Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

In February 2021, police officers found Justin Stepp, a convicted felon, with a gunshot wound in a car driven by his girlfriend, along with a firearm in the car’s console and ammunition under the passenger seat. A subsequent search of Stepp’s home uncovered more ammunition. Stepp was charged and convicted by a jury for being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. He appealed his conviction, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to prove he constructively possessed the firearm or ammunition, and that the court erred by including his 2002 conviction in its calculation of his base offense level. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed Stepp’s conviction and sentence. The court found that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient for a reasonable trier of fact to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Stepp had constructive possession of the ammunition found in his home. The court also concluded that the district court did not clearly err in finding Stepp’s 2002 conviction fell within the applicable fifteen-year lookback period for calculating his base offense level. View "United States v. Stepp" on Justia Law

In this case, Pamela Kathryn Conley appealed her sentence for bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. She argued that the district court incorrectly calculated her loss amount for the bank fraud offense, and that the court erred in accepting her guilty plea for aggravated identity theft.Conley had applied for loans at seven financial institutions using false employment and salary information, and in some cases, she forged the signatures of financial institution employees to create false lien releases for vehicles she used as collateral. She pled guilty to 24 counts of bank fraud and 4 counts of aggravated identity theft.On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit found that the district court had erred in calculating the loss amount for the bank fraud offense. The court vacated Conley's sentence for bank fraud and remanded for resentencing on those counts. The court determined that the district court had relied on disputed facts in the presentence report to calculate Conley's U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range for bank fraud, which was procedurally unreasonable.However, the court affirmed Conley's convictions for aggravated identity theft. Conley had argued that the court erred in accepting her guilty plea for this offense in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Dubin v. United States. But the appeals court found that any potential error in accepting the guilty plea was not plain or obvious under current, well-settled law. View "United States v. Conley" on Justia Law

In this case, Domingo Martinez Jr. was convicted of possession with intent to distribute and distribution of 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. On appeal, he challenged the admission of a narcotics detective’s testimony about Santa Muerte shrines, claiming the testimony violated his First Amendment rights. He also objected to the district court’s instruction to the jury to disregard a robocall inadvertently played during the trial, rather than declaring a mistrial.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction. The court found no error in the admission of the detective's testimony relating to Santa Muerte, noting it was based solely on the detective's law enforcement experience, not personal self-study. Moreover, the testimony was relevant to the issue raised by Mr. Martinez's entrapment defense, whether he was predisposed to drug trafficking. The court also found no error in the district court's treatment of the robocall interruption. The district court had instructed the jury to disregard the interruption twice and recessed the trial briefly to ensure it would not happen again. The court of appeals found no indication that the jury had time to process the robocall or that it affected the outcome of the trial. View "United States v. Martinez" on Justia Law

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that impounding a vehicle from a private property without a reasonable, non-pretextual community-caretaking rationale violates the Fourth Amendment. The defendant, Isaac Ramos, was arrested after an altercation at a convenience store. His truck was impounded from the store's parking lot, and a subsequent inventory search revealed a machine gun and ammunition. Ramos was charged with unlawful possession of a machine gun and being a felon illegally in possession of ammunition. He moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the impoundment of his truck violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied his motion, and he appealed.The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court's decision, finding that the impoundment was not supported by a reasonable, non-pretextual community-caretaking rationale. The court considered five factors: whether the vehicle was on public or private property; if on private property, whether the property owner had been consulted; whether an alternative to impoundment existed; whether the vehicle was implicated in a crime; and whether the vehicle’s owner and/or driver had consented to the impoundment. The court found that all of these factors weighed against the reasonableness of the impoundment, and thus, it violated the Fourth Amendment. The court remanded the case to the district court with instructions to grant Ramos’s suppression motion and conduct any further necessary proceedings. View "United States v. Ramos" on Justia Law

Timothy Chischilly gathered five relatives to get something “off his chest.” To the shock of the relatives, Chischilly confessed that he and his girlfriend, defendant-appellee Stacey Yellowhorse, had killed a woman. The relatives told law enforcement about Chischilly’s confession, and the accounts were largely consistent: Chischilly had admitted: he held the woman down while Yellowhorse bludgeoned the woman with a sledgehammer or mallet; and he and Yellowhorse pinned the woman down with nails and a hammer. Authorities later found parts of the woman’s skeletal remains in various locations, including a fire pit next to Chischilly’s house. Despite confessing to the murder, Chischilly pleaded not guilty. That plea led the district court to set Chischilly’s trial after Yellowhorse’s. At Yellowhorse’s upcoming trial, the government wanted Chischilly to testify about what he told his relatives. Because his statements were self-incriminating, however, the government expected Chischilly to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he was called as a witness. So the government asked the district court to allow the relatives to testify at Yellowhorse’s trial about three of Chischilly’s statements. Chischilly's statements would ordinarily constitute inadmissible hearsay; the hearsay exception would apply only if Chischilly's statements harmed his penal interest and had corroboration. The government argued the district court applied the wrong test by assuming that Chischilly’s statements about Yellowhorse’s involvement were not self-inculpatory. Yellowhorse disagreed, adding that the excluded parts were also inadmissible because the court shouldn’t have found corroboration. In the Tenth Circuit's view, the district court’s approach contradicted its precedent. The case was remanded for the district court to reconsider the admissibility of Chischilly’s statements to his relatives. View "United States v. Yellowhorse" on Justia Law

Defendant Terrence Taylor plead guilty to two counts of being a felon in possession of ammunition and one count of felon in possession of firearms. On appeal, he argued these charges were multiplicitous in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Tenth Circuit rejected this argument because he waived his multiplicity claim when he entered his plea to the three separate offenses. View "United States v. Taylor" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Dalton “Dash” Brown pled guilty to a single count of being a felon in possession of ammunition, and was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. On appeal, he challenged the sentence, arguing the district court improperly calculated his offense level under the Sentencing Guidelines. According to Brown, the district court erred in applying: (1) a multiple-firearms enhancement; (2) a stolen-firearm enhancement; (3) a higher base offense for possession of a high-capacity magazine; (4) a reckless-endangerment upward-adjustment; and (5) an “in-connection-with” enhancement. He urges the court to reverse and remand for resentencing with a lower offense level. Findnign no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Kenneth Walker appealed his conviction and sentence for assault resulting in serious bodily injury within Indian country. Walker lived "off and on" with his adult niece, Victoria Dirickson. Walker asked Dirickson for a set of house keys. She declined because “[i]t was [her] only day off, and [she] really didn’t feel like getting out and making a copy” of the keys. Walker became “[r]eally aggravated,” and an argument ensued in the living room, which lead to the assault charges at issue in this case. A grand jury indicted Walker on one count of assault resulting in serious bodily injury within Indian country. The indictment alleged Walker was a non-Indian and Dirickson was Indian. A jury found Walker guilty as charged. On appeal, Walker: (1) challenged the district court's jurisdiction because it erred in admitting Dirickson's Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (“CDIB”) and tribal registration cards; (2) the district court abused its discretion in admitting the testimony of a medical expert; (3) the district court abused its discretion in failing to give a unanimity-of-means jury instruction; (4) abused its discretion in failing to consider sentencing disparities arising from a possible sentence in a state case; and (5) Plainly erred in imposing an anger management condition of supervised release due to insufficient notice, and improper delegation of authority to the Probation Office. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Walker's conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Walker" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Edward Parson was convicted by jury of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Parson argued: (1) the district court erred in admitting expert testimony about the process of child-sexual-abuse disclosures and the characteristics and behaviors of children who make such disclosures; and (2) the district court erred in admitting specific testimony of the expert that children are four times more likely to omit facts than to make up facts in the process of disclosing abuse. The Tenth Circuit determined the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the expert testimony, and his second claim of error was unpreserved and Parson failed to demonstrate an entitlement to relief under the difficult-to-satisfy plain error standard. Thus, the district court’s judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "United States v. Parson" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Anthony Mason was convicted by a jury of assault of an intimate or dating partner by strangulation and Oklahoma first-degree burglary. The Presentence Report (PSR) initially calculated an offense level of 22 and a criminal history category of III, resulting in an advisory guideline range of 51 to 63 months’ imprisonment. But when a statutorily required minimum sentence is greater than the maximum of the guideline range, as was the case here, the statutorily required minimum was the guideline sentence. For convictions of first-degree burglary, Oklahoma state law imposed a sentence “not less than seven (7) years.” Accordingly, the PSR recommended a sentence of 84 months’ imprisonment, 21 months more than the initial advisory guideline range. Mason objected to the PSR sentence, arguing that his eligibility for a suspended or deferred sentence under the Oklahoma sentencing scheme meant that it did not impose a “true mandatory minimum.” Finding no reversible error in the calculation of Mason's sentence, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Mason" on Justia Law