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

The Government appealed the district court's grant of defendant's motion to suppress evidence. Law enforcement officers were pursuing a robbery suspect when they mistakenly identified defendant as the suspect. A frisk of defendant produced a gun and 27 bags of crack cocaine. The district court found that the suspect and defendant have different facial features, skin tones, heights, ages, and so forth. These material differences would have been apparent to any reasonable officer, especially on who had had previous contact with the suspect, and would have been further corroborated by defendant's production of his identification. The court concluded that the district court's effective legal conclusion - that a reasonable officer, once he had had a chance to view defendant close up, could not have reasonably believed he was the suspect - is fully supported by the factual findings and is not clearly erroneous. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Watson" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after he violated a condition of supervised release. Defendant argued that, because the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, had since amended the statute under which he had been convicted, the district court should have determined the maximum term of incarceration by reference to the post-FSA classification of his offense conduct. The court concluded that defendant's challenge is foreclosed by its recent decision in United States v. Ortiz, where the court held that the penalties applicable when a defendant violates the conditions of supervised release are "determined by reference to the law in effect at the time of the defendant's underlying offense." Finally, the court concluded that the Supreme Court's decision in Dorsey v. United States does not compel a different outcome when the underlying sentence was imposed pre-FSA but revocation proceedings are held subsequent to the FSA's effective date. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for drug-related offenses, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by admitting highly prejudicial evidence of his alleged threats to kill a government informant. The district court admitted the evidence, concluding that it was harmless. The court concluded, however, that the district court failed to make the careful assessment required for death threat evidence; admission of this evidence was an abuse of discretion; and the error was not harmless. In this case, the testimony was highly charged, the letter read into the record was graphic and profane, and the proposed crime was unrelated to the charged offenses, and far more terrible. The evidence at trial was not so overwhelming as to alleviate the danger that the jury was influenced by the death threat evidence in a significant way. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for a new trial. View "United States v. Morgan" on Justia Law

Petitioner sought habeas relief based on the ground that the State denied his constitutional right to a fair trial when it withheld exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland. The district court granted the petition and the court affirmed, concluding that the State violated Brady when it failed to disclose to the defense that a witness had repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the murders and only implicated petitioner after a police detective promised to let him go if he gave a statement in which he admitted to being the getaway driver and incriminated petitioner and another individual. View "Lewis v. Connecticut Comm'r of Corr." on Justia Law

Plaintiff was convicted of rape and murder in 1986 and later acquitted of those charges in 2005. Plaintiff filed suit for, inter alia, due process violations and malicious prosecution under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the County and NCPD. Plaintiff's claims were tried jointly with two other individuals whose convictions for the rape and murder of the same victim had also been vacated. The jury found in favor of defendants and plaintiff appealed. The district court denied plaintiff's motion for a separate trial on the ground that the statements attributed to the other two plaintiffs were admissible not on the issue of whether the detectives had probable cause to prosecute plaintiff but rather on the lack-of-malice element of plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim. Therefore, the district court's ruling that corroborating statements were made relevant to the malice element of plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim was not error. There was no abuse of discretion in the district court's conclusion that the introduction of statements that were relevant on the issue of malice, and most of which did not explicitly or implicitly mention plaintiff, did not unfairly prejudice him. The court rejected plaintiff's remaining contentions and affirmed the judgment. View "Kogut v. County of Nassau" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2241, asserting that the BOP incorrectly calculated his ten-year prison sentence. While serving petitioner's state sentence, he was indicted on federal charges and temporarily transferred to federal custody after the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. Petitioner argued that the writ was invalid because it required that he be produced in federal court for arraignment on October 10, 2001, and that when he was not so produced, there was no valid writ ad prosequendum that required him to be produced for arraignment at a later date. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court, holding that even if there was a technical deficiency in connection with the execution of the writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum that was issued, that deficiency did not invalidate the otherwise valid writ. View "Lugo v. Hudson" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of producing child pornography and witness tampering, appealed the denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2255. At issue was the timeliness of the petition under the one‐year statute of limitations of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), Pub. L. No. 104‐132, 110 Stat. 1214. The court joined eight of its sister circuits and held that the statute of limitations runs from the denial of certiorari, not from the denial of a rehearing of the certiorari petition. In this case, petitioner filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus more than one year after the Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari. Therefore, the petition is untimely and the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Rosa v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendants Calderon, Sanchez, Cardoza, and DeLeon appealed from convictions of racketeering, narcotics, and obstruction-of-justice. Defendants raised numerous issues on appeal. The court addressed only the sufficiency-of-the-evidence issue in regards to Cardoza's conviction for being an accessory after the fact to a murder. The court held that there was insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find Cardoza guilty of that charge where, based on the totality of the circumstances, no rational juror could find that Cardoza knew that the murder victim was dead or dying. Accordingly, the court reversed as to Cardoza's conviction and remanded with instructions for the district court to dismiss that count and resentence. The court affirmed on all other counts. View "United States v. Calderon" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base. The court concluded that the evidence establishes no more than defendant's role as a mere purchaser from the conspiracy and cannot support an inference that he joined it. Therefore, the court did not address defendant's alternative argument for a new trial as to that count based on juror misconduct. The court reversed defendant's conspiracy conviction, vacated the sentence, and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Dickerson" on Justia Law

Defendants Pierce, Colon, and Meregildo appealed their convictions for conspiracy, racketeering, murder, narcotics trafficking, and firearms offenses. The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendants; the admission into evidence of a rap video and images of tattoos posted on Colon's Facebook page were relevant, their probative value was not outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, and Colon's First Amendment rights were not implicated when the district court admitted evidence from his social media account; the court rejected Colon's claim regarding the constitutionality of the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. 2702-2703, where he possessed the very contents he claims the Act prevented him from obtaining; and the district court did not abuse its discretion in giving jury instructions the uncalled witness charge and the supplemental instruction regarding the narcotics conspiracy. In regards to Pierce's sentence, the court concluded that the rule of lenity applies because the statute is silent on how Pierce's discharge conviction and possession conviction should be sequenced for sentencing purposes. Accordingly, the court vacated Pierce's sentence and remanded for resentencing. The court affirmed in all other respects. View "United States v. Pierce" on Justia Law