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

Appellant Matthew Johnson filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and separately moved to recuse the district judge to whom that petition was assigned. On appeal, The Fifth Circuit denied Petitioner’s motion for a certificate of appealability, explaining that each of his arguments had already been considered and rejected by binding precedent. The court also affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion to recuse.   The Fifth Circuit denied the petition. The court explained that Defendant petitioned for rehearing en banc, arguing that the panel opinion stands for the proposition that a district court has the power to shorten the one-year statute of limitations. The court explained that the opinion stands for no such thing. It holds only that the district court’s case-management order is not a ground for disqualification under 28 U.S.C. Section 455(a). Especially probative for that holding is the fact that the district court ultimately granted Johnson the extension he sought. The court explained that its conclusion that the district court was not required to recuse says nothing about the hypothetical issue of whether a district court would commit legal error if it did order a post-conviction habeas petitioner to file his petition before the deadline provided by the statute of limitations. View "Johnson v. Lumpkin" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to possessing child pornography. The district court sentenced him to 168 months in prison and ordered him to pay his victims $46,000 in restitution. On appeal, Defendant argued that he was not competent to enter the plea and challenged the court's restitution order.The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Regarding competency, the court relied on Defendant's admission that he only began to exhibit competency concerns during the PSR interview. There is no authority to find that erratic statements made in a PSR interview can somehow retroactively undermine Defendant's competency to plead guilty. Further, the district court did not commit reversible error in failing to hold a competency hearing sua sponte.In terms of Defendant's restitution argument, the court held that he failed "to show that there is a reasonable probability that such error resulted in his accountability for damages he did not cause or that the district court would have imposed a lower restitution amount but for any error." View "USA v. Teijeiro" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to the production of child pornography. On appeal, he challenged the district court’s application of a sentence enhancement pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 2251(e) based on his prior conviction for fondling a child, also referred to as lustful touching of a child.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence. The court concluded that the Mississippi statute relates to “abusive sexual contact involving a minor or ward,” as defined under section 2251(e) because the statute proscribes conduct that: (1) involves a child; (2) is sexual in nature; (3) is abusive; and (4) involves physical contact. The Mississippi statute only criminalizes conduct involving a child under the age of 18, so the first element is met. Moreover, because the statute also proscribes conduct involving “handling, touching or rubbing,” it meets the generic definitions of “abuse” and “contact” as well. Accordingly, the court held that there is no ambiguity as to the enhancements’ application; the rule of lenity is inapplicable. View "USA v. Northington" on Justia Law

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(3) bars an individual from possessing a firearm if he is an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance. Patrick Daniels is one such “unlawful user”—he admitted to smoking marihuana multiple days per month. But the government presented no evidence that he was intoxicated at the time of arrest, nor did it identify when he last had used marihuana. Still, based on his confession to regular usage, a jury convicted Defendant of violating Section 922(g)(3). The question is whether Defendant’s conviction violates his right to bear arms. The answer depends on whether Section 922(g)(3) is consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”   The Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment of conviction and render a dismissal of the indictment. The court explained that the nation’s history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage. Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users. Thus, the court held that as applied to Defendant, then, Section 922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment. View "USA v. Daniels" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of enticement of a minor, travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and transfer of obscene material to a minor. A total offense level of 41 and a criminal history category of I yielded a guideline imprisonment range of 324 to 405 months. The district court adopted the Pre-Sentence Report and sentenced him to 405 months in prison, a life term of supervised release, a $300 special assessment ($100 for each count), and a $15,000 Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act special assessment ($5,000 for each count). Defendant appealed, raising multiple challenges to his sentence.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment as to Defendant’s conviction. However, the court vacated the district court’s judgment as to that special assessment. The court explained that Defendant does not identify any case law establishing that his conduct on two different days should constitute a single occasion of abuse or establishing that the prohibited sexual acts must continue for a certain period of time or occur on a certain number of occasions to constitute a pattern. Therefore, the court held that the commission of distinct sexual assaults constitutes “separate occasions,” whether on the same or different days, for purposes of Section 4B1.5(b)(1). View "USA v. Sadeek" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to three counts of possessing a firearm as a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(1). He raised various issues on appeal.   The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded. The court explained that the district court’s ambiguous sentence impacted the “outcome of the proceeding” in at least two ways. First, the Bureau of Prisons decided that the sentence was so ambiguous that it “could not be executed.” That obviously would never have happened save for the error. The court further explained that after it was made aware of the error, the district court attempted to impose a completely different sentence at the null-and-void July re-hearing. The court reasoned that rarely does it have such strong evidence “that, but for the error, the outcome of the proceeding would have been different.” Moreover, the court explained that the district court has already expressed its willingness to change Defendant’s sentence once. The court, therefore, left it to the district court on remand to exercise its jurisdiction and discretion to impose any sentence at or below the statutory maximum. View "USA v. Willis" on Justia Law

Brothers and energy consultant executives led an international bribery scheme implicating companies and individuals across the globe. They pleaded guilty to crimes related to their participation in the enterprise and their attempts to cover it up. Several press agencies intervened and successfully moved to unseal almost all the documents in the case up to that point. Not only were many of the documents filed under seal, but the district court also closed part of the sentencing hearing to the press and public. At the same time, media interest in the case remained high, and the intervening press organizations moved to unseal numerous documents related to the sentencing. The district court denied their motion. On appeal, the intervening organizations maintain that they have both a First Amendment and a common-law right to access at least some of the sealed information.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of intervenors’ motion to unseal documents related to Defendant’s sentencing. The court held that intervenors were not so deprived of a meaningful opportunity to be heard as to justify reversal. They had notice of the general reasons that the parties would likely proffer to keep the information under seal. The documents unsealed after the court granted intervenors’ 2020 motion contained passages identifying the interests that the parties viewed as compelling enough to justify sealing. The court explained that even if the court had unsealed the opposition brief as much as possible while still safeguarding the interests it identified in its ultimate order, the outcome would not have changed. View "USA v. Financial Times" on Justia Law

In January 2022, a jury convicted United Development Funding (“UDF”) executives (collectively “Appellants”) of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and eight counts of aiding and abetting securities fraud.  Jurors heard evidence that Appellants were involved in what the Government deemed “a classic Ponzi-like scheme,” in which Appellants transferred money out of one fund to pay distributions to another fund’s investors without disclosing this information to their investors or the Securities Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Appellants each filed separate appeals, challenging their convictions on several grounds.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court wrote that evidence strongly supports a finding that Appellants intended to conduct a scheme to deprive investors of their money. There is proof that they purposefully advertised a desired rate of return to brokers and continued to solicit investors to invest their money into UDF III despite knowing that UDF III did not have enough money to sustain its current investors. Evidence also shows that they purposefully did not invest UDF IV and UDF V investors’ money into the business or otherwise use the money to further fund developer’s projects. Further, the court held that the foremost scheme alleged here was for the Appellants to obtain money from investors, and the Government’s mountain of evidence supporting this theory is sufficient, regardless of the invalidity of its subsidiary theory. Here, the Appellants fail to highlight the multiple errors that they allege occurred throughout their trial. View "USA v. Greenlaw" on Justia Law

Defendant, a deer farmer in Louisiana, was found guilty of aiding and abetting others in hunting over bait and hunting over a baited area, both in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The district court affirmed the conviction, fine, and one-year term of probation. On appeal, Defendant principally argued that the MBTA and accompanying regulations allow him to use Mississippi’s Cooperative Extension Service guidance for the Southeast region, rather than the guidance issued by Louisiana’s Extension Service, to take advantage of the MBTA’s safe harbor provision.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the safe harbor exemption found in Section 20.21(i)(1) is only applicable where feed has been distributed “solely as the result of a normal agricultural operation.” Defendant does not challenge the extraneous improvements evidence and, instead, argues only that the Government made its case based on outdated guidance from the expert witness and did not look to Mississippi’s extension service recommendations that Defendant’s planting allegedly followed. The court wrote that because it held that the Cooperative Extension Service and State Extension Specialists’ guidance is state-specific, the court found no error in the Government’s use of the LSU Extension’s recommendations. Further, the court reasoned that even if the Mississippi State guidance was applicable, it did not benefit Defendant because he did not follow the normally accepted practice of placing one inch of soil over the seeds. View "USA v. Holdman" on Justia Law

Without a plea agreement, Defendant pleaded guilty to carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime. The district court sentenced him to 30 years in prison. Defendant challenged the sufficiency of the factual basis to which he pleaded guilty and the reasonableness of his sentence.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the factual basis supports Defendant’s guilty plea, and the district court’s imposition of an upward variance was neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable. The court concluded that the district court articulated the fact-specific reasons in support of a non-Guidelines sentence, committed no legal error in the procedure followed in arriving at the sentence, and gave appropriate reasons for its imposition. Accordingly, the sentencing court is owed “great deference,” and Defendant has not shown that his sentence is procedurally unreasonable.   The court further explained that Defendant did not show that the court’s analysis failed to take into account a factor that should have received significant weight, gave weight to an irrelevant or improper factor, or represented a clear error of judgment in balancing the sentencing factors and other relevant considerations. Thus, in applying a deferential standard of review to the district court’s consideration of the totality of the circumstances, as required, the court held that the district court’s upward-variance sentence was substantively reasonable. View "USA v. Jones" on Justia Law