Justia U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

After a jury trial, Russell Rose and Kelvin Frye were convicted of conspiring to distribute arising from their respective roles in a Cape Cod-based drug-distribution conspiracy. The First Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences, holding (1) no error occurred in the authorization of the government’s applications for phone wiretaps that produced tapes of intercepted phone calls between the co-conspirators; (2) the government properly utilized its central witness, and the witness’s testimony was not improper overview testimony; (3) a jury would have convicted Defendants even if evidence recovered from the search of the curtilage of Rose’s home was improperly admitted; and (4) even the district court violated Alleyne v. United States in sentencing Defendants, neither party could establish the necessary prejudice to sustain their claim of Alleyne error. View "United States v. Rose" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to various charges stemming from his role in a conspiracy to provide identification documents to undocumented aliens in the United States. The sentencing judge sentenced Defendant to a total of seventy-five months imprisonment. Defendant appealed, contending that his sentence was too long and that the sentencing judge made various errors when handing it down. The First Circuit vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing, as the court was wholly unable to discern the district court’s rationale behind its sentencing decisions, and therefore, appellate review was unworkable. View "United States v. Mendez" on Justia Law

Appellant was the target of a grand jury investigation into an alleged scheme to defraud investors regarding the salvaging of a sunken vessel. The government moved to compel the production of documents from Appellant’s attorneys in connection with the grand jury investigation. The district court granted the motion. The court also granted the government’s motion for a judicial determination that the crime-fraud exception applied to materials seized from Appellant’s home, thereby rejecting Appellant’s claim of attorney-client privilege. In Appellant’s opposition to the government’s motion to compel, Appellant requested that the district court conduct an in camera review of the documents that were the subject of the motion to compel. The district court did not address this request. The First Circuit affirmed, holding (1) there was ample evidence for the district court to conclude that Appellant was engaged in a scheme to commit a crime or fraud and that at least some of the communications between Appellant and Appellant’s attorneys were intended by Appellant to facilitate that fraudulent scheme; and (2) because Appellant failed to produce a privilege log as required under the Federal Rules, Appellant’s request for in camera review was not preserved. View "In re Grand Jury Proceedings" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. The federal district court imposed a seventy-eight month sentence. The First Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, holding (1) even if the district court erred in not deciding Defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress before trial, Defendant waived this argument by pleading guilty unconditionally; (2) Defendant’s argument that his guilty plea was involuntary because of his counsel’s ineffectiveness was not properly brought on appeal; and (3) the district court erred in its approach to applying a ten-level sentencing enhancement under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. View "United States v. Castro-Vazquez" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and of possessing with intent to distribute cocaine base. Defendant appealed, arguing primarily that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained by police officers in searching his apartment, as the warrant was not supported by probable cause. The First Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence, holding (1) assuming the invalidity of the warrant, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied to the evidence found in the apartment; (2) the district court did not err in denying Defendant’s Batson challenge to a peremptory juror strike; (3) the district court did not err in admitting testimony by a government expert witness; (4) Defendant waived his challenge to the district court’s ruling that the government could introduce recorded prison conversations as rebuttal evidence if Defendant called a certain individual as a defense witness; and (5) the district court did not rely on a clearly erroneous factual finding in selecting Defendant’s sentence. View "United States v. Monell" on Justia Law

Pursuant to a plea agreement, Defendant pleaded guilty to being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. The district court imposed an upwardly variant sentence of sixty months imprisonment - two times the top of Defendant’s Guidelines Sentencing Range. Defendant appealed, challenging both the procedural and substantive reasonableness of his sentence. The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence after reviewing the record as a whole, holding that each of Defendant’s claims failed and that Defendant’s sentence of sixty months of imprisonment was both procedurally sound and substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Pantojas-Cruz" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of crimes stemming from his involvement in a racketeering drug enterprise that resulted in the murder of two innocent bystanders. The district court imposed a sentence of 360 months imprisonment, to run concurrently with Appellant’s state sentence. The First Circuit affirmed the sentence, holding that the district court (1) did not impose a sentence that was unjustifiably long in comparison to those imposed on his co-defendants where the court considered Appellant’s specific role in the context of the whole case, imposed the sentence accordingly, and provided an adequate explanation for its sentence; and (2) did not err when it declined to adjust Appellant’s sentence to reflect the six months he had served for his state drug conviction. View "United States v. Graciani-Febus" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of possession of crack with intent to distribute. Defendant appealed, arguing that the district court committed reversible error by refusing to instruct that jury that, if it did not find Defendant guilty of intent to distribute it could still convict him of the lesser-included offense of simple possession so long as it found beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of that offense. The First Circuit agreed and vacated Defendant’s sentence, holding Defendant was entitled to the requested instruction, and the district court’s failure to give the instruction was not harmless. View "United States v. Nur" on Justia Law

Defendant, who had previously been convicted of first degree child molestation under Rhode Island law, was convicted in federal court of failing to register as a sex offender under the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act and sentenced to sixty-five months in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. At sentencing, the district court utilized the prior Rhode Island conviction to classify Defendant as a Tier III offender, resulting in a base-offense level two levels higher than if Defendant had been designated as a Tier II offender. The First Circuit vacated Defendant’s prison term and remanded for resentencing, holding that the district court committed plain error when it classified Defendant as a Teir III sex offender and when it utilized that designation in its guidelines calculation. View "United States v. Morales" on Justia Law

After a joint trial, Defendants - Ramon Lanza-Vazquez (Lanza), Luis R. Nieves-Canales (Nieves), and Rafael Galan-Olavarria (Galan) - were convicted and sentenced for their participation in a drug distribution conspiracy. The First Circuit affirmed Defendants’ convictions and sentences, holding (1) the district court did not err in ruling that no Franks violation occurred leading to a warrant obtained for the search of Galan’s residence; (2) the judge’s interventions and comments during trial were not improper; (3) there was no plain error in the judge’s charge to the jury; (4) Nieves’ arguments respecting the sufficiency of the evidence against him were without merit; and (5) even assuming that Alleyne v. United States applied in this case, no error occurred in the district court’s sentencing of Nieves. View "United States v. Lanza-Vazquez" on Justia Law