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

Petitioner filed a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion in 2005 and sought to file another such motion in 2014. Petitioner argued that the district court erred in treating his present section 2255 motion as second or successive because, after his first section 2255 motion, the court entered an amended judgment to correct clerical errors in the original judgment, and petitioner's present section 2255 motion is his first such motion since the entry of the corrected judgment. The court concluded that Magwood v. Patterson does not extend judgments amended only to correct clerical errors. The court considered all of petitioner's arguments in support of his contention that his present section 2255 motion should not be considered second or successive and have found them to be without merit. Therefore, the court denied petitioner's motion for a certificate of appealability. Further, construed as a motion for retransfer to the district court, the motion is denied. View "Marmolejos v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence of 63 months' imprisonment for bank robbery. The court concluded that Application Note 5 to 6 U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2, not Section 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), provides the proper standard for applying the enhancement based on a co‐defendant’s conduct. In this case, the district court plainly erred in applying the Section 3C1.2 sentencing enhancement based solely on a finding that defendant reasonably could have foreseen that his co‐defendant would recklessly endanger others while fleeing from the scene of his bank robbery. Accordingly, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. McCrimon" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed their convictions for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. The court concluded that since the relevant charges in the superseding indictment were well within the applicable ten‐year statute of limitations, the district court properly denied the motion to dismiss. The court considered defendants' remaining arguments and concluded that they are without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Heinz" on Justia Law

Defendant, a volunteer firefighter and captain of the Wallingford Volunteer Fire Department, appealed a conviction for conspiring to set fires to public lands. Defendant and other members of the Department were "bored" and conspired to set fires because it gave them "something to do." The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of conspiracy to set fires on public lands where specific knowledge of federal ownership is not required, either for the substantive statute or for conspiracy to violate the substantive statute. Further, even assuming that defendant had a right to be present at the jury orientation, he knowingly and voluntarily waived it. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Allen" on Justia Law

Defendants McGinn and Smith appealed their convictions for various securities, mail, and wire fraud and tax charges. The government cross-appealed the district court's restitution and forfeiture orders. The court affirmed the convictions and sentences, concluding that there was sufficient evidence to convict defendants of the charges; the district court did not plainly err when instructing the jury on the tax counts; the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting portions of Smith's 1999 letter where use of the document did not have a substantial impact on the result of the trial and where reading portions of the letter did not constitute a constructive amendment or variance; McGinn's sentence is procedurally and substantively reasonable; and Smith's restitution and forfeiture orders are not erroneous. In regard's to the government's cross-appeal, the court concluded that the restitution orders failed to make clear that funds should be credited against restitution only when they are distributed to victims and not when they are merely collected by the receiver. Accordingly, the court remanded to the district court for the limited purpose of correcting the written judgments to conform them to the requirements of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), 18 U.S.C. 3663A. View "United States v. McGinn" on Justia Law

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