Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

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

Petitioner appealed the denial of habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254, alleging that his right to be free from double jeopardy was violated when the New York State court that had sentenced him in 2000 to 11 years of imprisonment amended his sentence - after he had been imprisoned for 11 years but remained imprisoned because of additional crimes he committed during that 11-year period - by adding a term of post-release supervision that, under New York law, was required to be part of his 2000 sentence. The court held that it is not contrary to or an unreasonable application of United States v. DiFrancesco for a state court to hold that the Double Jeopardy Clause permits the resentencing of a prisoner while he is still in prison, when such resentencing is necessary to impose a term of supervised release required by statute. The court also concluded that the State court's decision that Smith had no legitimate expectation that his determinate sentence had become final, based on the court's conclusion that his judicially imposed sentences could properly be aggregated by DOCCS pursuant to N.Y. Penal Law 70.30 without further participation by the court, and on the fact that because of his intervening crimes he had not been released, did not constitute an unreasonable application of Hill v. United States ex rel. Wampler. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Smith v. Wenderlich" on Justia Law

Defendant John G. Rowland, the former governor of Connecticut, appealed his conviction of seven counts of violating campaign-finance laws and falsifying records. The court concluded that the broad language of 18 U.S.C. 1519 encompasses the creation of 18 documents - like the contracts at issue here - that misrepresent the true nature of the parties’ negotiations, when the documents are created in order to frustrate a possible future government investigation; the court rejected defendant's assertion that principles of contract law prevent the court from concluding that documents styled as contracts are “falsified” within the meaning of the statute; the court determined that the government adequately disclosed Lisa Wilson‐Foley’s statements to defendant, and that even if it did not, he is not able to show that he was prejudiced by the deficiency; and the court rejected defendant's challenges to the District Court’s other rulings at trial and at sentencing. View "United States v. Rowland" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. On appeal, defendant challenged his sentence, arguing that the district court miscalculated his guidelines range and that the sentence is otherwise procedurally and substantively unreasonable. The court rejected defendant's challenge to the guidelines calculations. However, the court concluded that the sentencing transcript suggests that the district court may have based its sentence on a clearly erroneous understanding of the facts. In this case, given the district court's emphasis on the fact that defendant destroyed the lives of "three specific children," when one of the victims had no knowledge of having been victimized by defendant, the court concluded that it is appropriate to remand for resentencing to ensure that the sentence is not based on a clearly erroneous understanding of the facts. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged the denial of his motion for a sentence modification under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). Defendant had received a sentence modification in 2011 based upon Amendment 750 to the Sentencing Guidelines and sought a second modification in 2015 based upon Amendment 782. The court held that when a defendant is serving a term of imprisonment that has been modified pursuant to section 3582(c)(2), his sentence is “based on” the guideline range applied at his most recent sentence modification, rather than the range applied at his original sentencing. In this case, because defendant’s sentence is “based on” a guideline range of 235 to 293 months and that range has not subsequently been lowered by Amendment 782, he is ineligible for a sentence modification. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Derry" on Justia Law

On this interlocutory appeal, the United States challenges the district court's order suppressing drugs and money seized incident to defendant's arrest in the home of Shonsai Dickson. The court concluded that, whether the subject of an arrest warrant is apprehended in his own home or a third‐party residence where he is a guest, his Fourth Amendment privacy rights with respect to entry of either premises are those stated in Payton v. New York, at the time of entry, arresting officers must possess (a) a valid arrest warrant for the subject and (b) reason to believe that the subject is then in the premises. The third‐party resident’s Fourth Amendment right in such circumstances to have the entry into his home authorized by a search warrant, does not extend to the subject of the arrest warrant. The court also concluded that the totality of circumstances known to law enforcement authorities at the time they entered third party Dickson’s residence to execute a valid warrant for defendant’s arrest supported reason to believe that defendant was then in those premises. Accordingly, the court vacated the suppression order to the extent it concluded that the entry of Dickson’s apartment violated defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights, and remanded. View "United States v. Bohannon" on Justia Law

Defendants were found liable under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), 12 U.S.C. 1833a, for mail and wire fraud affecting a federally insured financial institution. The Government alleged that defendants violated the federal mail and wire fraud statutes by selling poor-quality mortgages to government-sponsored entities. Defendants argue that the evidence at trial shows at most an intentional breach of contract and is insufficient as a matter of law to find fraud. The court agreed with defendants that the trial evidence fails to demonstrate the contemporaneous fraudulent intent necessary to prove a scheme to defraud through contractual promises. Accordingly, the court reversed with instructions to enter judgment in favor of defendants. View "United States ex rel. O’Donnell v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc." on Justia Law