Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in May, 2012
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Defendant appealed the sentence imposed by the district court following his conviction for illegal reentry after deportation. Defendant challenged the district court's determination that his prior Arizona state court conviction for attempted aggravated assault was a crime of violence, and the resulting sixteen-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). The court affirmed the sentence because defendant's conviction for attempted aggravated assault rested on the elements of generic attempted aggravated assault.

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Defendant was indicted for harboring aliens and moved to suppress evidence of the aliens as the fruit of a warrantless search and seizure. Though the district court found that the border patrol agents entered the curtilage of defendant's home and that there were no exigent circumstances that might justify the failure to obtain a warrant, that court denied the motion. Defendant entered a conditional guilty plea and appealed. Because the agents physically occupied the curtilage of defendant's home without obtaining a warrant, and no exceptions to the warrant requirement otherwise justified the search or seizure, the court reversed defendant's conviction and remanded.

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The Government appealed the sentence imposed on defendant for illegal reentry following deportation. The district court declined to apply a 16-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2L1.2, for defendant's prior conviction under California Health & Safety Code 11351. The court held that a conviction under Section 11351 did not qualify categorically as a "drug trafficking offense" for the purposes of U.S.S.G. 2L1.2. However, the court held that defendant's prior Section 11351 conviction qualified as a "drug trafficking offense" using the modified categorical approach. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for resentencing.

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Petitioner was sentenced to death following convictions for first-degree murder and other crimes. While seeking federal habeas relief, petitioner requested a stay of the proceedings on the grounds that he was not competent at the time to assist counsel. Following an evidentiary hearing on petitioner's competency, the district court denied the requested stay based on its determination that petitioner was competent to proceed. Petitioner sought an immediate appeal of the competency determination, or in the alternative, mandamus relief. The court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to review the competency determination at this time because it was not an immediately appealable order. The court also concluded that mandamus relief was not appropriate. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal and denied the petition for writ of mandamus.

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Petitioner was convicted in a California court of one count of forcible rape and one count of assault with intent to commit rape. Petitioner appealed from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner first contended that the trial court permitted a forensic analyst to testify based on the results of scientific tests performed and reports prepared by other analysts in violation of his Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause right. The court held that this claim failed because there was no clearly established federal law, based on decisions of the Supreme Court, that held that such testimony violated the Confrontation Clause in circumstances where the testifying witness participated in and reviewed the crime lab's work, even though she did not personally conduct all the testing herself. The court also concluded that petitioner's trial counsel's failure to object based on the Confrontation Clause to the analyst's testimony did not represent deficient performance and did not prejudice petitioner. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

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In expedited petitions for review, the court considered the allegations of petitioners that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) failed to discharge obligations under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) in approving Shell's plan for exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea. The court concluded that BOEM's decision that Shell's exploration plan complied with OCSLA's requirements was entitled to deference and was supported by the record as a whole. Accordingly, the court denied the expedited petitions.

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Plaintiffs, television news reporters for KPIX-TV, brought suit alleging that KPIX discriminated against them on the basis of age and gender, in violation of California law, when they were laid off. The district court granted KPIX's motion for summary judgment, dismissing all of plaintiffs' claims. The court held that, although plaintiffs established a prima facie case of discrimination, they did not present sufficient evidence of pretext to survive summary judgment. The court wrote to clarify that a plaintiff could make a prima facie case of disparate-treatment age discrimination using statistical evidence, even where that evidence did not account for defendant's legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for the discharge.

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Defendant appealed his jury conviction of two counts of making a false statement with respect to information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer. The court held that the district court correctly instructed the jury on the elements of the offense; the district court properly decided as a matter of law that Form 4473 was required to be kept by licensed firearm dealers; and the district court provided adequate instructions on witness credibility. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

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Plaintiff sued defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the copying and dissemination of her son's autopsy photographs violated her Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights. The court held that plaintiff had a constitutionally protected right to privacy over her child's death images. But, because defendant Coulter, the San Diego Deputy District Attorney, wasn't acting under color of state law when he sent the autopsy photograph to the press, that claim must be dismissed. And, because there was no "clearly established" law to inform Coulter that any of his earlier conduct was unlawful, Coulter was entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants.

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After plaintiff was convicted for drug possession with intent to distribute, plaintiff sought the return of his property seized by the government during his arrest pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g). Because some of plaintiff's belongings were inadvertently lost or destroyed, plaintiff sought equitable relief in the form of money damages to compensate for the missing property. The court affirmed the district court's grant of the government's motion to dismiss because sovereign immunity barred plaintiff's suit for money damages against the government.