Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

An Oklahoma jury convicted Alonzo Johnson of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. After unsuccessfully challenging his convictions in state court, Johnson petitioned for federal habeas relief. Relevant here, he asserted that the prosecution exercised its peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner to exclude minorities from the jury, in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. Johnson also asserted, in relevant part, that gruesome evidence, juror misconduct, and cumulative error rendered his trial fundamentally unfair. The district court denied relief. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the denial of relief on Johnson’s gruesome-evidence, juror-misconduct, and cumulative-error claims. But because the Court concluded that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) relied on an unreasonable factual determination and unreasonably applied Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) to reject Johnson’s claim, and further determined that Johnson raised a prima facie case of discrimination under the first step of Batson. The Court therefore reversed the district court’s denial of habeas relief on Johnson’s Batson claim and remanded for further proceedings. View "Johnson v. Martin" on Justia Law

Attorney Mark Schell asked a federal district court to invalidate Oklahoma’s requirement that practicing attorneys join the Oklahoma Bar Association (“OBA”) and pay mandatory dues. In addition, Schell alleged that the OBA did not utilize adequate safeguards to protect against the impermissible use of funds. Initially, the district court dismissed Schell’s challenges to membership and dues but permitted his challenge to the OBA’s spending procedures to proceed. Then, the OBA adopted new safeguards consistent with Schell’s demands. The parties agreed the revised safeguards mooted Schell’s remaining claim and asked that the district court dismiss the Amended Complaint. The district court obliged, and this appeal, limited to the membership and dues requirements, followed. On appeal, Schell, primarily citing Janus v. American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), disputed whether Supreme Court precedents upholding bar membership and mandatory dues remained good law. He contended "Janus" transformed prior Supreme Court decisions upholding mandatory bar dues and membership such that what was once permitted by Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U.S. 820 (1961), and Keller v. State Bar of California, 496 U.S. 1 (1990), was now precluded. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that mandatory bar dues did not violate Schell’s First Amendment rights. As for Schell’s First Amendment claim based on mandatory bar membership, the Court held the majority of the allegations supporting this claim occurred prior to the controlling statute-of-limitations period. However, some of the allegations falling within the statute-of-limitations period alleged conduct by the OBA not necessarily germane to the purposes of a state bar as recognized in Lathrop and Keller. Accordingly, the district court erred by relying upon Lathrop and Keller to dismiss Schell’s freedom of association claim based on mandatory bar membership. The Tenth Circuit therefore reversed the district court’s dismissal of Schell’s freedom of association claim based on mandatory bar membership, and remanded the case so that Schell could conduct discovery on that claim. View "Schell v. OK Supreme Court Justices" on Justia Law

Daniel Lowell and his girlfriend went on a "Bonnie and Clyde-esque crime spree that turned deadly." While on their way to cash in a stolen car and credit cards, the pair were pulled over outside Las Cruces, New Mexico. A high-speed chase ensued. They carjacked a Toyota 4Runner and eventually law enforcement lost track of them for two and a half hours in Las Cruces, during which time they did drugs and shoplifted items from Walmart that they could use to steal another car. After an officer spotted the 4Runner, another chase ensued, but this time it ended tragically when their car crashed into a motorcyclist, killing him. Lowell pleaded guilty to numerous crimes, including carjacking resulting in death, and was sentenced to 449 months’ imprisonment. On appeal, Lowell challenged the validity of his guilty plea, as well as the district court’s application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines (USSG). Lowell argued his conviction for carjacking resulting in death was invalid because he lacked the specific intent to cause the motorcyclist’s death while in the act of carjacking. According to Lowell, section 2119(3) required "but-for" causation, not specific intent to cause the death. Lowell thus argued the district court erred by applying the first-degree murder cross reference in USSG 2B3.1(c). Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Lowell’s conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Lowell" on Justia Law

Prior to the First Step Act, defendants convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine faced much higher penalties than defendants convicted of powder cocaine offenses. Section 404 of the First Step Act "opened the courtroom doors" to these defendants to move for discretionary sentence reductions based on the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals found that although the remedial purpose of section 404 was clear, its language had not been interpreted uniformly. Because application of section 404(b) "should not vary from defendant to defendant," the Court concluded that before a district court exercises its discretion, "it should look to the drug quantity and Sentencing Guidelines associated with an eligible defendant’s offense of conviction, rather than his underlying conduct, to 'impose a reduced sentence as if . . . the Fair Sentencing Act . . . were in effect at the time the covered offense was committed.'” The district court did not do so here, so denial of defendant-appellant Jason Broadway's petition for sentence reduction was reversed. View "United States v. Broadway" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, three citizens of American Samoa, asked the district court in Utah to declare that American Samoans were American citizens. The district court agreed and so declared. Appellants, the United States federal government joined by the American Samoan government and an individual representative acting as intervenors, asked the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the district court’s decision. The Tenth Circuit concluded that neither constitutional text nor Supreme Court precedent demands the district court’s interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It is evident that the wishes of the territory’s democratically elected representatives, who remind us that their people have not formed a consensus in favor of American citizenship and urge us not to impose citizenship on an unwilling people from a courthouse thousands of miles away, have not been taken into adequate consideration. Such consideration properly falls under the purview of Congress … These circumstances advise against the extension of birthright citizenship to American Samoa.” Accordingly, judgment was reversed. View "Fitisemanu v. United States" on Justia Law

Guy Jean-Pierre, a corporate and securities attorney, aided an illegal stock trading operation. Through a series of self-dealing transactions, Jean-Pierre and his co-conspirators artificially inflated stock prices of a company they controlled. Jean- Pierre sent letters on the company’s behalf to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) that contained false and misleading information and omitted material information from disclosures to potential investors. Jean-Pierre appealed his convictions for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud as to four of the twenty-eight counts of conviction, arguing the district court erred in admitting evidence that he had previously used his niece’s signature without her permission to submit attorney letters to a stock trading website. Jean- Pierre also argued that three of the four convictions should have been reversed because the district court declined to give a requested instruction reiterating the government’s burden as to a specific factual theory. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Jean-Pierre" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Matthew Maley appealed a district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion. Maley was convicted in New Mexico of various conspiracy and drug offenses as well as possession of a firearm by a felon, for which he was sentenced to 262 months’ imprisonment on the drug-related counts and 120 months’ imprisonment on the felon-in-possession count to run concurrently. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions on direct appeal, rejecting the argument that he was denied his choice of counsel when the district court denied his fourth motion for a continuance and required his then-counsel to proceed to trial. Maley also faced charges in Arizona based upon evidence found in the travel trailer. In that case, however, Arizona counsel filed a motion to suppress which was granted and ultimately the charges were dismissed. In his section 2255 motion, Maley argued that had his New Mexico counsel filed a motion to suppress, it likely would have been granted and he would not have been convicted on the felon in possession of a firearm count. The district court granted a certificate of appealability on: (1) whether law enforcement officers had probable cause to believe that Maley would be found within the travel trailer he was using as his residence when they entered it on November 17, 2013, with a valid warrant for his arrest; and (2) if probable cause was lacking, whether the failure of New Mexico trial counsel to seek suppression of the evidence constituted ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC). Finding no reversible error in the district court judgment, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Maley" on Justia Law

Petitioner-Appellant John William Childers, then-incarcerated in Oklahoma, appealed a district court’s denial of his pro se 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas relief. Childers was convicted of violating two provisions of Oklahoma’s Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA) for living within 2,000 feet of a school and for failing to update his address. He was serving two consecutive life sentences for these convictions. After seeking post-conviction relief in state court, Childers sought federal habeas relief, arguing, among other things, that his life sentences were the result of an impermissible retroactive application of SORA’s provisions in violation of the ex post facto clause of the Oklahoma Constitution. The district court determined that Childers’s section 2254 petition was time-barred and denied relief. The Tenth Circuit, however, granted a Certificate of Appealability (COA), concluding that “[r]easonable jurists could debate whether . . . Childers has advanced a colorable claim of actual innocence” to overcome the time-bar. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded the district court’s procedural ruling was correct and that Childers did not raise a claim of actual innocence before the district court or in his application for a COA. Accordingly, the Court disagreed that a COA should have been granted. Even were this not the case, Childers’s ex post facto arguments on appeal changed substantially from those he presented in his COA application. The Court therefore declined to consider Childers’s new arguments because they exceeded the scope of the COA. View "Childers v. Crow" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Eric Martinez appealed a district court’s imposition of a 27-month sentence for his burglary conviction under the Indian Major Crimes Act. In February 2016, Martinez and two accomplices burglarized a residence within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation in McKinley County, New Mexico. During the burglary, Martinez used a hammer to break a hole in the front door near the doorknob to gain entry to the residence. He and his accomplices took valuable items from the residence, including electronics, jewelry, and ceremonial shawls and robes. Martinez ultimately pled guilty to an “assimilated” New Mexico burglary offense under N.M. Stat. Ann. 30-16-3. At sentencing, Martinez argued that federal law permitted the district court to impose a conditional discharge, which would allow a term of probation without entry of a judgment of conviction -- a sentence possible had his case been adjudicated in New Mexico state court. He also objected to a two-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B2.1(b)(4) for possessing a dangerous weapon on the basis that he did not use the hammer as a weapon during the burglary. The district court rejected these arguments. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Martinez’s conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Martinez" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Christopher Dominguez appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to withdraw his guilty plea. This case arose from Defendant’s involvement in a series of robberies in New Mexico and Wyoming. In 2016, Defendant was arrested along with two other suspects, for the armed robbery of the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Raton, New Mexico. Prior to the robbery, the robbers had stolen a vehicle, which they used during the robbery and abandoned thereafter. During the robbery, the robbers wore face coverings, displayed firearms, and ordered the pharmacy employees to load certain drugs into black trash bags that the robbers supplied. The robbers identified the requested drugs by name, namely Oxycontin and Oxycodone. After seeing the Raton Police Department Facebook information, a Medicap pharmacist in Wyoming alerted law enforcement, which began investigating whether the suspects in the New Mexico robbery had also committed a prior Wyoming robbery, under similar circumstances. Defendant would ultimately strike a plea agreement for the charges arising out of the two robberies. On the day of his change-of-plea hearing, the law changed: on December 21, 2018, the President signed into law the First Step Act, a wide-ranging package of criminal justice reform measures that had passed both houses of Congress only days prior. Pertinent here, the First Step Act altered the “stacking” provision of 18 U.S.C. 924(c), which had “significant implications” for Defendant’s potential sentencing exposure. On appeal of his ultimate conviction, Defendant contended his plea was invalid for two reasons: (1) he did not knowingly and intelligently plead guilty; and (2) he did not receive the requisite “close assistance” of counsel in making his plea. Despite his arguments to the contrary, the Tenth Circuit concluded Defendant was unconvincing unknowingly and unintelligently pleaded guilty or that he did not receive “close assistance” of counsel. Accordingly, the district court’s judgment was affirmed. View "United States v. Dominguez" on Justia Law