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

A state does not inflict cruel and unusual punishment by declining to provide sex reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate. Plaintiff, a transgender Texas prison inmate in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), filed suit challenging TDCJ Policy G-51.11 as unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, both facially and as applied. Plaintiff contended that Policy G-51.11 amounted to systematic deliberate indifference to his medical needs, because it prevented TDCJ from even considering whether sex reassignment surgery was medically necessary for him. The district court granted summary judgment for the Director of TDCJ based on the merits of plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim.The Fifth Circuit held that plaintiff failed to present a genuine dispute of material fact concerning TDCJ's deliberate indifference to plaintiff's serious medical needs under the Eighth Amendment where, as here, the claim concerned treatment over which there exists on-going controversy within the medical community. As the First Circuit concluded in Kosilek v. Spencer, 774 F.3d 63, 76–78, 87–89, 96 (1st Cir. 2014) (en banc), there was no consensus in the medical community about the necessity and efficacy of sex reassignment surgery as a treatment for gender dysphoria. The court also held that plaintiff could not state a claim for cruel and unusual punishment under the plain text and original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, regardless of any facts he might have presented in the event of remand. The court held that it could not be cruel and unusual to deny treatment that no other prison has ever provided. View "Gibson v. Collier" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a death row inmate, petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of prohibition seeking to prohibit his execution until the state allowed his preferred spiritual advisor -- a Buddhist priest -- to be physically present in the execution chamber at the time of execution. After the petition was denied, plaintiff filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 complaint and a motion for stay of execution with the federal district court. The district court denied the motion for stay of execution as untimely and plaintiff appealed.The Fifth Circuit affirmed and held that the district court rightfully recognized that the proper time for raising such claims has long since passed. In this case, plaintiff's execution date was set on November 29, 2018; by his counsel's admission, he waited until February 28 to first request that the state allow his preferred spiritual advisor to not just meet with him prior to entering the chamber and watch from the viewing room, but actually enter the execution chamber with him; then he waited until March 20 -- eight days before the scheduled execution -- to raise his First Amendment and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act claims; and these claims were not brought before the federal courts until March 26. The court also took note, as did the district court, of the multiple warnings plaintiff's counsel has received in the past for filing last-minute motions. View "Murphy v. Collier" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendants' sentences imposed after they pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport illegal aliens within the United States by means of a motor vehicle. One of the people defendants transported died from a heart attack while fleeing law enforcement.The court affirmed the district court's application of a 10 level enhancement under USSG 2L1.1 and held that defendants' conduct was the but-for cause of the alien's death. In United States v. Ramos-Delgado, the court held that the defendant's conduct must simply be the but-for cause of the death, not its proximate cause. Just as in Ramos-Delgado and United States v. Ruiz-Hernandez, defendants were fully responsible for placing the victim in a precarious position where subsequent but-for causes ultimately took his life. View "United States v. Salinas" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit previously granted a certificate of appealability (COA) to defendant on two claims—first, that the government breached its obligations under his plea agreement when it failed to credit his cooperation in a murder conviction, and second, that defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel due to his attorney's failure to object to the government's breach of his plea agreement.In this appeal, the court held that the district court should have held an evidentiary hearing on defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The court held that an evidentiary hearing was needed before it could decide whether defendant's representation was constitutionally deficient, based on the failure to inform the court of his cooperation in the murder investigation. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for a limited evidentiary inquiry. View "United States v. Allen" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's order compelling Papalote to arbitrate a dispute raised by the Authority over whether their contractual agreements limited the Authority's liability to $60 million. In this case, the arbitration clause required Papalote and the Authority to arbitrate any dispute that arose with respect to either party's performance. The court held that the dispute at issue was an interpretative dispute, not a performance dispute, and was therefore outside the scope of the arbitration clause. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Papalote Creek II, LLC v. Lower Colorado River Authority" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's contempt finding and injunction related to the BOP's calculation of sentencing credits for federal prisoners. The court held that the district court made no explicit factual findings to support its decision to hold the BOP in contempt, nor did it identify which specific court orders the BOP violated. The district court abused its discretion, and the court could not identify any evidence in the record to support the conclusion that the BOP violated a definite and specific court order. Even if there was no error in holding the BOP in content, the court held that the sanction the district court imposed was contrary to law. The court held that, given the district court’s lack of authority over credit awards, it was improper to order the BOP to deny custody credits required by statute. Furthermore, the district court’s error was compounded by its threat to hold BOP officials in individual contempt for fulfilling their statutory duties. View "In re: U.S. Bureau of Prisons" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit granted a petition for review of the BIA's final order of removal determining that petitioner was ineligible for cancellation of removal because his 2007 conviction of attempted theft from a person under Texas law counts as a crime involving moral turpitude (CIMT) under a 2016 BIA decision. The court exercised its discretion to consider petitioner's claim and determined that it had jurisdiction to consider it.On the merits, the court held that the definition of CIMTs announced in In re Diaz-Lizarraga, 26 I. & N. Dec. 847, 848 (BIA 2016), may be applied only to crimes committed after that decision issued. Therefore, the BIA erred in retroactively applying Diaz-Lizarraga's new definition to petitioner's conviction for attempted theft. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Monteon-Camargo v. Barr" on Justia Law

After defendant was was convicted of multiple murders and his habeas petition was denied by the district court, he filed a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) motion for relief from judgment ten years later. The Fifth Circuit found no error in the district court's determination that the Rule 60(b)(6) motion was a second or successive habeas petition, and held that defendant failed to meet the standard for a second or successive petition. View "United States v. Robinson" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendants' convictions and sentences for their participation in a scheme to pose as singles looking for romantic relationships online, only to swindle their victims into sending money to Nigeria and South Africa. Defendants would steal personal information and then impersonate the victims, getting cash advances and transferring funds out of the victims' accounts. Then defendants cultivated online relationships, convincing their "paramours" to launder their money.The court held that shackling defendants at trial was not an abuse of discretion; the emails and copy of Defendant Mewase's passport was admissible; and the district court properly remove and replaced Juror 20 where the district court identified legally relevant reasons for removal, such as sleeping through witness testimony, misrepresenting this fact to the district court, not understanding the jury instructions, and not deliberating. The court held that the district court did not clearly err by applying the leadership enhancement to Defendant Ayelotan and Raheem's sentences; Ayelotan and Raheem's within-Guidelines sentences did not violate the Eighth Amendment; the district court did not clearly err in determining the intended loss calculation was over $25 million; and the sentences were substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Ayelotan" on Justia Law

Defendant's prior conviction for aggravated assault constituted a "crime of violence" under 18 U.S.C. 16, and thus an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(F). The Fifth Circuit held that United States v. Reyes-Contreras, 910 F.3d 169 (5th Cir. 2018) (en banc), did not make previously innocent activities criminal. In Reyes-Contreras, the court held that United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 162–68 (2014), was not limited to cases of domestic violence, and that for purposes of identifying a conviction as a crime of violence, there was no valid distinction between direct and indirect force. Therefore, this holding foreclosed defendant's use of the distinction between direct and indirect force -- a distinction he hoped would help him establish that aggravated assault under Texas law was not a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 16. View "United States v. Gomez Gomez" on Justia Law