Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his convictions for drug conspiracy charges, arguing that the 26-month delay between his arrest and the start of his trial violated the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161 et seq., and the Sixth Amendment. Because the district court's grant of the 270-day ends-of-justice continuance was both substantively and procedurally valid, the court concluded that the district court properly excluded the 104 days between January and July 2004 that defendant alleged should have been counted under the Act. The various days between late June 2005 and January 2006 at issue were also properly excluded. Because any error was not "clear or obvious" under the Barker v. Wingo analysis, the court was unpersuaded by defendant's Sixth Amendment challenges. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Rice" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine. On appeal, defendant claimed that counsel's prior representation of an individual involved in the same arrest created an impermissible conflict of interest. The court concluded that, even under the Cuyler v. Sullivan standard applied to cases involving successive representation, defendant still had to demonstrate that counsel's alleged conflict of interest adversely affected his performance. Defendant has not done so where defendant claimed that counsel's performance was defective because counsel coerced defendant into pleading guilty but the record conclusively showed that defendant's guilty plea was voluntary, not coerced. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of conviction because the record conclusively rebutted defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. View "United States v. Wright" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his conviction and sentence for witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The court concluded that defendant failed to show that his counsel's failure to invoke an entrapment defense prejudiced defendant. The court also concluded that the district court did not commit plain error in sentencing defendant under U.S.S.G. 2J1.2 to concurrent sentences for the same length, one for witness tampering, the other for obstruction of justice. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Solofa" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to drug offenses, but reserved his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. Finding no waiver of defendant's argument, the court concluded that the July 2009 search was unlawful because defendant's grandmother could not lawfully permit the police to search defendant's closed shoebox. The court vacated the portion of the district court's order relating to the evidence seized in the January 2010 search and remanded to let the district court have the first opportunity to address whether the evidence seized in January was the fruit of the unlawful search of the shoebox. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Peyton" on Justia Law

Defendants Jones, Thurston, and Ball were convicted of distributing small quantities of crack cocaine, but acquitted of conspiracy to distribute drugs. On appeal, defendants challenged their sentences. The court concluded that, given the highly corroborated accounts of defendants' conspiratorial conduct and the district court's evident care in weighing the evidence, it was not clearly erroneous to find that defendants had conspired to distribute crack; nor was it clearly erroneous for the district court to find that the evidence established a single conspiracy; the court rejected defendants' remaining procedural challenges; and defendants's below-guidelines sentences were substantively reasonable. The court rejected defendants' claim that their sentences violated their Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury because they were based, in part, on defendants' supposed involvement in the very conspiracy that the jury acquitted them of participating in. The court held that binding precedent of the court established that the practice did not violate the Sixth Amendment when the conduct was established by a preponderance of the evidence and the sentence did not exceed the statutory maximum for the crime. Finally, even if Thurston and Bell suffered a constitutional injury under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161-3174, the sentence reductions they received were adequate remedies. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendants' sentences. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

In 2009, defendant was sentenced to 180 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of crack cocaine. In 2011, the Sentencing Commission gave retroactive effect to an amendment to the Sentencing Guidelines lowering base offense levels for offenses involving crack cocaine. The court joined its sister circuits in upholding U.S.S.G. 1B1.10 as a lawful exercise of the Sentencing Commission's powers. Because U.S.S.G. 1B10(b)(2)(A) barred sentencing reductions below the applicable amended guideline range, and because defendant's sentence was already below that range, the district court properly held that a reduction in his sentence was unavailable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court, rejecting defendant's challenge to the validity of U.S.S.G. 1B10(b)(2)(A). View "United States v. Taylor" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's motion to suppress evidence. While waiting to execute a search warrant at the home of an arrested murder suspect, police saw defendant leave the house. Police pulled up to defendant and ordered him to put his hands on a nearby car, defendant obeyed and then fled a few seconds later, discarding guns and drugs. The court concluded that a seizure occurred where defendant's action of putting his hands on the car when told to do so by the police constituted full compliance. The court concluded that defendant's seizure was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment where a Summers-Bailey stop was inapplicable and where the government did not attempt to justify the stop as a Terry stop. Further, the government had not met its burden to show attenuation between the illegal seizure and the discovery of the guns and drugs. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Brodie" on Justia Law

Petitioners, detainees who have been cleared for release but remain held at Guantanamo Bay, engaged in a hunger strike unless and until they were released. The government subsequently instituted a force-feeding protocol. Petitioners invoked the district court's habeas jurisdiction and moved for a preliminary injunction prohibiting the authorities from force-feeding them. Two district courts denied petitioners' request, concluding that the Military Commissions Act (MCA), Pub. L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600, stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to consider such challenges brought by Guantanamo detainees. The court concluded that, under the law of this circuit, petitioners' challenges to the conditions of their confinement properly sounded in habeas corpus and were not barred by the MCA. The court concluded, however, that petitioners failed to establish their entitlement to preliminary injunctive relief. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district courts' denials of petitioners' applications for a preliminary injunction. View "Aamer, et al. v. Obama, et al." on Justia Law

In 2008, Defendants Wyche and Smith moved for sentence reductions after amendments to the United States Sentencing Guidelines lowered the sentencing ranges for cocaine base crimes. The district court granted Smith's motion but did not then rule on Wyche's motion. In 2011, Wyche and Smith filed resentencing motions after the Sentencing Commission again lowered the sentencing ranges for cocaine base offenses. The district court denied Smith's most recent resentencing motion and both of Wyche's motions. Because Wyche's pre-2011 amendment total offense level was 41, his total offense level and guideline range under the 2011 amendment would in fact increase, thereby precluding relief under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). Because the record reflected that the 2012 district court's calculation of 8.4 kilograms was not clearly erroneous, a quantity finding greater than 840 grams of cocaine base was not clearly erroneous either. And because Smith was not eligible for a second sentence reduction, the 2012 district court did not abuse its discretion in denying his motion. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgments. View "United States v. Wyche" on Justia Law

Appellant, a federal death row inmate, moved to intervene in this lawsuit, which challenged the government's method of carrying out lethal injections and its failure to disclose its execution procedures. The district court denied the motion. As a preliminary matter, the court concluded that the this suit still presents a live controversy and was, therefore, not moot. The court also concluded that appellant's intervention was timely. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded, directing the district court to grant appellant's motion to intervene as of right where granting the intervention was highly unlikely to disadvantage the existing parties. View "Roane, et al. v. Tandy, et al." on Justia Law