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

The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's order denying defendant's motion for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). Although the Government agreed that defendant was eligible for a sentence reduction, it argued that the appeal was moot because defendant had been released from federal prison. The panel held that the appeal was not moot and that USSG 1.10(b)(2)(B) allows a court to consider a number of departures when calculating a reduction in sentence where the defendant has provided substantial assistance. The panel also held that defendant was entitled to the benefit of the rule of lenity because the Guideline was ambiguous. Accordingly, the court remanded to the district court. View "United States v. D.M." on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's order denying defendant's motion to suppress contraband seized during a warrantless search of defendant's truck. The court held that, under the totality of the circumstances, there was probable cause to believe that contraband would be found in defendant's truck and thus the search was permissible under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. In this case, defendant was associating with a known drug dealer, defendant had been introduced to the dealer by one of the dealer's drug dealing associates, and law enforcement agents knew that the associate and dealer had previously engaged in three illegal drug transactions and that the associate had assisted the dealer in collecting a drug debt. View "United States v. Del Mundo Faagai" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendants' convictions and sentences for racketeering, drug trafficking conspiracy, and related offenses involving the Puente-13 street gang. The panel held that the district court's jury instruction for determining drug quantities under 21 U.S.C. 841(b) was not reversible error, even though the jury was not required to find that the drug quantities related to violations that were part of a jointly undertaken criminal activity; the district court did not err in denying a defendant's request for an instruction on multiple conspiracies where the evidence did not show that defendant was involved only in a separate, unrelated conspiracy; and the district court did not err in concluding that defendants had state convictions that were prior to the conviction in this case for purposes of the section 841(b) mandatory minimum. View "United States v. Torres" on Justia Law

21 U.S.C. 881(a)(6) does not authorize forfeiture based on mere intent to facilitate drug transactions without proof of some act to effectuate that intent. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's civil forfeiture judgment under section 881(a)(6) from claimant. The panel held that the district court's instructions to the jury on the facilitation theory were plain error because they permitted forfeiture even if the claimant never took any step to use the money to facilitate drug transactions. The court remanded to the district court for a new trial. View "United States v. Guerrero" on Justia Law

Petitioner claimed that he was categorically exempt from the death penalty because he was intellectually disabled pursuant to Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002). The Nevada Supreme Court rejected petitioner's claim of intellectual disability on the merits. The district court then deferred to its determination under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Ninth Circuit did not decide whether petitioner was intellectually disabled, nor whether the Nevada Supreme Court made a reasonable or an unreasonable determination of fact when it concluded that he is not. Instead, panel decided only that the district court erred in its analysis under AEDPA, and thus the panel remanded for reconsideration in light of Bromfield v. Cain, 135 S. Ct. 2269 (2015), and in light of a doctor's report concluding that petitioner was intellectually disabled. The panel affirmed the district court's order holding that petitioner's Hurst-based Rule 60(b) motion was disguised as an unauthorized second or successive habeas petition. Finally, the panel held that Hurst did not apply retroactively and thus denied petitioner's application for leave to file a second or successive habeas petition. View "Ybarra v. Filson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order denying defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion and remanded with instructions to vacate defendant's sentence. The district court sentenced defendant under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), finding that defendant had five convictions that qualified as violent felonies. However, the district court failed to specify whether it found each of those convictions qualified under the residual clause of the statute, the force clause, or both. In this case, the panel held that defendant's new 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion relied on the rule announced in Johnson v. United States (Johnson II), 135 S. Ct. 2551, 2563 (2015), and thus he may bring his motion under one of the narrow exceptions to the bar on second or successive section 2255 motions. The panel also held that any reliance by the sentencing court on the now-invalidated residual clause of ACCA was not harmless, because at least three of his convictions did not qualify as violent felonies under any of the remaining valid ACCA clauses. Because defendant has already been in prison longer than the statutory maximum sentence for a non-ACCA-enhanced conviction under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), the district shall direct that defendant be released from custody immediately. View "United States v. Geozos" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's requested jury instruction. The panel reversed the sentence, however, holding that California Health & Safety Code section 11378 is a divisible statute that was susceptible to the modified categorical approach. Using the modified categorical approach, the government failed to prove that defendant had pleaded guilty to violating a controlled-substance element under section 11378 that was encompassed by the federal definition for "felony drug offense," 21 U.S.C. 802(44). The panel remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Ocampo-Estrada" on Justia Law

When deciding an 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2) motion, a district court may supplement the original sentencing court's quantity findings only when supplemental findings are necessary to determine the defendant's eligibility for a sentence reduction in light of a retroactive Guidelines amendment. However, the district court may not make supplemental findings that are inconsistent with the findings made by the original sentencing court. A district court has broad discretion in how to adjudicate section 3582(c)(2) proceedings, including whether to hold a hearing when making supplemental findings of drug quantity. In this case, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion for a sentence reduction under section 3582(c)(2), based on Guidelines Amendment 782, which raised the threshold amount of methamphetamine to trigger the maximum base offense level from 1.5 kilograms to 4.5 kilograms. The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding, without a hearing, that defendant was ineligible for a sentence reduction under section 3582(c)(2) because Amendment 782 did not lower his applicable guideline range. View "United States v. Mercado-Moreno" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's 90 month sentence after he was convicted of two counts of being a felon in possession of firearms. The panel held that defendant's prior Washington crime of second-degree assault was not categorically a crime of violence where it criminalized more conduct than the generic federal definition of a crime of violence under USSG 2K2.1. The panel also held that the Washington statute was indivisible, because the statute defined a single crime—second-degree assault—and provided seven different "means" by which a person could commit that crime. Accordingly, the panel remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Robinson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for health care fraud and conspiracy. The panel held that defendant failed to establish that she was denied her Sixth Amendment right to counsel because, although she established a conflict of interest, she failed to meet the prejudice prong of Strickland v. Washington; the district court did not erroneously fail to grant a continuance; the jury instructions as a whole properly conveyed the government's burden of proof; it was not error to give a deliberate ignorance charge; the district court properly calculated loss under USSG 2B1.1(b)(1); the district court properly applied a leadership role enhancement under USSG 3B1.1(a); and the district court did not err in calculating restitution based upon the entire amount of reimbursements received by defendant from Medicare and Medi-Cal. View "United States v. Walter-Eze" on Justia Law