Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

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

Defendant plead guilty to conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine, cocaine base, heroin, and marijuana, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court concluded that defendant's plea was not entered voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently. The court explained that, in the plea hearing, the impression was given that there was a range of sentencing options: the judge spoke of "the potential sentences"; the prosecutor gave an account of multiple maximum and minimum sentences, discussed supervised release, and warned of the forfeiture of rights (including the right to hold public office); and the court and prosecutor discussed Sentencing Guidelines ranges and judicial discretion to weigh the facts and circumstances. Furthermore, the sentencing transcript suggested that defendant's counsel may not have understood the inexorable nature of the sentence either, and defendant's assertion that he would have gone to trial if he knew that a life sentence was foreordained was rendered plausible by the arresting fact that he derived absolutely no benefit or advantage from the plea. Accordingly, the court vacated the plea, directed that the case be reassigned, and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Defendants Monsalvatge, Byam, and Dunkley appealed their convictions stemming from their armed robberies of two Pay‐O‐Matic check‐cashing stores. A summary order filed simultaneously with this opinion addressed the balance of defendants' claims on appeal. At issue here was Monsalvatge's claims, which Dunkley joined, regarding whether the district court abused its discretion in admitting into evidence at trial four clips from the 2010 film, The Town. The Government argued that defendants altered their modus operandi to carry out the second robbery in a manner resembling robberies depicted in the movie. The court concluded that the district court's ruling to admit the clips was not arbitrary and irrational; the clips were relevant to the issues and defendants in the case and, importantly, they were short and narrowly tailored; and the district court provided not one but two curative instructions to minimize any potential for prejudice from the few differences between the clips and the 2012 robbery. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgments of conviction as to Monsalvatge and Byam; affirmed Counts One, Four, and Five as to Dunkley; and reversed Counts Two and Three as to Dunkley. The court remanded for resentencing as to Dunkley. View "United States v. Monsalvatge" on Justia Law

Defendants Dey and Finazzo were involved in a conspiracy to use South Bay as a supplier of Aeropostale apparel in exchange for secret payments. Finazzo was a former merchandising executive for Aeropostale, and Dey controlled South Bay, a clothing vendor. Dey plead guilty to conspiracy, and a jury convicted Finazzo of one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and to violate the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. 371, fourteen counts of mail fraud, and one count of wire fraud. The court affirmed the district court's jury instructions regarding the "right to control" property under the mail and wire fraud statutes; concluded that there was sufficient evidence to support the challenged portions of the jury verdict; but, vacated and remanded the district court's restitution order as to Finazzo and Dey. In a simultaneously issued summary order, the court affirmed the remaining issues on appeal. View "United States v. Finazzo" on Justia Law

Defendants Natal and Morales appealed their sentences and convictions for crimes including arson resulting in death, accessory after the fact to arson, and destruction and concealment of evidence. The court held that testimony on how cell phone towers operate constitutes expert testimony and may not be introduced through a lay witness; the admission in the instant case of lay opinion testimony on the operation of cell phone towers was harmless; the court held that Morales's conviction for destruction and concealment of evidence must be vacated in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Yates v. United States, handed down shortly after Morales filed the instant appeal; the court remanded Morales's case to the district court to vacate Morales's conviction for destruction and concealment of evidence, and, pursuant to United States v. Powers, to conduct de novo resentencing of Morales; and, as part of the district court's calculation of Morales's Guidelines range at the resentencing, Morales's three counts of conviction for accessory after the fact should be grouped pursuant to USSG 3D1.2. The court rejected defendants' other claims. Accordingly, the court upheld all counts of conviction except Morales's conviction for destruction and concealment of evidence, and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Natal" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, 20 state pretrial detainees, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the City and the supervisory officers of a pre-arraignment holding facility were deliberately indifferent to allegedly unconstitutional conditions of confinement at the holding facility. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants, denied plaintiffs' motion to reconsider; and denied a subsequent motion to reconsider the denial of the motion for reconsideration. The court affirmed the district court's judgment as to claims plaintiffs concede were properly dismissed. However, the court concluded that the district court misapplied this court's precedents in assessing whether plaintiffs had established an objectively serious deprivation. In Willey v. Kirkpatrick, the court recently reiterated that the proper lens through which to analyze allegedly unconstitutional unsanitary conditions of confinement is with reference to their severity and duration, not the detainee's resulting injury. Furthermore, the Supreme Court's decision in Kingsley v. Hendrickson dictates that deliberate indifference be measured objectively in due process cases. In this case, the district court did not analyze the implications of Kingsley in its opinion. Therefore, the court vacated in part and remanded for further proceedings. View "Darnell v. City of New York" on Justia Law