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

Defendant was convicted of two murders and sentenced to death. Defendant sought and was granted certiorari and the Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the court for reconsideration of defendant's United States v. Batson claim in light of the Court's intervening decision in Miller-El v. Dretke. The court remanded to the district court and the district court found that, even in light of the elucidation of Batson's principles in Miller-El, defendant had not met his burden of proving that the prosecution engaged in purposeful discrimination when it exercised peremptory strikes against five African-American members of the jury venire during jury selection for the sentencing phase in 2002. At issue was whether the district court's order denying relief of defendant's reconsidered Batson claim was proper. The court affirmed and held that there was no merit to defendant's contention that the district court committed prejudicial error in the manner in which it conducted the proceedings or in its findings of fact and legal conclusions on the merits of defendant's Batson claim.

Appellees, the parents of a child with moderate-to-severe autism, filed due process proceedings against the Sumter County School District #17 ("District") seeking a determination that the District did not provide a free and appropriate public education ("FAPE") to the child as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"), 20 U.S.C. 1412(a)(1)(A). At issue was whether the district court erred by concluding that the District failed to provide the child with a FAPE and that the program established by the child's parents to educate him at home was appropriate. The court held that that the district court did not err in concluding that the District failed to provide the child with FAPE for the 2005-2006 school year where the district court considered the evidence of the child's small improvements in a few tested areas against the District's conceded failure to provide the hours of therapy required for the child, the evidence that the lead teacher and aides did not understand or use proper techniques, and the evidence that it took one teacher months of working with the child to correct the problems caused by the improper techniques. The court also held that the district court did not err by finding that the District was not capable of providing FAPE to the child where the District's evidence was not compelling enough to establish it's improved capabilities at the time of the due process hearing. The court also held that the evidence was sufficient to support the district court's findings that the home placement was reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefits.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), on behalf of three individuals and present or former African American employees of Xerxes Corporation ("Xerxes"), alleged that Xerxes had a hostile work environment on the basis of race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2. At issue was whether the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of Xerxes based on its opinion that Xerxes' responses to the reports of harassment at issue were reasonable as a matter of law. The court partially vacated the summary judgment order and held that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Xerxes was on notice of racial harassment of two of the individuals prior to February 2006 and took no action reasonably calculated to end the harassment.

Defendant appealed his sentence after being convicted of one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon where he was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), to the mandatory minimum period of incarceration, 180 months. At issue was whether the government satisfied its burden of establishing that defendant's 1976 conviction in state court qualified as a predicate offense under the ACCA. The court affirmed the sentence and held that the government satisfied its burden where the reference to "shop" in the indictment "necessarily established" that defendant's burglary conviction was based on his entry into a structure that was "affixed to the ground," namely, "a building" under Taylor v. United States.

The government appealed the district court's grant of petitioner's habeas corpus petition where a jury sentenced him to death after finding him guilty of breaking into an 88 year-old woman's home where he raped and smothered her to death with a pillow. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion by holding the evidentiary hearing and whether relief was erroneously granted on petitioner's claims that counsel's development and presentation of mitigation evidence, as well as his failure to object to alleged instructional error, were constitutionally deficient. The court held that the district court's reliance on material developed at the federal evidentiary hearing was at odds with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. 2254, in light of Cullen v. Pinholster and proceeded to assess the federal habeas petition on the basis of the facts contained in the state-court record. The court reversed the grant of federal habeas relief and held that the failure to develop petitioner's siblings as witnesses was not substantially likely to have affected the outcome of penalty-phase proceedings; that there was no basis on which to conclude that counsel's alleged failure to present positive character evidence prejudiced petitioner; that the Supreme Court of Virginia was not clearly unreasonable in determining that petitioner had failed to demonstrate how additional evidence of his good character would have affected the jury's determination; that counsel's failure to present expert testimony linking childhood abuse to adult behavior yielded a substantial likelihood of a different result; and if counsel's development and presentation of mitigation evidence was deficient, any deficiencies did not amount to prejudice. The court further held that counsel's failure to object to a lack of a specific mitigating instruction could not support a claim for habeas relief. The court finally held that petitioner's claims on cross-appeal lacked merit where concerns that the jurors at issue expressed were addressed by general mitigation instruction.

Appellant appealed his convictions of six counts of distributing and conspiring to distribute cocaine, cocaine base, and heroin when the convictions stemmed from the operation of a local drug organization known as the Face Mob Family. At issue was whether the district court erred in denying appellant's motion to dismiss for Speedy Trial Act violations as a result of denying his motion for severance; whether the government's delay in filing a superseding indictment violated appellant's Fifth Amendment right to due process as well as his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial; and whether the sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to sever where appellant failed to articulate any injury to a specific trial right and where he was not entitled to severance merely because separate trials would more likely result in acquittal or where the evidence against one defendant was not as strong as that against another. The court also held that there was no constitutional violation in how the government handled the superseding indictment where appellant failed to point to any specific prejudice beyond a generalized assertion that the superseding indictment gave the government more time for trial. The court further held that the sentence was procedurally and substantively reasonable where the district court considered that appellant had distributed voluminous quantities of drugs, was a career offender, and was the leader and organizer of criminal activity which involved five or more participants and used violence to advance its goals.

Defendant was convicted of five electronic communications offenses when she began an anonymous electronic campaign of harassment against a former romantic partner. Defendant challenged her convictions and sentence on numerous grounds. The court held that the felony convictions of Count 2 and Count 4 must be vacated and reduced to misdemeanors where both Counts created a merger problem which implicated double jeopardy principles and where the indictment failed to establish any crime in Count 4. The court also held that there was sufficient evidence to convict defendant on Count 1 and Count 6 where the record showed that she conspired unlawfully to access computers and electronic storage facilities containing unopened e-mails for the purpose of accessing other computers and harassing, annoying, and harming the victim and his family and where the illegal access to voicemail facilitated the harassing telephone calls by supplying the ammunition that made the calls harassing and threatening. The court rejected defendant's claim that her Sixth Amendment rights were violated where the district court granted her request to represent herself. The court further rejected defendant's remaining sentencing arguments and affirmed the judgment of the district court. Finally, in light of Count 2 and Count 4, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing.

Respondent appealed the district court's grant of a writ of habeas corpus to the petitioner who was twice convicted of raping and murdering a victim when seven other men allegedly were concurrently involved in the rape and murder of the victim. At issue was whether the petitioner was entitled to the writ of habeas corpus issued by the district court where petitioner was ineffectively assisted by counsel when counsel failed to move to suppress petitioner's confession after petitioner invoked his right to answer no further questions. The court affirmed the writ of habeas corpus and held that counsel's failure to suppress the confession rendered suspect the jury's verdict.

Petitioner appealed convictions for the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters and secured pre-filing authorization from the court for a successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion for habeas corpus relief where he asserted a Fifth Amendment due process claim based on the newly discovered evidence of former U.S. Deputy Marshal Jim Britt ("Britt claim"). Shortly after petitioner presented his section 2255 motion, the results of DNA testing previously authorized by the court became available and petitioner sought to add a second claim to the section 2255 motion to raise a freestanding innocence claim ("DNA claim"). The DNA motion also urged the district to consider the DNA test results as a part of the "evidence as a whole" in assessing the Britt claim under section 2255. At issue was whether the district court erred in denying petitioner's section 2255 motion where it assessed the Britt claim under the standard of 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii), where it refused to consider the DNA claim on the ground that petitioner failed to secure additional pre-filing authorization from the court, and where it refused to consider the DNA test results and other evidence. The court remanded and vacated the district court's opinion where the district court erred in assessing the Britt claim under section 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii) rather than section 2255(h)(1), the district court erred by taking an overly restrictive view of what constituted "evidence as a whole" when it prohibited expansion of the record to include evidence received after trial and after the filing of petitioner's section 2255 motion, and the district court possessed jurisdiction over the separate DNA claim insofar as petitioner had timely and appropriately sought to add it to his pending section 2255 motion.

Plaintiff appealed an order granting summary judgment in favor of defendants, each of whom was related to plaintiff's employer, where plaintiff alleged religious and speech-based discrimination claims, as well as retaliation claims. At issue was whether plaintiff's rights were violated under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), the First Amendment, and the equal protection clause where defendants did not promote plaintiff to the position of full professor. The court held that the district court properly determined that the record lacked evidence to support plaintiff's allegations of religious discrimination under Title VII. The court also held that defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity as to plaintiff's First Amendment claims and that the proper course was to remand these claims for further consideration under the second and third prong of the McVey v. Stacey test. The court further held that the district court properly determined that plaintiff's evidence created no issue of disputed fact that defendants' decision to deny his promotion was the result of intentional or purposeful discrimination based on his religious beliefs or that he was treated differently from others with whom he was similarly situated.