Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of extortion and use of a destructive device to commit extortion. Defendant's conviction arose out of his plot to extort money from Home Depot by placing a device purporting to be an inert “model” of a pipe bomb in a Home Depot store in Huntington Station, New York, and threatening to plant bombs in other Home Depot locations. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to establish that the device used by defendant was an “explosive bomb,” as contemplated by 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(4), and that the district court did not err in instructing the jury on the combination‐of‐parts theory of guilt; the prosecutor’s comments during summation did not deprive defendant of a fair trial; and therefore the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Sheehan" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to conspiracy to traffic in narcotics and was sentenced to 188 months in prison and five years of supervised release. On appeal, defendant challenged the revocation of his supervised release and imposition of an additional prison term of 27 months based on a finding that he had engaged in new criminal conduct while on federal supervision, specifically, assault, as proscribed by New York Penal Law 120.00(1), and narcotics distribution, in violation of New York Penal Law 220.39. The court concluded that Title 18 U.S.C. 3583(e)’s use of the disjunctive in identifying the actions a district court may take with respect to defendants serving terms of supervised release does not limit a court’s authority so as to preclude it from revoking supervised release after conduct is proved that, when reported, had prompted modification of supervision conditions. Therefore, the district court had authorization to revoke defendant's supervised release in this case. The court also concluded that the district court acted within its discretion in admitting the victim's hearsay statements in determining that defendant, while on federal supervision, had committed a new state crime of assault. In this case, the district court properly balanced defendant's confrontation interest against the assault victim's reasons for refusing to testify. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Harris" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS, four counts of client tax evasion, one count of IRS obstruction, and one count of mail fraud. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions; the indictment was not constructively amended; the indictment was not duplicitous; defendant's due process right to a fair trial was not violated; the district court did not commit prejudicial error in giving a supplemental instruction about the Annual Accounting Rule; defendant's sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable; and the court rejected defendant's claims of error as to the forfeiture order. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Daugerdas" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, offenders who had been subject to post-release supervision (PRS) in violation of Earley v. Murray, filed suit against defendants for the actions they took in violation of Earley I and moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion and defendants appealed. The court agreed with the district court that defendants did not make an objectively reasonable effort to relieve plaintiffs of the burdens of those unlawfully imposed terms after they knew it had been ruled that the imposition violated federal law. The issue regarding the motion to deem the appeal frivolous is moot because defendants obtained a stay of further proceedings in the district court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment and remanded for further proceedings. View "Betances v. Fischer" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of participating in a robbery conspiracy (Count One) and using and carrying firearms during and in relation to the robbery conspiracy (Count Two). The district court cited Michigan v. Long and determined after a hearing on defendant's motion to suppress evidence of the gun that the officers possessed “a reasonable belief based on ‘specific and articulable facts’ . . . that the suspect [was] dangerous and the suspect [might] gain immediate control of weapons,” entitling them to conduct the search. The court concluded that, on the record, the events identified as leading to the search of defendant's car and recovery of the gun introduced as evidence at trial are, without more, not enough to justify a full protective search of the passenger compartment of a car based on immediate danger to the officers involved or to others. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "United States v. Cunningham" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction of wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering in connection with a scheme to make unauthorized credit card charges to the credit cards of customers of defendant's digital retail company. The court concluded that the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to dismiss the Superseding Indictment for spoliation of evidence where, pursuant to Arizona v. Youngblood, there is no evidence of the government's bad faith. The court joined its sister circuits and held that wire fraud does not require convergence between the parties intended to be deceived and those whose property is sought in a fraudulent scheme. Therefore, the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to dismiss the wire fraud counts in the Superseding Indictment for failure to plead a legally cognizable scheme. That the Superseding Indictment alleges that defendant's misrepresentations were directed at acquiring banks and others, but that the credit card holders were the intended victims of the scheme, is irrelevant. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Greenberg" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of harassment in the second degree, an offense classified as a violation under state law, and sentenced to one year’s conditional discharge, requiring one day of community service. Before completing his sentence, petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The district court concluded that petitioner's case did not present a live case or controversy sufficient to establish Article III standing because he fulfilled the requirements of his sentence during the pendency of the habeas proceeding. After granting a certificate of appealability, the court concluded that a sentence of conditional discharge and one day's community service, unfulfilled as of the time of filing the habeas petition, satisfies the "in custody" requirement of section 2254. The court also concluded that a presumption of continuing collateral consequences applies to petitioner's conviction, thus presenting a live case or controversy under Article III despite the expiration of his sentence. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Nowakowski v. New York" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the revocation of his supervised release on his 2010 conviction for conspiring to traffic in cocaine and marijuana and sentence of 24 months in prison. The court concluded that where, as here, post‐supervision charges involve conduct related to the requisite timely charge and the defendant is afforded adequate notice and opportunity to be heard, the district court is empowered to consider the related violations and to base revocation thereon. The court also concluded that defendant's sufficiency challenge fails on the merits. Therefore, the court affirmed the revocation judgment. View "United States v. Edwards" on Justia Law

Defendants Hisan Lee, Delroy Lee, Selbourne Waite, and Levar Gayle appealed from convictions on various charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy, Hobbs Act conspiracy, and substantive counts of Hobbs Act robbery and associated firearms and murder counts. The evidence at trial showed that Hisan Lee, his brother Delroy Lee, and their cousin Selbourne Waite were all members of a criminal organization centered around DeKalb Avenue in the northern Bronx (the “DeKalb Avenue Crew” or the “Crew”), which engaged in extensive drug dealing, violence, robberies of drug dealers, and murders. The court rejected most of defendants' challenges to their convictions in an accompanying summary order. In this opinion, the court held that, following the Supreme Court's recent decision in Taylor v. United States, the evidence offered at trial to prove the interstate commerce element of the challenged Hobbs Act robbery convictions was sufficient to support the guilty verdicts, because the evidence permitted the jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the robberies targeted suspected marijuana dealers for their drugs or the proceeds from the sale of drugs. The court also rejected defendant Gayle's due process and evidentiary challenges to his conviction on charges arising from the robbery and murder of Oneil Johnson. View "United States v. Lee" on Justia Law

Petitioner suffers from a hearing impairment that requires him to use hearing aids, but those aids were broken during petitioner's trial for murder. Although petitioner told his trial counsel that he could not hear during his trial, counsel never requested an accommodation. Petitioner filed a petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254, contending that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. The district court declined to address the merits, concluding that the claim was procedurally barred because petitioner could have brought it on direct appeal. The court held, however, that this falls within the limited category of exceptional cases where the “exorbitant application of a generally sound rule renders the state ground inadequate to stop consideration of a federal question.” Therefore, the district court was not precluded from reviewing the merits of petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The court vacated the judgment and remanded for the district court to consider the claim on the merits. View "Pierotti v. Walsh" on Justia Law