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

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.

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.

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.

Defendant was convicted of conspiracy, securities fraud, and wire fraud. On appeal, defendant contended, inter alia, that the trial court committed prejudicial error when it failed to disclose the contents of a jury note and engaged in an ex parte colloquy with a juror accused of attempting to barter his vote. The court held that trial court deprived defendant of his right to be present at every stage of the trial. Because the deprivation was not harmless, the court vacated and remanded for a new trial.

Petitioner appealed from the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief after finding that he did not derive citizenship from his father. The district court ruled that petitioner was not in his father's "legal custody" when his father naturalized. The court concluded that the district court erred because it relied on an unenforceable Dominican Republic custody award where New York had jurisdiction to determine custody. Accordingly, the court vacated the judgment and remanded for further proceedings.

The government appealed from two interlocutory orders. The first order suppressed cocaine seized from defendant's person incident to his warrantless arrest, as well as statements made by defendant, based on a lack of probable cause to support the arrest. The order also suppressed evidence seized from defendant's residence pursuant to the execution of a search warrant on the ground that without the reference to the cocaine seized from defendant's person, the warrant application did not establish probable cause to search the residence. The second order denied the government's motion for reconsideration of the suppression decisions in the first order. The court held that the district court erred in determining that defendant's warrantless arrest was not supported by probable cause, and thus, evidence seized from defendant's person and residence, as well as the statements made by defendant during and after his arrest, should not have been suppressed. Accordingly, the judgment was reversed and remanded.

Petitioner, wanted in his native Greece on charges related to the kidnapping and murder of a minor, was certified extraditable after a hearing in the district court, notwithstanding certain arguments he made regarding Greece's compliance, vel non, with its own criminal procedure. This appeal required the court to clarify the proper role of a district court considering a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging an extradition order. The court held that the district court erred by placing the burden of proof in the habeas proceeding on the United States rather than on petitioner and by engaging in an improper inquiry into Greece's compliance with its own laws. The court reaffirmed that a court considering an extradition request - or a petition for habeas corpus seeking collateral review of an extradition order - could review the demanding government's compliance with its own laws only insofar as it was necessary to ensure that the provisions of the federal extradition statute and relevant extradition treaty have been met. The court further held that petitioner had not carried his burden of proving that the requirements of the treaty were met. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment, vacated the writ, and remanded the cause to the district court with instructions to enter a certificate of extraditability and order of commitment.

Defendant appealed from a conviction of 16 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false federal income tax returns and was sentenced to concurrent terms of 41 months incarceration, three years' supervised release, and restitution and a special assessment. The court affirmed the conviction except with respect to certain aspects of the sentence, as to which the judgment was vacated and remanded for: (1) resentencing within the range authorized by statute, and (2) amendment of the restitution order to: (a) determine whether the State and the City of New York were victims entitled to restitution, (b) exclude payments already made by the five taxpayer-clients to the IRS, and (c) exclude losses associated with a 2001 tax return that did not serve as a basis for any of the 16 counts of conviction.

Defendants, four executives of Gen Re and one of AIG, appealed from convictions of conspiracy, mail fraud, securities fraud, and making false statements to the SEC. The charges arose from an allegedly fraudulent reinsurance transaction between AIG and Gen Re that was intended to cure AIG's ailing stock price. Defendants appealed on a variety of grounds, some in common and others specific to each defendant, ranging from evidentiary challenges to serious allegations of widespread prosecutorial misconduct. The court held that most of the arguments were without merit, but defendants' convictions were vacated because the district court abused its discretion by admitting the stock-price data.