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

Defendant pled guilty without a plea agreement to being unlawfully present in the United States after removal. The district court sentenced Defendant within the Guidelines range to 27 months of imprisonment and imposed a three-year term of supervised release. The district court imposed a special condition of supervised release requiring that Defendant be surrendered to immigration officials for deportation proceedings after his release from confinement and that, if officials decline to take custody of Defendant, he immediately depart the United States and return to Mexico.   On appeal, Defendant argued that the judgment should be amended to exclude the “self-deport” condition because the district court lacked the authority to impose this condition under 18 U.S.C. Section 3583(d). The Fifth Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment in part and remanded for the entry of a new written judgment without the special condition requiring that Defendant departs from the United States. The court held that here, the district court exceeded its authority by ordering Defendant to self-deport as one of his conditions of supervised release. View "USA v. Villanueva-Cardenas" on Justia Law

This appeal concerns an alleged international bribery scheme between U.S.-based businesses and Venezuelan officials. On Defendants’ motions, the district court dismissed all counts charged against them and suppressed statements made during an interview. The government timely appealed.   The Fifth Circuit reversed. First, the court held that because extraterritoriality concerns the merits of the case, not the court’s power to hear it, the district court erred in concluding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over these counts. Further, Defendants’ contention that the indictment does not sufficiently allege that they are agents of a domestic concern does not lend itself to the conclusion that the indictment is inherently insufficient. Moreover, the term “agent” is not unconstitutionally vague as applied to Defendants. Additionally, the court wrote that the allegations that Defendants engaged in conduct that occurred in part in the Southern District of Texas satisfy the money-laundering statute’s extraterritorial provision. The district court erred in concluding otherwise. Finally, the environment in which the agents questioned Defendant, wherein his attorney could safeguard against police coercion, does not present the same inherently coercive pressures as the station-house questioning at issue in Miranda. The district court’s order suppressing the statements, then, was erroneous. View "USA v. Murta" on Justia Law

Defendant brought a facial challenge to Section 922(g)(8). The district court and a prior panel upheld the statute, applying the Fifth Circuit’s pre-Bruen precedent. Defendant filed a petition for rehearing en banc; while the petition was pending, the Supreme Court decided Bruen. The prior panel withdrew its opinion and requested a supplemental briefing on the impact of that case on this one.   The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling and vacated Defendant’s conviction. The court held that Bruen requires the court to re-evaluate its Second Amendment jurisprudence and that under Bruen, Section 922(g)(8) fails to pass constitutional muster. The court explained that the Government failed to demonstrate that Section 922(g)(8)’s restriction of the Second Amendment right fits within the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Government’s proffered analogues falter under one or both of the metrics the Supreme Court articulated in Bruen as the baseline for measuring “relevantly similar” analogues: “how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense.” As a result, Section 922(g)(8) falls outside the class of firearm regulations countenanced by the Second Amendment. View "USA v. Rahimi" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted in 2015 of possessing child pornography and sentenced to an 86-month term of imprisonment and six years of supervised release. In 2019, Defendant violated the conditions of his supervised release, and the district court sentenced him to fifteen more months of imprisonment to be followed by five years of supervised release. After starting his second term of supervised release, Defendant again violated its conditions. The district court revoked Defendant’s supervised release and sentenced him to eighteen more months of imprisonment. Defendant appealed, arguing that his constitutional rights were violated at his preliminary revocation hearing, that the district court erred in detaining him pending the final revocation hearing, and that the district court imposed an unreasonable sentence upon revocation.   The Fifth Circuit vacated Defendant’s sentence and remanded for resentencing. The court reasoned that because it is impossible to say how the district court would have sentenced Defendant if it had known that the Guidelines range was nine months total and that the total statutory maximum sentence was twenty-four months, not nine months per violation, the court cannot resolve whether the district court’s error affected Defendant’s prison sentence. The district court may have varied or departed upwards and imposed the same eighteen-month sentence or a longer one, up to the twenty-four-month statutory maximum. Or, as evinced by the district court’s desire to follow the Guidelines, the district court may have imposed a more modest upwards variance or departure than eighteen months. Thus, the district court’s misunderstanding of its authority to sentence Defendant was not harmless. View "USA v. Greer" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment pursuant to the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), given his multiple prior violent felony convictions. While on supervised release, Defendant was again convicted of being a felon in possession of ammunition, resulting in revocation of his release as well as a separate conviction and an attendant sentence of 15 years and 3 months, again enhanced by the ACCA. Defendant challenged the ACCA sentencing enhancements in both cases.   The Fifth Circuit dismissed as moot his claim regarding his first federal conviction and sentence and affirmed the sentence of his second federal conviction. The court explained that Defendant had completed his “term of imprisonment imposed following the revocation of his supervised release” and had “no remaining supervised release term that may be modified or terminated.” As a result, even a favorable determination in this action will have no impact on his sentence, meaning that is impossible for the court to grant any effectual relief to Defendant. View "USA v. Sosebee" on Justia Law

At issue is whether Defendant was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment when an officer, with emergency lights engaged, pulled behind Wright’s parked vehicle, and he did not attempt to flee or terminate the encounter but failed to comply fully with the officer’s commands. The district court, at the end of an evidentiary hearing, however, denied Defendant’s motion to suppress, concluding erroneously that the Terry stop was initiated instead at a later point in the encounter.   The Fifth Circuit, while retaining jurisdiction over the appeal, remanded to the district court for it, based on the record developed at the suppression hearing, to prepare expeditiously written findings of fact and conclusions of law on whether the seizure at the earlier point in time was in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The court explained that Defendant not complying fully with some of the Officer’s commands was improper, to say the least, but his behavior does not show defiance of the Officer’s authority. Defendant sufficiently submitted to the show of authority because he objectively appeared to believe he was not free to leave, and he did not attempt to flee, nor terminate the encounter. The court further explained that because the district court’s findings and conclusions turn instead on events occurring after the Terry stop, the court is unable to deduce from them whether the district court concluded the totality of the circumstances prior to the Officer’s pulling behind Wright’s vehicle provided reasonable suspicion justifying the stop. View "USA v. Wright" on Justia Law

Movant, a Texas prisoner, moved for authorization to file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. Section 2254 application with respect to his conviction for two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of evading arrest and detention in a motor vehicle. He is one of many Texas prisoners who, after previously filing state habeas applications, have since learned that Weldon Ralph Petty, the state prosecutor who opposed their state habeas applications, was also employed by one or more district judges to prepare findings of fact and conclusions of law in those same habeas cases.   The Fifth Circuit denied the motion for authorization to file a second or successive Section 2254. The court explained that to the extent that Movant attempts to present a claim of actual innocence, the Court “does not recognize freestanding claims of actual innocence on federal habeas review.” Likewise, he may not rely on an assertion of actual innocence to serve as a gateway to overcoming the bar to the successive filing. Additionally, infirmities in state postconviction proceedings are not grounds for relief under Section 2254.9 Thus, none of Movant’s proposed challenges state a claim that is cognizable on federal habeas review View "In Re: Isaias Palacios" on Justia Law

Defendant sold drugs to police informants. Police searched his residence, where they found both cocaine and a gun. Subsequently, Defendant pleaded guilty to three drug distribution counts and to one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The district court denied his motion for compassionate release under Section 3582(c)(1). Defendant again timely appealed.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court wrote that Defendant’s claims are the province of direct appeal or a Section 2255 motion, not a compassionate release motion. Specifically, he argues that his sentence exceeded the statutory maximum and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. These are quintessential arguments for challenging the fact or duration of a prisoner’s confinement under Chapter 153. Further, Defendant admits in his Section 3582(c)(1) motion that he moved for compassionate release because he worried that he could not win relief under Section 2255. The habeas channeling rule, however, prevents a prisoner from so easily steering around Chapter 153’s strictures. The court, therefore, held that a prisoner cannot use Section 3582(c) to challenge the legality or the duration of his sentence; such arguments can, and hence must be raised under Chapter 153. Thus, because Defendant’s claims would have been cognizable under Section 2255, they are not cognizable under Section 3582(c). View "USA v. Escajeda" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed her conviction for possession and smuggling of controlled substances. Defendant asserts that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting evidence of a prior drug smuggling offense under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Defendant argued that evidence of her prior crime is irrelevant because it is too dissimilar to the subsequent trafficking crime. Defendant further argued that the prejudicial effect of the extrinsic evidence far outweighs its probative value, thus failing Rule 403’s balancing test and Beechum’s second step.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion either in finding that the prior criminal act was relevant to Defendant’s knowledge in the instant drug trafficking case or in finding that the prejudicial effect of the evidence did not substantially outweigh its probative value. The government’s closing argument offered the extrinsic evidence not to mislead the jury into convicting her for a previous offense, but to show absence of mistake, which Rule 404(b) specifically allows. The district court also mitigated any misuse by providing a limiting instruction cautioning the jury that Defendant was “not on trial for any other act, conduct or offense not alleged in the indictment.” View "USA v. Valenzuela" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to conspiracy to distribute over 500 grams of methamphetamine. He appealed, challenging his sentencing enhancement as lacking adequate record support. On appealed he argued that the district court erred in imposing without a sufficient factual basis a two-level sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. Section 3C1.2 for recklessly creating a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person while fleeing from a law enforcement officer.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that as Defendant neither objected to the Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) nor presented rebuttal evidence regarding the PSR’s statements, including those describing the disposal of the drugs, the district court properly relied upon the PSR. The court held that in this case, the record, supports at least a plausible basis for this enhancement. Again, the Factual Basis and the PSR both make clear that Defendant “lost several ounces because he threw it out during the car chase.” Absent specific evidence that Defendant took steps to ensure that the discarded drugs could not be consumed and pose a danger to others, his spoliation during a police chase, alone, plausibly “create[d] a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person recklessly created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person in the course of fleeing from a law enforcement officer.” View "USA v. Melendez" on Justia Law