Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction for attempted possession with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine. The district court denied Defendant's motion to suppress evidence of the drugs that were discovered strapped to his legs when he exited a plane in the Seattle airport and also denied Defendant's motion challenging venue in the District of Alaska. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) the district court did not clearly err in finding under the totality of the circumstances that Defendant voluntarily consented to the airport search that resulted in discovery of the methamphetamine; and (2) venue was proper in Alaska because possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine is a continuing offense, and Defendant took substantial steps in Alaska in pursuit of that offense.

Pentonville Developers, Ltd. and Marblearch Trading, Ltd., two Cyprus oil brokerage companies, sued the Republic of Iraq for unilaterally terminating two contracts for the purchase and sale of Iraqi oil. The district court concluded it had subject matter jurisdiction notwithstanding Iraq's assertion of sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act because the lawsuit fell within the "commercial exception" to that immunity. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, holding that because the lawsuit was not based upon commercial activity by Iraq in the United States, nor upon an act in connection with such commercial activity having a direct effect in the United States, the district court erred in denying Iraq's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Plaintiffs were automated teller machine (ATM) cardholders, who alleged horizontal price fixing of fees charged to the ATM owners by the banks when cardholders retrieve cash from an ATM not owned by their bank. Plaintiffs did not directly pay the allegedly fixed fee. The district court entered summary judgment against Plaintiffs and dismissed the suit for lack of antitrust standing. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) as indirect purchasers, Supreme Court precedent established in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois prohibited Plaintiffs from bringing this suit; (2) Plaintiffs did not qualify for the narrow exception to the Illinois Brick rule; and (3) Plaintiffs did not have standing under the Clayton Act to proceed with their Sherman Act suit.

Timothy Nelson, a former student of the University of California at Davis (U.C. Davis), suffered permanent injury when he was shot in the eye by a pepperball projectile fired from the weapon of a U.C. Davis officer when U.C. Davis and City of Davis police attempted to clear an apartment complex of partying students. Nelson filed suit alleging, among other things, that Defendants violated Nelson's Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable seizure. The district court denied Defendants' motion for summary judgment and found that Defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity for their conduct on the night of the shooting. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) Defendants' actions amounted to an unconstitutional seizure of Nelson; and (2) the law at the time of the incident should have placed Defendants on notice that the shooting of the pepperballs under the circumstances was an act of excessive force, thus precluding a judgment of qualified immunity.

Petitioner was born was born in El Salvador and was admitted to the United States as legal permanent resident in 1992. In 2006, Petitioner pled guilty to resisting an executive officer in violation of Cal. Penal Code 69. In 2007, the Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated removal proceedings against Petitioner. An immigration judge ultimately found that Petitioner's conviction was a categorical crime of violence, rendering Petitioner removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed Petitioner's appeal. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Petitioner's petition for review, holding that because the record of Defendant's conviction may be incomplete, the case was remanded to the BIA to apply the modified categorical approach to the question of whether Defendant committed a crime of violence and whether he was removable.

Earnest Woods, a former inmate, sued the warden and appeals coordinator under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for deliberate indifference to his medical needs. First, the district court granted the warden's motion for summary judgment, concluding that Woods failed to connect him to the alleged deprivation of his constitutional rights. The court subsequently granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, but only as to one of the two grievances. After proceeding to trial on the remaining grievance, Woods obtained a jury verdict against the appeals coordinator. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's grant of the motion of summary judgment and the motion to dismiss, holding (1) Rand and Wyatt notices must be provided to pro se prisoner plaintiffs concurrently with motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment filed by defendants; and (2) the notice provided by the district court in this case, which preceded the filing of the motion for summary judgment by over a year and the motion to dismiss by more than two years, did not provide fair notice to Woods, a pro se prisoner plaintiff.

Howard Back filed this suit alleging that Secretary of Heath and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius violated her duties under the Medicare Act and the Due Process Clause by failing to provide an administrative process for beneficiaries of hospice care to appeal a hospice provider's refusal to provide a drug prescribed by their attending physician. The district court granted the Secretary's motion for judgment on the pleadings because Back had not exhausted his administrative remedies. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the district court's judgment and dismissed the appeal as moot, holding that although the government led Back to believe there was no appeal process, such a process did exist. Accordingly, no controversy existed and the appeal was moot.

Defendant appealed the sentence imposed following his guilty plea to being a deported alien found in the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326. In particular, Defendant challenged the district court's application of U.S. Sentencing Guidelines 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii), which imposes a 16-level enhancement where a defendant has previously committed a crime of violence. Defendant argued that the district court committed plain error by relying solely on the presentencing investigation report's (PSR) characterization of his prior conviction. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing, holding (1) the district court plainly erred in basing its sentencing on the PSR's characterization of Defendant's prior offense as a crime of violence; and (2) the imposition of a substantially greater sentence based on the enhancement for committing a prior crime of violence clearly affected Defendant's substantial rights and the fairness of the judicial proceedings.

Defendant was convicted of racketeering and violence in aid of a racketeering enterprise. Although Defendant was entitled to exercise ten peremptory challenges, he was unable to do so because of a "use it or lose it" voir dire practice followed by the district court. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, holding (1) the district court's "use it or lose it" practice impermissibly deprived Defendant of two of the peremptory challenges to which he was entitled; but (2) under plain error review, reversal of Defendant's convictions was not warranted, as Defendant failed to demonstrate that the judicial proceedings were seriously affected by the district court's error.

After a jury trial, Defendant, a California state prisoner, was found guilty of two counts of robbery. The district court subsequently dismissed as untimely three claims in Defendant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Defendant appealed, arguing that his claims were timely because the prosecutor withheld evidence that a witness for the prosecution at his trial received lenient treatment in her own criminal cases in return for testifying against Defendant. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) Defendant was not entitled to delayed commencement of the one-year statute of limitations under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act because the factual predicate of his claims could have been discovered had he exercised due diligence at his trial; and (2) Defendant was not entitled to equitable tolling because he did not exercise reasonable diligence, and no extraordinary circumstance prevented the timely filing of his claims.