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

Defendant was convicted of federal insider trading crimes and subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking information from the FBI that he believed would show misconduct by the federal investigators and prosecutors handling the case. At issue was whether the FBI could withhold certain documents pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E). As a preliminary matter, the court held that the documents sought in the case qualified as "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes" under 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7). The court also held that defendant failed to meet the demanding National Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish test for challenging the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(C), which protected personal privacy. The court also upheld the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protected certain law enforcement techniques and procedures, where release of certain information at issue would expose computer forensic vulnerabilities to potential criminals and where disclosure of certain information at issue "could enable criminals to employ countermeasures to avoid detection, thus jeopardizing the FBI's investigatory missions." The court briefly addressed and disposed of defendant's two other claims. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Appellant, a citizen of El Salvador, pleaded guilty to violating 8 U.S.C. 1326(a), and 1326(b)(2), which together prohibited the illegal reentry of an alien who had been deported following an aggravated felony conviction. The district court twice sentenced appellant. The court reversed both times, remanding each time for resentencing - first, because the district court did not consider appellant's Guidelines range under United States v. Booker, and second, because the district court incorrectly calculated appellant's Guidelines range when it did consider it. Appellant appealed his third sentence which resulted in an 84 month prison sentence because the court varied upward from appellant's calculated Guidelines range on the basis of the factors articulated in section 3553(a). The court held that the district court correctly calculated the Guidelines range and its subsequent findings of fact about appellant's Virginia abduction offense were not clearly erroneous. The court also held that the district court's judgment presented a "reasoned and reasonable decision that the section 3553(a) factors, on the whole justified the sentence." Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence because the district court adequately explained its sentencing decision.

Defendant pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea where he maintained that he had not understood that he was pleading guilty to conspiracy and in failing to order a competency hearing before doing so. The court held that, because it found no taint in the taking of defendant's plea, nor any unreasonableness in the district court's determination that defendant had failed to assert a viable claim of innocence, the court found no abuse of discretion in the denial of defendant's motion to withdraw his plea. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his plea without first holding a competency hearing or ordering another examination where the district court had the opportunity, over the course of six hearings, to speak with defendant and observe his demeanor and where there was nothing in the record before the court to give it "reasonable cause" to believe that defendant might be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him incompetent under 18 U.S.C. 4241(a). Accordingly, the district court's denial of defendant's motion was affirmed.

Defendant appealed from his convictions for multiple bank robberies and contended that his trial violated the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(b), 3162(a)(1), that the district court erred in limiting the scope of his counsel's closing argument, and that the court further erred in admitting evidence of an additionally, uncharged bank robbery. The court held that the district court did not violate defendant's rights under the Speedy Trial Act when it did not dismiss his indictment pursuant to the 30 day complaint-to-indictment clock where it applied the exception in section 3162(h) and held that May 23, 2008 was an excluded day because the government made an oral motion to commit defendant to the custody of the Attorney General on that day. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the scope of counsel's closing argument regarding the "best practices" standard for law enforcement officers and DNA evidence. The court further held that, even if it were erroneous, the admission of evidence of the uncharged bank robbery in Virginia was harmless because it did not have a "substantial and injurious effect or influence" on the jury's verdict. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

In this Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(3)(A), case, a Texas death-row inmate sought information from the FBI that he alleged might corroborate his claim that four other men actually committed the quadruple homicide for which he was convicted. At issue was whether the FBI's Glomar response was permitted under FOIA Exemption 7(c), which permitted agencies to withhold information contained in law enforcement records to protect against unwanted invasions of personal privacy. The court held that the public had an interest in knowing whether the federal government was withholding information that could corroborate a death-row inmate's claim of innocence and that interest outweighed the three men's privacy interest in having the FBI not disclose whether it possessed any information linking them to the murders. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's approval of the FBI's Glomar response and, with minor exceptions, affirmed the district court's rejection of appellant's other arguments.

Defendant, a pimp who prostituted underage girls, was convicted of various federal sexual abuse crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Defendant appealed the denial of his request to unseal the records of two material witnesses, claiming that the First Amendment guaranteed a right of access to material witness proceedings. The court assumed arguendo that the qualified First Amendment right of access to judicial proceedings extended to material witness proceedings. The court held that, even so, under the First Amendment access precedents, the public was not entitled to the records here, which contained "substantial amounts of material of an especially personal and private nature relating to the medical, educational, and mental health progress" of the victims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the orders of the district court.

Since 2005, appellant, a dual citizen of Jordan and the United States, had pursued a habeas corpus petition to block his transfer to Iraq's government where the United States military had detained him in Iraq based on evidence that he participated in al Qaeda's terrorist activities there. Appellant argued that he could not be transferred to the custody of Iraqi officials because he was likely to be tortured after his transfer. At issue was whether the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 ("FARR"), 8 U.S.C. 1231, which had been supplemented by the REAL ID Act of 2005, 8 U.S.C. 1252(a)(4), gave him a right to judicial review of conditions in the receiving country before he could be transferred. Also at issue was whether appellant was entitled under the Constitution's habeas corpus guarantee to judicial review of his likely treatment in the receiving country. The court held that the FARR Act and the REAL ID Act did not give military transferees such as appellant a right to judicial review of their likely treatment in the receiving country. The court also held that the Supreme Court had already ruled when considering appellant's case in Munaf v. Geren, that the Constitution's guarantee of habeas corpus did not encompass a guarantee to judicial review. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's denial of appellant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus and in so doing, recognized that the policy arguments supporting appellant's position were not insubstantial. The court noted that Congress remained free to provide military transferees such as appellant with a right to judicial review of conditions in the receiving country before they were transferred.

Appellant, a primary care physician who served Medicaid patients in the District of Columbia, appealed his convictions for health care fraud and for making false statements relating to health care matters, as well as his 53 month prison sentence. At issue was whether the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly refused to give the good faith instruction appellant requested. Also at issue was whether appellant's sentence was procedurally unreasonable. The court found no merit in appellant's assertions of trial errors and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The court held, however, that because the district gave an inadequate explanation for its above-Guidelines sentence and because this procedural defect amounted to plain error, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for further proceedings.

The United States appealed from the district court's decision granting defendant's petition for writ of habeas corpus. At issue was whether the district court improperly concluded that the government failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant was "part of" al Qaeda. The court held that the government had demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant could be detained where the district court clearly erred in regarding another detainee's statements as unreliable, improperly excluded it from consideration, and failed to give it sufficient weight to the reliable evidence it did consider. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions to the district court to deny defendant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Defendant was indicted for unlawful possession of a firearm and despite his repeated request for a speedy trial of his one-count single defendant case, 436 days passed before his trial began. In delaying the trial, the district court relied on a government filing, styled as a "motion" to admit evidence of other crimes pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) as a placeholder that would suspend the 70 day time limit under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(c)(1). At issue was whether defendant's Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel was violated when counsel failed to challenge whether a Rule 404(b) filing tolled the 70 day period under the Act. The court held that counsel's failure to challenge the district court's exclusion of time following the Rule 404(b) filing caused counsel to overlook court precedent holding that a closely analogous evidentiary filing did not toll the Act; the prosecutor's expression of concern during a hearing that the Rule 404(b) filing did not toll the Act's clock; and defendant's own repeated pleas to the district court and his counsel to scrutinize the record for a violation under the Act. Therefore, under the circumstances, the court vacated the judgment of conviction and remanded where the performance of counsel was constitutionally deficient.