Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner, convicted of five counts of lewd and lascivious acts by use of force for sexually abusing his stepdaughters and their cousin, appealed the district court's denial of petitioner's request for a Rhines v. Weber stay. In Rhines, the Supreme Court held that a district court has discretion to stay, rather than dismiss, a timely-filed “mixed” petition for habeas corpus relief - that is, a single petition that includes both exhausted and unexhausted claims. The court joined several of its sister circuits in holding that the Rhines stay-and-abeyance procedure is not limited to mixed petitions, and a district court may stay a petition that raises only unexhausted claims. In this case, the district court dismissed the petition on the assumption that it lacked authority to grant petitioner's request for a Rhines stay. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for the district court to decide the issue in the first instance. View "Mena v. Long" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for mail fraud, arguing that there was insufficient evidence on Counts 4 and 6 to show that the underlying mailings furthered his fraudulent scheme. Count 4 arises from the notice of disability award that SSA mailed to defendant's girlfriend. The court affirmed as to this count, concluding that the notice of disability award marked the last step before defendant's girlfriend would receive disability benefit payments, the goal of her fraudulent plan with defendant. The mailing was a contemplated, necessary step in its respective scheme. Count 6 pertains to the application summary that SSA mailed to defendant in January 2012. The court reversed as to this count because the underlying mailing was not part of the execution of the scheme as conceived by the perpetrator at the time, and because it did nothing to further the scheme. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Eglash" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for obstructing justice by lying under oath to a grand jury about his role in impeding an investigation. During trial, defendant testified and allegedly lied under oath again. The district judge applied an enhancement for obstruction of justice under USSG 3C1.1 based on defendant's trial testimony, without expressly finding that the testimony was willfully or materially false. The court agreed with the parties that the district court erred by enhancing the sentence without making the findings necessary to show that defendant's trial testimony was, in fact, perjury. The court rejected defendant's contention that, even if his trial testimony was perjurious, the obstruction enhancement cannot be applied. The court concluded that applying the obstruction enhancement to defendant's false trial testimony does not impermissibly penalize him twice for the same conduct if the district court finds that his trial testimony was false, willful, and material. The court remanded for the district court to make express findings as to the willfulness and materiality of defendant’s trial testimony in light of United States v. Castro-Ponce in order to determine whether the obstruction enhancement applies, and to resentence accordingly. Finally, the court denied defendant's request for reassignment to a different judge on remand. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of murder and the Pima County Superior court found that Atkins v. Virginia did not preclude his execution, the Arizona Court of Appeals denied special action relief, and the Arizona Supreme Court denied a petition for review. In 2010, this court remanded this case to the district court for the limited purpose of considering petitioner's Atkins claim and the district court denied the claim in 2012. The court concluded that a presumption of correctness does not apply to the state court's factual determination that petitioner was not intellectually disabled at the time of the offense and trial. The court held that the state court’s factual determination is not entitled to deference because it is not fairly supported by the record. Judge Reinhardt would hold that deference is not due for the additional and independent reason that the Pima County Superior Court rendered its finding that petitioner was not intellectually disabled under a constitutionally impermissible legal standard. Applying de novo review to determine whether petitioner has demonstrated intellectual disability by clear and convincing evidence as required by Arizona law, the court held that he has met this burden where, considering his intellectual functioning test scores and his history of significantly impaired adaptive behavior, as the court must under Atkins and Hall v. Florida, the court found that the record in this case overwhelmingly demonstrates that petitioner satisfied the two substantive prongs of Arizona’s definition of intellectual disability both prior to age eighteen and at the time of the crime. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions. View "Smith v. Schriro" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of assaulting and attempted premeditated murder. Defendant served his sentence and is out of prison on parole. The Superior Court concluded in a decision spoken from the bench that trial counsel’s performance had been constitutionally defective by failing to secure medical evidence to support his primary expert’s sleepwalking opinion – a conclusion with which the prosecution agreed. The Superior Court found, however, that counsel’s failure had not been prejudicial. Petitioner then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. The district court denied the petition. The court reversed, concluding that the Superior Court’s decision was (1) based on an unreasonable determination of the facts, and (2) objectively unreasonable in its application of clearly established Federal constitutional law. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Yun Hseng Liao v. Junious" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to possessing 100 kilograms or more of marijuana on a vessel and was sentenced to 80 months in prison, as well as a consecutive 12 month sentence for violation of the terms of supervised released imposed in a prior case. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing a two-level enhancement to defendant's offense level for the marijuana conviction pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(b)(3)(C) (the “pilot/captain” enhancement). By defendant's own account, he was a lifelong fisherman hired to transport marijuana bales, and in so doing he operated a boat laden with substantial cargo in open water by controlling both its speed and direction. The court also concluded that defendant's below-Guidelines sentence is not substantively unreasonable where the district court exercised its discretion in departing downward from the Guidelines range, just not by as many months as defendant requested. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Cruz-Mendez" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions on twenty-four counts of wire fraud, seven counts of money laundering, and one count of investment-adviser fraud. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in barring defendant's expert witness from testifying and, even if the district court did not abuse its discretion, the error was harmless; the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting testimony regarding defendant's status as a fiduciary where nothing in the record indicates that testimony and argument regarding defendant's fiduciary status impermissibly infected his prosecution, and any concerns about the jurors’ equating violations of fiduciary duty with criminal liability were put to rest by the district court’s careful instructions on the elements of the offenses and the absence of reference to breach of fiduciary duty as a consideration in determining guilt; the district court did not violate defendant's Fifth Amendment rights when it declined to strike Count 33 from the indictment; and there is no cumulative error. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Spangler" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of armed carjacking, appealed the district court's dismissal of his petition for writ of habeas corpus under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254. The court agreed with the district court that the petition is untimely and that petitioner is not entitled to equitable tolling because he did not act diligently in waiting fourteen months before inquiring into the status of his petition. Accordingly, the court affirmed the dismissal of the petition as time-barred. View "Fue v. Biter" on Justia Law

The district court granted a motion for acquittal after the jury rendered a guilty verdict against defendant on two counts of sexual abuse of a severely disabled woman under 18 U.S.C. 2242(2)(B). The district court found insufficient evidence that the victim was “physically incapable” of resisting or declining to participate in the sexual assault by defendant. The court concluded that a defendant may be convicted under section 2242(2)(B) where the victim had some awareness of the situation and - while not completely physically helpless - was physically hampered due to sleep, intoxication, or drug use and thereby rendered physically incapable. The court held that - to the extent a defendant raises a factual dispute regarding consent as a defense under section 2242(2)(B) - the jury is the appropriate fact-finder to weigh the question when evaluating the victim’s physical incapacity to decline participation or communicate her unwillingness to engage in the alleged sexual abuse. The district court erred by taking the question out of the jury’s domain after it had rendered a guilty verdict against defendant. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "United States v. James" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of first degree murder and other charges and sentenced to death. This court subsequently found that the Arizona Supreme Court had erred in not considering certain mitigation evidence, because it found such evidence was not connected to petitioner’s actions at the time of the murder. The court reversed and remanded to the district court to issue a conditional writ ordering petitioner's release from his death sentence unless the State were to initiate proceedings either to correct the constitutional error or to vacate the death sentence and impose a lesser sentence. The district court so ordered and the state court affirmed the death sentence. Petitioner then moved the district court for an unconditional writ of habeas corpus, arguing that the Arizona Supreme Court was powerless to correct the constitutional error, because the law had changed since Styers I. Petitioner made a Ring v. Arizona claim before the state court, arguing that the conditional writ of habeas corpus required that petitioner be re-sentenced and that a jury must find the aggravating factors rendering him eligible for the death penalty. The state court denied the claim on the ground that petitioner's sentence was final. The U.S. Supreme Court has never held that the issuance of a conditional writ of habeas corpus necessarily renders non-final a conviction or sentence that was predicated on constitutional error, and the conditional writ of habeas corpus in this case did not vacate petitioner’s death sentence. Therefore, the court concluded that the state court's determination that petitioner's sentence remained final at the time of the second independent review was not contrary to federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Finally, the state court considered the mitigating evidence and decided to give it little weight. Neither Tennard v. Dretke, nor Eddings v. Oklahoma, requires more. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Styers v. Ryan" on Justia Law