Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant, a pimp who prostituted underage girls, was convicted of various federal sexual abuse crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Defendant appealed the denial of his request to unseal the records of two material witnesses, claiming that the First Amendment guaranteed a right of access to material witness proceedings. The court assumed arguendo that the qualified First Amendment right of access to judicial proceedings extended to material witness proceedings. The court held that, even so, under the First Amendment access precedents, the public was not entitled to the records here, which contained "substantial amounts of material of an especially personal and private nature relating to the medical, educational, and mental health progress" of the victims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the orders of the district court.

Since 2005, appellant, a dual citizen of Jordan and the United States, had pursued a habeas corpus petition to block his transfer to Iraq's government where the United States military had detained him in Iraq based on evidence that he participated in al Qaeda's terrorist activities there. Appellant argued that he could not be transferred to the custody of Iraqi officials because he was likely to be tortured after his transfer. At issue was whether the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 ("FARR"), 8 U.S.C. 1231, which had been supplemented by the REAL ID Act of 2005, 8 U.S.C. 1252(a)(4), gave him a right to judicial review of conditions in the receiving country before he could be transferred. Also at issue was whether appellant was entitled under the Constitution's habeas corpus guarantee to judicial review of his likely treatment in the receiving country. The court held that the FARR Act and the REAL ID Act did not give military transferees such as appellant a right to judicial review of their likely treatment in the receiving country. The court also held that the Supreme Court had already ruled when considering appellant's case in Munaf v. Geren, that the Constitution's guarantee of habeas corpus did not encompass a guarantee to judicial review. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's denial of appellant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus and in so doing, recognized that the policy arguments supporting appellant's position were not insubstantial. The court noted that Congress remained free to provide military transferees such as appellant with a right to judicial review of conditions in the receiving country before they were transferred.

Appellant, a primary care physician who served Medicaid patients in the District of Columbia, appealed his convictions for health care fraud and for making false statements relating to health care matters, as well as his 53 month prison sentence. At issue was whether the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly refused to give the good faith instruction appellant requested. Also at issue was whether appellant's sentence was procedurally unreasonable. The court found no merit in appellant's assertions of trial errors and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The court held, however, that because the district gave an inadequate explanation for its above-Guidelines sentence and because this procedural defect amounted to plain error, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for further proceedings.

The United States appealed from the district court's decision granting defendant's petition for writ of habeas corpus. At issue was whether the district court improperly concluded that the government failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant was "part of" al Qaeda. The court held that the government had demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant could be detained where the district court clearly erred in regarding another detainee's statements as unreliable, improperly excluded it from consideration, and failed to give it sufficient weight to the reliable evidence it did consider. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions to the district court to deny defendant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Defendant was indicted for unlawful possession of a firearm and despite his repeated request for a speedy trial of his one-count single defendant case, 436 days passed before his trial began. In delaying the trial, the district court relied on a government filing, styled as a "motion" to admit evidence of other crimes pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) as a placeholder that would suspend the 70 day time limit under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(c)(1). At issue was whether defendant's Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel was violated when counsel failed to challenge whether a Rule 404(b) filing tolled the 70 day period under the Act. The court held that counsel's failure to challenge the district court's exclusion of time following the Rule 404(b) filing caused counsel to overlook court precedent holding that a closely analogous evidentiary filing did not toll the Act; the prosecutor's expression of concern during a hearing that the Rule 404(b) filing did not toll the Act's clock; and defendant's own repeated pleas to the district court and his counsel to scrutinize the record for a violation under the Act. Therefore, under the circumstances, the court vacated the judgment of conviction and remanded where the performance of counsel was constitutionally deficient.

In 2009, defendant pled guilty to a one-count information charging him with possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(5)(B) and, in light of his 1999 Michigan state court proceeding where he pled guilty to distributing child pornography, the district court sentenced him to ten years imprisonment. At issue was whether defendant had such a "prior conviction" under the laws of the State of Michigan. The court concluded that if defendant had been convicted in state court of the conduct for which he was sentenced in federal court, his assignment under the Michigan Holmes Act, Mich. Comp. Laws 762.11, would have been treated as a "conviction" for determining his minimum sentence. It followed that even if Michigan law determined defendant's minimum federal sentence, he had a prior conviction under Michigan law relating to child pornography. Therefore, the court held that the district court properly imposed the ten year mandatory minimum sentence pursuant to section 2252A(b)(2).

Appellant, a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appealed the district court's denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. Appellant claimed there was insufficient evidence to find that he was part of al-Qaida and that the district court relied on evidence outside the record, abused its discretion in denying additional discovery, and committed various legal errors. The court affirmed the district court's denial and held that a preponderance of the evidence unmistakably showed that appellant was part of al-Qaida in light of his guesthouse and military training camp admissions, his carrying a rifle at the behest of camp superiors, and his suspicious movements and implausible narrative of his final capture in the company of at least one known al-Qaida operative.

Appellant appealed his conviction of seven counts of bank fraud and four counts of immigration fraud whereby he filed hundreds of applications for labor certification containing false representations that various shell companies he controlled would employ his alien clients and he reproduced counterfeit checks to draw on his clients' banks accounts involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. At issue was whether the district court erred in determining that appellant's waiver of his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment was unequivocal and voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The court held that the district court might have been well advised to inquire about appellant's waiver of counsel on the same day it accepted the waiver, but in viewing the proceedings as a whole, the court concluded that the district court's colloquy was constitutionally adequate to confirm that he voluntarily chose to represent himself and did so knowingly and intelligently. The court also held that, assuming there was a Sixth Amendment right to prepare a pro se defense upon self-representation, appellant failed to show he was denied adequate access to business records seized by law enforcement or that he was prejudiced in his defense by limitations on access to those materials and other government discovery. The court further held that all but one of appellant's challenges to the enhancements imposed by the district court in sentencing lacked merit and as to that enhancement, there was insufficient evidence to show that appellant was a leader under U.S.S.G. 3B1.1. Accordingly, the court confirmed the conviction and remanded for resentencing.

Appellant filed a suit against appellees, including the police officer that arrested her, alleging violations of her First and Fourth Amendment rights where the officer arrested her when she refused to stop what she described as "silent expressive dancing" inside the Jefferson Memorial. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed appellant's complaint for failure to state a claim. The court affirmed the dismissal and held that appellant was lawfully arrested for violating the reasonable regulations that govern the Jefferson Memorial, a nonpublic forum reserved for the tranquil commemoration of Mr. Jefferson's legacy, and that the officer had probable cause to make the arrest and used reasonable force to subdue her without injury after she twice refused his lawful orders.

A jury found David Safavian, Chief of Staff of the General Services Administration ("GSA"), guilty on four counts of a five-count indictment where his convictions were related to a golf trip he took with Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist, who had asked Safavian for information about two properties the GSA owned. At issue was whether Counts Three and Five should be vacated on the grounds of prosecutorial vindictiveness; whether Counts Two and Five should be vacated on the grounds that the government failed to prove Safavian's false statements to the ethics officer and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") were materially within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(1); and whether a new trial should be granted on Count One and Count Three where the district court improperly admitted evidence regarding the cost of the private plane. The court held that so long as Safavian's false statements were capable of influencing the course of the FBI's investigation, those statements were material within the meaning of section 1001(a)(1). The court also held that the district court did not clearly err in presuming vindictiveness on the part of the prosecution or in holding that the government overcame that presumption when it offered two reasons why the addition of Count Five was not vindictive. The court further held that its reasons for rejecting Safavian's arguments pertaining to Counts One, Two, and Three were the same as those of the district court and did not need to repeat them.