Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant, a California licensed attorney, challenged (1) the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction for transmitting extortionate communications in interstate commerce to sportswear leader Nike, attempted Hobbs Act extortion of Nike, and honest-services wire fraud of the client whom Defendant was purportedly representing in negotiations with Nike. Defendant further challenged the trial court’s jury instruction as to honest-services fraud and the legality of a $259,800.50 restitution award to Nike.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the trial evidence was sufficient to support Defendant’s conviction for the two charged extortion counts because a reasonable jury could find that Defendant’s threat to injure Nike’s reputation and financial position was wrongful in that the multi-million-dollar demand supported by the threat bore no nexus to any claim of right. Further, the court held that the trial evidence was sufficient to support Defendant’s conviction for honest-services fraud because a reasonable jury could find that Defendant solicited a bribe from Nike in the form of a quid pro quo whereby Nike would pay Defendant many millions of dollars in return for which Defendant would violate his fiduciary duty as an attorney. The court further explained that the district court did not exceed its authority under the MVRA by awarding restitution more than 90 days after initial sentencing, and Defendant has shown no prejudice from the delayed award. Finally, the court wrote that the MVRA applies in this case where Nike sustained a pecuniary loss directly attributable to those crimes as a result of incurring fees for its attorneys to attend the meeting demanded by Defendant at which he first communicated his extortionate threat. View "United States v. Avenatti" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged the district court’s application of a two-level enhancement under Section 2D1.1(b)(12) of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which applies when a defendant has “maintained a premises for the purpose of manufacturing or distributing a controlled substance.” The principal question is whether the enhancement applies to defendants who use their residence to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that here, Defendant maintained an apartment where he had at one point lived for the purpose of distributing controlled substances. The court reasoned that the commentary in the Guidelines manual confirms that the district court properly applied the drug-distribution premises enhancement using a “totality of the circumstances” test, which is appropriate given the fact-intensive nature of the inquiry. Further, Defendant challenged the district court’s failure to consider a downward departure from the Guidelines sentence in order to give effect to the parties’ plea bargain. He claimed that the court misunderstood its authority to do so under United States v. Fernandez. However, the court wrote that a district court’s silence concerning its refusal to depart downward generally does not support an inference that the district court misapprehended its scope of authority. The court, therefore, rejected Defendant’s argument that his sentence was procedurally unreasonable on this ground. View "United States v. Vinales" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed from their judgments of conviction. Following a five-week jury trial, Defendants-Appellants were convicted on counts of conspiracy to tamper with witnesses and obstruct an official proceeding, substantive witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of justice, and being accessories after the fact to the deprivation of the civil rights of a victim. The district court sentenced Defendants, principally, to five years’ imprisonment each. On appeal, Defendants raised challenges to the district court’s admission of certain testimony at trial—in particular, testimony about subordinates’ fear of retaliation and testimony about bad acts that formed the basis for that fear of retaliation. Defendants also challenge the district court’s denial of their application to admit the government’s bill of particulars, and Defendant challenges the district court’s denial of his motion for an evidentiary hearing and new trial.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the government specifically mentioned the demotion and the retirement party only once each, as examples of retaliation by the co-conspirator against an enemy. Discussion of the tasks performed by the detectives was similarly brief. These remarks by the government could have been made based only on the properly admitted testimony from other high-ranking members of the SCPD and, accordingly, could not have misled the jury. As a result, the court concluded that although the admission of cumulative evidence regarding the demotion and retirement party, and the tasks performed for the co-conspirator, was in error, it was ultimately harmless. View "United States v. McPartland, Spota" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of, among other things, kidnapping and kidnapping conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1201. Defendant argued on appeal that the victim’s detention was too brief to constitute kidnapping under section 1201 because Defendant lacked the intent required to violate section 1201 and because the district court violated his constitutional rights by preventing him from cross-examining the victim about any connections that the victim’s family may have had to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with Defendant that not all detentions satisfy section 1201(a)’s second element. However, the court explained that Defendant’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, Rodriguez does not compel the conclusion that the victim’s detention was not a kidnapping. The court concluded that Defendant’s conduct satisfied the federal kidnapping statute’s second element. While the victim’s 30-minute detention may be characterized as relatively brief, it was nonetheless “appreciable.” As noted, Defendant forced the victim into the vehicle under threat of violence, physically restrained the victim before walking him to a more secluded location, threatened the victim with a knife, beat the victim repeatedly, and included the victim’s family in their threats. The perilous nature of these conditions weighs heavily in favor of concluding that the victim’s detention was appreciable. View "United States v. Krivoi" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the denial of his habeas petition to vacate his 2006 guilty plea, conviction, and sentence. Defendant asserted that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his lawyer did not warn him of the risks of denaturalization and possible subsequent deportation arising from his guilty plea.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations. Effective assistance includes warning defendants of the “direct” consequences of pleading guilty, such as the offense’s maximum prison term and the likely sentence as set forth in a plea agreement. However, the court explained that it has long held that an attorney need not warn of every possible “collateral consequence of conviction. And such collateral consequences are “categorically removed from the scope of the Sixth Amendment.” Thus, a defendant can only establish an ineffective assistance claim as to a collateral consequence if his attorney affirmatively misadvises him. Failing to warn of the collateral risk alone is not enough. The court explained that the instant appeal is resolved by the straightforward application of this direct/collateral framework. Accordingly, the court held that the distinction remains valid, that it applies to civil denaturalization, and that such denaturalization is a collateral consequence of the conviction, and so is not covered by the Sixth Amendment’s right to effective assistance of counsel. View "Farhane v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court’s judgment revoking his original, three-year term of supervised release and sentencing him to three months imprisonment followed by a new, one-year term of supervised release for violating certain conditions of his supervised release. Defendant contends that the district court erred in finding that he violated a condition of his supervised release by possessing marijuana on January 27, 2021, in violation of New York Penal Law Section 221.05. First, Defendant argued that the offense defined by Section 221.05 was simply a state “violation,” not a state “crime,” and therefore, his offense did not violate the mandatory condition of supervised release that he “not commit another federal, state or local crime.” Second, Defendant argued that even if the offense, as defined by Section 221.05, constituted a “crime” for purposes of a violation of supervised release, New York’s March 31, 2021 repeal of the statute operated retroactively, such that his pre-repeal conduct in contravention of it cannot serve as the basis for a violation of supervised release.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with the district court’s conclusion that Defendant violated a condition of his supervised release based on his possession of marijuana. The court explained that irrespective of New York’s classification of the offense, Defendant’s underlying conduct constituted a “crime” under federal law. Because this holding disposes of Defendant’s appeal in its entirety, the court did not reach Defendant’s retroactivity argument. View "United States v. Francis" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing her claims of age, race, and gender discrimination and retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. Section 621 et seq., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000e et seq., and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. Section 1981. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that the district court applied an incorrect legal standard to her retaliation claim and that it erroneously concluded that she had failed to demonstrate that Defendants’ race-neutral explanations for not selecting her for two internal promotions were pretextual.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court held that Plaintiff has not demonstrated that Defendants’ explanations for her non-promotions were pretextual. Second, the court held that although the district court applied an incorrect standard to her retaliatory hostile work environment claim, Plaintiff has nevertheless failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliation and did not demonstrate that her employer’s non-retaliatory explanations were pretextual. The court explained that Defendant’s evidence supporting summary judgment established that Plaintiff received negative performance evaluations because she was not adequately or timely completing her duties and had become increasingly challenging to work with. The court wrote that Plaintiff has not rebutted this showing with evidence demonstrating that the reasons the NYCTA provided for the poor performance reviews were pretextual. Instead, she argues that the performance reviews must have been retaliatory due to their temporal proximity to her complaints. But she offers nothing more to establish causation. View "Carr v. New York City Transit Authority" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing claims against Defendants, challenging Public Act 21-6, which revised the Connecticut General Statutes to repeal religious exemptions from state immunization requirements for schoolchildren, college and university students, and childcare participants. Plaintiffs are two organizations and three individuals who allege that the Act violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and other federal constitutional and statutory guarantees. The district court granted the motions of Defendants to dismiss certain of Plaintiffs’ claims against the state agencies as barred by the Eleventh Amendment, to dismiss the organizational Plaintiffs' claims for lack of standing, and to dismiss all counts of the complaint for failure to state a claim.   The Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated and remanded in part. The court explained the district court's distinction between "special services" and "special education" was overly strict. The IDEA and its associated regulations do not use the phrase "special services." A reasonable inference from the allegation that Plaintiff’s son suffers from "a speech and learning disorder for which he now receives special services," combined with the allegation that he "is disabled within the meaning of the IDEA," is that the "special services" the complaint mentions constitute "special education" rather than "related services." Therefore, the court concluded that because the district court parsed the complaint too restrictively, failing to draw reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, the court erred when it found Plaintiff had not stated a plausible claim for relief under the IDEA. The court, therefore, vacated this portion of the judgment. View "We The Patriots USA, Inc. et al. v. Conn. Office of Early Childhood Dev." on Justia Law

Defendant was twice sentenced for violating conditions of supervised release. The first time, he was sentenced to six months in prison plus four years of supervised release. The second time, he was sentenced to three years in prison plus five years of supervised release. The parties agreed that this most recent sentence of supervised release was longer than allowed by statute. The district court was authorized to impose a term of supervised release of no more than the statutory maximum of five years for the underlying offense, minus the aggregate amount of prison time imposed for violations of supervised release. The parties disagree on the remedy. Defendant sought de novo resentencing, but the government seeks only a limited remand to reduce the term of supervised release to eighteen months.   The Second Circuit remanded for resentencing. The court concluded that the district court should be afforded the opportunity to exercise its discretion as to how much time Defendant should spend in prison and how much time on supervised release. The court explained that under Section 3583(h), the maximum allowable term of supervised release upon revocation decreased in direct proportion to the term of imprisonment imposed. With a three-year prison sentence, Defendant faced at most eighteen months of supervised release. For every month above an eighteen-month term of supervised release, the court would have needed to shave a month off the three-year prison term. The court concluded that the sentencing calculation is best left to the informed discretion of the district court, so that it may decide in the first instance how to strike the right balance. View "United States v. Gaye" on Justia Law

In 2005, a federal district court entered a permanent injunction against several pro-life advocates enjoining them from entering the public sidewalk within fifteen feet of the entrance of any abortion clinic in the Western District of New York. Twelve years later, in 2017, Plaintiff, who was not a named party to the 2005 permanent injunction, started sidewalk counseling near the Planned Parenthood facility in Rochester, New York. After Defendants, the New York Attorney General and the City of Rochester decided that Plaintiff was bound by the 2005 permanent injunction, he sued, seeking a declaratory judgment that he was not bound by the injunction. He also moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent Defendants from applying the injunction to his counseling activities. The district court dismissed his suit for failure to state a claim and denied his motion for a preliminary injunction.   The Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint and vacated the judgment insofar as it denied Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The court remanded for further proceedings. The court held that a person who is not a named party to an injunction or legally identified with a named party is bound by the injunction only from acting for the benefit of, or to assist, an enjoined party in violating the injunction. The allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint do not establish that he so acted and therefore state a claim for declaratory relief. View "Havens v. James" on Justia Law