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

The First Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court convicting Defendant of several drug and gun offenses and sentencing him to 188 months in prison. The court held that the district court (1) did not err in denying Defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal on three counts of the indictment under Fed. R. Crim. P. 29 because a rational jury could conclude that Defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; (2) did not abuse its discretion in admitting the testimony of the handler of a narcotics-detecting dog, and Defendant was not prejudiced by any error in admitting any part of that testimony; and (3) did not err in calculating Defendant’s guideline range. View "United States v. Naranjo-Rosario" on Justia Law

The First Circuit granted the certification requested by Petitioner that Petitioner’s successive motion to vacate his federal sentence under 28 U.S.C. 2255 contains a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable. Petitioner sought to argue in the district court that the new rule announced in Johnson v. United States (Johnson II), 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), which was made retroactive to cases on collateral review in Welch v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1257 (2016), invalidates the residual clause of the career offender guideline applied at his sentencing, which occurred before United States v. Booker, 453 U.S. 220 (2055), made the guidelines advisory. For the reasons given in this opinion, the First Circuit certified that Petitioner’s successive motion satisfies 28 U.S.C. 2255(h)(2). View "Moore v. United States" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s orders denying Defendant’s motion to suppress wiretap evidence and denying Defendant’s two requests for evidentiary hearings in connection with the motion to suppress. Defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, preserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress and his related requests for evidentiary hearings. The First Circuit affirmed, holding (1) the wiretap orders were not so lacking in particularity as to demand suppression, the wiretap applications were more than minimally adequate to justify the wiretap orders, and suppression was not required due to minimization deficiencies; and (2) the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to hold either a general evidentiary hearing or a Franks hearing. View "United States v. Gordon" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s convictions of first degree murder. Defendant took a collateral challenge to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), arguing that he received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. The SJC affirmed Defendant’s conviction. A federal district court denied Defendant’s subsequent petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The First Circuit affirmed, holding (1) the SJC clearly understood and reasonably rejected Defendant’s claims on the merits in a manner consistent with federal constitutional law; and (2) to the extent that the SJC misapprehended Defendant’s argument regarding his Fifth Amendment rights, Defendant suffered no prejudice because his Strickland argument would not have prevailed. View "Johnston v. Mitchell" on Justia Law

Here the federal government attempted to use the Hobbs Act to police the activities of members of a labor union. Defendants, two union members, were convicted of, inter alia, extortion under the Hobbs Act. The government charged that Defendants extorted property from nonunion companies when they threatened to take certain actions, such as picketing, if those companies did not give union members jobs and that Defendants extorted wages, benefits, and rights to democratic participation within the union from their fellow union members. The First Circuit (1) sustained the convictions of both defendants on count 29 under 29 U.S.C. 504(a), holding that the evidence was sufficient to support these convictions; (2) vacated the conviction for extortion of a nonunion company because the jury instructions allowed the jury to convict upon a finding that the work performed was merely unwanted; and (3) reversed all other convictions due to various errors and insufficiency of the evidence. View "United States v. Burhoe" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment convicting Defendant, after a jury trial, of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute oxycodone and oxymorphone. On appeal, the court held (1) the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions; (2) Defendant waived his claim that the district court committed plain error in its response to a particular question from the jury; and (3) the district court did not err in imposing a sentencing enhancement for the use or attempted use of a minor in the commission of the offense. View "United States v. Corbett" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the sentence imposed by the district court in connection with Defendant’s convictions of securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud. On appeal, Defendant challenged her sentence on both procedural and substantive grounds. The First Circuit held (1) the district court’s imposition of a two-level obstruction of justice enhancement and a two-level vulnerable victim enhancement was not an abuse of discretion; and (2) under the undisputed facts of this case, the length of Defendant’s bottom-of-the-guidelines sentence fell well within the possibilities of reasonable sentences. View "United States v. O'Brien" on Justia Law

In 2007, Vogel loaned Catala, $8,500 during a trip to Las Vegas. When Catala did not repay the loan, Vogel sued him in a Rhode Island state court. In 2012, a state judge entered a judgment for $8,500, plus interest and costs. Efforts to collect the judgment proved fruitless. In 2016, federal authorities charged Catal with distributing oxycodone and marijuana, searched his home, and seized $14,792 in cash. The case was docketed in the District of Rhode Island. Catala pleaded guilty. The court determined that the cash represented the proceeds of the illegal drug dealings and was subject to forfeiture, 21 U.S.C. 853(a). Vogel filed a third-party petition, asserting a claim to the seized cash under 21 U.S.C. 853(n) and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2(c). The First Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the claim, ruling that Vogel had no legal right to the forfeited proceeds. As a matter of first impression, the court concluded that the government had priority. There is no suggestion that the forfeited cash came from any source other than the defendant's drug-trafficking activities, so the government's interest in the forfeited cash vested as soon as Catala began selling drugs and before any proceeds started to reach him. View "United States v. Vogel" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence after he pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm. The court held that defendant's prior conviction for robbery under 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. 3701(a)(1)(iv) fell within the career offender guideline's residual clause in the 2015 Guidelines Manual. In this case, the Pennsylvania conviction qualified as a crime of violence because it involved conduct that presented a serious potential risk of physical injury to another and it substantially corresponded to the definition of generic robbery. View "United States v. Ball" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed defendant's 27 month sentence, which included three years of supervised release with a six-month 6:00 PM curfew enforced by electronic monitoring. The court held that the curfew was sufficiently connected to the underlying crime, the need to protect the public, and the need for deterrence. Because the curfew was appropriate, defendant's objection to the electronic monitoring requirement failed. The court also held that defendant's sentence was procedurally reasonable where the district court addressed every step required, including considering the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors. Furthermore, the sentence was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Quinones-Otero" on Justia Law