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

Petitioner was convicted of 25 felonies (mostly residential burglaries) committed against multiple victims over a three-month period. The trial court imposed consecutive sentences on all but two of the 25 counts, resulting in an overall sentence of 292 years imprisonment.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of habeas relief. Rejecting Petitioner’s constitutional claim, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded that proportionality should be assessed based on each individual conviction and sentence, not the cumulative effect of consecutive sentences and that none of Petitioner’s individual sentences were disproportionate. Petitioner argued that the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s (AEDPA’s) deferential standard of review does not apply to the Arizona Court of Appeals’ decision because that court did not consider the cumulative impact of his sentence and that he was entitled instead to de novo review on this claim. The panel concluded that the Arizona Court of Appeals made a merits determination and that AEDPA deference applies.   Applying AEDPA deference, the panel noted that there is no clearly established law from the Supreme Court on whether Eighth Amendment sentence proportionality must be analyzed on a cumulative or individual basis when a defendant is sentenced on multiple offenses, and that other than the basic principle of proportionality, the only thing that the Supreme Court has established is that the rule against grossly disproportionate sentences is violated only in the exceedingly rare and extreme case. The panel concluded that it cannot say that the Arizona Court of Appeals’ decision was contrary to, or unreasonably applied, clearly established federal law. View "ATDOM PATSALIS V. DAVID SHINN, ET AL" on Justia Law

After the district court denied his motion to suppress, Defendant pled guilty to smuggling ammunition in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 554(a). Defendant timely appealed the denial of his motion to suppress. This appeal challenges that denial. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion to suppress because of the consistent conclusions of Judge Gould and Judge Bea, which represent a majority of the panel, even though the reasoning of Judge Gould and Judge Bea in their separate concurrences is different.   The Ninth Circuit noted that one exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of searches and seizures conducted without prior approval by judge or magistrate is a Terry stop, which allows an officer to briefly detain an individual when the officer has a reasonable articulable suspicion that an individual is engaged in a crime, during which stop an officer may also conduct a limited protective frisk if the officer has reason to believe the individual has a weapon. The panel noted that another exception is when an officer has probable cause to arrest an individual. View "USA V. SERGIO GUERRERO" on Justia Law

Petitioner raised several ineffective assistance of counsel claims under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 688 (1984). The Ninth Circuit affirmed and applied AEDPA deference to the state habeas courts’ denial of relief. Taking as true that trial counsel failed to consult with experts at all, the panel held that even assuming that this failure fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, it did not create the necessary prejudice to warrant relief. The panel further held that it was not objectively unreasonable for the state habeas court to conclude that trial counsel's conduct was not constitutionally deficient and that any error that might have occurred did not create sufficient prejudice to call into question the outcome of the case. The panel held that even if trial counsel’s failure to address the respective heights fell below professional standards, a reasonable jurist could conclude that the outcome of the trial would not have been different if trial counsel had done so. View "ORLANDO LOPEZ V. TRENT ALLEN" on Justia Law

Petitioner was sentenced to death in 1994 after a state jury convicted him of first-degree murder and several other offenses. He appeals the district court’s denial of his federal habeas corpus petition.   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. 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).   Because the California Supreme Court unreasonably applied Johnson, the panel reviewed de novo Petitioner’s Batson claim to determine whether he raised an inference of racial bias at Step One. The panel noted that trial courts are often well-situated to decide the Step One question without conducting a formal comparative juror analysis, but wrote that when an appellate court must decide whether the trial court that denied a Batson motion should instead have drawn an inference that discrimination occurred, Batson supports the use of comparative juror analysis.   Accordingly, pursuant to Batson’s three-step framework, the panel could not say the California Supreme Court erred by ruling that Petitioner did not make a prima facie showing to shift the burden to the prosecutor to explain the actual motivation for the peremptory challenges. View "JAIME HOYOS V. RONALD DAVIS" on Justia Law

Petitioner was accused of sexually abusing two young girls and fled Alaska soon after. The State of Alaska filed an information that same year, but Petitioner was neither apprehended nor charged by indictment until 2004, when an employment background check in Minnesota alerted Alaskan authorities to Petitioner’s whereabouts, leading to his arrest and extradition. Petitioner completed his prison sentence and probation in 2016.   Petitioner challenged the 2009 conviction as a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial because of Alaska’s delay in apprehending and indicting him after he fled. Before he filed this habeas petition, Petitioner was convicted in federal court in Tennessee for failing to register as a sex offender pursuant to its laws.   At issue in this appeal was whether Petitioner was “in custody pursuant to” the Alaska judgment he challenges when he filed his Section 2254 petition; if he wasn’t, the federal court lacks jurisdiction over it. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment dismissing for lack of subject matter jurisdiction Petitioner’s habeas corpus petition.   The panel explained that Petitioner failed to establish jurisdiction under his restraint-on-liberty theory for reasons similar to the Supreme Court’s rejection of his supervised release theory, that is, because Petitioner does not demonstrate that Tennessee’s sex offender registration laws establish custody “pursuant to” the Alaska judgment. The panel noted that Petitioner in no way argued that he is significantly restrained by the sex offender registration laws of Alaska. View "SEAN WRIGHT V. STATE OF ALASKA" on Justia Law

Petitioner asserted that he is entitled to relief on several grounds, the majority of which the panel addressed in a memorandum disposition filed on January 15, 2021. In this opinion, as amended, the panel addressed Petitioner’s certified claim for ineffective assistance of trial counsel— that counsel did not investigate and present mitigating evidence at the penalty phase, including evidence of diffuse brain damage, childhood abuse, and substance abuse.   The Ninth Circuit (1) filed an amended opinion along with Judge Gould’s separate concurrence, (2) denied a petition for panel rehearing, and (3) denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc, in a case in which the panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Petitioner’s habeas corpus petition challenging his Arizona conviction and death sentence for first-degree murder.   Because Washington filed his habeas petition before the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), the panel reviewed the claim under the standard set out in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), and its progeny, without the added deference required under AEDPA.   The panel held that Washington did not meet his burden under the first Strickland prong of showing constitutionally deficient performance by failing to obtain and review Washington’s education and incarceration records. The panel held that Washington did not meet his burden of showing that trial counsel erred by not further investigating Washington’s childhood abuse, to the extent that he could have, or by not presenting the information he did not have regarding abuse at sentencing hearing. View "WASHINGTON V. DAVID SHINN" on Justia Law

Defendant contended that the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion based on the dangerousness finding imposed by U.S.S.G. Section 1B1.13.   The Ninth Circuit amended an opinion filed July 29, 2022, affirming the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. Section 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) in which Defendant requested a reduction to time served and immediate release, or, in the alternative, home detention for the balance of his sentence.  Following Aruda, while the Sentencing Commission’s statements in Section 1B1.13 may inform a district court’s discretion for Section 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) motions filed by a defendant, they cannot be treated as binding constraints on the court’s analysis. Here, the district court did precisely what Aruda proscribes: it denied Defendant’s motion by holding that he failed to demonstrate that he is “not a danger to others or [to] the community” pursuant to Section 1B1.13. The panel wrote that this holding is an abuse of discretion.   The panel held that Aruda error is harmless if the court properly relied on 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(a) sentencing factors as an alternative basis for its denial of a compassionate release motion, as the district court did here when it held in the alternative that the 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(a) sentencing factors weighed “squarely against” granting Defendant’s compassionate release motion. Defendant also contended that the district court abused its discretion by failing to respond to his alternative request to serve the rest of his sentence under home confinement. View "USA V. JOEL WRIGHT" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. Sec. 115(a)(1)(B) after threatening to kill an on-duty Social Security employee. On appeal, Defendant claimed that the District Court erred in denying her motion for judgment of acquittal because the threatened employee was not an "officer" under the terms of Sec. 115(a)(1)(B).The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant's conviction, agreeing with the Third and Eighth Circuits, that the plain language of Sec. 115(a)(1)(B) includes all persons described in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1114. At the time Defendant made the threat, the employee was assisting the Federal Protective Service by providing security services at a government-owned and leased property. This brought the employee within those covered under Sec. 114. View "USA V. JACQUELINE ANDERSON" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions for conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, money laundering conspiracy, and conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO).   The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant’s convictions. The panel held that sufficient evidence supported Defendant’s conviction for money laundering conspiracy, which required the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was an agreement to commit money laundering, Defendant knew the objective of the agreement, and Defendant joined the agreement with the intent to further its unlawful purpose. Defendant did not dispute that the CRO conspired to launder money by transferring extortionate “taxes” collected by foot soldiers to incarcerated gang leaders.   The panel concluded that there was sufficient evidence that Defendant himself knew of and intended to support the CRO’s money laundering, and that he was not convicted solely on the basis of his CRO membership. The panel held that, as related to the money laundering conspiracy charge, the district court did not plainly err in instructing the jury, in the course of generally defining the term “knowingly,” that the government was “not required to prove that the defendant knew that his acts or omissions were unlawful.”   The panel held that a conspiracy conviction can stand if one of the objects is only factually, but not legally, insufficient. Thus, even if there had been insufficient evidence for money laundering conspiracy, the RICO conviction would still stand because there was sufficient evidence for the other two valid predicate activities, drug distribution conspiracy and extortion. View "USA V. ALEXIS JAIMEZ" on Justia Law

Defendant was tried for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and conspiracy to do the same during a one-day bench trial. Defendant subsequently filed a motion for findings of fact under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 23(c). Although he acknowledged that the motion might be untimely because the rule requires that such a motion be made “before the finding of guilty or not guilty,” Defendant argued that he had been unaware that the court intended to deliver its finding without a hearing. The district court denied the motion.   The Ninth Circuit vacated the judgment of conviction. The panel held that the district court plainly erred by making only a written finding of guilt after trial, in violation of Defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. The panel concluded that, although the usual remedy would be a remand to announce the finding in open court, the district court had already reiterated its finding of guilt publicly during Defendant’s sentencing, rendering such a remedy superfluous.   The panel further held that, because the finding of guilt was legally insufficient, the district court erred in denying as untimely Defendant’s motion for specific findings of fact. Instead, the panel vacated the defendant’s sentence and remanded for the district court to make specific findings of fact. View "USA V. JOSE RAMIREZ-RAMIREZ" on Justia Law