Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Seven years after her term of probation ended, petitioner moved to have her conviction for health care fraud expunged because her conviction prevented her from getting or keeping a job as a home health aide. At issue is whether the district court has ancillary jurisdiction to expunge all records of a valid conviction. The district court relied on States v. Schnitzer and Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Insurance Company of Americas and held that it had ancillary jurisdiction to consider and grant petitioner's motion. However, the court held that Schnitzer only applies to arrest records after an order of dismissal. Therefore, the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider petitioner's motion to expunge records of a valid conviction. The court vacated and remanded with instructions. View "Doe v. United States" on Justia Law

Petitioner seeks a certificate of appealability to challenge the district court’s order denying his Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d) motion to set aside the court’s order denying his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion.  In Kellogg v. Strack, the court held that a COA is required to appeal a district court’s denial of a Rule 60(b) motion for relief from judgment when the underlying order denied 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas relief. The court held that, because the principles animating Kellogg apply with equal force in the Rule 60(d) context, a COA is required to appeal a district court’s denial of a Rule 60(d) motion when the underlying order denied section 2255 relief. Accordingly, the court denied the motion for a COA and dismissed the appeal. View "Torres v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for theft of government property in violation of 18 U.S.C. 641. Defendant principally argues that his conviction of a section 641 felony violated the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because a violation of that section is a felony only if the value of the property stolen exceeded $1,000, and the indictment on which he was tried charged only a misdemeanor because it did not allege the value of the property stolen. The court concluded that the value of the property stolen is an element of the section 641 felony offense and that, in order to charge defendant with the felony, the indictment on which he was tried should have alleged that the value of the property stolen exceeded $1,000. However, in the circumstances of this case, in which, inter alia, the defense was fully aware, well in advance of the trial, of the government's intent to prosecute the offense as a felony, and the evidence that hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of government property had been stolen was overwhelming, the violation of the Grand Jury Clause was harmless. The court found no merit in defendant's remaining arguments and affirmed the conviction. View "United States v. Lee" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance on board an aircraft registered in the United States and possessing with intent to distribute a controlled substance on board an aircraft registered in the United States. The court held that defendant's conduct falls squarely within the ambit of 21 U.S.C. 959 and that the district court's exercise of jurisdiction was consistent with due process. In this case, a sufficient nexus existed between defendant's extraterritorial conduct and the United States, and defendant's ignorance of the aircraft's registration in the United States does not implicate due process. The court concluded that the remainder of defendant's arguments do not warrant significant explanation and are resolved by a separate Summary Order. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Epskamp" on Justia Law

Defendants Jiamez-Dolores and Degante-Galeno were convicted of crimes related to their involvement in a prostitution ring, which involved four separate brothels and a delivery service by which women would be driven directly to customers' residences. The court concluded that Degante-Galeno’s 60 month sentence was substantively reasonable where the district court considered the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors. In addition to considering his role in the offense, the district court based the sentence on his complicity in the coercion applied to the victims - some of whom were forced into prostitution, the duration of his participation in the conspiracy, and his failure to acknowledge fully the seriousness of the offense. The court also concluded that Jiamez-Dolores's 60 month sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable. In this case, the record reflects the district court’s thorough, individualized consideration of the section 3553(a) factors and its justifications for imposing an upward variance in Jiamez-Dolores’s case. The court considered defendants' remaining arguments and found them to be without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Jiamez-Dolores" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for a firearm-related murder committed in the course of a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 924(c), in this case, Hobbs Act robbery, as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1851(b)(1). The court held that Hobbs Act robbery is a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(3). The court found that Hobbs Act robbery qualifies categorically as a crime of violence under the statute’s "force clause," and the court rejected defendant's argument that the Supreme Court in Johnson v. United States effectively rendered the “risk‐of‐force clause,” under section 924(c)(3)(B), void for vagueness. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction. View "United States v. Hill" on Justia Law

Years after Steven Greenfield was implicated in tax evasion as a result of a document leak, the Government issued a summons for Greenfield’s records, including documents relating to all of Greenfield’s financial accounts and documents pertaining to the ownership and management of offshore entities controlled by Greenfield. Greenfield opposed production and moved to quash the summons based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The district court granted enforcement as to a subset of the records demanded by the summons. The court found that, for all but a small subset of the documents covered by the order, the Government has not demonstrated that it is a foregone conclusion that the documents existed, were in Greenfield’s control, and were authentic even in 2001. Second, the court found that the Government has failed to present any evidence that it was a foregone conclusion that any of the documents subject to the summons remained in Greenfield’s control through 2013, when the summons was issued. Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's order and remanded, because the Government has not made the showing that is necessary to render Greenfield’s production of the documents non-testimonial and, hence, exempt from Fifth Amendment challenge. View "United States v. Greenfield" on Justia Law

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