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

Petitioner, convicted of bank robbery, armed bank robbery, and using and carrying a firearm during and in connection with a crime of violence, appealed the denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 petition for relief. Petitioner argued that the firearms conviction must be vacated because there is no subsisting conviction on the predicate crime of violence where the court vacated the bank robbery conviction on the ground of multiplicity with the conviction for armed bank robbery in the same incident. The court held that a conviction for the firearms offense under 18 U.S.C. 924(c) requires legally sufficient proof that the predicate crime of violence was committed but it does not require a conviction for that predicate crime. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Johnson v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to four counts of sex trafficking of a minor and subsequently appealed his sentence as procedurally unreasonable. The court held that the district court did not err in applying a two-point enhancement under U.S.S.G. 2G1.3(b)(3) for use of a computer in the commission of sex trafficking crimes to Counts 1, 3, and 4. The enhancement applies to a defendant who begins communicating and establishing a relationship with a minor by computer, but then entices the victim through other modes of communication. Application Note 4 of U.S.S.G. 2G1.3 is plainly inconsistent with subsection 2G1.3(b)(3)(B) and is therefore inapplicable to that subsection. Even assuming arguendo that the district court erred in applying the enhancement to Count 2, any error was harmless where correcting the error would not affect the offense-level or sentencing-range calculations. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Cramer" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and subsequently appealed his sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the district court did not violate 18 U.S.C. 3153(c) by relying on the information from pretrial services (positive results on drug tests) in determining defendant's sentence. View "United States v. Morrison" on Justia Law

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