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

Defendant was convicted of possession with intent to distribute ecstasy after Government officers discovered large quantities of illegal drugs in two packages falsely labeled as containing documents from a German law firm. Defendant unsuccessfully challenged the admissibility of the evidence in a pre-trial motion to suppress. The Ninth Circuit held that, even if the evidence was seized in violation of Defendant's constitutional rights, admission was justified under the independent source doctrine. The court also rejected Defendant's challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence. View "USA V. TONY SAELEE" on Justia Law

Defendants were indicted on many charges related to their participation in the Canta Ranas gang in Whittier, California. Defendants were ultimately convicted on RICO conspiracy. On appeal, Defendants raise multiple challenges to the admissibility of the government's expert witness's testimony.The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant's convictions, finding that the district court had broad latitude when determining reliability and that, in this case, the district court did not commit an abuse of discretion in failing to hold a hearing. The district court erred in failing to put its credibility findings on the record; however, any error was harmless. View "USA V. ENRIQUE HOLGUIN" on Justia Law

Petitioner argued that application of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. Section 2254(d), is unconstitutionally retroactive—i.e., that the relevant event to which AEDPA’s legal consequences attached is the automatic appeal of his capital sentence in state court, which occurred before AEDPA’s effective date.   In a per curiam opinion addressing all issues except penalty phase prejudice, and a separate majority opinion addressing penalty phase prejudice, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment denying Petitioner’s habeas corpus petition challenging his California conviction and death sentence for murder.   The panel wrote that the California Supreme Court’s conclusion on direct appeal that Michaels did not unambiguously invoke either his right to counsel or his right to silence with respect to all questioning is fully supported by the record. The California Supreme Court did recognize that Petitioner selectively invoked his right not to answer a specific question as protected by Miranda, but the California Supreme Court neither determined precisely what question Petitioner had declared off-limits nor whether the ensuing interrogation impermissibly violated Petitioner's invocation of his right to silence with regard to the subject covered by that question. The panel held that the California Supreme Court’s decision to ignore a defendant's unambiguous and unequivocal selective invocation of his right to silence as to an area of inquiry during a custodial interrogation, requiring instead that the refusal be repeated in response to each question regarding the subject matter as to which the right was earlier invoked, was contrary to the law clearly established by Miranda and its progeny. View "KURT MICHAELS V. RON DAVIS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted on terrorism-related charges for his central role in a conspiracy to travel to Afghanistan and engage in armed conflict against American soldiers. He was originally sentenced to 300 months in prison, but had to be resentenced after the Ninth Circuit reversed two of his convictions. The district court resentenced him, again imposing a 300-month sentence. Defendant challenged his resentence on multiple grounds, 1.) the district court erred in applying an enhancement to his sentence after finding that he was an “organizer” or “leader” of the criminal conspiracy pursuant to the United States Sentencing Guidelines, 2.) the district court’s decision to impose an additional terrorism enhancement under the Guidelines was inadequately justified.The Ninth Circuit rejected Defendant's challenges, affirming his sentence. The court explained that the district court reasonably concluded that Defendant had the necessary influence and ability to coordinate the behavior of others so as to achieve a desired criminal result, meaning that he was an “organizer” within the meaning of § 3B1.1(c). View "USA V. SOHIEL KABIR" on Justia Law

Defendants used fake driver’s licenses and a false tissue procurement company as cover to infiltrate conferences that Planned Parenthood hosted or attended. Using the same strategy, defendants also arranged and attended lunch meetings with Planned Parenthood and visited Planned Parenthood health clinics. During these conferences, meetings, and visits, defendants secretly recorded Planned Parenthood staff without their consent. After secretly recording for roughly a year-and-a-half, Defendants released on the internet edited videos of the secretly recorded conversations. After a jury trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of Planned Parenthood and awarded it statutory, compensatory, and punitive damages as well as limited injunctive relief.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment, after a jury trial, in favor of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., and other plaintiffs on claims of trespass, fraud, conspiracy, breach of contracts, unlawful and fraudulent business practices, violating civil RICO, and violating various federal and state wiretapping laws. Affirming in part, the panel held that the compensatory damages were not precluded by the First Amendment. The panel held that under Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991), and Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Wasden, 878 F.3d 1184 (9th Cir. 2018), facially constitutional statutes apply to everyone, including journalists. The panel reversed the jury’s verdict on the claim under the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2511(2)(d), and vacated the related statutory damages for violating this statute. View "PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION, ET AL V. CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendant kidnapped Jane Doe, then age 12 years old, and drove her from California to Nevada knowing that she would engage in prostitution. The defendant entered into a written plea agreement pursuant to which, in exchange for the government’s promise to drop five serious criminal charges, he would plead guilty to two lesser crimes (interstate travel in aid of unlawful activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1952(a)(3)(A)) and would pay Doe restitution.   The panel granted Jane Doe’s petition for a writ of mandamus pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3771(d)(3), a provision of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, in a case in which the district court concluded that it lacked statutory authority to order Defendant to pay restitution to Jane Doe. The panel published the opinion to reiterate what this court held in two cases decided three decades ago: 18 U.S.C. Section 3663(a)(3) grants statutory authority to district courts to award restitution whenever a defendant agrees in a plea agreement to pay restitution. The panel instructed the district court to address, in the first instance, Defendant’s evidentiary challenges and other arguments concerning the appropriate amount of restitution View "JANE DOE V. USDC-NVL" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possession of crack cocaine and a gun in 2007. He was sentenced to 107 months of incarceration. In a violation of parole hearing, the district court sentenced Defendant to consecutive 24-month sentences after finding he violated the conditions of his supervised release by possessing two guns and ammunition.On appeal, Defendant argued that 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3583(g)’s requirement that a judge impose a term of imprisonment based on conduct that constitutes a federal crime violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and that his violations should therefore have been determined beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury. He also challenged his sentences on Double Jeopardy grounds.The Ninth Circuit affirmed, explaining that Sec. 3583(g) is more like “ordinary revocation” than “punishment for a new offense,” and that Defendant’s argument is not supported by Justice Breyer’s controlling concurring opinion in United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019). Defendant's Double Jeopardy challenges similarly failed because 1.) He possessed more than one weapon and 2.) The violations related to separate counts in the indictment. View "USA V. JAMES RICHARDS" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of a habeas corpus petition brought by Petitioner, who was sentenced to death in 1994 after a state jury convicted him of first-degree murder and other offenses. In the opinion, the panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Petitioner's certified claim that the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection pursuant to Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).   Petitioner argued the California Supreme Court’s decision was an unreasonable application of Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162 (2005), under 28 U.S.C. Section 2254(d)(1) because the state court “engaged in the prohibited exercise of reviewing the trial court record regarding the struck jurors and identifying colorable reasons why the prosecutor might have legitimately struck the three jurors.”   The panel held that the California Supreme Court unreasonably applied Johnson by doing exactly what this court has explained Johnson forbids: the court scanned the record, articulated its own race-neutral reasons why the prosecutor may have exercised his peremptory strikes, and denied Petitioner’s claim at Step One. The panel addressed Petitioner’s six other certified claims in a simultaneously filed memorandum disposition and affirmed the district court’s rulings on those claims. The panel declined to reach Petitioner’s uncertified claims. View "JAIME HOYOS V. RONALD DAVIS" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit amended its Opinion filed April 27, 2022, affirming a conviction and sentence on one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child, and one count of possession of sexually explicit images of children, in a case in which Defendant was arrested returning from the Philippines where he engaged in sex tourism involving minors.   Defendant argued that the evidence seized from his electrical devices upon his arrest should have been suppressed because Yahoo and Facebook were acting as government agents when they searched his online accounts. The panel rejected Defendant’s arguments (1) that two federal statutes—the Stored Communications Act and the Protect Our Children Act—transformed the ESPs’ searches into governmental action, and (2) that the government was sufficiently involved in the ESPs’ searches of Defendant’s accounts to trigger Fourth Amendment protection.   The panel declined to reach the question of whether the preservation requests implicate the Fourth Amendment because even assuming that they do, there is no basis for suppression given that the record establishes that the ESPs’ preservation of the defendant’s digital data had no effect on the government’s ability to obtain the evidence that convicted him.   The panel concluded that the affidavit—which described Yahoo’s internal investigation and the resulting findings, as well as the information Facebook provided to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after searching the defendant’s accounts—established a fair probability that child pornography would be found on the defendant’s electronic devices. The panel wrote that there was no impermissible double counting here, as the enhancements were premised on separate exploitative acts. View "USA V. CARSTEN ROSENOW" on Justia Law

In a case in which the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s decision filed April 7, 2020, and reported at 954 F.3d 1251 (9th Cir. 2020), the panel filed an amended order granting the government’s motion to reinstate portions of April 7, 2020, opinion, to the following extent:   The panel reversed the district court’s judgment on Counts Four (money laundering) and Ten (possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence). The panel affirmed—for the reasons explained in April 7, 2020, opinion—on all remaining Counts: One, Eight (conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery); Two (Hobbs Act robbery); Three (possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence); and Nine (attempt to commit Hobbs Act robbery). The panel remanded to the district court for resentencing consistent with United States v. Taylor, 596 U.S. —, 2022 WL 2203334 (June 21, 2022), which held that attempted Hobbs Act robbery does not qualify as a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. Section 924(c)(3)(A) because no element of the offense requires proof that the defendant used, attempted to use, or threatened to use force. View "USA V. MONICO DOMINGUEZ" on Justia Law