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

Defendant, employed as the property manager of a condominium association, was convicted of wire fraud for embezzling funds from the condominium association and bank fraud for taking out an unauthorized loan in the condominium association's name. The district court applied a four-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(2)(B), which applies to offenses involving 50 or more victims. The court affirmed the sentence, concluding that the district court properly counted the individual tenants as victims (more than 70 tenants total) and, therefore, properly applied the enhancement. View "United States v. Iovino" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to use and possession of a chemical weapon in violation of 18 U.S.C. 229(a)(1) and consumer product tampering in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1365(a). Defendant's conviction stemmed from his dispersing liquid mercury at the Albany Medical Center (AMC) on four occasions in retaliation for what he considered to be substandard care and excessive billing. The court concluded that defendant's attempt to deter the public from seeking treatment at a regionally important medical center for fear of exposure to a dangerous chemical violates section 229(a)(1); the court rejected defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel based on counsel's failure to challenge defendant's prosecution under section 229(a)(1); and defendant's sentence was procedurally reasonable where the district court did not err in applying a two-level offense adjustment for use of a special skill in the commission of the offenses, in applying a two-level adjustment for the vulnerability of the victims of the offenses, in adequately considering the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors, and in explaining its choice of sentence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Kimber" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 36 months' imprisonment and three years of supervised release. The district court imposed a special condition of supervised release that delegated the discretion to select between inpatient and outpatient treatments to the Probation Department. The court concluded that defendant did not have a sufficient opportunity to raise a contemporaneous objection to the challenged delegation as a condition of supervised release; defendant could not have known of the delegation until the district court had imposed sentence; and therefore the court will consider defendant's challenge under plain error review. On the merits, the court agreed with its sister circuits and concluded that the district court's delegation to the Probation Department of the discretion to require either inpatient or outpatient drug treatment was an impermissible delegation of judicial sentencing authority. The court rejected defendant's remaining claims. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded with respect to the challenged condition of supervised release. The court affirmed as to the remaining claims. View "United States v. Matta" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of, inter alia, rape and unlawful imprisonment of his estranged wife, appealed the dismissal of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner argued that the state trial court violated his constitutional rights to be present during critical stages of trial and to effective assistance of counsel. The state court's affirmance of the exclusion of a note written by the victim for lack of relevance was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. Although petitioner argues that the state courts and the district court could not properly reach these conclusions because he was excluded from the Admissibility Hearing, petitioner had provided no basis for impeaching the state courts' factual findings. Petitioner's contention that the state courts' determinations as to relevance were based on unreasonable factual findings is meritless. Given the court's limited role under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) to review habeas petitions to set aside state-court judgments, the court held that the New York courts rejecting petitioner's constitutional claims were not "contrary to" or an "unreasonable application of" clearly established Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Contreras v. Artus" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against two officers and their employers, alleging that the officers knowingly falsified and omitted material facts from police reports, lied to the district attorney and the grand jury, and conspired to do the same, resulting in plaintiff's malicious prosecution. The district court granted in part and denied in part Defendant Buonora's motion to dismiss based on absolute and qualified immunity. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court to the extent it denied Buonora absolute and qualified immunity from suit on certain of plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims unrelated to his grand jury testimony. The third amended complaint alleges misconduct by Buonora that is not based on his grand jury testimony and the district court properly found that absolute immunity is inappropriate. In regards to qualified immunity, the alleged falsification of evidence and the related conspiracy, if true, constitute a violation of clearly established law, and no objectively reasonable public official could have thought otherwise. The court declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over Buonora's other claims of error at this interlocutory stage. Accordingly, the court dismissed the remainder of the appeal. View "Coggins v. Buonora" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and appealed his sentence, contending that the district court erred when it calculated his criminal history category and base offense level by relying on prior sentences imposed upon pleas entered in accordance with North Carolina v. Alford. The court joined its sister circuits in concluding that a sentence imposed for a conviction resulting from an Alford plea constitutes a "prior sentence" within the meaning of U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(a)(1). Therefore, the court rejected defendant's arguments and affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Banks" on Justia Law

Defendant, convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, appealed his sentence. The court concluded that the district court painstakingly calculated the Guidelines-recommended range of imprisonment, finding that the factual components of its calculations were supported by at least a preponderance of the evidence. The court rejected defendant's claims of procedural error that the district court improperly calculated his Guidelines offense level by inconsistently crediting parts of his trial testimony and that the district court improperly made findings as to loss amount, number of victims, role, and intent to obstruct justice. Further, the court concluded that defendant's 240-month term of imprisonment was substantively reasonable. Because the court found all of defendant's claims to be without merit, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Norman" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's revocation of his supervised release and sentence. At issue was whether 18 U.S.C. 3583(h), which covers the calculation of the maximum term of supervised release following revocation of a previous term of supervised release, requires that the term be reduced by all prior post-revocation terms of imprisonment imposed on the same underlying offense, or by only the most-recent term of imprisonment. The court held that, when imposing the maximum term of supervised release following revocation of a previous term of supervised release, section 3583(h) requires that the term be reduced by all post‐revocation terms of imprisonment imposed with respect to the same underlying offense, not only by the most-recent term of imprisonment. Accordingly, the court remanded for entry of judgment reducing defendant's term of supervised release. View "United States v. Rodriguez" on Justia Law

Appellee, a Swiss criminal complainant, sought from appellants the production of documents relating to the examination of Rajiv Jaitly to provide to a Swiss investigating magistrate overseeing a criminal inquiry into a Bernard Madoff feeder fund in Switzerland. At issue was whether 28 U.S.C. 1782, which authorizes federal courts to order document production for use in certain foreign proceedings, permits discovery for use in a foreign criminal investigation conducted by a foreign investigating magistrate. The court held, based on the plain reading of the statute, as well as the statute's legislative history, that the statute applies to a foreign criminal investigation involving an investigating magistrate seeking documents in the United States. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order. View "Optimal Investment Serv. v. Berlamont" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed their convictions for securities fraud in violation of sections 10(b) and 32 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. 78j(b), 78ff; Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rules 10b-5 and 10b5-2, 17 C.F.R. 240.10b-5, 240.10b5-2, and 18 U.S.C. 2; and conspiracy to commit securities fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371. The court concluded that, in order to sustain a conviction for insider trading, the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the tippee knew that an insider disclosed confidential information and that he did so in exchange for a personal benefit; the court held that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict against defendants because the Government's evidence of any personal benefit received by the alleged insiders was insufficient to establish the tipper liability from which defendants' purported tippee liability would derive, and even assuming that the scant evidence offered was sufficient, the Government presented no evidence that defendant knew that they were trading on information obtained from insiders in violation of those insiders' fiduciary duties; and, therefore, the court reversed and remanded with instructions to dismiss the indictment. View "United States v. Newman" on Justia Law