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

Petitioner filed a Section 2255 motion in the district court challenging her restitution order in a case in which Petitioner was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The district court dismissed the motion on the ground that restitution claims are not cognizable in a Section 2255 motion. Petitioner then filed a second-in-time Section 2255 motion asserting new grounds for relief. The district court denied it as an unauthorized second or successive motion filed in violation of 28 U.S.C. Section 2255(h). Pursuant to Circuit Rule 22-3(a), the district court referred the matter to this court, which opened the matter as an application for authorization to file a second or successive motion.
The Ninth Circuit denied Petitioner’s s application for leave to file a second or successive motion. The panel held that the district court’s dismissal of Petitioner’s first motion constitutes an adjudication “on the merits” for purposes of the second-or-successive bar. The panel explained that when an initial petition or motion is dismissed because its claims cannot be considered by the court or do not otherwise establish a ground for habeas relief, regardless of their underlying merits, any later-filed petition or motion is second or successive. Accordingly, to the extent Petitioner's second motion raises claims that could have been adjudicated on the merits when she filed her first motion, that aspect of her second motion is second and successive for purposes of Section 2255(h). Because Petitioner has not argued or otherwise made a showing that she meets the requirements of Section 2255(h), the panel denied her application to file a second or successive motion. View "TONG V. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence of twenty-seven months’ imprisonment followed by three years’ supervised release for attempted reentry following removal. Defendant had been deported from the United States six times, most recently about a month before his arrest. The same district court judge who sentenced Defendant in this case had presided over his prior sentencing hearing for illegal reentry. On appeal, Defendant raised two challenges to the court’s sentence.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence. The panel held that so long as Defendant is apprised of the consequences of entering into a Type B plea agreement and accedes to them voluntarily, he has no right to withdraw from the agreement on the ground that the court does not accept the sentencing recommendation or request. Accordingly, the district court’s use of the word “reject” in the context of a Type B plea agreement can have no legal effect. The panel wrote that the record establishes that Defendant was aware of the consequences of entering into a Type B plea agreement, and concluded that the district court therefore did not abuse its discretion under the circumstances.   Defendant argued that the district court committed procedural error when it used Defendant’s alleged promise at his prior sentencing hearing not to return to the United States as a sentencing factor. Reviewing for plain error, the panel held that the district court’s factual finding that Defendant had assured the court at the prior sentencing hearing that he would not return to the United States is supported by the record. View "USA V. URBANO TORRES-GILES" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from his conviction after a conditional plea of guilty to a single count of unlawful reentry by a previously removed alien. Defendant contended that his indictment should have been dismissed on the ground that the 2000 removal order underlying his prior removals was invalid due to an error by the immigration judge (“IJ”), at his removal hearing, as to whether he was eligible for voluntary departure.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that, in the respects relevant here, Palomar-Santiago abrogated that caselaw as well. Even assuming arguendo that the IJ’s incorrect statement about Defendant’s eligibility for voluntary departure violated due process and rendered his removal proceedings “fundamentally unfair,” that would not automatically or “effectively” satisfy the requirement in 8 U.S.C. Section 1326(d)(1) that the alien exhausted available administrative remedies, or the requirement in 8 U.S.C. Section 1326(d)(2) that the deportation proceedings improperly deprived the alien of an opportunity for judicial review. The panel therefore concluded that Defendant remains subject to Section 1326(d)’s general rule that he may not challenge the validity of his predicate removal order. View "USA V. PRAXEDIS PORTILLO-GONZALEZ" on Justia Law

Defendant moved from the United States to Cambodia in the spring of 2003. Between June 2005 and June 2006, he sexually abused young girls. The government presented evidence at trial from which a jury could infer that one of Defendant’s primary activities in Cambodia was molesting children. A jury convicted Defendant of two counts of violating 18 U.S.C. Section 2423(b) by traveling in foreign commerce with the purpose of committing illicit sexual acts and two counts of violating 18 U.S.C. Section 2241(c) by crossing a state line with intent to sexually abuse a child under 12 and then so doing. Defendant appealed the sufficiency of the evidence for each of these convictions, as well as the district court’s instructions to the jury.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel wrote that Mortensen does not remove from the jury’s province its ability to rationally find that a person embarked on a trip with an innocent purpose but returned home with a motivating purpose of illicit conduct. The panel held that a jury could rationally find that the sexual abuse of children was one of Defendant’s primary motivations for returning from the United States to Cambodia, which is sufficient to uphold his convictions under Section 2423(b) (Counts 1 and 2). Noting that Section 2241(c) (Counts 3 and 4) requires the jury to find a slightly more specific motivating purpose, the panel held that a rational trier of fact could have found that Defendant’s charged victims were, in fact, under 12, and that Pepe crossed state lines with a motivating purpose of sexually abusing girls under 12. View "USA V. MICHAEL PEPE" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged the sentence he received after violating several conditions of his supervised release. Defendant first argued that the district court unlawfully delegated its judicial authority to his probation officer to determine the duration of his inpatient substance abuse treatment. His second argument is that the court erred because one year of inpatient treatment, plus the prison time he was sentenced to serve, exceeds the maximum recommended sentence for his offense, and the district court failed to explain what Defendant considers an upward variance.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the special conditions of supervised release. The panel held that the district court, which ordered a specific time range for Defendant’s inpatient substance treatment with a hard upper limit of one year, did not unconstitutionally delegate its judicial authority by ordering the probation officer to supervise Defendant’s progress in inpatient treatment, and allowing the probation officer the discretion to reduce—but not increase—the duration of his inpatient treatment in consultation with Defendant’s care provider. The panel held that the district court’s imposition of Special Condition 2 in addition to a high-end Guidelines sentence did not constitute an upward variance. View "USA V. ARNOLD TAYLOR" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the denial of his 28 U.S.C. Section 2254 habeas petition. Petitioner was convicted in California state court of making criminal threats and assault with a deadly weapon. The victim was not authorized to reside in the United States at the time of the crimes. Prior to testifying in Petitioner’s trial, the victim received a U-Visa, which provides immigration benefits for victims of certain crimes who cooperate with law enforcement. At trial, the court barred Petitioner from cross-examining the victim about his U-Visa status, which Petitioner asserted was relevant to the victim’s credibility.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that under the standard prescribed in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), which requires a habeas petitioner to persuade the court that a constitutional error at trial had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence” on the verdict, the panel held that Petitioner is not entitled to habeas relief. The panel wrote that nothing in the record indicates that the victim had an eye toward immigration benefits when he made his initial statement implicating Petitioner; rather, the record suggests the opposite. The panel therefore did not harbor the requisite “grave doubt” that the jury would have convicted Burgos had it known about the victim’s immigration status. View "ORLANDO BURGOS V. RAYMOND MADDEN" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged the district court’s judgment on the third revocation of his supervised release. He contends that the district court lacked jurisdiction because, at the time of his third violation, he was serving a term of supervised release that exceeded the applicable statutory maximum.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Applying the rationale of United States v. Castro Verdugo, 750 F.3d 1065 (9th Cir. 2014), which involved the same issue in the context of probation revocation, the panel held that because Defendant was serving a term of supervised release when he committed the instant violation, the district court had jurisdiction to revoke his supervised release and impose an additional term of imprisonment, regardless of any error in the sentence imposed on the second revocation. The panel declined to reach Defendant’s argument that the term of supervised release imposed on his second revocation exceeded the statutory maximum. Consistent with Castro Verdugo and earlier precedent, the panel held that an appeal challenging a supervised release revocation is not the proper avenue through which to attack the validity of the underlying sentence. View "USA V. CARLOS ESTRADA" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was arrested for murder and held for almost four years before the charges against him were dismissed, months after another person confessed to the crime. Years later, Plaintiff then sued the County of Riverside and various County officials under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, claiming that they had violated his due process rights under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by suppressing the separate confession. The district court denied a motion for judgment on the pleadings on the Brady claim.   The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded, without prejudice to Parker, asserting a different due process claim. A Brady violation requires that the withheld evidence have a reasonable probability of affecting a judicial proceeding, and no such proceeding was affected here. The panel held that Plaintiff could not show prejudice from the nondisclosure of the confession. A Brady violation requires that the withheld evidence have a reasonable probability of affecting a judicial proceeding. Plaintiff did not state a Brady claim because he did not assert the nondisclosure would have changed the result of any proceeding in his criminal case. The panel rejected Plaintiff’s contention that the prejudice inquiry should be whether the withheld evidence had a reasonable probability of affecting counsel’s strategy. The panel noted that no court has adopted Plaintiff’s proposed rule, and most other courts require a conviction to establish prejudice. Moreover, here, the cause of Plaintiff’s continued detention was not the suppression of the confession, but the District Attorney’s continued prosecution even after receiving the confession. View "ROGER PARKER V. COUNTY OF RIVERSIDE, ET AL" on Justia Law

After pleading guilty to a single count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(1), Defendant argued at his sentencing that the district court should not consider certain prior convictions in determining his sentencing range under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. According to Defendant, subsequent case authority made clear that the guilty plea that produced those prior convictions was not knowing and voluntary, thereby rendering those convictions constitutionally invalid. Defendant argued that the district court should not consider his prior 2004 federal convictions in determining his sentencing range under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines because the subsequent authority in Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), made clear that the guilty plea that produced those prior convictions was not knowing and voluntary, thereby rendering those convictions constitutionally invalid.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that, under Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485 (1994), neither the Constitution nor any federal statute granted Sadler a right to collaterally challenge the validity of his 2004 convictions in connection with their use in enhancing his sentence in this Section 922(g) prosecution. The panel also held that the Guidelines’ provisions and commentary did not create any such right. Defendant argued that the commentary accompanying Guidelines Section 2K2.1 requires that any conviction that is disregarded for criminal history purposes must also be disregarded in applying Section 2K2.1(a)(4)(A)’s enhanced base offense level for a felon-in-possession offense that follows a conviction for a crime of violence or drug-trafficking crime. View "USA V. JASON SADLER" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the robbery of two jewelry stores in violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1951(a). For his crimes, he was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment, including a mandatory minimum sentence for the use of a firearm during a “crime of violence.” On appeal, Defendant argued that aiding and abetting Hobbs Act robbery is not a crime of violence and, therefore, cannot serve as a predicate for his Section 924(c) conviction and mandatory minimum sentence.   The Ninth Circuit disagreed and affirmed the judgment of the district court. The court explained that under the “elements clause” of Section 924(c), the phrase “crime of violence” is defined as “an offense that is a felony and . . . has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.” The phrase “physical force” means violent force or force capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person. The panel applied the “categorical approach,” asking whether the federal felony at issue always requires the government to prove the use, attempted use, or threatened use of force. The panel held that under United States v. Dominguez, completed Hobbs Act robbery is a crime of violence for purposes of Section 924(c). The panel concluded that, even if it were not bound by Dominguez II, it would still find that Dominguez I’s analysis of the completed Hobbs Act robbery was not clearly irreconcilable with Taylor. View "USA V. LEON ECKFORD" on Justia Law