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Bernardo" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for illegal reentry, arguing that he was in a delusional state. Defendant believed he was being chased by Mexican gangs, and with the specific intent solely to place himself into the protective custody of United States officials, illegally reentered the United States. In United States v. Lombera-Valdovinos, the court held that it was impossible to convict a previously deported alien for attempted illegal reentry when he crosses the border with the intent only to be imprisoned because attempted illegal reentry is a specific intent crime that requires proof of intent to enter the country free from official restraint. In this case, it is not clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the district court would have found defendant guilty absent its misapprehension of the specific intent element. Because the district court found defendant guilty under an erroneous legal standard, the court vacated the conviction and remanded for a new trial. View "United States v. Argueta-Rosales" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction of two counts of attempted illegal reentry. Defendant did not testify at trial but snuck in his recollection of events by using an expert witness as a conduit for his own words. Principally at issue is whether it was proper to allow the government to impeach the expert with statements that defendant made voluntarily but that were not Miranda compliant. The court concluded that the district court properly admitted defendant's statements to the expert to impeach defendant's account of the events at issue. Because defendant does not challenge the district court’s finding that his statements to the Border Patrol officers were voluntary and reliable, the district court did not err by admitting these statements. The court also concluded that the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal on the June 21 count where a jury could reasonably find that defendant had taken a substantial step by crossing the border and waiting in line for about an hour and a half to reach the inspection station, and that defendant had the specific intent to enter without the express consent of the Attorney General. The court rejected defendant's claim that the prosecutor vindictively added a second charge; the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying an adverse-inference jury instruction relating to the destruction of the port-of-entry video; and because the petition for certiorari granted in Mathis v. United States is directly relevant to the court's resolution of defendant's challenge to his sentence enhancement, the court deferred the resolution of this issue pending the Supreme Court's decision in Mathis. The court affirmed the conviction. View "United States v. Rosales-Aguilar" on Justia Law

Defendant was found guilty of unlawful possession of a firearm and sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e). The court agreed with defendant that his prior 1990 conviction for armed robbery under a Massachusetts statute is an offense that does not have “as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.” Under the categorical approach, a conviction under the Massachusetts statute does not qualify as a violent felony under the ACCA’s force clause. Given that neither this conviction nor defendant’s 1989 conviction for assault and battery by dangerous weapon qualifies as a violent felony, the district court erred by sentencing him as an armed career offender. View "United States v. Parnell" on Justia Law