Justia U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Petitioner was sentenced to death. He did not appeal or pursued state habeas relief. However, he subsequently filed for a Certificate of Appealability with the Fifth Circuit on several grounds. The Fifth Circuit rejected two of the grounds based on current precedent. However, the Fifth Circuit granted the Certificate of Appealability on the following issues:(1) Did Petitioner's state habeas counsel render inadequate assistance by conceding that Petitioner was competent to waive review?(2) Can the court reach that conclusion based on evidence consistent with Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, 142 S. Ct. 1718 (2022)?(3) If Petitioner's state habeas counsel rendered inadequate assistance, was the inadequate assistance a cause external to Petitioner? View "Mullis v. Lumpkin" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a person of color and of mixed heritage, reported to school administrators that she was harassed by her peers on the basis of her race and national origin during her sixth-grade year in the Austin Independent School District. Plaintiff alleged that she was told to "go back where [she] came from" and that, in some cases, the harassment involved physical shoving. There were also incidents in which Plaintiff responded physically to verbal threats and name-calling, resulting in the school requesting she be transferred. Through her parents, Plaintiff sued the District for failure to address the harassment under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The trial court dismissed Plaintiff's 1983 claim under Rule 12(b)(6) and ultimately granted summary judgment in favor of the district on Plaintiff's Title VI claim.While the Fifth Circuit took issue with some of the district court's findings, the Fifth Circuit concluded that the district court ultimately reached the correct result. Thus, the court affirmed the dismissal of Plaintiff's 1983 claim and the court's grant of summary judgment on the Title VI claim. View "Menzia v. Austin Indep School Dist" on Justia Law

Plaintiff claimed that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated because he was detained without probable cause for driving while intoxicated. He brought suit under Section 1983, seeking damages from the officers who submitted an affidavit and incident reports to a magistrate to support his pretrial detention. The defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting the defense of qualified immunity. The district court determined that fact issues precluded summary judgment, specifically, whether the officers made false statements that Plaintiff was “operating a motor vehicle” in violation of Texas law.The Fifth Circuit reversed. Under Texas law, the inquiry when determining whether a person caused a vehicle to move must take into account “the totality of the circumstances [regarding whether] the defendant took action to affect the functioning of his vehicle in a manner that would enable the vehicle’s use.” The court explained that the officers' allegedly false statements pertained to how far the vehicle moved rather than whether it moved at all. Even if a vehicle only moved six inches, that may be sufficient to establish the operation element. View "Garcia v. Orta" on Justia Law

Defendants were convicted by a jury of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) by interfering with its lawful functions and evasion of payment of taxes. On appeal, Defendants both challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions and raise challenges to a number of jury instructions.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the district court’s denial of Defendant’s last-minute continuance request was not an abuse of discretion, and Defendant was not denied the counsel of his choice. Further, because Defendant failed to meaningfully address all four prongs of plain error review either in his opening brief or in reply, his constructive amendment challenge fails.   Further, the court wrote, that viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence showed that Defendant failed to report a substantial amount of income; influenced MyMail to amend its tax return to underreport how much income it distributed to Defendant; converted at least $1 million of income into gold coins; purchased a house with gold coins and transferred it to a trust controlled by a relative; and hid his income in Co-Defendant’s trust accounts and used the concealed funds to pay his living expenses for at least a decade, including during the years that the IRS Agent was contacting Defendants, as Defendant’s IRS power-of-attorney, in an attempt to collect Defendant’s unpaid tax liabilities. Based on the foregoing evidence, a reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt both willfulness and an affirmative act of evasion. View "USA v. Selgas" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, on behalf of her son, sued District Attorney, Sheriffs, and Clay County under Section 1983 alleging that Defendants violated her son’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by unlawfully detaining him for years. The complaint also contends that, at one point, the Sheriff held Defendant down and forced him to take unwanted medication. As to Clay County, Plaintiff argued that Sheriffs were final policymakers, making the county liable under Monell. Defendants sought summary judgment; Plaintiff responded with a motion for partial summary judgment.   After summary judgment, the following claims remained: the detention claim against the Sheriffs and Clay County; the forced medication claim against Clay County alone. The Sheriffs and Clay County appealed. The Fifth Circuit, in treating the petition for rehearing en banc as a petition for panel rehearing, granted the petition for panel rehearing. The court dismissed Clay County’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction and affirmed the district court’s denial of summary judgment as to the Sheriffs.   The court explained that this is not a case about jailers following court orders that turned out to be unconstitutional. These Sheriffs held Plaintiff’s son in violation of a court order that followed Jackson’s commit-or-release rule. The court wrote that it cannot be that the initial detention order in a case overrides subsequent release orders and allows jailers to indefinitely hold defendants without consequence. Thus, taking the evidence in Plaintiff’s favor, the Sheriffs violated Plaintiff’s due process right by detaining him for six years in violation of the commit-or-release rule and qualified immunity thus does not protect the Sheriffs. View "Harris v. Clay County, MS" on Justia Law

The issue before the en banc court was whether the current version of Miss. Const. art. 12, Section 241 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. This provision was upheld in Cotton v. Fordice, 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), which was binding on the district court and the panel decision here, but the court voted to reconsider Cotton en banc.   Plaintiffs are black men in Mississippi who were convicted, respectively, of forgery and embezzlement. Both are disenfranchised under current Mississippi law because of their convictions. They filed suit against the Mississippi Secretary of State under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restore the voting rights of convicted felons in Mississippi. They contend that the crimes that “remain” in Section 241 from the 1890 Constitution are still tainted by the racial animus with which they were originally enacted.   The Fifth Circuit reaffirmed that the current version of Section 241 superseded the previous provisions and removed the discriminatory taint associated with the provision adopted in 1890. Cotton, 157 F.3d at 391–92. Further, the court held that Plaintiffs failed to establish the 1968 reenactment of Section 241 was motivated by racism. The court explained that contrary to Plaintiffs’ principal assertion, the critical issue here is not the intent behind Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution, but whether the reenactment of Section 241 in 1968 was free of intentional racial discrimination. Accordingly, as a matter of law, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that Section 241 as it currently stands was motivated by discriminatory intent or that any other approach to demonstrating the provision’s unconstitutionality is viable. View "Harness v. Watson" on Justia Law

State troopers arrested Defendant after finding drugs in his car during a traffic stop. Morton also had three cell phones in the car. A state judge later signed warrants authorizing searches of the phones for evidence of drug crime. The warrants allowed law enforcement to look at photos on the phones. When doing so, troopers discovered photos that appeared to be child pornography. This discovery led to a second set of search warrants. The ensuing forensic examination of the phones revealed almost 20,000 images of child pornography. This federal prosecution for receipt of child pornography followed. Defendant argues the evidence discovered during those searches should be suppressed. Defendant principally tries to defeat good faith by invoking the third exception, which involves what are commonly known as “bare bones” affidavits.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision. The court held that law enforcement is usually entitled to rely on warrants and none of the exceptions that undermine good-faith reliance on a judge’s authorization applies. The court wrote that the affidavits used to search Defendant’s phones are not of this genre. Each is over three pages and fully details the facts surrounding Defendant’s arrest and the discovery of drugs and his phones. They explain where the marijuana and glass pipe was discovered, the number (16) and location of the ecstasy pills, and the affiant’s knowledge that cellphones are used for receipt and delivery of illegal narcotics. The court explained that it decides only that the officers acted in good faith when relying on the judge’s decision to issue the warrants. View "USA v. Morton" on Justia Law

This case involves three constitutional challenges to New Orleans’s regulation of short-term rentals (“STRs”)—the City’s term for the type of lodging offered on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo. The district court granted summary judgment to the City on two of those challenges but held that the third was “viable.” Both sides appealed.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and dismissed the City’s cross-appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Plaintiffs appealed the summary judgment on the dormant Commerce Clause claim and the Takings Clause claim. The City cross-appealed the “holding”—its term, not ours—that the prior-restraint claim is “viable.”   The court explained that first, the original licensing regime was explicit: An STR license is “a privilege, not a right.” Second, Plaintiffs’ interests in their licenses were not so longstanding that they can plausibly claim custom had elevated them to property interests. Together, those two factors yield one conclusion: Plaintiffs didn’t have property interests in the renewal of their licenses.  Next, the court agreed that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to the City on their challenge to the residency requirement. The court explained that the district court should have asked whether the City had reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives to achieve its policy goals. View "Hignell-Stark v. City of New Orleans" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was fired from his position as the Chief of Investigation of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (Parchman) about three months after he testified at a probable cause hearing on behalf of one of his investigators. Rogers sued the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC), then-MDOC Commissioner, and MDOC’s Corrections Investigations Division Director, under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, alleging a First Amendment retaliation claim. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants based on sovereign and qualified immunity. The Fifth Circuit affirmed.   The court explained that to defeat qualified immunity, Plaintiff must show that the defendants violated a right that was not just arguable, but “beyond debate.” And he fails to “point to controlling authority—or a robust consensus of persuasive authority that either answers the question Lane left open regarding sworn testimony given by a public employee within his ordinary job duties, or clearly establishes that Plaintiff’s testimony was outside his ordinary job duties as a law enforcement officer (or was otherwise protected speech). Nor does Plainitff point to record evidence demonstrating that his testimony was undisputedly outside the scope of his ordinary job responsibilities, as was his burden to do. View "Rogers v. Hall" on Justia Law

A grand jury charged Defendant and co-Defendant with three offenses: conspiracy to deal methamphetamine; possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine; and conspiracy to deal marijuana. Defendant filed a motion seeking an acquittal or, in the alternative, a new trial. The district court granted the second request, however, the order did not divulge the grounds for the new trial. The government had timely appealed the new trial grant. A divided panel of the Fifth Circuit held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting a new trial.   The Fifth Circuit reversed the order granting a new trial, reinstated as to Count Two and the jury’s verdict on that count (possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine). The court further remanded for sentencing on that conviction. The court explained this is not one of the “exceptional cases” in which a judge had the discretion to vacate the jury’s verdict by ordering a new trial. Far from being a case in which the evidence weighs heavily against the verdict, the great weight of the evidence supports this one. The court wrote, that the district court set aside the verdict because, in its view, little evidence showed that Defendant knowingly possessed an illegal substance. But a trinity of evidence supported the knowledge element. The court explained that it is true that the “district judge, unlike us, was there throughout the trial.” But because the jury’s verdict was not against the great weight of evidence, it was an abuse of discretion to erase it. View "USA v. Crittenden" on Justia Law