Justia U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Appellant pled guilty to five counts of filing a false tax return and appealed his sentence of 110 months in prison, arguing that the sentence was impermissibly influenced by his refusal to reveal the source of his unreported income. This court then vacated the sentence and the district court again sentenced appellant to 110 months imprisonment on remand, stating that its initial sentence had nothing to do with appellant's refusal to discuss the source of his unreported funds. Appellant appealed again. The court concluded that the district court did not plainly err in its reasoning for an upward variance where deterrence of tax evasion was a permissible reason. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Saani" on Justia Law

Appellant challenged the Parole Commission's denial of his 2010 and 2012 applications for parole, alleging that the Commission violated the Constitution’s prohibition on ex post facto laws by incorrectly applying the regulations in place at the time of appellant’s underlying offense. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. The court affirmed, finding that the Commission's denial of appellant’s requests for parole was a valid exercise of parole authority as it existed at the time of his offense. The court further concluded that the Commission did not rely on the retroactive application of any law, regulation, or guideline to justify its decisions, and therefore could not have violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. View "Bailey v. Fulwood, Jr." on Justia Law

Petitioner, a Peruvian national who founded and led a low-cost airline operating throughout Latin America, challenged the determination of the Department of the Treasury that the President had lawfully designated him a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act), 21 U.S.C. § 1901 et seq. The court affirmed the district court’s rejection of petitioner’s claim that Treasury’s denial of his delisting request was arbitrary and capricious. The court concluded that Treasury did not err by relying on five different sets of evidence to delist petitioner: (1) newspaper articles discussing the recent seizure of assets he continued to control in Panama; (2) newspaper articles discussing new charges filed against him in Peru in 2011 and 2012; (3) newspaper articles discussing his ongoing control of assets in Peru; (4) newspaper articles discussing the recent discovery of an illicit cellphone and memory stick in his prison cell in Peru; and (5) his 2007 criminal indictment in the Southern District of Florida. The court also concluded that there was no shortage of additional evidence. The court rejected petitioner's remaining claims and affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Zevallos v. Obama" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for five counts of bank fraud and five counts of possessing and uttering a counterfeit security with intent to deceive. Defendant had deposited a number of checks that falsely listed him as the payee. The court reversed the conviction as to the counterfeit count because the government failed to present evidence from which a reasonable jury could have found that the security was counterfeit. The court affirmed the district court's judgment in all other respects and denied defendant's request to remand for an inquiry into jury selection. View "United States v. Shmuckler" on Justia Law

Defendant, convicted of numerous violent crimes including first-degree murder, appealed the denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus based on the ineffective assistance of counsel. The court rejected defendant's contention that the limitations period of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2244(d)(1), was tolled until 2009 because, until the court's decision in Williams v. Martinez, the court's case law barred him from bringing his claim in federal court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of the petition and dismissal of the action. View "Head v. Wilson" on Justia Law

Five defendants, convicted of charges related to their involvement in a massive drug distribution organization and sentenced to life imprisonment, appealed their convictions and sentences. On appeal, defendants raise numerous issues. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the guilty verdicts; the omission of a sentence that the parties had agreed to include in the jury instructions did not render the jury instructions erroneous; the court rejected defendants' joinder arguments, concluding that the indictment alleged that the local and federal offenses were committed as part of a common scheme or plan; any error in admitting the testimony of a certain FBI agent was harmless; there was no plain error in admitting autopsy reports; the district court did not abuse its discretion by excluding defendants' expert testimony; the district court did not abuse its discretion when it declined to conduct a mid-trial voir dire of the jury; the court will not disturb the district court's well-supported determination that the alleged improper juror activity did not occur; defendants failed to carry their burden of establishing the appearance or existence of judicial bias and the district judge did not abuse his discretion by denying the motion to recuse; and the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Defendant Edelin's motion to discharge counsel. The court vacated Defendant Edelin and Johnsons' sentence under Booker; remanded Defendant Bostick and Marbury's sentence to determine whether the district court would impose different sentences, more favorable to defendants, under the advisory Guidelines; and affirmed Defendant Edelin's sentence. View "United States v. Bostick" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to embezzling from an organization that received federal funds. On appeal, defendant challenged his sentence of 24-months in prison. Even if the district court’s loss calculation were erroneous, the court would not require it to reconsider petitioner’s sentence; the court expressly stated that it would regard the same sentence as appropriate under either party’s calculation; and because that sentence is within-Guidelines, reasonable, and thoroughly explained, there is no warrant for a remand. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Kaufman" on Justia Law

Defendant, convicted of fraud and embezzlement, argued that the district court erred in excluding two defense exhibits at trial. The fraud and embezzlement was in connection with defendant's management of a union of private security guards. The court concluded that it was error to exclude one of the defense exhibits, an employment contract, and remanded for the district court to determine whether that additional evidence affects defendant's sentence. In this case, the contract was potentially a significant piece of exculpatory evidence; the government has not identified any prejudice it would have suffered from the defense's use of the exhibit; and the district court did not find that the defense withheld the disputed contract in bad faith. Although the court rejected defendant’s conflict-of-interest theory, the court follows this circuit’s usual practice and remanded most of his ineffective assistance claims for initial determination by the district court. View "United States v. Gray-Burriss" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to federal charges stemming from a series of armed robberies. Defendant was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and ordered to pay restitution, as well as a special assessment. Both amounts were payable immediately under the district court's order. The sentencing order also provided that, during plaintiff's time in prison, he was to participate in the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP) through which he would make payments to satisfy the restitution obligation. On appeal, appellant contended that the district court's delegation to the IFRP violated the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA)18 U.S.C. 3664(f)(2). Section 3664(f)(2) mandates that the court shall specify in the restitution order the manner in which, and the schedule according to which, the restitution is to be paid. Because the filing requirement under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b) is a non-jurisdictional, claim processing rule, the court proceeded to the merits of the appeal. The court concluded that in United States v. Baldwin, the court determined that restitution arrangements like the one at issue here do not constitute plain error. The court rejected Amicus' attempts to distinguish Baldwin and its claims that Baldwin is bad law. Accordingly, the court denied the appeal. View "United States v. Hunter" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of interstate travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and was sentenced to 84 months' imprisonment. On appeal, defendant contended that the district court committed procedural error by failing to address his nonfrivolous sentencing manipulation argument when imposing the sentence. The court held that the Supreme Court’s post-Booker decisions required sentencing courts to consider nonfrivolous mitigation arguments at sentencing. When a judge fails to address a defendant’s nonfrivolous mitigation claim based on a 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) sentencing factor, a reviewing court and the public cannot adequately evaluate the judge’s sentence selection. Moreover, where, as here, a district court may have thought it was prohibited, as a matter of law, from considering a claim for mitigation, the error seriously affects the public reputation of judicial proceedings. Accordingly, the court concluded that the district court committed plain error by failing to consider defendant's nonfrivolous mitigation argument and the court vacated the sentence, remanding for further proceedings. View "United States v. Bigley" on Justia Law