Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
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In the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the case involved Peter Sotis, who was convicted for violating export controls. He had conspired to export diving equipment, specifically rebreathers, to Libya without a license, despite the Department of Commerce requiring a license to export certain products to Libya that implicate the United States’ national security interests.Sotis challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support each count of his conviction, the opinion testimony presented at trial, and the reasonableness of his 57-month sentence. He argued that there was insufficient evidence to prove willfulness, to prove that he and another individual had acted in conspiracy, and to prove that the rebreathers were closed-circuit, which would have resulted in a material and prejudicial variance from the indictment. He also claimed that one expert witness and one lay witness invaded the province of the jury by opining on an ultimate issue in the case.The Court of Appeals found that there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that Sotis had sufficient knowledge of the illegality of his conduct to have willfully violated the export control laws. The Court also found that the government sufficiently proved that Sotis conspired with another individual to violate the export control laws. Moreover, the Court rejected Sotis's argument that there was a material variance between the indictment and the evidence presented at trial.Regarding the expert and lay witness testimonies, the Court held that the testimonies were not improper. The Court also found that the district court did not err in applying the sentencing guidelines and that Sotis's sentence was not substantively unreasonable. As a result, the Court affirmed Sotis's conviction and sentence. View "USA v. Sotis" on Justia Law

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit considered an appeal by Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump, who sought to move his state criminal prosecution to federal court. The state of Georgia had indicted Meadows for crimes related to alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election. Meadows argued that because these actions were taken in his official capacity, they should be heard in federal court according to the federal-officer removal statute (28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1)). The district court denied this request because Meadows' charged conduct was not performed under the color of his federal office. The court of appeals affirmed this decision. It ruled that the federal-officer removal statute does not apply to former federal officers and even if it did, the alleged actions leading to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties. The court concluded that the former chief of staff’s role does not include influencing state officials with allegations of election fraud or altering valid election results in favor of a particular candidate, regardless of the chief of staff's role with respect to state election administration. Therefore, Meadows was not entitled to invoke the federal-officer removal statute. View "The State of Georgia v. Meadows" on Justia Law

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The case revolves around a defendant, Reginald McCoy, who was charged in 1990 with conspiracy to possess and possession of 50 grams or more of crack cocaine with the intent to distribute. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2019, McCoy filed a motion to reduce his sentence under § 404(b) of the First Step Act, which allows some defendants to have their sentences reevaluated under reduced statutory penalties for crack cocaine offenses that were implemented after their sentences became final. He argued that he should be able to object to the drug-quantity finding made at his original sentencing as he did not have reason to do so at the time because he did not know that the statutory sentencing thresholds would be lowered in the future. However, the district court denied McCoy's motion, concluding that it lacked the authority to reduce the sentence because McCoy was already serving the lowest statutory penalty available to him under the Fair Sentencing Act, which was life imprisonment. The court also ruled that it would not have exercised its discretion to reduce the sentence even if McCoy was eligible due to the large quantity of crack cocaine attributable to him and his "ongoing and excessive disciplinary infractions" while incarcerated.On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision. The court held that the First Step Act does not grant authority to relitigate a drug quantity finding made at the original sentencing. It also rejected McCoy's argument that the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act via the First Step Act violates due process. The court reasoned that it is impossible for courts to provide notice of a hypothetical future law whose passage is uncertain and whose operative text is uncertain. The court concluded that McCoy was not entitled to notice in 1991 of what the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act would provide decades later. View "USA v. McCoy" on Justia Law

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In the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the court reviewed the conviction of the defendant, Jirard Kincherlow, for coercing or enticing a minor into engaging in prostitution, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). The defendant had connected a fourteen-year-old girl, J.D., with adult men to engage in sexual activity for money, and advised her on how to make more money as a prostitute through social media messages. The defendant appealed his conviction on the grounds that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction, that the district court erred in its instructions to the jury, and that a variance between the language of the indictment and the jury charge denied him due process notice of the charge against him.The court held that the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant's conviction. The court ruled that presenting the opportunity or paying money for a minor to engage in prostitution qualifies as inducement under § 2422(b), and the defendant's actions went beyond merely offering an opportunity. The court also held that the district court did not err in denying the defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal. The court found that the district court did not err in its instructions to the jury regarding the definition of "induce". Lastly, the court held that the variance between the indictment and the proof did not affect the defendant's substantial rights and his ability to defend himself. Therefore, the court affirmed the defendant's conviction. View "USA v. Kincherlow" on Justia Law

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After the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions of Kendrick Eugene Duldulao and Medardo Queg Santos for the roles they played in a Florida “pill mill,” the Supreme Court vacated the court’s judgment and remanded for further consideration in light of Ruan v. United States.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed Duldulao’s conviction on count one of the second superseding indictment; affirmed Santos’s conviction on count one, vacated Santos’s convictions on counts seven, eight, and nine, vacated Santos’s sentence, remanded for resentencing, and remanded for a new trial on counts seven, eight, and nine. The court explained that in the context of sentencing errors, the Supreme Court has explained that “the risk of unnecessary deprivation of liberty particularly undermines the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings” when the court is responsible for the error. The court explained it has repeatedly upheld jury instructions that misstated the mens rea requirement under Section 841. A jury then convicted Santos based in part on that misstatement. Santos received a prison sentence on these counts, and “the possibility of additional jail time . . . warrants serious consideration in a determination whether to exercise discretion under Rule 52(b).” Further, the court explained that the jury was reasonably able to find that the government had not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Duldulao violated Section 841 on that occasion but had nevertheless knowingly joined a conspiracy to unlawfully distribute controlled substances in the abstract and on other occasions. View "USA v. Kendrick Eugene Duldulao, et al." on Justia Law

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In late 2018 a grand jury in Mobile, Alabama, charged Defendant with possessing a stolen firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(j). The district court allowed him to be released on bond pending trial. Defendant then faked his own kidnapping. After trial, but before sentencing, the government filed a notice informing Defendant that it was going to seek a ten-year consecutive sentence pursuant to Section 3147. The district court ruled that there was no Apprendi problem because the jury found Defendant guilty of receiving a firearm while under indictment in violation of Section 922(n), and sentenced him to a prison term of 300 months. Defendant appealed.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed and held that a sentence imposed pursuant to Section 3147 can exceed the maximum term prescribed for the underlying offense(s) of conviction. But in such a circumstance, the issue of whether the person committed a felony offense while on pretrial release must be submitted to a jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt pursuant to Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000), and its progeny. The court explained that the Apprendi error here was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendant did not dispute at any point that he was on pretrial release at the time of the Section 922(n) offense, and his counsel recognized that this fact was undisputed at oral argument. The court explained that no reasonable jury could have convicted Defendant of the Section 922(n) offense without also finding that he committed this crime while on pretrial release. View "USA v. Marco Antonio Perez" on Justia Law

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While losing in a high-stakes poker game, Defendant allegedly used his cell phone to arrange an armed robbery to reclaim his losses. Because a cell phone was directly tied to the crime, no one disputes that there was probable cause to search that device. But the police went one step further. They secured a warrant to search an iCloud account that backed up the phone twelve hours before the poker game and robbery. The iCloud warrant permitted a search of almost all the account’s data with no time limitation. Based on evidence secured by that warrant, the government prosecuted, and a jury convicted Defendant of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Given the warrant’s breadth and the account’s indirect link to the crime, Defendant argued that the district court should have suppressed the iCloud evidence.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court found that although Fourth Amendment standards are largely settled, their application to developing areas of technology is not. Like judges, law enforcement officers operating in good faith may struggle to apply existing standards to new circumstances. That is where the exclusionary rule’s good faith exception comes in. The court explained that the government concedes that the iCloud warrant fell short in certain respects, but it argues that reasonable officers could have believed it to be valid. The court wrote that it agreed that the warrant was not so deficient in probable cause, particularity, or otherwise that it would be unreasonable for an officer to rely on it in good faith. View "USA v. Kevin McCall" on Justia Law

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Defendant filed liens against property owned by a slew of people he thought had wronged him—including, as relevant here, a former Commissioner of the IRS and a former Secretary of the Treasury. Defendant was thereafter charged with and convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. Section 1521, which criminalizes the filing of retaliatory liens against the property of “an individual described in” Section 1114, which, in turn, refers to “any officer or employee of the United States. At issue on appeal is whether a former civil servant counts as an “officer or employee of the United States” within the meaning of Section 1114 and, thus, of Section 1521.   The Eleventh Circuit vacated Defendant’s convictions on four counts and remanded for resentencing. The court explained that Davis v. Michigan Department of Treasury and Robinson v. Shell Oil Co. establish that words like “officer” and “employee” can sometimes include formers—but only when the statutory context makes clear that they should. Neither suffices to show that the ordinary meaning of those terms includes ex-officers or erstwhile employees. Here, given the absence of textual indicia supporting a broader reading of the terms, the court declined to adopt the government’s strained interpretation. The court wrote that because Defendant filed the liens at issue when the relevant parties were no longer government “officer[s] or employee[s]” within the meaning of Section 1114, his conduct wasn’t covered by 18 U.S.C. Section 1521. View "USA v. Timothy Jermaine Pate" on Justia Law

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After entering a conditional guilty plea, Defendant appealed his convictions on four counts related to child pornography. At the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, Defendant was arrested on a criminal complaint on March 10, 2020. Thereafter, the district court entered a series of pandemic-related administrative orders that continued grand jury sessions five times at the ends of justice, spanning March 26, 2020, to November 16, 2020. Due to the pandemic, a grand jury did not formally indict Defendant until December 1, 2020. On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss his indictment for failure to indict him within thirty days from his arrest, as required by the Speedy Trial Act. Defendant does not challenge the time between indictment and his guilty plea, but only between his arrest on March 10 and grand jury indictment on December 1, 2020.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial of Defendant’s motion to dismiss his indictment. The court concluded that the pandemic-related continuances in 2020 were not an abuse of discretion and were within the ends-of-justice exception to the Speedy Trial Act. The court explained that the magistrate judge was not required to expressly consider each statutory factor in its order or recite specific language from the statute. The court explained that not every statutory factor will be relevant to the circumstances warranting the continuance. Instead, it is sufficient if the record shows, as it does here, that the magistrate judge considered the pertinent factors. View "USA v. Robert Dunn" on Justia Law

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Defendant appealed his sentence of 20 years of imprisonment following the revocation of his probation pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3565. Defendant argued that, where the Sentencing Guidelines recommended a sentence of 12 to 18 months of imprisonment, his sentence is procedurally and substantively unreasonable. One of his arguments is that the district court failed to give a specific reason for imposing an upward variance to the statutory maximum.   The Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded for resentencing. The court wrote that upon finding that a defendant violated a condition of probation, a district court may revoke the term of probation and impose a term of imprisonment as long as the court considers the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(a), such as the need for the sentence imposed to reflect the “seriousness of the offense” and “afford adequate deterrence,” among others. The court noted that a district court commits a “significant procedural error” in imposing a sentence if it calculates the guidelines incorrectly, fails to consider the Section 3553(a) factors, bases the sentence on clearly erroneous facts, or, of particular relevance here, “fail[s] to adequately explain the chosen sentence—including an explanation for any deviation from the Guidelines range.” The court explained that the record reflects that the district court did not give any reason for why it was imposing an above-guideline sentence. The court explained that the district court’s statements at the conclusion of the revocation proceeding were not sufficiently specific to allow the court to understand why the district court imposed an above-guideline sentence. View "USA v. Henry Martin Steiger" on Justia Law