Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant Bruce Latorre appealed his marijuana trafficking convictions. Latorre flew a private aircraft from California to New York and was flying back to California when police detained him in Wyoming. Several state and federal law enforcement agencies cooperated to investigate and then stop Latorre’s aircraft at an airport in Wyoming, where they received Latorre’s consent to search his aircraft and found $519,935 in cash. A grand jury indicted Latorre on two counts: (1) interstate travel in aid of racketeering; and (2) conspiracy to distribute marijuana. Latorre moved to suppress the evidence from the search of his aircraft, and the district court denied the motion. Latorre then entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. He then appealed that denial to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Latorre" on Justia Law

Alejandro Lujan Jimenez petitioned for review a final order of removal and an order by the Bureau of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) declining to sua sponte reopen removal proceedings. Lujan is a native and citizen of Mexico. He first entered the United States as a child sometime in the 1990s. His most recent entry into the United States occurred in May 2004. In January 2007, Lujan pled guilty in Colorado state court to Criminal Trespass of a Motor Vehicle with the Intent to Commit a Crime Therein, and sentenced to 35 days in jail. The Department of Homeland Security filed a notice charging Lujan as removable. He received three continuances of removal proceedings until April 2009 when he conceded removability. Lujan then applied for adjustment of status and cancellation of removal. He obtained four additional continuances of his removal proceedings. Lujan appeared in immigration court on June 5, 2013, and the IJ granted counsel’s motion to withdraw. Lujan stated that he was attempting to obtain new counsel, but proceeded pro se at the hearing. The IJ denied relief, concluding that Lujan was ineligible for adjustment of status based on his immigration history and that he was ineligible for cancellation of removal because he had been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude—his criminal trespass offense in Colorado. Lujan appealed to the BIA, arguing that the IJ’s denial of a continuance violated his right to due process and that his Colorado conviction was not a crime involving moral turpitude. The BIA affirmed the IJ’s ruling. Lujan then filed an untimely petition for review, which was dismissed. The Tenth Circuit determined it lacked jurisdiction over petition number 17-9527: review of the BIA’s decision declining to sua sponte reopen his removal proceedings. The Court has previously held that “we do not have jurisdiction to consider [a] petitioner’s claim that the BIA should have sua sponte reopened the proceedings . . . because there are no standards by which to judge the agency’s exercise of discretion.” View "Lujan-Jimenez v. Sessions" on Justia Law

Petitioner-Appellant Azael Bedolla-Zarate, a native and citizen of Mexico, petitioned the Tenth Circuit for review of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Final Administrative Removal Order (FARO) based upon his having been convicted of an aggravated felony. Bedolla-Zarate was convicted of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor in Wyoming state court in September 2016. He contended that his conviction did not qualify as an aggravated felony. The Tenth Circuit found a person convicted under the Wyoming sexual abuse of a minor statute necessarily has committed sexual abuse of a minor under the INA, therefore DHS properly issued a FARO against Bedolla-Zarate for committing an aggravated felony under the INA. The Court denied review. View "Bedolla-Zarate v. Sessions" on Justia Law

In 2004, Chance Wade Driscoll (“Driscoll”) pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. At Driscoll’s sentencing in January 2005, the sentencing court accepted the Presentence Investigation Report’s (“PSR”) determination that Driscoll was an armed career criminal based upon one previous drug conviction and two previous burglary convictions. The sentencing court did not state whether the two burglary convictions counted as violent felonies under the ACCA’s enumerated offenses clause or the residual clause. Over ten years later, Driscoll filed this 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion, arguing it was possible the sentencing court relied on the now-unconstitutional residual clause of the ACCA to enhance his sentence. The district court denied his section 2255 motion as untimely. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, finding that the predicate Nebraska crime that served as his sentence enhancer did not categorically fit under the generic offense of burglary. As a result, Driscoll's 1988 Nebraska burglary conviction was not a violent felony as defined by the enumerated offenses clause of the ACCA. This meant Driscoll did not qualify as an armed career criminal under the ACCA, not eligible for 18 U.S.C. 924(e)'s fifteen-year minimum sentence, and instead was subject to section 924(a)(2)'s ten-year maximum. The Tenth Circuit found the sentencing court's error was not harmless. View "United States v. Driscoll" on Justia Law

This case arose from two restaurant robberies in 2009, during one of which, defendant-appellant Francisco Melgar-Cabrera’s cohorts shot and killed a waitress. Defendant was charged with numerous crimes but was not immediately tried because he fled to El Salvador. He was extradited in 2013 and subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for causing the death of a person while using a gun to commit an 18 U.S.C. section 924(c) crime of violence. He appealed, contending that the underlying crime for which he was charged, was not categorically a crime of violence. An additional issue this case raised for the Tenth Circuit's consideration was the fact that in the Tenth Circuit, section 924(j) has been held to constitute a sentencing enhancement, not a separate crime. The Court raised this issue because the El Salvador Supreme Court granted defendant's extradition only after holding that he could not be charged with or convicted of a section 924(c) crime. The government subsequently re-indicted defendant, charging him with violating 924(j), and he was convicted of that “crime” rather than a 924(c) offense. Defendant challenged his conviction on appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, but finding no reversible error in the proceedings, the Court affirmed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Melgar-Cabrera" on Justia Law

A former small-town doctor, defendant Joel Miller, was charged with multiple counts of health-care fraud, money laundering, and distributing a controlled substance outside the usual course of professional treatment, as well as one count of making a false statement on an application submitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A jury acquitted him on all of the financial charges as well as several of the drug distribution charges, but found him guilty on seven counts of distributing a controlled substance, and one count of making a false statement to the DEA. The district court granted Defendant’s post-judgment motion for acquittal on one of the controlled-substances counts based on an error in the indictment. The court then sentenced him to forty-one months of imprisonment on the six remaining distribution counts, plus a consecutive sentence of nineteen months on the false-statement count, for a total sentence of sixty months of imprisonment. Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence. The Tenth Circuit found no error in the imposition of defendant’s sentence on the six distribution counts; however the Court reversed and remanded on the false statement count. The Court was persuaded that trial court proceedings “broadened the possible bases for conviction beyond those found in the operative charging document. …we are persuaded that the trial proceedings in this case effected a constructive amendment.” View "United States v. Miller" on Justia Law

Kenneth Francis was convicted by jury on three federal firearms charges, namely, two counts of making false statements to a firearms dealer and one count of unlawful disposition of a firearm to a felon. The charges stemmed from Francis’ straw purchase of two firearms for a felon working as a confidential informant with ATF agents. On appeal, Francis argued: (1) whether the government sufficiently proved he disposed of the firearms to a felon (informant); (2) whether the trial court erred in imposing a four-level sentencing enhancement for trafficking firearms; and (3) whether the district court erred by ordering sex-offender treatment as a special condition of his supervised release. The Tenth Circuit determined the facts found by the district court didn’t suffice to support applying the firearms-trafficking enhancement in calculating Francis’s sentence. The Court found Francis was convicted of a sex offense in 2011, and during the investigation of that crime someone accused him of having intimate sexual contact with a twelve-year-old girl. He failed to complete his previous court-ordered sex- offender-treatment program. Because the record revealed a basis for the sex-offender-treatment condition, Francis could not show prejudice and harm to his substantial rights. So Francis failed to meet his burden under plain error review. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the conviction and sex-offender-treatment special condition, but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Francis" on Justia Law

Cornelia Tapaha was convicted of assault for hitting her boyfriend, Myron Yazzie, with her car. She appealed, arguing the district court: (1) denied her the ability to mount a defense to the charges by excluding three witnesses’ testimony; (2) violated the Confrontation Clause by excluding certain testimony by Yazzie; and (3) erred in refusing to admit redacted portions of an interview with a law-enforcement officer. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Tapaha’s conviction. View "United States v. Tapaha" on Justia Law

Early in the morning of November 12, 2009, police officers from the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Department were dispatched to an apartment complex to investigate a 911 domestic violence call. Upon their arrival, they saw Walter Deiter and his wife, D’Leah Harris, in the middle of the street. When Deiter and Harris saw the officers, they separated, each walking in the opposite direction. Deiter proceeded toward the apartment complex; Officer Patricia Whelan followed him. Deiter went behind a staircase; Whelan temporarily lost sight of him. Deiter emerged a few minutes later on the second-story open breezeway. Whelan told Deiter to come down and talk to her. But before doing so, he made a “squatting, bending motion” which led Whelan to believe he had “dropped” something illegal. She could not see what was dropped because a three- to four-foot tall wall obstructed her view, but once Deiter came down the stairs, Whelan asked Officer Sammy Marquez to determine what had been dropped. As Marquez proceeded up the steps to the second-story breezeway, Deiter took off running. Deiter was eventually brought down with a taser; once he was secured, officers found a holster containing a loaded .22 caliber revolver. Forensic testing revealed Deiter’s DNA on both the holster and firearm. The firearm also contained a small amount of DNA from an unidentified source. A jury convicted Deiter of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. Deiter filed a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion, claiming a prior bank robbery conviction could not be deemed a “violent felony” supporting the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) enhancement to the sentence he ultimately received. He also argued trial counsel was ineffective for (1) failing to challenge his ACCA sentence and (2) reading a transcript of Whelan’s belt tape recorder to the jury which contained an incriminating statement from a witness. After review of the briefs submitted for review, the Tenth Circuit found no reversible error to Deiter's sentence, nor ineffective assistance of counsel. View "United States v. Deiter" on Justia Law

In January 2017 a grand jury in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming returned a 21-count indictment against Defendant Shakeel Kahn (who was a physician) and others charging distribution of controlled substances and money laundering. The indictment included a criminal forfeiture count under 21 U.S.C. 853, which listed a number of his assets that the grand jury identified as fruits of the alleged crimes. Most of those assets had been seized by the government before filing the indictment. Two weeks after the indictment, Kahn moved for a hearing to challenge the seizure of $1,140,699.95 in currency and bank accounts, asserting he needed this money to retain private counsel of his choice, noting that his only unseized assets were a $175,000 home encumbered by an $80,000 lien and a business that brought in less than $3,000 a month after taxes. He estimated that he would need at least $200,000 to pay counsel and that his total defense costs would be at least $450,000. In April the district court denied the motion. Defendant petitioned the Tenth Circuit for a district-court hearing to challenge the seizure of those assets. The district court denied a hearing because he has some unseized assets with which to pay an attorney. The Tenth Circuit reversed and remanded because the proper test was whether he had sufficient unseized assets to pay for the reasonable cost of obtaining counsel of his choice. View "United States v. Kahn" on Justia Law