Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was sentenced to 24 months imprisonment following a conviction for wire fraud. With the government’s consent, Defendant was allowed to self-surrender to the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”). Before he was required to turn himself in, Defendant sought compassionate release through the BOP. After the BOP did not respond to his requests, Defendant filed a motion for compassionate release in the district court.The district court denied Defendant’s motion for compassionate release, finding him ineligible because he was not yet in custody at the time he filed the motion. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. In discussing a district court’s ability to modify a sentence, 18 U.S.C. sec. 3582(c)(1)(A) provides, the court “may reduce the term of imprisonment . . . that does not exceed the unserved portion of the original term of imprisonment.” This implies that a defendant’s term of incarceration has begun. Thus, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court properly denied Defendant's motion for compassionate release because he was not in custody when it was filed. View "USA V. GEORGE FOWER" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of 28 felony offenses in connection with a fraud conspiracy involving 120,000 American Express Cards. In sentencing Defendant to 27 years’ imprisonment, the district court relied in part on Application Note 3(F)(i) to U.S.S.G. Sec. 2B1.1 (“the Application Note”), which provides that the “loss” amount for the use of counterfeit credit cards must at least $500 per credit card used. Using this multiplier, the district court applied a 22-level enhancement.The Ninth Circuit vacated Defendant’s sentence. Under Stinson v. United States, 508 U.S. 36 (1993), an Application Note is authoritative unless it is “inconsistent with, or a plainly erroneous reading of, that guideline.” Thus, if an Application Note conflicts with the Guidelines, the Guidelines must be given effect over the Application Note.Defendant’s fraud scheme involved charging $15 to $30 per card, resulting in actual losses of $1.4 million. However, the use of the Application Note calculated the loss amount to be $60 million. Here, the Ninth Circuit found that the Application Note’s multiplier rule does not comport with the plain meaning of “loss,” and thus, Defendant’s 22-level enhancement based on the calculated $60 million loss cannot stand.The Ninth Circuit also found that the district court erred in sentencing Defendant to 264 months for each wire and mail fraud count when the maximum statutory penalty was 240 months. View "USA V. RUSLAN KIRILYUK" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of attempted illegal entry under 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1325(a). On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Defendant claimed the district court erred in denying his request for a jury instruction on the lesser-included offense of misdemeanor attempted illegal entry.The Ninth Circuit reversed Defendant’s conviction. Under United States v. Arnt, 474 F.3d 1159 (9th Cir. 2007) A defendant is entitled to an instruction on a lesser-included offense if 1) the elements of the lesser offense are a subset of the elements of the charged offense and; 2) a jury could rationally find the defendant guilty of the lesser offense and acquit him of the more serious offense.Here, the government conceded that misdemeanor attempted illegal entry is a less-included offense of felony attempted illegal entry. The Ninth Circuit held that a rational juror could have acquitted Defendant of the more serious offense in favor of convicting him of misdemeanor illegal entry. The only distinct element required for felony attempted illegal entry is a prior conviction for the same crime. Thus, the jury could have rationally chosen the lesser offense by finding that the government failed to prove Defendant was previously convicted under 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1325(a). View "USA V. LUCIO MEDINA-SUAREZ" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for 18 fraud-related counts in a case where defendant stole $10 million in digital gift cards from his employer, Microsoft, using login credentials he stole from his coworkers. The panel concluded that there was probable cause to support the search warrant where, considering the totality of the circumstances, the search warrant affidavit shows a fair probability that evidence of defendant's crimes would be found on a computer at his residence. Therefore, there was an adequate nexus between the unlawful activities and the place to be search. The panel also concluded that the evidence supporting the application was not stale.The court rejected defendant's contention that his convictions for aggravated identity theft are infirm because the test accounts do not constitute a "means of identification" under 18 U.S.C. 1028A(a)(1), in that the accounts do not "identify a specific individual." Rather, the panel concluded that the test accounts' purpose, prerequisites, and functionality do not bear on whether they identify a specific individual. The panel stated that the test accounts at issue here clearly could be used to identify specific Microsoft employees because the company’s investigators actually did identify four individuals. The panel further concluded that the district court's exclusion of evidence regarding defendant's asylum status did not deny him a defense. Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in excluding the evidence. Finally, the district court properly denied the motion to remove Juror No. 12. View "United States v. Kvashuk" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief to petitioner, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of murder, five counts of robbery, and two counts of rape in concert. The panel concluded that the California Supreme Court on direct appeal reasonably rejected petitioner's claim regarding an erroneous aiding and abetting instruction. Rather, the state court reasonably concluded that the instructions were adequate for the jury to make the requisite culpability finding, especially in light of the exception to the rule of Enmund found in Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987) and Tapia v. Roe, 189 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 1999).Although counsel's failure to investigate and present mitigation evidence at the penalty phase was deficient, given the entirety of the evidence before the jury, petitioner's disruptive conduct in front of the jury and the sure-to-be-admitted rebuttal and impeachment evidence that would follow introduction of the mitigation evidence, the panel concluded that the California Supreme Court reasonably concluded that petitioner did not show a reasonable probability that the result would have been different but for counsel's unprofessional errors. View "Ross v. Davis" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a motion to dismiss a Second Superseding Indictment (SSI) charging defendant with racketeering conspiracy. After determining that it had jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine to hear this interlocutory appeal, the panel held that the Juvenile Delinquency Act (JDA) does not preclude the government from prosecuting a person as an adult for a continuing conspiracy that includes both pre- and post-majority conduct after the court dismisses a JDA information charging that person with conspiracy based solely on pre-majority conduct.In this case, because defendant's participation in the conspiracy allegedly continued beyond his eighteenth birthday, it was no longer an act of juvenile delinquency under the JDA. Rather, the panel concluded that the conduct became a continuing adult RICO conspiracy offense which began when he was a juvenile but continued when he allegedly engaged in additional acts in furtherance of the ongoing conspiracy after reaching the age of majority. View "United States v. Mendez" on Justia Law

In 1981, Balla, incarcerated at ISCI, brought a class action suit alleging unconstitutional prison conditions. In 1984, the district court granted injunctive relief related mostly to medical care and physical safety. Since then, the district court has ordered many forms of prospective relief. The district court ultimately held a hearing, found that ISCI had complied with agreed-upon standards and was not deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of patients, and terminated all prospective relief, pursuant to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 18 U.S.C. 3626(b).The Ninth Circuit affirmed, first rejecting an assertion that the district court abused its discretion in excluding evidence of ISCI's failure to adequately treat the Hepatitis C virus. That evidence did not necessarily answer whether there was an ongoing constitutional violation related to the general provision of healthcare that was required by prior orders. The district court did not clearly err in finding no evidence that ISCI medical staff made choices in conscious disregard of an excessive risk to the plaintiffs’ health; the conditions at the Medical Annex did not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation because there was no deliberate indifference. There was no evidence there were ongoing problems of the sort that motivated previous population caps and security staffing orders. View "Balla v. Idaho" on Justia Law

Wells pled guilty to the receipt of child pornography. He was sentenced to 76 months’ imprisonment followed by five years of supervised release, with 16 special conditions.The Ninth Circuit dismissed, in part, his appeal. Wells signed an unambiguous agreement that knowingly and voluntarily waived the right to appeal. The waiver contained an “illegal sentence” exception and does not apply to a challenge that the sentence violates the Constitution if the constitutional claim directly challenges the sentence itself and is not based on any underlying constitutional right that was expressly waived. The court, therefore, addressed only three constitutional challenges to the supervised release conditions. The court vacated Special Condition 3, a computer ban; its definition of “computer” potentially could be understood to encompass household objects and is unconstitutionally vague. The court remanded with instructions for the district court to delineate explicitly that the prohibition only covers computers and computer-related devices that can access sexually explicit conduct. Because the use of the internet was integral to the offense of conviction, the court rejected a First Amendment challenges to Special Condition 5, an internet ban. Wells argued that Conditions 3 and 5 unconstitutionally delegated authority to the probation officer; the court declined to address that issue because the conditions are not manifestly unjust. View "United States v. Wells" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied Munoz-Gonzalez’s application to file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion asserting that his conviction for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence (18 U.S.C. 924(c)) was invalid because his predicate crime (racketeering) is no longer a categorical “crime of violence” under a new rule of constitutional law announced by the Supreme Court in “Davis” (2019).The new “Davis” argument was not “previously unavailable,” as required for authorization of a second or successive 2255 motion. A prisoner must show that real-world circumstances prevented him, as a practical matter, from asserting his "new rule of law" claim in his initial habeas proceeding. While pro se prisoners face unique difficulties and language barriers add to those difficulties, the limited exception to the broad prohibition on successive habeas proceedings should not be applied subjectively. Focusing on external barriers, the court noted “Davis” was issued before Muñoz-Gonzalez filed his reply brief for his initial habeas motion. He had the facts that he needed for his claim; no systemic or external barrier prevented him from presenting his claim; Muñoz-Gonzalez was clearly aware of Davis because he cited it in his reply brief in his initial habeas proceeding. View "Gonzalez v. United States" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a habeas corpus petition where the district concluded that the petition was timely but denied petitioner's claim on the merits. Relying on Trigueros v. Adams, 658 F.3d 982 (9th Cir. 2011), petitioner argues that the California Court of Appeal's silence on timeliness triggers an exception to the general "look through" rule under which the California Court of Appeal's one-line denial of his petition would presumptively be considered a tacit affirmation of the superior court's finding of untimeliness.The panel declined to extend Trigueros to new contexts, concluding that there are at least two materially important distinctions between this case and Trigueros. First, Trigueros centers around a ruling from the California Supreme Court, while the case at hand centers around a ruling from the California Court of Appeal. Second, the California Supreme Court in Trigueros ordered "an informal response on the merits," Trigueros, while the California Court of Appeal here merely requested a general "opposition to the petition." Therefore, the panel declined to apply Trigueros in this context and concluded that the government's failure to present certain additional arguments does not prevent it from addressing these matters in this appeal. View "Flemming v. Matteson" on Justia Law