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

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's entry of a personal money judgment against defendant in the amount that corresponds to the proceeds of the offenses for which defendant was convicted. In this case, defendant was convicted of fraudulently obtaining Social Security, Medicaid, and food-stamp benefits.The panel held that its rationale for allowing district courts to impose personal money judgments remained undisturbed by the reasoning in Honeycutt v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1626 (2017), which held that 21 U.S.C. 853 does not authorize courts to impose joint and several liability for forfeiture judgments. The panel explained that Honeycutt's holding did not address whether personal money judgments are permissible in the criminal forfeiture context. The panel held that such personal money judgments were necessary to avoid undermining Congress' objectives in enacting mandatory forfeiture sanctions, pointing in particular to the substitute property provision found in section 853(p). The panel noted that Honeycutt does require clarification that personal money judgments must be enforced within the constraints imposed by the applicable criminal forfeiture statutes. View "United States v. Nejad" on Justia Law

Defendants brought these consolidated appeals seeking to reduce their sentences under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), which allows a court to reduce in certain circumstances a previously imposed sentence, for drug-related offenses.The Ninth Circuit held that the Supreme Court's decision in Hughes v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1765 (2018), and this circuit's decision in United States v. Padilla-Diaz, 862 F.3d 856 (9th Cir. 2017), were fully compatible and that Padilla-Diaz, which upheld USSG 1B1.10(b)(2), remains binding precedent. The panel explained that the question considered in Hughes was entirely different from those addressed in Padilla-Diaz. Hughes did not consider at all the import of section 1B1.10(b)(2)(A), the provision limiting sentence reductions to the lowest term recommended by the revised Guidelines range. Furthermore, Hughes did not conclude that general sentencing policies constrain section 3582(c)(2) proceedings, and nothing in Hughes addressed inter-defendant sentencing uniformity more generally, much less the sentence reduction limitation at issue here. Therefore, the panel was bound by Padilla-Diaz's conclusion regarding the interplay between the Guidelines policy statement contained in section 1B1.10(b)(2) and section 3582(c)(2). Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district court's denial of defendants' motions. View "United States v. Hernandez-Martinez" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The panel held that a district court may not sua sponte raise a defendant's waiver of the right to file a section 3582(c)(2) motion. In this case, the government waived defendant's waiver of his right to file a section 3582(c)(2) motion by failing to raise it in the district court, and the district court abused its discretion by raising the waiver sua sponte. View "United States v. Sainz" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied an application for authorization to file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas corpus petition. The panel held that the Supreme Court has not made Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), which held that a warrant is generally required to search a cell phone's data, retroactive. Therefore, the applicant has not made a prima facie showing that his application to file a section 2254 petition met the requirements of 18 U.S.C. 2244(b)(2)(A). View "Young v. Pfeiffer" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of the petition for habeas corpus relief challenging petitioner's capital sentence. Petitioner's conviction for first degree murder and related burglary and kidnapping counts stemmed from his armed robbery of a jewelry store. The panel agreed with, and followed, the district court's application of Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170 (2011), and based its decision only on the record before the California Supreme Court (including the trial court record) and did not consider the evidence presented in the federal court evidentiary hearing.The panel held that there were reasonable grounds to support the denial of relief by the state court on petitioner's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. In this case, the California Supreme Court did not unreasonably apply federal law by determining that counsel's performance was not constitutionally deficient for failing to investigate mitigation evidence regarding petitioner's mother and petitioner's mental impairments. Furthermore, petitioner was not prejudice by counsel's performance. View "Livaditis v. Davis" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order granting defendant's motion to suppress evidence found on a laptop seized under a State of California warrant and searched under a federal warrant. The panel held that, although there was insufficient probable cause to seize the laptop, the special agent's affidavit supporting the state warrant contained sufficient information to render his reliance on the warrant reasonable.The panel also held that, even assuming that the 21-day delay between the seizure of the laptop pursuant to the state warrant and the search of the laptop pursuant to the federal warrant was unreasonable, suppression was not warranted where the agent's delay did not evince negligence, let alone deliberate and culpable misconduct. In this case, the agent's good faith efforts complied with the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment and there was no indication that he believed he was depriving defendant of a legitimate possessory interest. View "United States v. Jobe" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of Nevada's Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) motion for relief from the district court's judgment granting on remand petitioner's habeas corpus petition challenging his first degree murder conviction.At issue was whether the Nevada Supreme Court has, since the panel's prior decision in this case, changed the elements for first-degree murder in Nevada in 1991, when petitioner's murder conviction became final. The panel held that intervening Nevada Supreme Court cases did not change the law or undermine Riley I. Therefore, because there was no change in the law that affected Riley I's interpretation of the required elements for first-degree murder in Nevada, the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the state's motion. View "Riley v. Filson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of habeas relief on a certified claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase. Petitioner was convicted and sentenced to death by a California jury on two counts of first-degree murder for killings he committed during a carjacking.The panel held that the California Supreme Court unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in denying petitioner's claim for ineffective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase. Reviewing de novo counsel's performance under Strickland v. Washington, the panel held that counsel rendered deficient performance by failing adequately to investigate petitioner's good character and social history, and he had no reasoned or tactical excuse for not doing so. The panel also held that counsel rendered deficient performance by not investigating petitioner's claim of self-defense in the jail homicide to counter the State's use of it as aggravation evidence. Furthermore, the state court's conclusion that petitioner failed to show prejudice was objectively unreasonable. Accordingly, the panel remanded with instructions. View "Avena v. Chappell" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's judgment dismissing a habeas corpus petition in which petitioner, who has been detained for thirteen years awaiting trial for recommitment under the California Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVPA), alleged that the State of California was violating his due process rights by continuing to detain him pretrial based on an outdated and scientifically invalid probable cause finding.The panel rejected petitioner's contention, that his SVPA case has been stalled for so long that it was no longer "ongoing" for purposes of Younger abstention, as foreclosed by precedent. The panel also held that the delay in bringing petitioner's case to trial was not an extraordinary circumstance under Younger. Furthermore, petitioner's claim fits squarely within the "irreparable harm" exception to Younger abstention in Arevalo v. Hennessy, 882 F.3d 763 (9th Cir. 2018). Therefore, the district court erred in abstaining under Younger from hearing petitioner's claim that the state was violating his pretrial due process rights. Accordingly, the panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Page v. King" on Justia Law

On remand from the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's order denying defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion. Defendant alleged that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to file a notice of appeal. In this case, the government never had the opportunity to challenge defendant's assertion, because both the district court's and this court's prior rulings held that the collateral attack waiver nonetheless barred the section 2255 motion.Therefore, the panel held that the district court, on remand, should determine whether defendant expressly instructed his attorney to file a notice of appeal, and if not, whether counsel failed to consult, and if so, whether that failure constituted deficient performance. View "United States v. Fabian-Baltazar" on Justia Law