Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs, a group of inmates in the custody of the Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC), sued Defendant Roger Werholtz, Secretary of KDOC (the Secretary), under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and state law. They challenged two policies in the KDOC's Internal Management Policy and Procedure (IMPP), which requires money obtained by the inmate to be saved for use upon release from prison. "Plaintiffs' imprecise amended complaint appeared to contend" that these policies: (1) violated their private-property rights without due process, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; (2) were unconstitutionally vague; (3) violated the federal and Kansas constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment; and (4) imposed punishment in violation of the "principles of ex post facto." Contending that Plaintiffs had failed to state a claim and had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies, the Secretary filed a motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, to grant summary judgment. The district court granted the motion to dismiss, ruling that the compulsory-savings plans did not violate Plaintiffs' rights. Plaintiffs appealed. Upon careful consideration of the Plaintiffs' appellate brief, the Tenth Circuit concluded that their argument failed on multiple levels to allege the violation of any constitutional right or a basis on which the Court could grant any relief. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the district court's dismissal.

In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sought a preliminary injunction against ClearOne Communications, Inc. based on suspicions of irregular accounting practices and securities law violations. During a hearing on the preliminary injunction, Defendant and former CEO Susie Strohm was asked if she was involved in a particular sale by ClearOne that was the focus of the SEC’s case. She said she was not and approximated that she learned of the sale either before or after the end of ClearOne’s fiscal year. Based on this testimony, Defendant was later convicted of one count of perjury. She argued on appeal to the Tenth Circuit that her conviction should be reversed because (1) the questioning at issue was ambiguous, (2) her testimony was literally true, and (3) even if false, her testimony was not material to the court’s decision to grant the preliminary injunction. The Tenth Circuit disagreed on all three points. The Court found the questions were not ambiguous and there was sufficient evidence to demonstrate Defendant knowingly made false statements. Also, Defendant's testimony was material to the preliminary injunction hearing because it related to a transaction the SEC believed demonstrated ClearOne’s accounting irregularities. The Court therefore affirmed Defendant's conviction.

The issue before the Tenth Circuit in this appeal was whether a district court must allow a criminal defendant to withdraw his guilty plea when the request was based on a lie. "Unsuprisingly," the Tenth Circuit held that the "law does not permit anyone to compel judicial action based on intentionally false statements." Defendant Cesar Osbaldo Armendariz Soto faced an indictment for his involvement in a drug trafficking conspiracy. As part of an effort to show his cooperation and reduce his sentence, and in consultation with his attorney, Defendant initially agreed to plead guilty to these charges without a plea agreement. Months later (though still before his sentencing hearing), he tried to reverse course, asking the court to allow him to withdraw the plea he had entered and the court had accepted. Defendant argued that his plea wasn't entered knowingly or voluntarily because it was premised on a misunderstanding of the facts. Ultimately the district court refused to allow Defendant to retract his plea, finding "I simply think he is not telling us the truth." Upon review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision: "we are no less at a loss to see how we might say the choice this district judge made was an irrational one."

Prisoner-Petitioner Mark Tuckel filed a "1983" lawsuit against two prison officials. In his suit, Petitioner averred that he was beaten in retaliation for submitting a complaint through the prison grievance system. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Defendants, finding that Petitioner had failed to exhaust administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit held that a petitioner with an objectively reasonable fear of retaliation from prison officials may show that administrative remedies were unavailable to him and thereby be excused from exhausting such remedies. Because there were disputed issues of fact about the availability of administrative remedies to Petitioner, the Court reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Defendants Daniel Montoya and Joe Williams appealed the district court's denial of their motion to dismiss Plaintiff Ray Brown's "1983" lawsuit against them. Plaintiff pled guilty to two counts of false imprisonment in New Mexico state court. When he was released from custody, his probation officer, Daniel Montoya, directed him to register as a sex offender and placed him in the sex offender probation unit. Officer Montoya alleged that he acted on information that the victim in Plaintiff's false imprisonment case was a minor and, under Officer Montoya’s understanding of the law, Plaintiff was properly classified as a sex offender. Plaintiff sought and won in state court an order removing his name from the sex offender registry and removing him from the sex offender probation unit. Plaintiff then filed suit, alleging violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights, as well as substantive due process, procedural due process, and equal protection rights. The Defendants argued, among other things, that their qualified immunity from suit required dismissal. The Tenth Circuit's review of the case was limited to the qualified immunity issue. As to Plaintiff's claims against Secretary Williams in his individual capacity, the Court reversed the district court’s denial of the motion. As to Plaintiff's procedural due process claim against Officer Montoya, the Court affirmed the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss. The Court reversed the denial of the motion to dismiss on the substantive due process and equal protection claims, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

In 2009, Defendant Antonio Molina-Chavez pled guilty in the New Mexico district court to illegally reentering the United States. The court sentenced him to eight months in prison to be followed by a two-year term of supervised release. In November 2009, Defendant completed his prison term and the Department of Homeland Security removed him to Mexico. A year later, before his supervised release term had expired, Defendant was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a public intoxication charge. This arrest had two consequences relevant here: (1) Defendant was charged in federal court with illegally reentering the United States to which he pled guilty and was sentenced to ten months’ incarceration; (2) the district court revoked his 2009 supervised release and sentenced him to an additional five months in prison, to be served concurrently with the ten-month sentence on the illegal reentry charge. On appeal from both convictions, Defendant argued that the Oklahoma district court should have (1) permitted him to withdraw his guilty plea, and (2) dismissed the order revoking his supervised release. He contended that ambiguities in his 2009 New Mexico sentence provided him with authorization to reenter the United States legally. The Tenth Circuit disagreed, and therefore affirmed the district court’s judgment and sentence for illegal reentry. The Court dismissed Defendant's appeal concerning revocation of his supervised release as moot.

This appeal presented the Tenth Circuit with two questions related to the presence of "fast-track" programs for disposing of illegal re-entry and other immigration offenses in some federal districts, but not others. The first question was whether a sentencing court in a non-fast-track district has the discretion to consider sentence disparities caused by the existence of fast-track programs in other districts, and based thereon, vary from the applicable guideline range for a defendant charged with an immigration offense. If so, the second issue was whether the "apparently nebulous" eligibility requirements for fast-track programs relieve a defendant charged with an immigration offense in a non-fast-track district of the burden of showing entitlement to sentencing consistent with a fast-track program. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit held that (1) where the circumstances warrant, a district court in a non-fast-track district has the discretion to vary from a defendant’s applicable guideline range based on fast-track sentence disparities, but (2) a defendant bears the initial burden of showing entitlement, in some sense, to a variance based on fast-track sentence disparities.

Petitioner Andrew Yellowbear, Jr. was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Petitioner's challenge to the state court's jurisdiction was rejected by the Wyoming Supreme Court on direct appeal, and by the federal courts (including the Tenth Circuit) in Petitioner's subsequent habeas proceeding. Ten months after the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief, Petitioner filed a motion for post-conviction relief with the Wyoming federal district court arguing he was entitled to relief because the district court judge fell asleep during his habeas hearing. Petitioner sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to challenge the district court's denial of his post-conviction relief motion. The Tenth Circuit reviewed Petitioner's appellate brief and COA application, the district court's "well-reasoned order" and the entire record on appeal and concluded that Petitioner was not entitled to a COA. Accordingly, the Court denied his request and dismissed his appeal.

Defendant Daniel Lehi appealed his felony conviction of forcibly assaulting a federal officer and his thirty-three month prison sentence. A federal police officer was dispatched to Defendant's home after receiving a call of a domestic dispute. In his attempt to restrain Defendant, the officer testified Defendant "had a big gob of spit that come right at my face and some of it got in my right eye. I could feel a lot of it get into my left eye. It started getting blurry." After hearing this testimony, the district court found that Defendant committed a forcible assault involving "physical contact" based solely on the spitting conduct. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit concluded that the record supported Defendant's conviction, and that Defendant could not overcome the presumption that his sentence was not substantively reasonable. Accordingly, the Court affirmed his conviction and sentence.

Pro se prisoner Petitioner Lewis Roberson applied for a certificate of appealability (COA) from the Tenth Circuit to challenge a district court's denial of his habeas petition. After a jury trial, Petitioner was convicted of assault and battery with a deadly weapon after having been convicted of two or more felonies. On appeal, Petitioner argued that: (1) the trial court erred by holding a bifurcated, rather than a trifurcated, trial; (2) his convictions violated a state prohibition on multiple punishments; and (3) he was denied the effective assistance of trial counsel. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) affirmed Petitioner's convictions. Petitioner then filed an unsuccessful application for post-conviction relief in Oklahoma state court, raising a claim that his appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on direct appeal. Upon review by the Tenth Circuit, the Court concluded that the district court's resolution of Petitioner's claims were "not reasonably subject to debate and the claims [were] not adequate to deserve further proceedings." Accordingly, the Court denied Petitioner's request for a COA and dismissed his appeal.