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

Defendant, the former Chief Executive Officer of Brocade Communications (Brocade or the Company), a company the developed and sold data switches for networks, appealed his conviction in a second criminal trial for securities fraud and making false filings; falsifying corporate books and records; and making false statements to auditors in violation of securities laws. Defendant was previously convicted of violating the securities laws but the court vacated that conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct and remanded for a new trial. In this appeal, the court held that there was no evidence of sufficient facts in the record to support any allegation of prosecutorial misconduct. The court also held that there was sufficient evidence of materiality to support defendant's conviction. The court further held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by not giving defendant's proposed jury instruction. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant appealed his jury conviction for assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a contraband in prison. On appeal, defendant argued that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to instruct the jury on his theory that he acted in self-defense; the district court violated his Confrontation Clause rights by refusing to allow him to cross-examine the treating physician about the cause of the victim's injuries; the district court erred by refusing to let him designate the treating physician as his expert witness on causation during trial; and his sentence was substantively unreasonable because his guidelines range sentence included "recency points," which were removed from the guidelines after he was sentenced. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that defendant's evidence was mere speculation and that a jury could not rationally sustain the defense based on the evidence presented. The court also held that the district court did not err in limiting cross examination of the treating physician and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to permit defendant to add the treating physician as a defense witness on the causation issue during trial. The court further held that defendant's sentence was reasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Petitioner, a death row inmate, appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner raised three grounds for relief: (1) petitioner claimed that the state failed to disclose an oral agreement with a co-defendant, in violation of Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States; (2) petitioner claimed that the state failed to correct the co-defendant's false testimony denying the existence of this agreement, in violation of Napue v. Illinois; and (3) petitioner claimed that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance at the penalty phase in violation of Strickland v. Washington. The court affirmed the denial of relief with respect to petitioner's guilt-phase claims based on Brady, Giglio, and Napue. However, the court reversed on petitioner's penalty-phase claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, which was not decided on the merits in state court. The court concluded that counsel's complete failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence of petitioner's troubled childhood, his mental illness, and his history of chronic drug abuse constituted deficient performance. The court further concluded that this failure prejudiced petitioner. Therefore, the court granted the writ with respect to petitioner's death sentence.

During petitioner's murder trial, defense counsel failed to object to the prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges to strike six Hispanic venirepersons. Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on defense counsel's claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. At issue was whether defense counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's allegedly group bias-based peremptory challenges constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, which ineffectiveness now required a grant of federal habeas relief under the Sixth Amendment. The court affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's claim because he failed to present evidence sufficient to overcome the strong presumption that counsel's performance was reasonable, as set out in Strickland v. Washington.

Appellant, owner and operator the Custer Battlefield Museum, was investigated in 2005 for unlawfully attempting to sell migratory bird parts and for fraudulently misrepresenting the provenance of historical artifacts for sale. During that investigation, two search warrants were executed and the court sealed the affidavits supporting the warrant applications. The government ultimately declined prosecution of any criminal charges. In 2010, appellant asked the district court for a copy of the search warrant applications and supporting affidavits. At issue was whether the public had a common law or First Amendment right of access to materials filed in support of search warrant applications after an investigation had been terminated. The court held that the public had a qualified common law right of access to warrant materials after an investigation had been terminated. The court also held that the district court properly recognized that right here, but it erred by granting appellant only restricted access to the warrant materials without articulating a compelling reason for its ruling or making specific factual findings. Therefore, the district court's order was vacated and the matter remanded to the district court to reapply the common law standard to appellant's request.

Defendant appealed from his conditional guilty plea to receiving material involving the sexual exploitation of minors in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(2). Defendant challenged the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized from computers in his custody. The court held that, giving the appropriate deference to the appointed Primary Search Authority Military Magistrate's determination as required by Illinois v. Gates and the court's own precedent, there was probable cause to support the issuance of the warrant. Alternatively, even if the court were to determine that there was no probable cause for the warrant, the court would affirm the district court's determination that the warrant fit within the good-faith exception set forth in United States v. Leon. Accordingly, the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress was affirmed.

Defendant appealed his sentence of 25 months' imprisonment plus five years of supervised release following his guilty plea to ten counts of embezzlement under 18 U.S.C. 656, and eight counts of bank fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1344. The eighteen counts defendant pleaded guilty to related to two schemes to defraud Wells Fargo: an embezzlement scheme and a check-kiting scheme. On appeal, defendant's primary contention was that because he did not know he was the subject of a pending criminal investigation at the time he committed perjury in a civil suit concerning the very same conduct later charged in the criminal indictment, the district court erred in applying U.S.S.G. 3C1.1 to enhance his sentence for willfully obstructing justice. The court held that because the district court applied the correct legal standard and relied upon probative evidence submitted by the government, the district court did not err in calculating the intended loss at being over $200,000. The court also held that "willful" meant only that defendant had engaged in intentional or deliberate acts designed to obstruct any potential investigation, at the time an investigation was in fact pending; it did not mean that defendant had to know for certain that the investigation was pending. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Plaintiff brought this suit in 2004, challenging the constitutionality of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, 10 U.S.C. 654(b). While an appeal was pending in this case, Congress enacted the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-321, 124 Stat. 3515. Consequently, the court held that this case became moot when the repeal of section 654 took effect on September 20, 2010. Therefore, the court vacated and remanded with directions to dismiss.

Plaintiffs, representing a putative class of purchasers of contact lens solutions, appealed the district court's order granting summary judgment for defendant. Plaintiffs brought suit alleging that defendant violated California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 17200 et seq., and False Advertising Law (FAL), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 17500 et seq., by marketing Complete MoisturePlus as a product that cleaned and disinfected lenses. The district court ruled that plaintiffs lacked standing. Defendant argued that the ruling was not in error and that even if it was, the suit was properly dismissed because the class' claims were preempted by 21 U.S.C. 360k(a) of the Medical Devices Amendments of 1976 (MDA), 21 U.S.C. 360(c) et seq. The court held that the district court was incorrect to conclude that this class of plaintiffs lacked standing where they had demonstrated economic harm, but the court held that it could affirm the district court's summary judgment on any ground supported by the record. Therefore, the court held that the record demonstrated that the class' claims were preempted, so the court affirmed the grant of summary judgment.

Defendant was convicted of illegal reentry in 2004, escape, and a second count of illegal reentry with a found-in date of June 7, 2007. Defendant appealed his conviction on the second illegal reentry offense, challenging the denial of his motion to dismiss based on violation of the 30-day preindictment time limit imposed by the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161(b). The court held that the Speedy Trial Act's 30-day preindictment time limit, which ordinarily ran from the date of the defendant's initial arrest, restarted when the underlying complaint was dismissed without prejudice and the charges were later refiled. In this case, the 30-day clock both started and stopped upon the filing of the second superseding indictment, which reinstated the dismissed illegal reentry charge. Therefore, there was no violation of section 3161(b) and the district court properly denied defendant's motion to dismiss.