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Criminal Law & Procedure Case Summaries
Criminal Law & Procedures

[02/06] US v. Reyes-Bonilla
In a prosecution for being a deported alien found in the United States without permission, the conviction is affirmed, where: 1) the defendant was deprived of the opportunity for judicial review of his prior removal order, and was exempt from the administrative-remedies exhaustion requirement because did not validly waive his right of appeal; and 2) the defendant was not properly advised of his due process right to counsel nor did he waive this right; but 3) this due process violation was not per se prejudicial; and 4) the defendant could not demonstrate that he had a plausible claim to relief at the time of removal proceedings, so he was not actually prejudiced as a result of the due process violations, and entry of the removal order was not fundamentally unfair.

[02/06] Richardson v. Branker
On a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 USC section 2254, the district court's judgment is: 1) reversed, insofar as it granted the petition, where the district court erred in considering the petitioner’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under a de novo standard of review, and the state court did not hold unreasonably that the petitioner failed to demonstrate prejudice under Strickland; and 2) affirmed, insofar as it awarded summary judgment against the petitioner on his claims that the state withheld exculpatory evidence from him before trial, and that because he was mentally retarded, his sentence of death violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

[02/03] US v. Mahin
In a prosecution on two counts of possessing a firearm or ammunition while subject to a domestic violence protective order in violation of 18 USC section 922(g)(8), the judgment of conviction is: 1) affirmed in part, where the statute and its application to the defendant's firearm use the same day he was served with a protective order did not violate the Second Amendment under the intermediate scrutiny standard; and 2) reversed in part and remanded for resentencing, where it was plain error to convict and sentence the defendant on two separate counts for the simultaneous possession of a firearm and ammunition under section 922(g)(8).

[02/03] People v. Gabriel
On appeal from conviction on charges of cultivation and possession of marijuana and other offenses, the judgment is affirmed, where: 1) the trial court did not err in allowing the prosecution to impeach the defendant's credibility with evidence of his prior convictions for possession of an assault weapon and cultivation of marijuana, inasmuch as each of those offenses is a crime involving moral turpitude; and 2) any error in admitting the prior convictions evidence would have been harmless error, as it would not have resulted in prejudice requiring reversal.

[02/03] US v. Leahy
In a sentencing challenge brought by a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, the district court's 10-year sentence is affirmed, where: 1) the district court's application of enhancements under the sentencing guidelines and its inclusion of criminal history points was procedurally reasonable; and 2) the sentence, although the maximum possible, was substantively reasonable, as the district court articulated a plausible sentencing rationale and imposed a sentence within the range of reasonable outcomes.

[02/03] US v. Culbertson
In a prosecution in which the defendant pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to import 100 grams or more of heroin and five kilograms or more of cocaine, the case is remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the judgment of conviction, where: 1) there was an inadequate factual basis for the defendant's guilty plea with respect to the quantity of drugs for which he was responsible; and 2) the district court's error in accepting the defendant's plea was not harmless.

[02/02] US v. Rivera-Santana
In a sentencing challenge after the appellant was convicted of illegal reentry into the United States after being removed for a conviction of an aggravated felony, the sentencing court's judgment order is affirmed, where: 1) two upward departures in the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range, augmented by an upward variance of 90 months therefrom, were not procedurally unreasonable; and 2) the resulting sentence, which was the statutory maximum, was not substantively unreasonable.

[02/02] People v. Elliott
On appeal of the death sentence after conviction for crimes including first-degree murder with the special circumstance of murder during the commission of a robbery, the sentence is affirmed against numerous and various challenges on issues relating to: 1) pretrial procedures and jury selection; 2) the defendant's guilt; 3) the penalty imposed; and 4) the adequacy of the appellate record.

[02/02] People v. Brents
In a prosecution for first-degree murder and other crimes which resulted in a conviction and death sentence, the judgment is reversed as to the sentence of death, and the jury's true finding on the kidnapping special circumstance allegation is stricken, where the jury was not properly instructed regarding the need to find an independent felonious purpose to kidnap the victim, but the convictions are otherwise upheld where: 1) hearsay statements were admissible under Evidence Code section 791(b) as prior consistent statements; 2) there was no abuse of discretion in the admission of a photograph of the victim's body; 3) the trial court did not violate Penal Code section 654's prohibition against multiple sentences for a single act or course of conduct by imposing a death sentence for the murder conviction and a consecutive 25-years-to-life term for the felony assault conviction; and 4) the trial court did not make multiple errors, so that the defendant's claim of cumulative prejudice necessarily failed.

[02/01] US v. Noriega-Perez
In a prosecution of a property owner stemming from his renting houses he owned near the United States-Mexico border to an alien smuggling organization knowing that they would be used as load houses to conceal and later transfer recently arrived aliens, the convictions are affirmed, where: 1) the strong circumstantial evidence presented at trial sufficed for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that non-testifying material witnesses were illegal aliens; 2) a reasonable jury could find sufficient specific evidence linking the defendant to intentionally aiding the cross-border transportation of the named material witnesses before they were dropped off in the United States.

[02/01] US v. Lyttle
In a prosecution for numerous offenses relating to the defendant's involvement in a fraudulent high-yield investment program, before which the district court had granted a government application to suspend the statute of limitations pursuant to 18 USC section 3292 while the government sought the assistance of the Hungarian government in recovering records relating to transfers of the scheme’s proceeds into Hungarian bank accounts, the district court's denial of a motion to dismiss the indictment on statute of limitations grounds is affirmed, where: 1) the evidence was sufficient to support the district court’s order; 2) section 3292 does not require that the foreign evidence sought be necessary for an indictment, nor that it be obtainable only through an official request to a foreign government; and 3) district courts may rely on ex parte proceedings when deciding to issue section 3292 orders.

[02/01] Phan v. Holder
In a case in which USCIS denied an application for naturalization on the grounds that the applicant could not show good moral character because he was convicted of an aggravated felony, the district court's grant of summary judgment is affirmed, where: 1) on its face, the appellant's conviction satisfied the statutory requirements for a "conviction" of an aggravated felony; 2) although a court set aside the conviction, it acted pursuant to rehabilitative goals, which do not control the use of the conviction in the immigration context.

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