Justia U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, pro se and incarcerated, appealed the district court's order denying his post-judgment motion for an order directing the Social Security Administration (SSA) to re-tender a check for retroactive supplemental social security benefits that he was owed. The court held that the No Social Security Benefits for Prisoners Act, Pub. L. No. 111-114, 123 Stat. 3029, barred the SSA from making any payment to an incarcerated individual covered by the Act, regardless of when the underlying obligation to pay the individual arose. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of plaintiff's motion.

Defendants appealed from judgments following a jury trial that resulted in their convictions for racketeering and related offenses. Defendants all contended, inter alia, that the district court erred in failing to instruct the jury on the relatedness and continuity factors required to establish a pattern of racketeering under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. 1962(c) and (d). The court concluded that the district court's RICO instruction was legally erroneous and this error was prejudicial with regard to Chris Cain. With regard to the racketeering convictions of David Cain, Jr. and Jamie Soha, however, applying a plain error standard of review, the court concluded that it was not reasonably likely that a properly instructed jury would have failed to find a pattern of racketeering. Accordingly, the court reversed the RICO convictions with regard to Chris Cain only and remanded for resentencing. The court affirmed the convictions in all other respects.

Defendant entered a guilty plea to transporting a minor in interstate commerce with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, 18 U.S.C. 2423(a), and was sentenced to a 233-month term of imprisonment. The court applied three two-level sentencing enhancements pursuant to USSG 2G1.3 because the offense involved: commission of a sex act; use of a computer to entice a minor to engage in prohibited sexual conduct; and misrepresentation of identity to persuade, induce, entice, or coerce a minor to engage in prohibited sexual conduct or undue influence to engage in such conduct. The Second Circuit affirmed. There was no double-counting. The sentence was substantively and procedurally reasonable.

In 1988 petitioner was convicted of first-degree robbery. After his release, he was arrested for murder and attempted murder and, in 2001, entered a plea of guilty in New York state court. Treating the attempted murder as a second violent felony, the state court imposed three consecutive terms of 25 years. The Department of Correctional Services determined that an undischarged portion of the robbery prison term should be added to the 2001 sentence. Direct review ended in 2005; from 2005-2008, petitioner pursued post-conviction motions in state court. In 2008, he filed a federal petition for habeas corpus, which was dismissed as untimely under 28 U.S.C. 2244(d)(1). The petition did not mention the DOC sentencing calculation. The Second Circuit affirmed. State applications for post-conviction relief did not toll the one-year statute of limitations. Section2244(d)(2) limits tolling to those applications for post-conviction or other collateral review that are made with respect to the pertinent judgment: the 2001 conviction and sentence. The applications at issue were directed neither to the conviction nor to the sentence; they concerned only a post-conviction administrative determination that the sentence ran consecutively to the earlier undischarged prison term.

Following about 30 years of oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Ecuadorians brought a variety of claims against the company and obtained judgment in Ecuador. Chevron, a potential judgment-debtor, brought action under New York’s Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments Recognition Act, N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5301-5309, which allows judgment-creditors to enforce foreign judgments in New York courts, seeking a global anti-enforcement injunction against the Ecuadorians and their attorney to prohibit attempts to enforce the allegedly-fraudulent judgment entered by the Ecuadorian court. The district court granted the injunction. The Second Circuit reversed, vacating the injunction. The Recognition Act does not grant putative judgment-debtors a cause of action to challenge foreign judgments before enforcement of those judgments is sought. Judgment-debtors can challenge a foreign judgment’s validity under the Act only defensively, in response to an attempted enforcement.

The United States appealed from a judgment of the district court invalidating two notices of Final Partnership Administrative Adjustments issued by the IRS. The district court so ruled because it concluded that the taxpayer's characterization of two tax-exempt Dutch banks as its partners in Castle Harbour LLC was proper under Internal Revenue Code 704(e)(1). The district court also concluded that, even if the banks did not qualify as partners under section 704(e)(1), the government was not entitled to impose a penalty pursuant to Internal Revenue Code 6662. The court held that the evidence compelled the conclusion that the banks did not qualify as partners under section 704(e)(1), and that the government was entitled to impose a penalty on the taxpayer for substantial understatement of income. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was reversed.

Petitioner was convicted in a New York state court of second-degree murder. Petitioner subsequently appealed the denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas petition. The court held that because the evidence was sufficient to support petitioner's conviction of "depraved indifference" murder under New York law, his counsel's failure to preserve a claim of insufficiency in the trial court was not prejudicial.

Defendants appealed from a judgment of the district court in favor of plaintiff on claims of Section 16(b) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. 78p(b). At issue was whether a beneficial owner's acquisition of securities directly from an issuer - at the issuer's request and with the board's approval - should be exempt from the definition of a "purchase" under Section 16(b), on the theory that such a transaction lacked the "potential for speculative abuse" that Section 16(b) was designed to curb. The court held that such transactions were covered by Section 16(b) and that defendants, who were limited partnerships, were beneficial owners for the purpose of Section 16(b) liability, notwithstanding their delegation of voting and investment control over their securities portfolios to their general partners' agents. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Defendant was charged with being a previously-convicted felon in possession of firearms and ammunition and seeking forfeiture of the unlawfully possessed property. Defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained during the search was granted and the government filed an interlocutory appeal seeking review of the suppression order. Because the court found that the search was proper under the "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant was convicted of possessing a firearm and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 15 years' imprisonment. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's determination that he had three or more prior convictions for felonies categorized as "violent" under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), and that he was subject to the ACCA mandatory minimum sentence as a result. The court held that defendant's convictions for escape from custody qualified as violent felonies. Therefore, the district court did not err in imposing the ACCA's mandatory minimum sentence.