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

The Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's sentence for sexually exploiting a minor and remanded for resentencing. The panel concluded that, because there is no evidence that defendant exercised control over the child's mother, the district court abused its discretion in applying the leadership enhancement under USSG 3B1.1(c). The panel also concluded that the district court erred in applying a guardian enhancement under USSG 2G2.1(b)(5) where defendant was not the child's parent and was never entrusted with parent-like authority. The panel could not say that the district court would come to the same conclusions given the proper scope of the enhancements and thus the sentence must be vacated and remanded. View "United States v. Harris" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit filed (1) an order granting respondent's petition for panel rehearing and denying as moot her petition for rehearing en banc, (2) a superseding opinion affirming the district court's denial of petitioner's habeas corpus petition challenging his California conviction for first-degree murder, and (3) a partial dissent/concurrence.The panel concluded that the prosecutor's repeated statements to the jury during final argument that the presumption of innocence no longer applied were misstatements of clearly established law as articulated by the Supreme Court. However, the panel deferred to the state court's finding, applying the Darden standard, that there was not a reasonable probability of a different outcome had the prosecutor not misstated the law. The panel also concluded that the state court did not err under Dunn v. United States, 442 U.S. 100 (1979), in upholding the jury's arguably inconsistent verdict. Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district court's denial of relief. View "Ford v. Peery" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's 15-month sentence imposed for violating the terms of his supervised release. Defendant argued that the sentence violates his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights because it extends his incarceration beyond the maximum term of imprisonment for his underlying conviction, without findings of fact proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.The panel explained that defendant's argument is based on the plurality opinion in United States v. Haymond, 139 S.Ct. 2369 (2019), and Justice Breyer's controlling concurring opinion did not adopt the plurality's position. Therefore, the panel concluded that Haymond did not overrule or undermine the panel's prior opinion in United States v. Purvis, 940 F.2d 1276 (9th Cir. 1991), which held a term of supervised release may extend beyond the statutory maximum for the underlying substantive offense. Nor does defendant hold that the right to jury findings proved beyond a reasonable doubt recognized in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), extends to a revocation of supervised release hearing. Furthermore, when district courts revoke supervised release, the new sentences they impose are treated, for constitutional purposes, "as part of the penalty for the initial offense," Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 700 (2000). The panel explained that neither this circuit nor any of its sister circuits has adopted or endorsed defendant's argument that the terms of imprisonment and the terms of reimprisonment must be aggregated and may not exceed the maximum term of the statute of conviction. View "United States v. Henderson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for seven instances of armed robbery and three instances of attempted armed robbery. Defendant raised three alleged trial errors: (1) denial of his motion to suppress body camera footage of him taken during an unrelated police encounter; (2) denial of his motion in limine to exclude video evidence of his flight from police; and (3) denial of his motion to sever the offenses. Furthermore, defendant argued that cumulative errors affected the fairness of his trial; the mandatory minimum term of imprisonment violated the Eighth Amendment; and a Hobbs Act robbery case should be overturned.The panel concluded that the police violated the Fourth Amendment when they opened the door to defendant's residence without a warrant on February 7, 2017, and the fruit of that search should not have been introduced at trial. However, given the strength of the other evidence that defendant committed the ARCO robbery, the panel concluded that the district court's error in admitting the body camera evidence was harmless. The panel rejected the remainder of defendant's challenges to his conviction and his 85-year sentence as meritless. View "United States v. Holiday" on Justia Law

Lopez, attempting to drive across the border in Otay Mesa, California, was referred to secondary inspection. The inspection of Lopez’s vehicle revealed packages containing methamphetamine. Lopez pleaded guilty under 21 U.S.C. 952 and 21 U.S.C. 960, triggering a mandatory minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment.The 18 U.S.C. 3553(f) “safety valve” allows a district court to sentence a criminal defendant below the mandatory minimum sentence for certain drug offenses if the defendant meets the criteria in section 3553(f)(1)-(f)(5). A 2018 amendment, the First Step Act, focuses only on the defendant’s prior criminal history as determined under the Sentencing Guidelines and requires a defendant to prove that he does not have: (A) more than 4 criminal history points . . . (B) a prior 3-point offense . . . and (C) a prior 2-point violent offense.” Lopez’s only relevant conviction was for vandalism in 2008. Because of a probation violation, he served 13 months of imprisonment, so that conviction constituted a “3-point offense” under U.S.S.G. 4A1.1(a)The district court concluded that section 3553(f)(1)’s “and” is ambiguous and invoked the rule of lenity to reach a conjunctive interpretation, then sentenced Lopez to four years of imprisonment. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, finding 3553(f)(1)’s “and” unambiguously conjunctive. View "United States v. Lopez" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's imposition of two conditions of supervised release after defendant was convicted of receipt or distribution of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2). The panel concluded that the place condition, which prohibits defendant from being near any place primarily used by children, is not unconstitutionally vague nor overbroad and is reasonable for the protection of the public. The panel also concluded that the third-party risk notification condition, where a probation officer may require defendant to notify another person of the defendant's risk to that person, was not unconstitutionally vague where the limited discretion vested in the probation officer as to when the condition should be triggered does not render it unconstitutionally vague. View "United States v. Gibson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a prison officer based on qualified immunity in an action brought by plaintiff under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that defendant violated plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights by screening and intermittently checking in on plaintiff's phone conversations with the attorney he had hired to bring lawsuits on his behalf.The panel concluded that defendant was entitled to qualified immunity because she did not violate any Fourth Amendment right that was clearly established at the time of her challenged conduct. In this case, the panel exercised its discretion to consider only the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis. The panel explained that plaintiff has not cited any precedent that has placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate. In this case, there is no Supreme Court case considering whether a prison official's monitoring of an inmate's legal calls in this manner violates the inmate's Fourth Amendment rights. Furthermore, plaintiff has not pointed to any Ninth Circuit precedent holding that monitoring the beginning of an inmate's calls to ensure their legal character and then intermittently checking on those calls to confirm their continuing legal character violates a prisoner's Fourth Amendment rights. Consequently, the panel declined to address the merits of plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claim. Finally, the panel briefly responded to the concurrence's argument that plaintiff's claim warranted a merits decision even though such a decision could not affect the case's outcome. View "Witherow v. Baker" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which is governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Petitioner had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. The district court granted a certificate of appealability as to five claims, and the panel later issued a certificate of appealability as to a sixth.The panel concluded that petitioner is not entitled to relief on any of the certified claims. In this case, petitioner is not entitled to relief on Claim 1, which was predicated on the alleged denial of his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, where fairminded jurists applying the governing beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard could conclude that the absence of a jury trial did not affect either the finding of the (F)(6) aggravating factor or the determination that the mitigating evidence was not sufficiently substantial to call for leniency. The panel also rejected Claim 2, which alleged that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance of counsel in presenting mitigation defense during the penalty phase; Claim 8, which alleged that petitioner's waiver of the privilege against self-incrimination was not knowing and voluntary; Claim 4, which alleged ineffective assistance of counsel with the same factual predicate as Claim 8; Claim 7, which alleged that Arizona courts violated the Eighth Amendment by applying an impermissible "causal nexus" test when assessing non-statutory mitigating circumstances; and Claim 12, which alleges that the sentencing court violated petitioner's Eighth Amendment rights. View "Sansing v. Ryan" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion seeking to vacate his conviction and sentence for money laundering. The panel concluded that defendant failed to make a showing that, due to the ineffective assistance of counsel, his guilty plea was not knowing and voluntary. The panel explained that, by knowingly receiving funds as a "conduit" from the gambler for forwarding to the bookmaking operation, defendant thereby "conduct[ed] . . . part of an illegal gambling business" in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1955(a). Furthermore, because defendant violated 18 U.S.C. 1955(a) upon his unlawful receipt of the funds, they became property obtained through a violation of section 1955(a).The panel further concluded that, even if defendant's lawyer conducted an inadequate legal analysis and failed to properly explain "proceeds" to defendant, there is no prejudice under Strickland because defendant has not shown that the lawyer thereby overlooked a viable defense to the charges. Consequently, there is no basis for finding a "reasonable probability" that, had defendant been properly advised of the meaning of "proceeds," defendant "would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial." View "United States v. Silveira" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress the fruits of a search of his pocket and his subsequent conviction for possession of 35.35 grams of heroin with intent to distribute. The panel concluded that the officers complied with Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), and its progeny in all respects except one: in conducting the limited protective search for weapons that Terry authorizes, the officer here did not perform any patdown or other initial limited intrusion but instead proceeded directly to extract and examine an item in defendant's pocket. The panel concluded that, under Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40 (1968)—a companion case to Terry that was decided the same day—the officer's search of defendant's pocket exceeded the limited scope of what Terry permits and was therefore unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law