Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine base, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and causing the death of Melissa Barratt. Defendant contends that the "pinging" of his cell phone was a search that violated the Fourth Amendment and that, as a result, the district court’s failure to suppress evidence recovered upon his arrest requires reversal of his conviction. In this case, officers investigating Barratt's death asked Sprint, defendant's cell-phone provider, to track the GPS coordinates of defendant's cell-phone over a two-hour period. The court found that the officers reasonably believed that defendant posed an exigent threat to the undercover officers and confidential informants involved in his drug operation. This threat justified the pinging of defendant's phone, a) which at most constituted a limited intrusion into his privacy interests, b) which objectively could be viewed as plausibly consistent with existing law, and c) which the officers used in the most limited way to achieve their necessary aim. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Caraballo" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of assaulting a federal officer and sentenced as a career offender principally to 180 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. The court concluded that, after the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. United States, a conviction for first‐degree robbery in New York is not in every instance a conviction for a “crime of violence.” Therefore, the district court plainly erred in sentencing defendant as a career offender based on its conclusion that a conviction for first‐degree robbery is necessarily a conviction for a “crime of violence” within the Career Offender Guideline. The court need not address defendant's argument that his sentence was substantively unreasonable. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the denial of his motion to suppress 145 pounds of marijuana discovered in his vehicle by border patrol agents. Defendant argued that the agents seized him and searched his vehicle in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The court affirmed the denial of the motion to suppress, agreeing with the district court that the agents had reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry v. Ohio stop of defendant. In this case, the Terry stop did not actually begin until an agent ordered defendant and his brother back in the vehicle and the stop was reasonable in duration. View "United States v. Compton" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of rape and sodomy in the first degree, appealed the denial of his amended 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas relief. The petition is based on the grounds that the prosecution suppressed a psychiatric record of an evaluation of the complainant, in violation of petitioner's due process rights under Brady v. Maryland, and that petitioner's trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to prepare cross-examination or call expert witnesses to counter expert testimony introduced by the prosecution. The court concluded, without need to assess the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, that the petition should have been granted with respect to the Brady claim pursuant to Kyles v. Whitley. In this case, the contents of the suppressed psychiatric record provided information with which to impeach the complaining witness and to support defendant's version of the events. The state court concedes that it misread the psychiatric record and the court concluded that the error was not harmless. View "Fuentes v. Griffin" on Justia Law

Petitioner pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to distribute five grams or more of cocaine base and was sentenced to 130 months in prison. The district court found that petitioner qualified as a career offender under USSG 4B1.1 because he had two previous convictions for a crime of violence. Petitioner moved for leave to file a successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion and argued that his sentence enhancement under USSG 4B1.1 was rendered unconstitutional by Johnson v. United States. The court noted that there is substantial disagreement among other circuits on the question on which the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Beckles v. United States. The court concluded that petitioner has made a prima facie showing that his claim satisfies section 2255(h) and warrants fuller exploration by the district court. The court granted the motion and instructed the district court to hold petitioner's section 2255 motion in abeyance pending the outcome of Beckles. View "Blow v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant, a licensed physician, appealed convictions stemming from her participation in a broad scheme involving a number of medical services professional corporations (PCs) to defraud insurance companies in connection with claims submitted under New York’s No Fault Comprehensive Motor Vehicle Insurance Reparation Act, N.Y. Ins. Law 5102 et seq. Defendant held herself out as the owner of a PC and represented herself as such on claims. The jury found that, while defendant was the owner on paper, the true owners of the clinic were coconspirator nonphysicians. Defendant principally contends that the jury should have been instructed, in determining the question of ownership, to consider only the formal indicia of ownership, and not the economic realities. The court concluded, however, that New York law is clear that ownership for purposes of New York insurance law is based on actual economic ownership. The court held that, as in the civil context, a factfinder in a criminal case may properly consider factors beyond formal indicia of ownership in determining ownership under New York’s no‐fault insurance laws. The court rejected all of defendant's arguments and affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Gabinskaya" on Justia Law

The United States appealed from an order suppressing statements made by defendant during a two‐hour interview that was conducted in her home while a search warrant was being executed. The court concluded that, based on the record, defendant was not in custody. In this case, defendant was told 20 minutes into the interview that she was not under arrest; she was never told that she was not free to leave; she did not seek to end the encounter, or to leave the house, or to join her husband; the tone of the questioning was largely conversational; there is no indication that the agents raised their voices, showed firearms, or made threats. Her movements were monitored but not restricted, certainly not to the degree of a person under formal arrest. She was thus never “completely at the mercy of” the agents in her home. Therefore, the court concluded that defendant's statements should not have been suppressed, because no Miranda warnings were necessary. The court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Faux" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of charges related to his role as a closing attorney in several real estate transactions in upstate New York from approximately 2001 until 2007. The court focused primarily on defendant's challenge to the three substantive counts of conviction involving activity directed at BNC. The court held that evidence of fraudulent activity directed at BNC is not enough to support convictions under 18 U.S.C. 1344 (bank fraud) and 1014 (false statements) solely by virtue of the fact that BNC was owned by a federally insured financial institution. Therefore, the court reversed defendant's convictions on the three substantive counts. However, the court concluded that the conspiracy to violate section 1014 count of conviction involved fraudulent misstatements made directly to a federally insured bank. Therefore, the court affirmed defendant's conviction on that count and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Bouchard" on Justia Law

Defendants Rivernider and Ponte plead guilty to charges arising from their orchestration of a Ponzi scheme and a related real estate scheme, in which defendants induced victims to purchase properties using mortgages based on an inflated appraisal price while pocketing the difference between the actual sales price and appraisal price as a “marketing fee,” without disclosing the fee to the buyer. The court concluded that the district court did not err in failing to appoint new counsel to represent Rivernider with respect to his motion to withdraw, or in denying his pro se motion, because there was a sufficient factual basis for Rivernider’s plea and because Rivernider did not sufficiently allege an actual conflict of interest between himself and his attorney. The court also rejected defendants’ challenges to their sentences and to the $22,140,765.99 restitution order. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Rivernider" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for narcoterrorism conspiracy (Count One); cocaine-importation conspiracy (Count Two); conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization (Count Three); and conspiracy to acquire and transfer anti-aircraft missiles (Count Four). The court concluded that the district court properly denied defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment for lack of jurisdiction and rejected defendant's argument that Colombia violated the extradition treaty between it and the United States; the evidence at trial was sufficient to prove he knowingly participated in any of the conspiracies with which he was charged; the district court's supplemental "mere presence" instruction in response to a jury note was proper; and Count Three was not multiplicitous with Count One. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Garavito-Garcia" on Justia Law