Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Justin Pickel was convicted on two counts related to the operation of a marijuana-distribution network centered in Kansas. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release. The court also imposed a sixteen-million dollar criminal forfeiture money judgment, to be paid jointly and severally by Pickel and his co-defendants. Pickel appealed, arguing: (1) the district court erroneously denied his motion to suppress marijuana found in his truck after a traffic stop; (2) the Government did not present sufficient evidence to establish a single conspiracy and connect him to it; (3) the Government’s failure to establish a single conspiracy led to a prejudicial variance between his superseding indictment and the trial evidence; (4) the Government did not present sufficient evidence to establish that he used a communication facility to facilitate a drug trafficking conviction; (5) his 10-year term of supervised release exceeds the statutory maximum; and (6) the district court violated 21 U.S.C. 853(a) when it imposed joint and several forfeiture liability on him for the value of marijuana attributable to the whole conspiracy. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Pickel’s convictions and term of supervised release, but reversed the forfeiture judgment and remanded for resentencing regarding Pickel’s forfeiture liability. View "United States v. Pickel" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs-Appellants Pueblo of Pojoaque appealed a district court’s dismissal of its claim for declaratory and injunctive relief based on the New Mexico’s alleged unlawful interference with Class III gaming operations on the Pueblo’s lands. In July 2005, the Pueblo and New Mexico executed a Class III gaming compact pursuant to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (“IGRA”) that allowed it to operate casino-style gaming on its lands. Prior to the expiration of the compact, the New Mexico Gaming Control Board (“the Gaming Board”) sought to perform its annual compliance review of the Pueblo’s gaming operations. The Pueblo complied on June 24; on June 30, 2015, the compact expired at midnight. The Gaming Board announced that despite the U.S. Attorney’s decision allowing the Pueblo’s gaming operations to continue pending the review, the Pueblo’s casinos were operating illegally due to the absence of a compact, and it placed in abeyance approval of any license application or renewal for vendors who did business with the Pueblo. The Pueblo commenced this action, asserting in part that New Mexico failed to conduct compact negotiations in good faith in violation of IGRA and that individual defendants conspired under the color of state law to “deprive the federal right of the Pueblo and its members to be free of state jurisdiction over activities that occur on the Pueblo lands.” The Pueblo sought an injunction, contending that the Gaming Board’s actions were an impermissible attempt to assert jurisdiction over gaming operations on tribal lands, despite the termination of New Mexico’s jurisdiction over such activities upon the expiration of the compact. The district court entered final judgment, stayed the effects of the preliminary injunction, and issued an indicative ruling that it would vacate or dissolve the preliminary injunction on remand. The Pueblo sought to stay the district court’s judgment and restore the preliminary injunction. The district court declined to do so, but the Tenth Circuit extended a temporary injunction against the State mirroring the preliminary injunction entered by the district court. On appeal, the Pueblo argued the district court did not have jurisdiction to proceed to the merits given the interlocutory appeal of the preliminary injunction and, even if it did, it erred in concluding that IGRA did not preempt New Mexico’s regulatory action. The Tenth Circuit found the text of IGRA clearly evinced congressional intent that Class III gaming would not occur in the absence of a compact, and no such compact existed. Accordingly, conflict preemption also does not apply. For similar reasons, the Court rejected the Pueblo’s argument that the Gaming Board’s determination as to the unlawful nature of the Pueblo’s gaming activities was an improper assertion of jurisdiction preempted by IGRA. Because the Pueblo’s gaming activities are not conducted pursuant to a compact or an alternative mechanism permitted under IGRA, the Pueblo’s present gaming is unlawful under federal law, and the State’s conclusion to this effect was not an exercise of jurisdiction that IGRA preempts. View "Pueblo of Pojoaque v. New Mexico" on Justia Law

“Custody does not automatically render [every] exchange an interrogation,” and the Tenth Circuit determined that certain statements defendant Gavin Yepa made while “tired, intoxicated and under tremendous emotional stress” were not the result of police interrogation warranting suppression. Defendant was convicted by a jury of first-degree felony murder in the perpetration of aggravated sexual abuse in Indian country. The sole issue on appeal was whether self-incriminating statements by defendant during a search of his person authorized by a warrant were spontaneous or were the result of interrogation. After a review of the circumstances of the statements, the Tenth Circuit found the district court did not clearly err in finding defendant’s statements were spontaneous and not by virtue of police interrogation. View "United States v. Yepa" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Defendant Ann Marie McNeal under 18 U.S.C. 922(d)(1) for disposing of a firearm to her son, a convicted felon. Her primary claim on appeal was that evidence seized from her home under a search warrant should have been suppressed. The affidavit supporting the warrant was based largely on statements she made when interviewed by law-enforcement officers; she argued that some of what she said was improperly coerced by the officers and that the affidavit included false descriptions of her statements. The Tenth Circuit concluded that police did not coerce defendant when they told her of their reasonable belief she could be prosecuted for providing false information to them. Finding no other reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. McNeal (Ann Marie)" on Justia Law

This case presented the question whether Oklahoma’s drive-by shooting statute, Okla. Stat. tit. 21, sec. 652(B), qualified as a violent felony under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). In 2004, defendant-appellant Britt Hammons pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a firearm as a felon. His criminal history included three prior convictions under Oklahoma’s drive-by shooting statute. At the time of sentencing, Hammons qualified for the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence because his prior convictions would have met the definition of “violent felony” under the ACCA’s residual clause. The district court thus imposed the ACCA enhancement, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the residual clause in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). Because the residual clause could not be relied upon for the enhancement, Hammons sought to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. sec. 2255. On collateral review, the district court concluded that Hammons nevertheless qualified for the enhancement because his state-law convictions were violent felonies under the elements clause of the ACCA. The Tenth Circuit agreed, finding that a conviction under Oklahoma’s drive-by shooting statute categorically qualified as a violent felony under the elements clause of the ACCA. View "United States v. Hammons" on Justia Law

In 2014, an FBI agent served a grand-jury subpoena on Defendant Dakota Williston while he was being held in jail on state charges unrelated to a crime that the grand jury was investigating. Williston appeared before the grand jury. Before the federal prosecutor began asking Williston any questions, he reviewed on the record Williston’s rights with him. Williston affirmed that he understood all that information. The prosecutor then moved on to his substantive questions, starting out by asking if Williston wanted to tell the grand jury his story. The prosecutor’s belief stemmed from Williston’s prior affirmation to the second FBI agent that he planned to testify rather than invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. Williston then gave his account of the death of Payton Cockrell. Six months after Williston’s testimony, the grand jury indicted Williston for Payton’s murder. Williston filed a pretrial motion to suppress his grand-jury testimony. A magistrate judge recommended the denial of the motion, and the district court adopted the recommendation and denied the motion. Defendant argued that Miranda should have applied to protect grand-jury targets who were confined on unrelated criminal charges. Defendant argued that the district court erred at trial by not suppressing his grand-jury testimony, because the government failed to provide him Miranda warnings before that testimony. In rejecting defendant's argument, the Tenth Circuit held that the rule rendering Miranda inapplicable to grand-jury witnesses extended to persons who were incarcerated for unrelated reasons when they are subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. The Court also rejected Defendant’s other challenges to his conviction and sentence based on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, unfairly prejudicial evidence, the evidentiary rule of completeness, and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. View "United States v. Williston" on Justia Law

One form of allocution involves a trial court’s announcement of a definitive sentence before giving the defendant an opportunity to make his statement: this sequence creates a violation unless the court communicates its willingness to reconsider the sentence in light of what the defendant says. In the second form, the trial court announces a purportedly tentative sentence, but makes further statements suggesting that the court might have already made a decision. This was what took place here when Jesus Octavio Valdez-Aguirre was to be sentenced for drug conspiracy. Defendant did not object to this, and appealed to the Tenth Circuit. After review of the trial court record, the Tenth Circuit found no plain error in the judgment and affirmed. View "United States v. Valdez-Aguirre" on Justia Law

The district court denied state prisoner Michael Leatherwood’s habeas application. Leatherwood pled guilty in Oklahoma state court to two counts of Rape in the First Degree and four counts of Rape in the First Degree by Instrumentation. He was sentenced to six concurrent 20-year terms and suspended the sentence except for 90 days in jail. Upon completion of his jail time, Leatherwood would serve a suspended sentence and also be under probationary supervision. Leatherwood agreed to the Special Probation Conditions. One of the Special Probation Conditions, Rule 17, required that Leatherwood “[n]ot date, socialize, or enter into a romantic or sexual relationship with any person who has children under the age of eighteen (18) years present in their residence or custody at any time.” Leatherwood would violate Rule 17 twice, and “looking at the totality” of the circumstances, including Mr. Leatherwood’s own statements and deceptive behavior, the district court concluded he knew he had violated Rule 17. At his first violation, the court revoked five years of Leatherwood’s suspended sentence; after the second violation, the court revoked the remaining fifteen years. Leatherwood was granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on his claim that revocation of his suspended sentence violated his procedural and substantial due process rights. It denied a COA on his other claims. Finding no reversible error in that decision, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. The Tenth Circuit also denied Leatherwood’s request for additional COAs and a motion to supplement the record. View "Leatherwood v. Allbaugh" on Justia Law

In 2004, petitioner-appellant Wade Lay and his so Chris attempted to rob a Tulsa bank, the money from which was going to fund a patriotic revolution against the federal government akin to what the Founding Fathers had done. A bank security guard was killed in the process; the Lays did not get away with any money, and they were apprehended later that day. The Lays were tried together. Chris was represented by counsel; the elder Lay proceeded pro se. Both were found guilty by a jury. Chris received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Wade was sentenced to death. A district court stayed habeas proceedings pending a psychiatric evaluation for Wade. The Supreme Court decided Ryan v. Gonzales, and in response, the district court lifted the stay, found no evidentiary hearing was necessary following Wade’s psychiatric evaluation, and denied habeas relief. The Tenth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on whether the district court should have ordered a temporary stay of the underlying habeas proceedings until Wade Lay could be restored to competency. Finding no reversible error in the district court’s judgment, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "Lay v. Royal" on Justia Law

The government allowed a prisoner's SAMs to expire, and could not proffer a compelling argument to that continuing one such measure was not the least restrictive means of furthering a governmental interest. Plaintiff-appellant Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was a prisoner at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado (“ADX Florence”). He was subjected to Special Administrative Measures (“SAMs”) that limited his contact with the outside world due to past terrorist activities and his connections with terrorist groups. One of the restrictions included a prohibition against participating in group prayer. Acting pro se, plaintiff challenged the legality of his numerous restrictions. He requested a declaratory judgment proclaiming that the government’s imposition and enforcement of the restrictions violated numerous constitutional provisions as well as the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (“RFRA”). He also sought an injunction ordering the government to permit his participation in group prayer. The district court dismissed his suit for failure to state a claim. While his case was on appeal, the government allowed plaintiff's SAMs to expire. But he was still prohibited from participating in group prayer due to the housing restrictions at ADX Florence. The Tenth Circuit found that the government did not meet its burden to affirmatively demonstrate that continuing to deny plaintiff the right to freely exercise his religion one a week furthered a compelling governmental interest in the least restrictive manner. Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court granting the government's motion to dismiss plaitniff's SAMs claims, and remanded this case with instructions to dismiss those claims as moot. View "Ghailani v. Sessions" on Justia Law