Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's motion to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. 2255. The court held that petitioner cannot prove that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance, because petitioner's prior convictions in Alabama categorically qualify as predicate offenses under both the Armed Career Criminal Act and the career-offender provision of the Guidelines, and his prior conviction in Georgia qualifies as a predicate offense under the Act. Therefore, counsel did not perform deficiently by failing to raise a meritless objection. View "Hollis v. United States" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in permitting one of his arresting officers to offer testimony at trial on the correlation between guns and drug activity and to suggest that defendant was selling drugs; the court declined to evaluate the applicability of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), because the district court would have imposed the same sentence regardless of whether the mandatory minimum applied; and the court rejected defendant's claim under Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), and held that there was no plain error in the district court's failure to instruct the jury of the knowledge-of-status element and any error from the lack of a knowledge-of-status element in defendant's plea colloquy did not affect his substantial rights. Finally, the court remanded for clarification of the judgment to reflect the sentence the district court said it would have imposed if the Armed Career Criminal Act did not apply. View "United States v. McLellan" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate his sentence. The court held that defendant's prior 1996 Florida convictions for robbery qualified as violent felonies under the Armed Career Criminal Act's (ACCA) elements clause, and rejected his contention that the court's decision in his direct appeal carved out a narrow exception to pre-1997 Florida robbery convictions obtained in Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal. The court also held that petitioner's prior Florida felony battery conviction was a violent felony under the ACCA in light of the court's holding in United States v. Vail-Bailon, 868 F.3d 1293 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 2620 (2018). View "Welch v. United States" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that, given the totality of the circumstances, it was reasonable for officers, mistaking a dog's whimper for a person in distress, to enter defendant's home without a warrant. Therefore, defendant's challenge to the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence failed.The court upheld the district court's imposition of a 22 offense level finding because defendant possessed a semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a large capacity magazine under USSG 2K2.1(a)(3)(A)(i) (2016). The court also upheld defendant's sentencing enhancement under USSG 2K2.1(b)(4)(B) for possessing a rifle that had an obliterated serial number. View "United States v. Evans" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241. Plaintiff alleged that President Obama commuted his "total sentence" of imprisonment, which included the 37 months of imprisonment that he served as part of his 2003 sentence. Based on the terms of the commutation order, the Constitution, and Supreme Court precedent, the court could not say that the Bureau erred in excluding the 37-month term of imprisonment from its recalculation. View "Andrews v. Warden" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possessing a firearm and ammunition as an immigrant illegally or unlawfully in the United States. After defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), which reversed a decision from this court and held that under 18 U.S.C. 922(g), the government must prove that a defendant knew "his status as a person barred from possessing a firearm" when he knowingly possessed a firearm.The Eleventh Circuit held that defendant established the necessary prejudice under plain error review and vacated defendant's section 922(g) conviction, remanding for further proceedings. In this case, the district court committed an error that was made plain by the Supreme Court in Rehaif. Furthermore, defendant has sufficiently shown a reasonable probability that but for the error, the outcome of his trial would have been different. View "United States v. Russell" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas relief. Petitioner alleged that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase of his capital-murder trial.The court held that, even assuming that counsel performed deficiently in failing to investigate and present the mitigation evidence that petitioner now raises—thus satisfying the first prong of the two-part Strickland standard that governs ineffective-assistance claims—petitioner failed to carry his burden of demonstrating resulting prejudice. View "Knight v. Florida Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief to petitioner, who has been convicted and sentenced to death for murder. The court held that the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reasonably applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), in rejecting petitioner's claim that he was provided constitutionally ineffective assistance during the penalty phase of his second trial by counsel's failure to investigate or present mitigating evidence. The court held that petitioner failed to show a reasonable probability that his counsel's performance affected the outcome of his sentencing proceeding. View "James v. Warden, Holman Correctional Facility" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's 46 month sentence for illegally reentering the United States and 21 month sentence for violating the terms of his supervised release. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by determining that defendant's 67 month sentence, ordered to run consecutively to his undischarged state sentence, represented a significant period of time for defendant to spend in prison but that his actions warrant it in this instance. In this case, the district court considered the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) sentencing factors, including defendant's history of violence, including his sexual battery conviction, as well as his arrest for violating a domestic violence protective injunction. Furthermore, defendant's sentences were within their respective Guidelines ranges, and his sentence for illegally reentering the United States was at the low end of that range. View "United States v. Gomez" on Justia Law

Petitioner, one of more than 30 woman who were victimized by notorious sex trafficker and child abuser Jeffrey Epstein, sought mandamus relief, alleging that when federal prosecutors secretly negotiated and entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in 2007, they violated her rights under the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004. Specifically, petitioner alleged that federal prosecutors violated her rights to confer with the government's lawyers and to be treated fairly by them. In this case, Epstein entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, and the prosecutors never conferred with the victims about the agreement or told them that such agreement was under consideration.The Eleventh Circuit denied mandamus relief and held that rights under the CVRA do not attach until criminal proceedings have been initiated against a defendant, either by complaint, information, or indictment. Because the government never filed charges or otherwise commenced criminal proceedings against Epstein, the court held that the CVRA was never triggered. View "In re: Courtney Wild" on Justia Law