Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

A jury convicted Patrick Murphy of murder in Oklahoma state court and imposed the death penalty. In August 1999, Murphy lived with Patsy Jacobs; Jacobs was previously in a relationship with the victim, George Jacobs. Murphy had an argument with her about George, and said he was “going to get” George Jacobs and his family. A passerby found George Jacobs in a ditch with his face bloodied and slashes across his chest and stomach. His genitals had been cut off and his throat slit. Murphy allegedly confessed the killing to Ms. Jacobs, and he was later arrested and tried. On appeal, Murphy asserted he was tried in the wrong court: he challenged the jurisdiction of the Oklahoma state court in which he was convicted and sentenced, contending he should have been tried in federal court because he was an Indian and the offense occurred in Indian country. To this point, the Tenth Circuit agreed and remanded to the district court to issue a writ of habeas corpus vacating his conviction and sentence. The question of whether the state court had jurisdiction was straightforward but reaching an answer was not. Parsing the issue involved review of: (1) federal habeas corpus review of state court decisions; (2) Indian country jurisdiction generally; (3) Indian reservations specifically; and (4) how a reservation can be disestablished or diminished. In this case, the Oklahoma court applied a rule that was contrary to clearly established Supreme Court law. Congress has not disestablished the Creek Reservation; the crime in this case occurred in Indian country; Murphy was an Indian and because the crime occurred in Indian country, the federal court has exclusive jurisdiction. Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction. The Tenth Circuit therefore reversed the district court’s judgment and remanded with instructions to grant Murphy’s application for a writ of habeas corpus. View "Murphy v. Royal" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Matthew Williams of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. He appealed, arguing the evidence against him was insufficient. Williams began a mortgage loan application at Pulaski Bank (the “bank”) using his father’s personal and financial information and his status as a Purple Heart veteran. After his father received the application packet in the mail, he called the bank to explain he had not applied for a loan. The bank referred the matter to law enforcement, but continued to work with Williams to process the loan and obtain additional documents to clarify the applicant’s identity. The bank sent Williams a notice of incompleteness because it lacked several required documents, signatures, and a photo identification. In response, Williams provided some of the required documents to the bank, including a fake earnings statement and a letter expressing his intent to proceed with the loan. The bank sent a final notice of incompleteness to Williams. Williams did not respond, and the bank closed his application file. Mr. Williams argues his misrepresentations on the incomplete application could not support a bank fraud conviction because they (1) were not material to the bank’s decision to issue him a loan; and (2) did not impose a risk of loss on the bank. Finding no reversible error in the district court's judgment, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Williams" on Justia Law

A district court presiding over a murder trial did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of prior, similar incidents, including whether the defendant killed his second wife in circumstances similar to those that led to the death of his first wife. The evidence was properly admitted under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), was relevant, and was not substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice. View "United States v. Henthorn" on Justia Law

This case arose from a state prisoner’s alleged deprivation of outdoor exercise for two years and one month. The alleged deprivation led the prisoner, plaintiff-appellee Donnie Lowe, to sue two senior prison officials, invoking 42 U.S.C. 1983 and alleging violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court declined to dismiss the personal liability claims against the two officials, and they appeal. For the sake of argument, the Tenth Circuit assumed a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but nevertheless found the two officials would enjoy qualified immunity unless the denial of outdoor exercise for two years and one month had violated a clearly established constitutional right. In the Court’s view, the right was not clearly established. View "Lowe v. Raemisch" on Justia Law

This case arose from two state prisoners’ alleged deprivation of outdoor exercise. The inmates were kept in administrative segregation at a Colorado prison for roughly eleven months. During that time, the inmates were allegedly prohibited from exercising outdoors, although they were brought to a “recreation room” five times each week. The alleged prohibition on outdoor exercise led the two inmates to sue the prison warden and the director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, invoking 42 U.S.C. 1983 and claiming violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court denied the motion to dismiss, reasoning that the two inmates had stated a plausible claim for relief. The Tenth Circuit found, however, the warden and director enjoyed qualified immunity, and accordingly reversed: even if the alleged prohibition on outdoor exercise had violated the Eighth Amendment, the underlying constitutional right would not have been clearly established. View "Apodaca v. Raemisch" on Justia Law

Robert Harte and his two children visited a garden store where they purchased a small bag of supplies to grow tomatoes and other vegetables in the basement of the family home as an educational project with his 13-year-old son. Unbeknownst to Harte, Sergeant James Wingo of the Missouri State Highway Patrol was parked nearby in an unmarked car, watching the store as part of a ‘pet project’ where he would spend three or four hours per day surveilling the garden store, keeping meticulous notes on all of the customers: their sex, age, vehicle description, license plate number, and what they purchased. More than five months later, a sergeant in the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office (“JCSO”), emailed Wingo about the possibility of conducting a joint operation on April 20; the idea stemmed from a multi-agency raid on indoor marijuana growers that was conducted on the same date the previous year. That raid, known as “Operation Constant Gardener,” was spearheaded by Wingo on the basis of several hundred tips he had amassed from his garden store surveillance. The raid would end with police searching the Harte's trash and finding loose tea leaves, suspecting a marijuana grow operation in the Harte house. A SWAT team descended on the family home (complete with battering ram, bulletproof vests, and assault rifles), keeping the entire family under armed guard for two and a half hours. In this appeal, the Tenth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants-officers. The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment on all claims asserted against defendant Jim Wingo, and affirmed as to the plaintiffs’ excessive force and Monell liability claims. However, the Court reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment on the unlawful search and seizure claims asserted against the remaining defendants. On remand, plaintiffs’ claim under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), was limited to their theory that one or more of the remaining defendants lied about the results of the field tests conducted in April 2012 on the tea leaves collected from the plaintiffs’ trash. The Court further reversed summary judgment as to the four state-law claims raised on appeal. View "Harte v. Board Comm'rs Cnty of Johnson" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Samuel Windom entered a conditional guilty plea to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Windom appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress the firearm, arguing that officers used unreasonable “high risk” traffic stop procedures to investigate a “completed misdemeanor,” Windom’s flashing of a firearm in public, and the unreasonable nature of the force involved in the stop elevated it from an investigative detention to an arrest without probable cause. The Tenth Circuit concluded the precautionary measures of force that the officers employed in seizing Windom were reasonable, and did not cause his seizure to rise to the level of a de facto arrest, which would have required a showing of probable cause. Consequently, the seizure here was lawful. View "United States v. Windom" on Justia Law

The FBI used malware to identify and find viewers of child pornography to access illicit websites. The FBI maintained the website in the Eastern District of Virginia, but users were spread out all over the country. Finding those users could prove difficult because of geographic constraints on the FBI’s ability to obtain a warrant. Notwithstanding these constraints, the FBI obtained a warrant that led to the discovery of hundreds of viewers of child pornography. One was the defendant, who faced prosecution in the District of Colorado. In the subsequent prosecution, the district court held that the warrant was invalid and suppressed evidence resulting from the search. The Tenth Circuit reversed this ruling, finding that even when a search warrant is invalid, the resulting evidence should not be suppressed if the executing agents could reasonably rely on the warrant. Here, the Court assumed for the sake of argument that the warrant was invalid. But in the Court's view, the executing agents acted in an objectively reasonable manner. Thus, the evidence should not have been suppressed. View "United States v. Workman" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Jonathan Kearn of federal child pornography charges arising from pictures he took of his four-and-a-half year old daughter and shared on the internet. He was sentenced to a lengthy prison term followed by five years of supervised release. Kearn contends the district court committed various errors at trial and sentencing. Finding no reversible errors, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Kearn's conviction. View "United States v. Kearn" on Justia Law

The district court sentenced Defendant David Magnan, a Native American, to three life terms after a jury convicted him of murdering three people in Indian Country. Defendant shot Lucilla McGirt twice and left her to die, paralyzed from the chest down, as part of an execution-style slaying during which he shot four individuals. McGirt died, but not before she identified Defendant as her assailant. On three separate occasions ranging from approximately two to five hours after the shooting, three people heard McGirt identify Defendant as the man who shot her. At trial, these three individuals testified to McGirt’s respective statements over Defendant’s hearsay objections. Defendant appealed, arguing the district court abused its discretion in ruling McGirt’s statements constituted excited utterances admissible under Rule 803(2) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Magnan" on Justia Law