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

A jury found for the District of Columbia government and a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)(collectively, the government), in this case alleging a 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim for the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and common law claims for assault and battery. Appellant, as personal representative of her brother's estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by the detective, and she contended on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principle issue concerned the district court's rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding an altercation between the detective and appellant's brother. A related issue involved a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The court found no abuse of discretion by the district court where the record revealed that it properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudiced the government. The court also held that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert's disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but in view of appellant's cross-examination of the expert, after receiving the expert's interview notes, that the violation was harmless and so the district court's refusal to strike the expert's testimony was not reversible error. Accordingly, because appellant's other claims of error and her bias claim were unpersuasive, the court affirmed the judgment.

Three state and local governmental units, along with individual citizens, petitioned the court for review of and other relief from two "determinations" made by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the other respondents: the DOE's attempt to withdraw the application it submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to construct a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and the DOE's apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. The court concluded that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 10101-270, set forth a process and schedule for the siting, construction, and operation of a federal repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. At this point in that process, the DOE had submitted a construction license application for the Yucca Mountain repository and the NRC maintained a statutory duty to review that application. Therefore, the court held that unless and until petitioners were able to demonstrate that one of the respondents had either violated a clear duty to act or otherwise affirmatively violated the law, petitioners' challenges to the ongoing administrative process was premature. Accordingly, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction over petitioners' claims and dismissed the petitions.

Plaintiff, the former captain of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), filed a ten-count complaint charging the District of Columbia with racial and ethnic discrimination and retaliation against him because of a series of discrimination complaints he filed against the MPD. At issue was whether plaintiff's damages award constituted impermissible double recovery, represented compensation for two distinct juries, or reflected a single award apportioned between two theories of liability. The court found that the magistrate judge explicitly instructed the jury not to concern itself with double recovery because he had concluded "as a matter of law" that plaintiff could recover under both his federal and state law theories. Therefore, the court held that it could not presume that the jury intended to compensate plaintiff for a single injury without regard to the multiplicity of the theories pled. Accordingly, because the jury's award amounted to impermissible double recovery, the court reversed the magistrate's order denying the District's motion for judgment as a matter of law and remanded the case.

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.

Appellants, nonprofit environmental organizations, appealed from a judgment of dismissal entered by the district court in an action against the EPA under the citizen suit provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq., challenging the EPA Administrator's failure to take action to prevent the construction of three proposed pollution-emitting facilities in Kentucky. The court held that the validity of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permits issued under the noncompliant State Implementation Plan (SIP), and the possible invalidity of the amended SIP, sufficiently raised a current controversy to save the litigation from mootness. The court also held that the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., did not provide a cause of action to review the EPA Administrator's failure to act under section 7477 of the CAA because her decision was an agency action "committed to agency discretion by law." Therefore, the EPA Administrator's decision was discretionary and not justiciable and thus, appellants failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Although the district court dismissed the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the court affirmed the district court's action because dismissal would otherwise have been proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

Southwest Airlines Co. and 18 other airlines alleged that the TSA's determination of their year 2000 costs was arbitrary and capricious for purposes of the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq. At issue was whether the TSA should have relied on the Simat, Helliesen & Eichner, Inc. report (SH&E report) commissioned by the TSA or, at least, should have more fully explained why it rejected the conclusions of the Campbell Aviation Consultants report (Campbell report) submitted by the airlines. The court held that the TSA's determination was not arbitrary or capricious when the TSA chose the SH&E report with good reason where it sent a letter to each airline stating that it had thoroughly reviewed the Campbell report and concluded that the report was insufficient due to its limited data and broad, simplistic methodologies and the letter also explained SH&E's more extensive methodology. The court also discussed and disposed of the three other arguments the airlines raised. Accordingly, the court denied the airlines' petitions for review.

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.

In this civil enforcement action, a jury found appellant aided and abetted a securities fraud by his former employer in violation of 15 U.S.C. 78t(e). At issue was whether the district court erred in allowing appellant's trial to proceed in the District of Columbia pursuant to the "co-conspirator theory of venue." The court held that the SEC failed to lay venue in the District of Columbia under the "straightforward language of [section 78aa]." Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court on the basis of improper venue in light of Olberling v. Illinois Central and the district court was instructed to dismiss the case without prejudice.

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.