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

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence of 180 months in prison after he was convicted of assaulting a federal officer. In light of Beckles v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 886 (2017), which held that the residual clause of the Career Offender Guideline—a second basis for finding a crime of violence—was not unconstitutional, the court held that New York first‐degree robbery categorically qualifies as a crime of violence under the residual clause and the court need not address defendant's argument based on the force clause. The court also held that defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

Petitioner challenged the denial of his habeas corpus relief in regard to his state convictions for criminal impersonation and forgery. The Second Circuit held that four of the criminal impersonation convictions must be vacated under Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87 (1965), but that five of them were reliably supported by the evidence; the criminal impersonation statute was not unconstitutionally vague or overbroad; the criminal forgery statute, as interpreted by the trial court and the court of appeals, was so clearly overbroad as to be facially unconstitutional notwithstanding AEDPA deference; and thus the court narrowed the statute to save it, and granted the habeas petition as to some (but not all) of the forgery convictions. View "Golb v. Attorney General of the State of New York" on Justia Law

Defendants Brian Gill, David Gill, and Samuel Waco McIntosh appealed from their conviction of committing and conspiring to commit a drug-related murder. Brian and David also appealed their convictions for conspiring to distribute at least 280 grams of cocaine base. The Second Circuit affirmed the convictions, holding that the defect in the superseding indictment did not amount to plain error, the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the challenged evidence, there was sufficient record evidence to support the convictions, and the claim of perjury was unsubstantiated. View "United States v. Gill" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit vacated defendant's 46 month sentence after pleading guilty to illegally attempting to reenter the United States after having been deported. Because the sentencing court did not explain the reasoning behind the sentence imposed, or expressly adopt the PSR in open court, and because the factual findings in the PSR were not, by themselves, clearly adequate to support the sentence, the court concluded that defendant's sentence was procedurally unreasonable and that the sentencing judge therefore erred in calculating the Guidelines range. Because the court vacated defendant's sentence as procedurally unreasonable, the court need not address defendant's alternate argument that his sentence was substantively unreasonable. The court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Genao" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud in connection with an insider trading scheme. After defendant's conviction, the Second Circuit issued a decision in United States v. Newman, 773 F.3d 438 (2d Cir. 2014), which elaborated on the Supreme Court's ruling in Dirks v. S.E.C., 463 U.S. 646 (1983), concerning liability for a "tippee" who trades on confidential information obtained from an insider, or a "tipper." While defendant's appeal was pending, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Salman v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 420 (2016), which rejected certain aspects of Newman's holding. The court held that the logic of Salman abrogated Newman's "meaningfully close personal relationship" requirement and that the district court's jury instruction was not obviously erroneous. The court also held that any instructional error would not have affected defendant's substantial rights because the government presented overwhelming evidence that at least one tipper received a financial benefit from providing confidential information to defendant. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Martoma" on Justia Law

The United States appealed the district court's order precluding the government from introducing at trial certain testimony by a co-defendant turned government witness on the basis of the common-interest rule of attorney-client privilege. The Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court, finding nothing in the circumstances in this case to support the application of the privilege. Here, the excluded statements were not made to, in the presence of, or within the hearing of an attorney for any of the common-interest parties; nor did the excluded statements seek the advice of, or communicate advice previously given by, an attorney for any of the common-interest parties; nor were the excluded statements made for the purpose of communicating with such an attorney. View "United States v. Krug" on Justia Law

After defendant was convicted of possessing digital images and videos of child pornography, he violated two conditions of his supervised release. In regard to the computer monitoring condition, the Second Circuit held that the condition, as construed for purposes of this appeal and under the court's deferential standard, was reasonable. In regard to the mental health treatment condition, the court held that it was reasonable for defendant to object to signing a treatment agreement that conflicted with his actual sentence, and he did not appear, based on the record, to have otherwise acted unreasonably with respect to participating in such treatment. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. View "United States v. Browder" on Justia Law

In 1997, defendant was convicted in the present case of a drug conspiracy (Barinas I). In 2016, defendant was extradited to the United States and convicted on new narcotics trafficking charges (Barinas II). The district court found that defendant had violated his supervised release by failing to report to Probation, leaving the district in which he was to be supervised without permission, and committing the crime of which he was convicted in Barinas II. The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment and held that defendant lacked prudential standing to raise a rule-of-specialty challenge and that his claim that his supervised-release term ended prior to his Barinas II crime lacked merit because that term was tolled while he was a fugitive. View "United States v. Barinas" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit certified to the Court of Appeals of the State of New York the following question: Whether an entity engaged in the “bail business,” as defined in NYIL 6801(a)(1), may retain its “premium or compensation,” as described in NYIL 6804(a), where a bond posted pursuant to NYCPL 520.20 is denied at a bail-sufficiency hearing conducted pursuant to NYCPL 520.30, and the criminal defendant that is the subject of the bond is never admitted to bail. The Court of Appeals answered in the negative and its conclusion was determinative of this appeal. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Gevorkyan v. Judelson" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a 28 U.S.C. 2255 petition. Petitioner argued that trial counsel failed to provide constitutionally effective assistance when they conceded before trial that child sexual abuse charges were timely under the applicable statute of limitations. In this case, trial counsel submitted a sworn affidavit in which they justified the decision to forgo a statute of limitations defense. Counsel considered the defense tenuous and believed it would clutter the motion to dismiss and distract from the motion's other strong points. The court held that the decision was reasonable under the circumstances of this case. The court affirmed the balance of the order in a summary order filed contemporaneously with this opinion. View "Weingarten v. United States" on Justia Law