Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of murder for hire and related charges. Defendant argues on appeal that the district court erred in ruling that certain defense arguments would open the door to the admission of statements made during a proffer session; the district court erred in admitting evidence of prior bad acts; and there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction. The court concluded that the district court erred in unduly restricting defendant's ability to defend against the charges, and that such error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Rosemond" on Justia Law

Defendant, the owner and operator of a freight service that couriered items to and from the United States and Canada, was found guilty of nine counts of tax-related offenses. Defendant was charged with violating 26 U.S.C. 7212(a), which imposes criminal liability on one who ʺcorruptly or by force or threats of force . . . endeavors to intimidate or impede any officer or employee of the United States acting in an official capacity under this title.” Another portion of the statute, often referred to as the ʺomnibus clause,ʺ imposes criminal liability on one who ʺin any other way corruptly . . . obstructs or impedes, or endeavors to obstruct or impede, the due administration of this title.ʺ On appeal, defendant argued that the court, like the Sixth Circuit, should construe the phrase ʺthe due administration of this titleʺ in the omnibus clause to include only a pending IRS action of which a defendant was aware. The court rejected defendant's argument and joined three of its sister circuits in concluding that section 7212(a)ʹs omnibus clause criminalizes corrupt interference with an official effort to administer the tax code, and not merely a known IRS investigation. The court also concluded that an omission may be a means by which a defendant corruptly obstructs or impedes the due administration of the Internal Revenue Code under section 7212(a). Finally, the court concluded that the district court did not commit procedural error by using the manner of calculating the tax loss and restitution amounts that it did, or by deciding not to apply a two‐level reduction to defendant's base offense level for acceptance of responsibility. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Marinello" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of possession of child pornography and then appealed his sentence of 84 months in prison. Defendant argued that the district court erred in calculating the Guidelines range by imposing a five-level enhancement under USSG 2G2.2(b)(3)(B) for distribution of child pornography “for the receipt, or expectation of receipt, of a thing of value” based on his use of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system to trade pornography. The court ultimately concluded that the manner in which defendant used file sharing warranted this enhancement, but held that the district court erred in describing the Guidelines range as above the statutory maximum for the charge. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Bennett" on Justia Law

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