Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioner, convicted of murder and related-offenses, sought review of the district court's denial of habeas relief, arguing that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to call a medical expert both to interpret the portion of his medical records documenting his blood alcohol level and to expound upon the effects of that level of intoxication. The Second Circuit vacated and remanded, holding that the state trial court's determination that petitioner failed to establish prejudice was not unreasonable; it was not so lacking in justification as to be beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement; and thus the district court erred in second-guess that determination and substituting its own judgment. View "Waiters v. Lee" on Justia Law

At issue in this appeal was whether defendant should have been acquitted of transporting an alien within the United States for profit in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) and 1324(a)(1)(B)(i). The Second Circuit reversed the conviction, holding that the evidence was insufficient to prove that defendant transported an alien "in furtherance of" the alien's illegal stay in the United States, as required by section 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) and by the district court's jury instructions. Although the Government did present evidence that defendant drove the alien to Pennsylvania Station in order to facilitate the alien's entry into Canada using a fraudulent passport, such a showing alone cannot establish a direct and substantial relationship between the transportation and an act in furtherance of the alien's unlawful presence in the United States. The Second Circuit remanded with instructions to dismiss the count and for de novo sentencing. View "United States v. Khalil" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to hear defendant's appeal of the denial of his Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29 and double jeopardy motions. Defendant has not stated a colorable double jeopardy claim that may be appealed before final judgment, as no event has occurred to terminate his original jeopardy from his first trial. The Second Circuit has previously held that the denial of a Rule 29 motion does not fall within the scope of the collateral order doctrine and may not be appealed prior to a final judgment. Accordingly, the appeals were dismissed based on lack of appellate jurisdiction and all pending motions were dismissed as moot. View "United States v. Serrano" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed Defendants Lyle and Van Praagh's conviction and sentence for drug trafficking charges. The Second Circuit held that the district court did not err in denying Lyle's motion to suppress where he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the rental car that he was driving without a license and without authority; Lyle's statement in his opening argument triggered the waiver of his proffer agreement, and the proffer statements rebutted his counsel's argument that he was a mere user of methamphetamine and not a dealer; the admission of Lyleʹs redacted proffer and post‐arrest statements in defendantsʹ joint trial was not plainly erroneous; the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence seized during Lyleʹs New Jersey arrest; the district court did not plainly err in failing to sua sponte give a buyer‐seller instruction to the jury; and Van Praaghʹs below‐Guidelines sentence of 144 monthsʹ imprisonment was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Lyle" on Justia Law

Defendant was found guilty of possessing a firearm as a previously convicted felon. At issue was whether the district court erred in denying defendant's motion to suppress the gun on Fourth Amendment grounds. The court concluded that the district court did not err by suppressing the motion because the officer had probable cause to arrest defendant inasmuch as she had a reasonable belief that an apartment‐building stairwell is a public place for purposes of the open‐container law and that defendant was violating that law.  Therefore, the warrantless search was a lawful search incident to arrest, even though the officer testified that before finding the gun she intended only to issue a summons, not to make an arrest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Diaz" on Justia Law

Defendant Key was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and several drug- and firearm-related offenses. On appeal, defendant principally challenged the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction for participating in the murder-for-hire conspiracy and the admission of evidence seized during a car stop and search of his apartment. The court concluded that the evidence offered at trial to prove the pecuniary value element of defendantʹs conviction for conspiracy to commit murder‐for‐hire was sufficient to support the guilty verdict, and that the challenged searches and seizures did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In this case, the officers had probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained contraband. After defendant's arrest, officers were entitled to conduct an inventory search, and thus the discovery of the evidence in the back of the car was inevitable. Furthermore, defendant's cell phones, iPad, and address book where in plain view in the apartment. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Babilonia" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of one count of possession of child pornography and one count of transportation of child pornography. The government proved at trial that defendant owned a collection of child pornography and brought it across the U.S.-Canada border on the way to a family vacation for his personal viewing. The district court imposed concurrent 120 months for the possession count and 225 months for the transportation count, as well as 25 years of supervised release. The court concluded that the factors upon which the district court relied— retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation, and the attributes of defendants and his crimes—cannot bear the weight of the sentence the district court imposed. The court also explained that its conclusion that the sentence was excessive was reinforced by the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities and by the need to avoid excessively severe conditions of supervised release. Therefore, defendant's sentence was substantively unreasonable. The court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Jenkins" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed two rulings by the district court vacating its order dated December 26, 2007, which had granted him more than $1.1 million in credits towards his restitution obligations pursuant to the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), 18 U.S.C. 3664(j)(2). The district court, recognizing nearly eight years after the fact that its December 2007 order had been prematurely entered, vacated the order sua sponte, drawing on its "inherent power to correct mistakes made in its handling of a case" and "power to grant relief from erroneous interlocutory orders." The court concluded that appeal of an 18 U.S.C. 3664(j)(2) order need not wait until a defendant's restitution obligations are fully satisfied and may be brought where the order conclusively determines a defendant's entitlement to credit under section 3664(j)(2) for particular funds. In this case, because the December 2007 order conclusively determined defendant's entitlement to particular funds recovered in two bankruptcy proceedings and was thus a final order, the district court lacked the authority to later vacate that order. Accordingly, the court vacated in part and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Yalincak" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed her conviction of one count of embezzling funds from her company's 401(k) plan, and the forfeiture order entered against her. The court affirmed the conviction in a summary order issued contemporaneously with this opinion. At issue here was the amount of defendant's forfeiture order. The court held that mandatory criminal forfeiture amounts may not be reduced by the amount of restitution in the absence of specific statutory authorization for such an offset. Because the district court lacked the discretion to reduce defendant's forfeiture order in this case, the court affirmed as to this issue. View "United States v. Bodouva" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted, among other crimes, of coercing and enticing a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity. The court held that the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress incriminating statements he made to law enforcement because he was not in custody at the time he made the statements; Federal Rule of Evidence 413 does not violate the Due Process Clause; and the district court did not err by permitting the government to introduce portions of four videos that showed defendant committing prior sexual assaults on two minor girls. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Schaffer" on Justia Law