Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Pro se prisoner Petitioner Zeno Sims appealed a district court's dismissal of his petition for habeas relief. Petitioner was serving a 235-month sentence at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth for distributing cocaine base. After his time in Leavenworth, he was scheduled to serve time in Missouri for a thirty-year state sentence for murder. The federal court held Petitioner's federal sentencing hearing two weeks before the state court held its sentencing hearing, and the federal court stated that Petitioner's federal sentence would run concurrently with the state sentence which had not yet been imposed. The state court, disagreed and imposed a consecutive sentence. When the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) attempted to transfer Petitioner to state custody so that he could begin serving the sentences concurrently, Missouri refused to take custody until he completed his federal sentence. Petitioner asked the Tenth Circuit to issue a nunc pro tunc order to the BOP to force it to transfer him to the custody of Missouri so that he could serve his state sentence concurrently with his federal sentence, in accordance with the federal court order. The Tenth Circuit found that Defendant's request was actually the second time he requested post-conviction relief, and because he raised no new claims nor made an attempt to argue that earlier court proceedings did not provide him with a full and fair hearing on the merits. The Court concluded the district court was correct to dismiss Petitioner's petition.

Pro se prisoner Petitioner Ramon Rivera sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge a district court's dismissal of his petition for habeas relief as untimely. In 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement Rivera pled no contest to unlawful possession of a controlled drug with intent to distribute. He was sentenced 15 years imprisonment. Rivera did not timely appeal, but later sought state post-conviction relief. The Oklahoma district court dismissed his petition and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. Proceeding pro se, Petitioner filed for habeas relief. He contended he was denied the effective assistance of counsel and he did not voluntarily, intelligently or knowingly waive his right to a jury trial. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit found that Petitioner filed his petition one year after his conviction became final. The Court denied Petitioner's application for a COA and dismissed his appeal.

After Plaintiff-Appellant David Cook brought his pro se "1983" action against prison officials, the district court found his complaint legally deficient and ordered him to amend it. Instead of amending the complaint, Plaintiff filed "motion after motion seeking…discovery and the appointment of counsel." The district court ordered Plaintiff to show cause why his complaint should not be dismissed. Plaintiff did not respond, and the court dismissed his complaint. He appealed the dismissal to the Tenth Circuit who affirmed the dismissal: "[t]he simple fact is that no litigant, even a pro se litigant, may repeatedly disregard a court’s orders without inviting the lawful possibility that his case might be dismissed."

Petitioner-Applicant Robert Burling sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge the denial of his motion for post conviction relief by the district court. Petitioner was convicted by a jury on 12 counts of sexual abuse of a child and sentenced to 36 years in prison. On appeal, Petitioner asserted 6 claims of error at trial that entitled him to additional judicial review of his case and conviction: (1) impermissible vouching by two witnesses and the prosecutor, (2) ineffective assistance of counsel, (3) vagueness and indefiniteness in the information, (4) erroneous evidentiary rulings, (5) improper denial of a jury instruction on his eligibility for parole, and (6) cumulative error. Because Petitioner failed to make a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right," the Tenth Circuit denied Petitioner's COA and dismissed his appeal.

Defendants-Appellants Patrick Talk and Kenneth Martinez, both enrolled members of the Navajo Tribe, challenged the procedural reasonableness of their sixty-month sentences of imprisonment. The district court imposed the sentences after Defendants pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Indian Country in the death of Shawn Begay, also an enrolled member of the Navajo Tribe. Mr. Talk argued that the district court procedurally erred in finding that he did not fully accept responsibility for Mr. Begay's death, and by failing to adequately explain his sentence, because it explained neither why he received the same sentence as Mr. Martinez nor why his sentence was longer than the Sentencing Guidelines' range for aggravated assault. Mr. Martinez argued that the district court procedurally erred by enhancing his sentence pursuant to U.S.S.G. 3A1.1 because Mr. Begay was not a "vulnerable victim" and, even if he was, Mr. Martinez neither knew nor should have known that he was. Finding that Mr. Talk's challenge was "misguided" and that the district court "did not commit procedural error in explaining its upward variance," the Tenth Circuit affirmed his sentence. Because Mr. Begay was heavily intoxicated at the time of his death, the Tenth Circuit found that he was unable to protect himself, and was therefore "unusually vulnerable." The Court found that the district court did not err in finding Mr. Begay was a vulnerable victim, and that Mr. Martinez's challenge to the district court's ruling that he knew or should have known of Mr. Begay's vulnerability "[could not] succeed under plain-error review, regardless of whether his argument [was] framed as a factual or legal one." The Court affirmed Mr. Martinez's sentence.

Pro se prisoner Defendant-Appellant Mark Rice sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge what he claimed was ineffective assistance of counsel and government misconduct when the district court denied his post-conviction motion to vacate, set aside or correct his sentence. In 2001, a school official where Defendant worked as a teacher, notified law enforcement that Defendant had been accessing child pornography on his work computer. Through counsel, Defendant moved to suppress the statements to law enforcement into evidence. After the district court denied the motion, Defendant entered a conditional plea in which he pled guilty to four counts of possessing child pornography. He was eventually sentenced to 262 months' imprisonment. In 2006, represented by a public defender, Defendant moved to withdraw his plea as legally ineffective. He also claimed the government withheld exculpatory evidence about the validity of the search warrant that would have persuaded him to go to trial. The district court denied the motion. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit found that the district court's decision was not "even debatably incorrect," the Court denied Defendant's request for a COA and dismissed his appeal.

Defendant-Appellant Timothy Reeves challenged the district court's revocation of his supervised release and modification of the terms of his pending supervised release based on vindictive prosecution and failure to rule on his objectives. Defendant was convicted in 1994 of mailing a threatening communication based upon sexual demands made in a letter to a woman he did not know in violation of federal law. He served eighteen months for that conviction, consecutive to sentences for other state crimes, and then started a three-year term of supervised release. While on supervised release, Defendant admitted to Colorado authorities that he had left sexually explicit voicemail messages with a woman he did not know, in violation of state law. He received an additional ten months of imprisonment to be followed by twenty-six months of supervised release, including a condition that he participate in a sex offender treatment program. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit surmised that Defendant's experience of vindictiveness was "more akin to failed plea negotiation" and not clear evidence the government was motivated by vindictiveness against him. Furthermore, the Court found that Defendant's objections were not yet ripe as he was incarcerated as he made them, and the objections pertained to the "treatment contract" that was not yet final until he finished serving his time.

Pro se prisoner Defendant-Appellant Frederick Deberry sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge the district court's denial of his motion for post-conviction relief following his conviction for assaulting another inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. In his motion, Defendant asserted four claims: (1) vindictive and/or discriminatory prosecution, (2) judicial bias, (3) abuse of discretion by the sentencing court, and (4) ineffective assistance of counsel. Taking each of his claims in turn, and after review of the trial court record and applicable legal authority, the Tenth Circuit found no merit to any of Defendant's claims, and denied his request for a COA and dismissed his appeal.

Petitioner Omar Garcia-Tinoco, a native and citizen of Mexico, challenged the Bureau of Immigration Appeals' (BIA's) decision dismissing his appeal of a removal order. Petitioner entered the U.S. without inspection in 1994. Five years later, he pled guilty in Colorado to possession of cocaine. In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security commenced removal proceedings against him. He appeared before an immigration judge (IJ) and conceded that he was in the country illegally, but contested removal on the basis of his controlled-substance conviction because he was "in the process of withdrawing his guilty plea pursuant to a violation of his constitutional rights." To that end, Petitioner filed a post-conviction petition in state court, arguing that his guilty plea was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel. The IJ denied the motion and ordered Petitioner removed. The BIA affirmed, stating that the IJ was not required to grant a continuance because Petitioner's "collateral attack upon his conviction d[id] not … negate its validity." Petitioner asked the Tenth Circuit to reverse the decision of the IJ and hold that he established good cause for a continuance. Upon review, the Court found that it lacked jurisdiction to review the case: "constitutional infirmities in collateral proceedings are 'categorically' beyond the scope of [the Court's] review."

Pro se prisoner Petitioner-Appellant Jose Flores sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge the district court's dismissal of his petition for habeas relief as untimely. Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder in 1976 for which he was sentenced to death. On appeal, the Wyoming Supreme Court reversed his conviction and remanded for a new trial. Instead of facing another trial, Petitioner pled guilty and was resentenced to life. After unsuccessfully pursuing post-conviction relief in state court in 2010 and 2011, Petitioner filed a federal habeas petition in April, 2011. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely, noting that Petitioner filed the petition over a decade after the deadline mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. In doing so, the district court concluded that Petitioner had not demonstrated exceptional circumstances to warrant equitable tolling of his untimely petition. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit denied his request for a COA and dismissed his appeal: "[r]egardless of how we interpret [Petitioner's] arguments, they are insufficient to justify tolling the AEDPA statute of limitations. The argument that [Petitioner] only recently learned of the legal bases for his claims [was] meritless."