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

Petitioner, convicted of two counts of felony sexual assault, appealed the district court's dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. 2244 habeas petition as untimely. The court held that petitioner's application for review of his sentence was “pending” during the time that the Sentence Review Division (SRD) of the Montana Supreme Court held it in abeyance so he could seek other state collateral review. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2244(d)(2), statute of limitations was tolled after the SRD held petitioner's application in abeyance but before he filed for other state collateral relief. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's judgment and remanded for further proceedings. View "Rogers v. Ferriter" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed from the district court's denial of all but one of the claims raised in his 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas petition. The state cross-appealed the district court's grant of relief on petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claim for counsel's failure to investigate and present additional mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of petitioner's capital murder trial. Because the state court’s rejection of petitioner’s penalty phase ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent, the court denied relief on this claim. The court concluded that petitioner was not prejudiced and reversed the district court's decision on this issue. Because petitioner has not made a “substantial showing” that his Eighth Amendment rights were violated, the court denied a Certificate of Appealability (COA) on this claim. Further, the court denied a COA on petitioner's four uncertified claims alleging that trial counsel were ineffective for failing to investigate and present four categories of evidence. Finally, the court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying petitioner's motion for an evidentiary hearing. View "Andrews v. Davis" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography and was convicted of two counts of distribution of child pornography. On appeal, defendant challenged his 262 month sentence. The court held that U.S.S.G. 2G2.2(b)(3)(B) applies to a child pornography distributor who anticipates receiving something of value in return for his distribution, even in the absence of a specific agreement providing for reciprocity. In this case, there was sufficient evidence that defendant expected that he would receive child pornography in return for sharing his videos and images on GigaTribe. Therefore, the district court properly applied the five-level enhancement. The court also concluded that the district court did not impermissibly rely on the allegations that defendant abused his daughters when it determined his sentence; the court rejected defendant's claim that the district court relied on its personal belief that defendant was "incurable" in determining his sentence where the district court depended on other, substantial, case-specific evidence about defendant's addiction to child pornography; and the district court properly imposed a two-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2G2.2(b)(6). Finally, the court concluded that the sentence was substantively reasonable. The court affirmed the sentence, remanding with an instruction to amend the written judgment to conform with the oral pronouncement. View "United States v. Hernandez" on Justia Law

Defendant filed a Rule 60(b) motion for relief from judgment following the denial of his section 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence. The court concluded that a certificate of appealability (COA) is required to appeal the denial of a legitimate Rule 60(b) motion for relief from judgment arising out of the denial of a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion; a COA should only issue for the appeal arising from the denial of a Rule 60(b) motion in a section 2255 proceeding if the movant shows that (1) jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court abused its discretion in denying the Rule 60(b) motion and (2) jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the underlying section 2255 motion states a valid claim of the denial of a constitutional right; and, in this case, defendant is not entitled to a COA where the district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to reopen the time for appeal and the district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to consider defendant's amended section 2255 motion. Accordingly, the court denied the COA and dismissed the appeal. View "United States v. Winkles" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for charges related to a mortgage-fraud scheme. At issue was whether defendant breached an immunity agreement and thus made himself amenable to prosecution. The court concluded that, in light of the gaps and contradictions in the record, the district court’s failure to either grant defendant's motion for reconsideration or order an additional evidentiary hearing was an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to reconsider and remanded with directions to dismiss the indictment. View "United States v. Mark" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his 60-month sentence for violating the terms of his supervised release. The court held that before a district court concludes that a defendant committed a Grade A violation of supervised release by engaging in conduct constituting a felony offense that is a crime of violence, it must take the following steps: it must determine by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant’s conduct constituted a federal, state, or local offense; it must then use the categorical approach set forth in Taylor v. United States to determine whether that offense is a categorical match to the federal generic offense of a “crime of violence;” if the federal, state, or local statute criminalizes more conduct than the federal generic offense, the court may consider whether the statute is divisible, and whether the offense the defendant committed is a crime of violence; and if the defendant’s conduct constitutes an offense that is a crime of violence, then the court may conclude that the defendant committed a Grade A violation of supervised release. In this case, because the district court did not specify which of two offenses in a divisible statute defendant's conduct constituted, and one of the two offenses may not be a crime of violence in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Johnson v. United States, the court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Willis, Jr." on Justia Law

In the absence of guidance from California courts, courts in the Ninth Circuit have struggled to discern how California courts would rule on the issue of timeliness of habeas petitions, particularly when there is no justification for the delay. Accordingly, the court certified the following question to the California Supreme Court: When a state habeas petitioner has no good cause for delay, at what point in time is that state prisoner’s petition, filed in a California court of review to challenge a lower state court’s disposition of the prisoner’s claims, untimely under California law; specifically, is a habeas petition untimely filed after an unexplained 66-day delay between the time a California trial court denies the petition and the time the petition is filed in the California Court of Appeal? View "Robinson v. Lewis" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to distributing crack cocaine and subsequently filed a direct appeal, claiming that the district court failed to ensure that he entered his plea knowingly and voluntarily. The court concluded that the district court's inquiry was sufficient to ensure that defendant entered his plea knowingly and voluntarily and it did not commit a constitutional or procedural error. In this case, the district court asked defendant mental-state-related questions after defendant revealed that he was under the influence of medication. The district court continued its inquiry, asking if the medication affected defendant's ability to understand the things that the court or the lawyer is saying, or whether defendant understood the purpose of the hearing. Defendant's performance during the rest of the plea hearing also supports the conclusion of competency. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Carter" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of first degree murder, appealed the district court's grant of the State's motion to dismiss as untimely petitioner's habeas petition. The court concluded that the district court did not clearly err in finding that petitioner possessed sufficient mental competence to understand the need to timely file a petition and to personally prepare and effectuate a filing. Therefore, the district court did not err in determining that petitioner did not establish an exceptional circumstance that would warrant equitable tolling of the one year statute of limitations. The court declined petitioner's suggestion that it adopt a simple mandatory test requiring an evidentiary hearing whenever a petitioner makes a non-frivolous showing where the district court had an amply developed record full of relevant evidence allowing a well-supported ruling concerning petitioner's mental competence. Thus, the district court did abuse its discretion in reaching a decision absent an evidentiary hearing. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Orthel v. Yates" on Justia Law

Torres was convicted of knowingly transporting 73 kilograms of cocaine across the U.S.-Mexico border concealed in a specially constructed compartment of his pickup truck, 21 U.S.C. 952, 960. At his first trial, which ended in a hung jury, the district court permitted Torres to testify that his friend in Tijuana, Griese, borrowed his truck on several occasions and that the modifications and concealment could have been made to his truck without his knowledge. On retrial, Torres attempted to testify about other requests made to him by Griese, who Torres claimed was manipulating him into unknowingly carrying drugs across the border by asking him for favors running errands in San Diego. The district court precluded this line of questioning as hearsay and irrelevant. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. While some questions may constitute non-hearsay, where the declarant intends the question to communicate an implied assertion and the proponent offers it for this intended message, the question falls within the definition of hearsay. Even if the district court erred in sustaining the hearsay objection, the exclusion did not amount to constitutional error; exclusion of the testimony about the friend’s requests would also have been harmless under the non-constitutional error standard View "United States v. Torres" on Justia Law