Justia U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

A Virginia jury convicted Petitioner-Appellee Leon Winston of capital murder. The court, following the jury’s recommendation, sentenced him to death. Petitioner's direct appeals failed and his conviction became final, at which point he sought habeas relief in state court. The Supreme Court of Virginia denied relief, rejecting Petitioner's requests for discovery and an evidentiary hearing. Petitioner then filed a habeas petition in federal court. The district court granted him an evidentiary hearing to explore whether his trial attorneys were ineffective for failing to raise the claim under "Atkins v. Virginia" (536 U.S. 304 (2002)) that his mental retardation categorically barred imposition of a death sentence. But the court reversed course and held that it was precluded from considering any evidence adduced during the federal proceeding. Looking only to facts presented in the state habeas proceeding and conducting a deferential review of the state-court decision, the court denied Petitioner's petition for habeas relief. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit vacated in part the district court’s decision on appeal, ordering it to conduct a de novo review of Petitioner's ineffectiveness claim while entertaining the evidence offered during the federal hearing. On remand, the district court granted Winston’s petition for habeas relief and vacated his death sentence. Virginia appealed, contending that intervening Supreme Court precedent eroded the foundation of the Fourth Circuit's prior opinion in the earlier case compelling the Court to forgo de novo review and instead accord substantial deference to the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision denying habeas relief. The Fourth Circuit disagreed and found nothing in recent Supreme Court decisions that called into question its reasoning in "Winston I," which, as law of the case. Reviewing Petitioner's ineffectiveness claim de novo, the Court agreed with the district court that Petitioner established that his trial attorneys rendered deficient performance that prejudiced him. The Court therefore affirmed the district court's grant of habeas relief. View "Winston v. Pearson" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Ronald Colson pled guilty to six counts of receiving movies depicting actual female minors engaged in actual and simulated genital and oral sex with adult males, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2). Because Defendant had a prior state conviction which the district court concluded "related to either sexual abuse or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor," the court imposed, over Defendant's objection, a 15-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Defendant appealed his sentence, arguing that the earlier conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under section 2252A(b)(1). He contended that the district court erred as a matter of law because his 1984 conviction did not, when considered under the categorical approach, relate to sexual abuse involving a minor. He noted that under this approach, the sentencing court must, in evaluating whether the conviction qualifies as a predicate offense, focus on the elements of the offense and the fact of conviction, taking the most benign conduct that could support a conviction. According to Defendant, because the Virginia statute under which he was convicted in 1984 arguably covered innocuous depictions of nudity, he could not be subject to a sentencing enhancement requiring a conviction that categorically relates to sexual abuse of a minor, as required by the federal enhancement statute. Upon review, the Fourth Circuit concluded that Defendant misread the requirements for a conviction under the Virginia Code and read too narrowly the scope of convictions that can serve as predicate offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(b)(1). Accordingly, the Court affirmed Defendant's conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Colson" on Justia Law

Former co-pastors of the Greater Salem Church in North Carolina Defendants-Appellants Anthony and Harriet Jinwright appealed their convictions and sentences arising from a tax evasion scheme in which they omitted millions of dollars in taxable income from their jointly filed returns. Defendants raised a variety of challenges on appeal. Finding each contention to be without merit, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment. View "US v. Jinwright" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant Waterford Investment Services, Inc. appealed the district court’s ruling that it must arbitrate certain claims that a group of investors brought before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The investors alleged in their FINRA claims that they received bad advice from their financial advisor, George Gilbert. The investors named Gilbert, his current investment firm, Waterford, and his prior firm, Community Bankers Securities, LLC (CBS), among others as parties to the arbitration. In response, Waterford filed this suit asking a federal district court to enjoin the arbitration proceedings and enter a declaratory judgment that Waterford need not arbitrate the claims. The district court, adopting the recommendations of a magistrate judge, concluded that because Gilbert was an "associated person" of Waterford during the events in question, Waterford must arbitrate the investors' claims. Upon review of the matter, the Fourth Circuit affirmed, finding that Gilbert was inextricably an "associated person" with Waterford, and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in adopting the magistrate judge's opinion. View "Waterford Investment Services v. Bosco" on Justia Law

In August 2004, Plaintiff-Appellant Gwyniece Hutchins, a letter carrier with the United States Postal Service, stepped on an improperly fitted manhole cover maintained by the Town of Ninety Six, South Carolina. The manhole cover flipped up, and Plaintiff fell into the manhole, sustaining serious injuries. Because she was injured in the course of her duties as a United States Postal Service employee, she filed a claim for workers’ compensation under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA). The Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs accepted Plaintiff's claim as covered by FECA and paid her lost wages and medical benefits. In 2007, Plainitff accepted an offer of judgment arising from a South Carolina state court action that she brought against the Town. The Department of Labor asserted that it was entitled to recover a portion of that judgment. Plaintiff opposed the Department of Labor's assertion, arguing that the Town was not a "person" under 5 U.S.C. sections 8131 and 8132 and that if 5 U.S.C. section 8131 was construed to allow such a claim, it would be unconstitutional. The Office of Workers' Compensation rejected Plaintiff's arguments and determined that the Department of Labor was entitled to reimbursement. Plaintiff paid the sum but appealed the Office of Workers’ Compensation's decision to the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board. The Appeals Board affirmed. Because the Fourth Circuit agreed with the Department of Labor that the Town qualified as a "person other than the United States," the Court upheld the district court's determination that Plaintiff reimburse the Department of Labor from her judgment. View "Hutchins v. U.S. Department of Labor" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought a discrimination claim against her former employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq., for denying her a reasonable accommodation following her foot surgery. The district court dismissed her case after concluding she had failed to exhaust her administrative remedies by not filing her proposed accommodation with the EEOC. The court held that plaintiff did not exhaust her administrative remedies under the circumstances and reversed the district court's judgment. View "Sydnor v. Fairfax County, Virginia" on Justia Law

Relator brought a qui tam action under the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. 3729 et seq., alleging that appellees defrauded the United States Department of Education by knowingly making fraudulent claims by engaging in various non-economic transactions to inflate their loan portfolios eligible for Special Allowance Payments (SAP), a federal student loan interest subsidy. The district court granted appellees' motions to dismiss on the ground that they were "state agencies" and therefore not subject to suit under the FCA as interpreted in Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens. Because the district court did not employ the arm-of-the-state analysis in determining whether each of the appellees was a state agency subject to suit under the FCA, the court vacated its judgment and remanded the case for the court to apply this analysis in the first instance. View "US ex rel. Jon H. Oberg v. Kentucky Higher Ed., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs challenged the Corps' decision to approve a permit under section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. 1344, and section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 (RHA), 33 U.S.C. 403, to build a mooring facility and concrete boat ramp about 3,000 feet from the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia Beach. Plaintiffs appealed the district court's award of summary judgment to defendants. Having concluded that the Corps' grant of the permit violated the applicable National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C), procedural requirements, the court was not inclined to decide whether it should not have issued on different grounds. Therefore, the court vacated the judgment, remanded for preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and remanded for further proceedings. View "Friends of Back Bay, et al. v. US Army Corps of Engineers, et al." on Justia Law

This suit arose after Project Vote learned that students at Norfolk State University, a historically African-American college, experienced problems in registering to vote in the November 2008 primary and general elections in Virginia. At issue was whether Section 8(i)(l) of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which required public disclosure of "all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters," 42 U.S.C. 1973gg-6(i)(l), applied to completed voter registration applications. The court held that the district court correctly interpreted Section 8(i)(l), concluding that it did not apply to such applications and holding that defendants had violated the NVRA by refusing to disclose the completed applications with voters' Social Security numbers redacted. View "Project Vote v. Long" on Justia Law

Petitioners appealed from the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief, contending that, at their sentencing for armed robbery of the Sunday worship services at a North Carolina church, the state trial judge impermissibly made references to religion, thereby violating their rights to due process. The court affirmed the denial of the petition where defendants' choice to target a church during weekly services imbued their crime with an undeniably religious character; crimes of that nature carried special hazards for the freedom of all faiths to worship undisturbed; and the trial judge's comments reflected distinctive harms to the community of the particular crime that defendants chose to commit and was not an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law. View "Deyton v. Keller, Jr." on Justia Law