Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Appellant, as personal representative of her brother's estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) detective and contended on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principal issue concerned the district court's rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding the altercation between the detective and appellant's brother. A related issue involved a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The court held that there was no abuse of discretion by the district court. The record revealed that the district court properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudice the government. The court held that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert's disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but that the violation was harmless and so the district court's refusal to strike the expert's testimony was not an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, because appellant's other claims of error and her bias claim were unpersuasive, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant appealed his conviction for attempted enticement of a minor and for traveling across state lines with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. At issue was whether the evidence was sufficient to support his convictions; whether his counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel; and whether the conditions of supervised release the district court imposed were erroneous. The court held that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find the necessary intent beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant committed the crimes. The court remanded defendant's ineffective assistance claims for analysis by the district court in the first instance. The court further held that defendant's challenge to the condition that restricted his loitering in arcades and parks and on possessing a camera were foreclosed by United States v. Love where the Love court withheld the same conditions on plain error review. The court also held that the computer-related conditions of supervised release were not plainly erroneous.

In 1988, defendant was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape while armed; assaulting, resisting or interfering with a police officer with a dangerous weapon; and two counts of first-degree burglary while armed. Defendant was sentenced to prison for 18 years to life and while defendant was in prison, the District of Columbia enacted the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA), D.C. Code 22-4001 to -4017. Defendant challenged SORA under various provisions of the U.S. Constitution, most notably the Ex Post Facto Clause. The court held that, like the sex offender registration requirement in Smith v. Doe, SORA's registration requirement did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause where neither the Council of District Columbia's intent nor SORA's effects were so punitive as to render SORA a form of punishment. The court also held that defendant failed to show that he was entitled to relief in regards to his Fifth Amendment claims. The court further rejected defendant's Eighth Amendment and equal protection claim and defendant's claim under the D.C. Human Rights Act. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Petitioner was incarcerated when he petitioned the court for writs of mandamus to prevent the district court from transferring two of his civil cases to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. The court had recently held that the filing fee provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 38 U.S.C. 1915(b), applied to a prisoner who filed a petition for writ of mandamus in connection with an underlying civil case. At issue was whether the PLRA's three-strikes provision, section 1915(g), likewise applied to a mandamus petition in an underlying civil case. The court held that petitioner's mandamus petitions were subject to the PLRA's three-strikes provision and consequently, petitioner was barred from proceeding in forma pauperis where the underlying actions, which the district court ordered to be transferred to Maryland, were civil in nature. Therefore, the court denied the motions for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and ordered petitioner to pay the full fee in each case before the court would consider his petitions.

Petitioner petitioned the court on July 14, 2010, for a writ of mandamus to compel the district court to grant him in forma pauperis status and permit him to file his civil rights damages suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983. At issue was whether a dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim based on Heck v. Humphrey counted as a "strike" under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 38 U.S.C. 1915(g). The court concluded that it did and joined the Fifth and Tenth Circuits in holding that in the absence of proof "that the conviction or sentence ha[d] been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus," the petitioner failed to state a claim for purposes of section 1915(g). Accordingly, because petitioner, while incarcerated, had filed at least three civil actions that were dismissed on the ground that they were frivolous, malicious, or failed to state a claim, and he had neither offered any valid reason as to why he should not be required to pay in full the appellate filing fee before the court would consider his mandamus petition, nor claimed he was in imminent danger within the meaning of the exception under section 1915(g) of the PLRA's three-strikes provision, the court denied petitioner's motion for leave to appeal in forma pauperis and ordered him to pay the full fee before the court would consider his petition.

Defendant was convicted of federal insider trading crimes and subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking information from the FBI that he believed would show misconduct by the federal investigators and prosecutors handling the case. At issue was whether the FBI could withhold certain documents pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E). As a preliminary matter, the court held that the documents sought in the case qualified as "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes" under 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7). The court also held that defendant failed to meet the demanding National Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish test for challenging the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(C), which protected personal privacy. The court also upheld the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protected certain law enforcement techniques and procedures, where release of certain information at issue would expose computer forensic vulnerabilities to potential criminals and where disclosure of certain information at issue "could enable criminals to employ countermeasures to avoid detection, thus jeopardizing the FBI's investigatory missions." The court briefly addressed and disposed of defendant's two other claims. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Appellant, a citizen of El Salvador, pleaded guilty to violating 8 U.S.C. 1326(a), and 1326(b)(2), which together prohibited the illegal reentry of an alien who had been deported following an aggravated felony conviction. The district court twice sentenced appellant. The court reversed both times, remanding each time for resentencing - first, because the district court did not consider appellant's Guidelines range under United States v. Booker, and second, because the district court incorrectly calculated appellant's Guidelines range when it did consider it. Appellant appealed his third sentence which resulted in an 84 month prison sentence because the court varied upward from appellant's calculated Guidelines range on the basis of the factors articulated in section 3553(a). The court held that the district court correctly calculated the Guidelines range and its subsequent findings of fact about appellant's Virginia abduction offense were not clearly erroneous. The court also held that the district court's judgment presented a "reasoned and reasonable decision that the section 3553(a) factors, on the whole justified the sentence." Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence because the district court adequately explained its sentencing decision.

Defendant pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea where he maintained that he had not understood that he was pleading guilty to conspiracy and in failing to order a competency hearing before doing so. The court held that, because it found no taint in the taking of defendant's plea, nor any unreasonableness in the district court's determination that defendant had failed to assert a viable claim of innocence, the court found no abuse of discretion in the denial of defendant's motion to withdraw his plea. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his plea without first holding a competency hearing or ordering another examination where the district court had the opportunity, over the course of six hearings, to speak with defendant and observe his demeanor and where there was nothing in the record before the court to give it "reasonable cause" to believe that defendant might be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him incompetent under 18 U.S.C. 4241(a). Accordingly, the district court's denial of defendant's motion was affirmed.

Defendant appealed from his convictions for multiple bank robberies and contended that his trial violated the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(b), 3162(a)(1), that the district court erred in limiting the scope of his counsel's closing argument, and that the court further erred in admitting evidence of an additionally, uncharged bank robbery. The court held that the district court did not violate defendant's rights under the Speedy Trial Act when it did not dismiss his indictment pursuant to the 30 day complaint-to-indictment clock where it applied the exception in section 3162(h) and held that May 23, 2008 was an excluded day because the government made an oral motion to commit defendant to the custody of the Attorney General on that day. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the scope of counsel's closing argument regarding the "best practices" standard for law enforcement officers and DNA evidence. The court further held that, even if it were erroneous, the admission of evidence of the uncharged bank robbery in Virginia was harmless because it did not have a "substantial and injurious effect or influence" on the jury's verdict. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

In this Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(3)(A), case, a Texas death-row inmate sought information from the FBI that he alleged might corroborate his claim that four other men actually committed the quadruple homicide for which he was convicted. At issue was whether the FBI's Glomar response was permitted under FOIA Exemption 7(c), which permitted agencies to withhold information contained in law enforcement records to protect against unwanted invasions of personal privacy. The court held that the public had an interest in knowing whether the federal government was withholding information that could corroborate a death-row inmate's claim of innocence and that interest outweighed the three men's privacy interest in having the FBI not disclose whether it possessed any information linking them to the murders. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's approval of the FBI's Glomar response and, with minor exceptions, affirmed the district court's rejection of appellant's other arguments.