Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiiff, a deputy serving a bench warrant, entered a garbage-filled residence. She and her partner discovered that they were covered with fleas and were directed to proceed to an Emergency Management Building. They were told to stay inside their cruiser until a superior officer arrived. About 20 minutes later, superior officers arrived and began to film plaintiff for a training video. Despite the heat and biting insects, plaintiff was told to remain in the car. Plaintiff alleges that officers laughed at her and filmed her in a semi-nude state at the hospital, taunted her because of a tattoo, and showed the video to other officers.The district court dismissed her 42 U.S.C. 1983 suit. The Third Circuit affirmed in part, with respect to unreasonable search and seizure and failure to train claims, but reversed with respect to a Fourteenth Amendment privacy claim. Plaintiff had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the decontamination area, particularly with respect to members of the opposite sex. A dispute of material fact exists as to which of her body parts were exposed to members of the opposite sex or filmed while she was in that area.

Delaware's death penalty statute calls for lethal injection but does not mandate use of a particular drug, Del. Code tit. 11 sec. 4209(f). Death row inmates challenged, under 42 U.S.C. 1983, a 2011 change in the protocol, brought about by nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental. The district court declined to reopen a challenge to a previous protocol and to stay a pending execution. The Third Circuit affirmed. The purpose of the protocol is to render the inmate unconscious before execution and there was no affirmative evidence that pentobarbital, used under the 2011 protocol, fails to do so. The court was not required to consider the comparative risks of known and available alternatives.The district court acted within its discretion in finding that the use of pentobarbital did not create a demonstrated risk of severe pain.

Defendant boarded a plane in New York City and flew to Hamburg. Six months after his arrival in Germany, he sexually molested a 15-year-old boy. After serving 19 months in a German prison, defendant returned to the United States and was convicted of engaging in noncommercial illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place (18 U.S.C. 2423(c) and (f)(1)) and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The Third Circuit affirmed. The offense began when defendant boarded a plane, but the bulk of the offense was not committed in any district in the United States, so venue was proper in the Delaware district where the arrest occurred. Rejecting a facial challenge to the statute, the court stated that the statute is within the authority of Congress under the Foreign Commerce Clause.

Petitioner was detained for 1,072 days pursuant to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, 8 U.S.C. 1226(c), which requires that any person who is removable from this country because he has committed a crime involving moral turpitude or a crime involving a controlled substance be taken into custody and does not provide for release on bond. Petitioner, a citizen of Senegal, apparently had a state conviction for possessing a controlled substance. The district court concluded that the detention was lawful. The Third Circuit construed the pro se petition as seeking habeas corpus and reversed. The statute authorizes only detention for a reasonable period of time, after which the Due Process Clause requires that the government establish that continued detention is necessary to further the purposes of the detention statute. Detention of petitioner for nearly three years without further inquiry into whether it was necessary to ensure his appearance at the removal proceedings or to prevent a risk of danger to the community, was unreasonable.

After being told, by children, that defendant, a teacher, had touched them inappropriately and kept a notebook of information about students, an officer applied for a warrant to search defendant's home for child pornography. The affidavit established only probable cause to believe that she would find evidence of sexual assaulted on children; it did not allege any direct evidence that defendant possessed child pornography or any connection between the two crimes. The search turned up incriminating documents relating to the alleged assaults, but no child pornography. The district court suppressed the documents. The First Circuit affirmed. A probable cause affidavit must set forth all the facts upon which the affiant seeks to rely; the affidavit in this case omitted the linchpin allegation on which any reasonable belief in the existence of probable cause must have depended. The government cannot draw an inference from facts not stated in the affidavit or rely on the affiant's personal knowledge.

Defendant pled guilty to one count of simple possession of a controlled substance in violation of 21 U.S.C. 844(a) and his conviction subsequently triggered removal proceedings against him some years later. Defendant filed a petition for writ of error coram nobis to challenge the plea conviction, arguing that his attorney's failure to advise him of the immigration consequences of pleading guilty to a federal drug charge constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Having concluded that defendant's petition failed to allege Strickland v. Washington prejudice and hence was deficient as a matter of law, the district court dismissed the petition without conducting an evidentiary hearing. At issue was whether Padilla v. Kentucky, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court during the pendency of defendant's appeal, had retroactive applicability. The court held that, because Padilla followed directly from Strickland and long-established professional norms, it was an "old rule" for Teague v. Lane purposes and was retroactively applicable on collateral review. Therefore, the court vacated the judgment of the district court and remanded to that court to decide the case within the framework of Padilla and on the basis of a developed factual record.

In 1985, defendant was found guilty of first-degree murder, terroristic threats, and kidnapping, and sentenced to death. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed. While a state post-conviction petition was pending, a video was released, showing the prosecutor instructing colleagues to exclude potential jurors on the basis of race. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed denial of relief. Defendant's second state petition was rejected as untimely. After an evidentiary hearing, the federal district court granted habeas corpus. The Third Circuit vacated and remanded. Although timely objection is a prerequisite to a "Batson" claim, even for cases decided before Batson, the defense did raise a timely objection. The response that it was impossible to determine the race of jurors and that counsel did not have to give reasons for peremptory challenges was refusal to conduct equal protection analysis, not a finding of fact entitled to deference. The state Post Conviction Relief Act time bar was not regularly followed or firmly established at the time of defendantâs procedural default in 1996; the district court properly allowed an evidentiary hearing despite that default. The defendant established a prima facie Batson violation that the state did not rebut, but the court held that remand for analysis of other evidence relevant to intentional discrimination is preferable to overturning a 25-year-old jury verdict which the state has upheld against numerous challenges and which was predicated on substantial evidence, merely because it would be possible to infer discrimination in jury selection.

After pleading guilty to illegal reentry (8 U.S.C. 1326) the defendants challenged their sentences, claiming that their Fifth Amendment rights were violated as a result of the Department of Justice "fast-track" programs that allow a departure from sentencing guidelines in return for a guilty plea and waiver of right of appeal. Such programs have been implemented in several areas, but not in any district within the Third Circuit. The Third Circuit affirmed, holding that the program is rationally related to, among others, the goals of allocating prosecutorial resources and enforcing the immigration laws. The sentences imposed on the defendants were reasonable.

The plaintiffs were subjected to raids as part of "Operation Return to Sender," implemented to apprehend fugitive aliens. The complaint included "Bivens" claims: unreasonable home entries, unreasonable searches; unreasonable seizures, all in violation of the Fourth Amendment; a Fourth Amendment claim for excessive force by four individuals; a Fifth Amendment substantive due process claim involving three individuals; and a Fifth Amendment equal protection claim by one individual. The district court denied a motion to dismiss. The Third Circuit reversed on qualified immunity grounds. The plaintiffs did not allege that the defendants, high-level federal Immigration enforcement supervisors, participated in the raids, adopted an unconstitutional policy, or had legally sufficient notice of the unconstitutional conduct of subordinates. They did not identify what defendants should have done differently with respect to training or other matters, that would have prevented the unconstitutional conduct. The plaintiffs may pursue official capacity claims for injunctive relief against any further intimidation or unlawful entry. The court did not address individual capacity claims for damages against the lower-ranking agents

A student created a fake profile of his high school principal on a social networking internet web site, using his grandmother's computer. Some students saw the profile from school computers before the school disabled them. The student was suspended for 10 days, required to finish the school year at an alternative school, and banned from extra-curricullar activities and the graduation ceremony. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the student on his First Amendment (42 U.S.C. 1983) claim. The Third Circuit affirmed, but vacated for rehearing en banc, following which it again affirmed. The school district response to the conduct transcended the protection of free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. Student expression may not be suppressed unless school officials reasonably conclude that it will materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school. The school district could not establish a sufficient nexus between the speech and disruption of the school environment. The student's attempt to use a picture from the district website did not establish such a connection, nor did the use of school computers, by other students, to access the site.