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

After pleading guilty to first-degree conspiracy and second-degree murder in state court, Petitioner filed an unsuccessful federal habeas petition as well as an unsuccessful motion in state court to vacate his conviction. In this second habeas petition presently before the Second Circuit, Petitioner argued that newly discovered evidence shows that he is actually innocent of the murder charge. The district court dismissed the petition as both procedurally barred and lacking merit. Although Petitioner’s petition was filed after the one-year time limit in 28 U.S.C. Section 2244(d), he argued, based on Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995), for an equitable exception to the time limit based on a sufficient   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court held that Petitioner’s claim is time-barred because he failed to show that it is “more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him.” The court reasoned that the state post-conviction court’s factual findings, including determinations of witness credibility, are entitled to the presumption of correctness under Section 2254(e)(1). Here, the court agreed with the district court that Petitioner has not satisfied his burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence that the state court’s factual findings are wrong. Nor has Petitioner otherwise demonstrated that it is “more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found [him] guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Because Petitioner’s petition fails to satisfy the high threshold standard set forth in Schlup for a gateway claim of actual innocence, the court concluded that it is untimely. View "Cosey v. Lilley" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed a judgment against him following a jury trial where he was convicted of one count of conspiring to illegally donate  monies to a political campaign and one count of aiding and abetting over $25,000 of such donations. Defendant argued that the district court erred in giving the standard jury instruction on willfulness: that “a person acts ‘willfully’ when he acts with a ‘bad purpose’ to disobey or disregard the law. Further, Defendant challenged the district court’s refusal to 1) instruct the jury that for count one, a co-conspirator must knowingly and willfully join the conspiracy with the “intent of achieving [the alleged conspiracy’s] unlawful objectives, namely violation of the federal election laws;” and 2) to provide e a good faith defense charge.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained it is not necessary for the government to prove that the defendant was aware of the specific provision of the law that he is charged with violating.” Further, the district court charged the jury that the government needed to prove  Defendant acted willfully, knowingly, and voluntarily. As the district court aptly noted, “to have found that Defendants acted willfully, the jury had to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that they intentionally did something that the law forbids, the opposite of good faith.” Where, as here, the district court correctly instructed the jury as to knowledge and willfulness and the defendant’s theory was thus “effectively presented elsewhere in the charge,” its refusal to provide a separate “good faith defense” instruction is not reversible error. View "United States v. Kukushkin" on Justia Law

Defendant s pled guilty to (1) using, carrying, and possessing a firearm during an attempted armed robbery of suspected marijuana dealers (“Count One”); and (2) using, carrying, possessing, and discharging a firearm during an assault in aid of racketeering of an individual whom Defendant shot and killed (“Count Two”). Both Counts were violations of 18 U.S.C. Section 924(c)(1)(A), which requires that a defendant use, carry, or possess a firearm “during and in relation to” or “in furtherance of,” as relevant here, a “crime of violence.” To sustain Defendant’s Section 924(c) convictions, each Count must contain a predicate “crime of violence.” Defendant appealed from the judgment sentencing him principally to 360-months’ imprisonment. He argued that neither count contains a predicate “crime of violence” necessary to sustain his Section 924(c) convictions.   The Second Circuit held Defendant’s Section 924(c) conviction on Count One is vacated because attempted Hobbs Act robbery is not a valid predicate crime of violence that would support a conviction under Section 924(c). Defendant’s Section 924(c) conviction on Count Two is sustained because, after applying the modified categorical approach prescribed by the Supreme Court, the court concluded that the predicate crime of violence—VICAR assault with a dangerous weapon premised on a violation of N.Y. Penal Law Section 120.05(2) and perhaps also N.Y. Penal Law Section 120.10(1)—qualifies as a crime of violence that supports a conviction under Section 924(c). View "United States v. Darren Morris" on Justia Law

In 2021, the Court affirmed Defendant’s conviction after a guilty plea in district court. Among other things, The Second Circuit affirmed Defendant’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. Sections 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (ii), (iii), and 2 for using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to an attempted Hobbs Act robbery, as well as his conviction under 18 U.S.C. Sections 924(j)(1) and 2 for murdering a person with a firearm during and in relation to an attempted Hobbs Act robbery. The Supreme Court vacated that judgment and remanded it to the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of its decision in United States v. Taylor, 142 S. Ct. 2015 (2022).   The Second Circuit vacated the section 924(c) conviction and the section 924(j) conviction. The court explained that after Taylor, attempted Hobbs Act robbery no longer qualifies as a crime of violence under section 924(c)(3)(A) and, therefore, cannot serve as a predicate for Defendant’s conviction under section 924(c)(1)(A). Furthermore, because an element of an offense under section 924(j)(1) is that the defendant was “in the course of a violation of [section 924(c)],” attempted Hobbs Act robbery also cannot serve as a predicate for Defendant’s conviction under section 924(j)(1). Moreover, the court wrote it cannot conclude that the purported Rule 11 error made any difference in Defendant’s guilty-plea calculation. View "United States v. Collymore" on Justia Law

Plaintiff responded to a distracted-driving enforcement campaign conducted by Defendants (the City of Stamford and its Sergeant) by standing down the street from where police sat holding a sign stating "Cops Ahead." Plaintiff's sign was confiscated twice before he was arrested for interfering with an officer. Charges were filed, Plaintiff spent a night in jail, and shortly thereafter, the prosecution dropped the charges against Plaintiff. Plaintiff filed suit under Sec. 1983, claiming Defendants infringed on his freedom of speech, engaged in malicious prosecution, and deprived him of equal protection and due process, violating the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants, and Plaintiff appealed.The Second Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part Plaintiff's Sec. 1983 claim. Specifically, the court held that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Defendants on the First and Fourth Amendment claims but did not err in dismissing Plaintiff's Fourteenth Amendment claim. The court held that no Connecticut law proscribed Plaintiff's conduct, and thus, officers did not have probable cause to arrest him. Thus, the district court erred in finding that the existence of probable cause served as a complete defense to Plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim. The court also held that Plaintiff's speech was protected but rejected his equal protection and due process claims based on the City's bail-setting policies. View "Friend v. Gasparino" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. Section 552, seeking documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) related to himself, speculating that they might include exculpatory information that the government had not disclosed in his recent criminal trial. The government produced sets of responsive documents and an index detailing FOIA exemptions under which it withheld other responsive documents, and the district court granted summary judgment for the government. Plaintiff appealed the district court’s ruling granting summary judgment to the United States Department of Justice.   On appeal, Plaintiff argued (1) that summary judgment was improperly granted because his FOIA action is an effort to vindicate his rights under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and (2) that, in the alternative, the district court erred in not conducting an in-camera inspection of withheld documents. The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that in Brown v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 658 F.2d 71, 76 (2d Cir. 1981), FOIA and the criminal discovery process provide distinct tracks for seeking disclosure from the government. That a FOIA action might lead to the discovery of documents useful to a particular criminal defendant changes neither the government’s statutorily defined obligations under FOIA nor the government’s burden at summary judgment. View "Jabar v. U.S. Department of Justice" on Justia Law

The government petitions for a panel rehearing of so much of the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Gibson, 55 F.4th 153 (2d Cir. 2022), as ruled that the 2015 removal of naloxegol from the federal controlled substances schedules promulgated under the Controlled Substances Act ("CSA"), 21 U.S.C. Sections 801-971, rendered those schedules categorically narrower than the New York drug schedules applicable to Defendant’s 2002 state-law conviction. The government's petition suggests that that ruling in the court’s opinion ("Opinion") was dictum rather than a holding and asks that the court issue an amended opinion so stating.   The Second Circuit granted rehearing in order to note the government's various positions on the comparability of the state and federal drug schedules and to flag some defects in the petition's characterizations of the record. However, the court denied the request for an amended opinion. The court explained that the comparability of the New York's 2002 drug schedules and the current federal drug schedules was an issue that the district court was required to, and did, decide in order to make a determination as to what Defendant’s Guidelines sentence would be. This Court was required to and did, determine whether the district court's decision was correct. View "USA v. Gibson" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of extortion for threatening to disseminate nude photographs of Jane Doe if she did not return to a relationship with him. Defendant appealed, arguing that the plea proceedings were defective because the district court did not explain the “wrongfulness” element of extortion under United States v. Jackson. He also challenged two special conditions of supervised release on First Amendment grounds: (1) a requirement that Defendant seek retraction of articles he published about Jane Doe and her brother-in-law, John Doe, and (2) a requirement that he seek approval from the district court before publishing any further information about them.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that the plea proceedings were not defective because the district court correctly determined that Defendant understood the “nature of each charge” to which he pled. Second, the special condition that Defendant seeks retraction of articles he published about Jane Doe and John Doe has expired, so Defendant’s challenge to that condition is moot. Finally, the special condition that Defendant seeks approval from the district court before publishing further information about Jane Doe and John Doe does not violate the First Amendment under the circumstances here. Defendant pled guilty to extortion by threatening to publish nude images of Jane Doe, and he is a journalist who had published or threatened to publish information about her and John Doe in the past. So the district court acted within its broad discretion by imposing the narrowly tailored special condition requiring Defendant to obtain approval from the court before publishing any further information about them. View "United States v. Farooq" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged in district court with five counts of an eight-count indictment in connection with two killings. Counts Four, Five, and Six charged Defendant with conspiring to commit, and committing, murder for hire. Counts Seven and Eight charged Defendant with the use of a firearm to commit murder. Defendant was convicted on all five counts and received a sentence of five concurrent life terms, one for each count. In response to intervening Supreme Court precedent, Defendant filed a motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Section 2255 asserting that his two Section 924(j) convictions on Counts Seven and Eight should be vacated. The district court agreed and granted the motion. The court declined, however, to resentence Defendant de novo. Defendant argued that this was an error, either because de novo resentencing was mandatory, or because the district court abused its discretion in declining to resentence Defendant de novo.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that Section 2255's statutory text vests district courts with the discretion to decide when to conduct a de novo resentencing and that de novo resentencing was not mandatory here. The court also concluded that because resentencing Defendant would have been “strictly ministerial,” resulting in the same sentence of mandatory life imprisonment that he received in the first instance, the district court did not abuse its discretion. View "United States v. Peña" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court’s judgment sentencing him to 36 months in prison following his conviction by a jury of witness retaliation. Defendant challenged the manner in which the district court conducted jury selection, arguing primarily that the district court neglected to adequately screen prospective jurors for bias against gang members and that the voir dire process was too abbreviated to allow for informed peremptory and for-cause challenges.   The Second Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment and remanded for a new trial. The court explained that, under these circumstances, the district court exceeded its discretion by failing to sufficiently account for the risk of gang-related bias among prospective jurors. The court explained that the district court’s failure on voir dire to explore or to take other steps specifically to counter such potential prejudice unfairly deprived Defendant of the opportunity to unearth a pervasive bias relevant to an issue pivotal to the government’s case against him. Accordingly, the court held that the district court abused its discretion. View "United States of America v. Nieves" on Justia Law