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

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action alleging violations of plaintiff's First and Fifth Amendment rights under the implied cause of action theory adopted by the Supreme Court in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), as well as state law claims. Neither the Supreme Court nor this court have expanded Bivens in the context of a prisoner's First Amendment access to court or Fifth Amendment procedural due process claims arising out of a prison disciplinary process, and the circumstances of plaintiff's case against private defendants plainly presented a "new context" under Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1854 (2017). The panel also held that plaintiff had alternative means for relief against the alleged violations of his First and Fifth Amendment rights by the private defendants. In a memorandum opinion, the panel addressed plaintiff's remaining arguments. View "Vega v. United States" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's order on remand denying petitioner's claims that the California state court improperly denied his motion for a new trial based on the State's prosecutorial misconduct. Petitioner was convicted of raping and killing an eighteen-month-old girl. The panel held that the district court properly denied further discovery in light of its finding that there was no good cause to permit additional discovery because petitioner received the adverse inference he desired and further discovery into the State's alleged spoliation of evidence would not affect the decision of the remaining witness intimidation claim of the habeas petition. The panel also held that the district court did not clearly err in weighing the credibility of the witnesses in light of the evidence adduced at the hearing. View "Earp v. Davis" on Justia Law

A presumption of validity did not attach to a stipulation by defense counsel that their clients waived their right to a jury trial on their criminal charges. The Ninth Circuit reversed based on the ineffective jury trial waivers in this case and held that the record was insufficient to show that the jury trial waivers were voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The panel reasoned that the proper practice under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 23(a) was for the defendant to personally execute the written waiver. Therefore, the panel concluded that the convictions were supported by sufficient evidence, but remanded based on the ineffective jury trial waivers. View "United States v. Laney" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied defendants' 28 U.S.C. 2255 motions challenging the validity of their convictions for carrying a firearm during a crime of violence. The panel held that bank robbery "by force and violence, or by intimidation" is a crime of violence under the force clause of 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The panel reasoned that, because defendants' predicate offense, armed bank robbery, could not be based on conduct that involved less force than unarmed bank robbery requires, armed bank robbery qualifies as a crime of violence under section 924(c) as well. View "United States v. Watson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's imposition of a sentencing enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(1), after defendant pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. The panel held that neither of defendant's prior convictions for first-degree robbery under Alabama law nor second-degree robbery under California law was a violent felony under the ACCA. In this case, at least two of defendant's four prior non-drug convictions did not qualify as violent felonies and thus defendant should not have been subject to the ACCA's mandatory sentencing provision. Accordingly, the panel remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Walton" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed defendant's conviction for transporting an illegal alien for financial gain. The panel held that the district court's instruction to the jurors defining "reckless disregard" was incorrect where, even assuming the jury instruction required that defendant be aware of facts from which the inference of the risk at issue could be drawn, it plainly did not require that defendant actually draw the inference. In other words, defendant was subjectively aware of the risk. The panel reasoned that this was not the proper case in which to conduct a harmless error review. The panel also held that the district court improperly admitted the passenger's videotaped deposition, because the government made an insufficient showing that the passenger was "unavailable," where the government's efforts to secure his presence were not reasonable. View "United States v. Rodriguez" on Justia Law

A California conviction for carjacking under Penal Code section 215(a) does not qualify as a crime of violence. The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review of a final order of removal. The panel held that Nieves-Medrano v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 2010), which held that a conviction for carjacking under section 215 is categorically a crime of violence under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(F), cannot stand in light of Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 140 (2010), which held that the physical force that a crime of violence entails must be violent force. Because section 215 did not require the use of violent force that Johnson required, the California statute was not a crime of violence. The panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Solorio-Ruiz v. Sessions" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed defendant's conviction for importation of methamphetamine, holding that the district court necessarily abused its discretion because it applied the wrong legal standard in excluding the evidence of third-party culpability for failing to meet the "substantial evidence" threshold in Perry v. Rushen, 713 F.2d 1447 (9th Cir. 1983), and Territory of Guam v. Ignacio, 10 F.3d 608 (1983). The panel held that nothing in Perry purported to import California's evidentiary standard, and nothing in Ignacio purported to announce a new rule for the admissibility of third-party culpability evidence under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Because the district court's error was not harmless, the panel remanded for a new trial. View "United States v. Urias Espinoza" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit granted a petition for panel rehearing, withdrew a previous opinion, filed a superseding opinion affirming a conviction and sentence arising out of the operation of purported medical-marijuana collective storefronts in California, and denied a petition for rehearing en banc. The panel held that defendant was not entitled to remand for an evidentiary hearing on his state law compliance; the district court erred by giving an overly strong anti-nullification jury instruction, but the error was harmless; the district court did not err by denying defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized pursuant to a state search warrant; the district court did not err by denying defendant's motion for a Franks hearing; the district court did not err by declining to instruct the jury on defendant's joint ownership defense; the district court did not abuse its discretion by considering the government's late-filed objections to the presentence report; and defendant's 211 month sentence was substantively and procedurally reasonable. View "United States v. Kleinman" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's 60-month sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm and remanded for resentencing. The panel held that defendant's previous conviction for drug conspiracy under Washington state law did not qualify as a controlled substance offense because the Washington drug conspiracy statute was not a categorical match to conspiracy under federal law. Therefore, the district court erred when calculating defendant's Sentencing Guidelines range and the error was not harmless. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law