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

After committing armed robbery with an unidentified accomplice, Defendant pled guilty to Hobbs Act robbery and a firearm charge pursuant to an agreement with the government. At sentencing, the district court warned that Defendant’s decision to name his accomplice would be a “critical part” of its sentencing determination. When Defendant declined to name his accomplice, the district court imposed a sentence at the top of Carter’s Sentencing Guidelines range. On appeal, Defendant asserted that the district court violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination by imposing a harsher sentence due to his failure to identify his accomplice and drawing adverse inferences from that failure. He further alleged that this Fifth Amendment violation rendered his sentence procedurally and substantively unreasonable.   The Fourth Circuit granted the government’s motion to dismiss Defendant’s appeal to the extent he challenges the reasonableness of his sentence. The court explained that the district court had no substantial reason to believe that Defendant’s identification of his accomplice would be incriminating beyond the plea itself. Defendant was asked to name his accomplice in specific conduct for which he had already been convicted or received immunity in his federal case and for which his state charges were dismissed.   The court explained that Defendant’s self-incrimination concerns would have merited further analysis had he raised them before the district court. But he did not, and the district court was left without any substantial reason to believe that Defendant’s identification of his accomplice was likely to be incriminating. Defendant’s reliance on the Fifth Amendment privilege comes too late. Thus, his Fifth Amendment challenge fails. View "US v. Richard Carter" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs sought to enjoin the state from enforcing only this additional, preliminary handgun-licensure requirement. The district court originally dismissed that challenge for lack of Article III standing, but we reversed and remanded for a decision on the merits. On remand, the district court again rejected Plaintiffs’ claims, this time holding that Maryland’s handgun licensure law did not violate the Second Amendment. So Plaintiffs appealed once more.   The Fourth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision. The court explained that the challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one. The court enjoined the enforcement explaining that under the Supreme Court’s new burden-shifting test for these claims, Maryland’s law fails. The court wrote that Maryland has not shown that this regime is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. There might well be a tradition of prohibiting dangerous people from owning firearms. But, under the Second Amendment, mechanism matters. And Maryland has not pointed to any historical laws that operated by preemptively depriving all citizens of firearms to keep them out of dangerous hands. View "Maryland Shall Issue, Inc. v. Wes Moore" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, former pretrial detainees in Prince George’s County, Maryland, appealed from the district court’s denial of their motion for a preliminary injunction. The detainees sought an injunction that would require the County to release them, and others similarly situated, on the ground that the County’s pretrial-release program violates the Due Process Clause. The district court denied the motion without stating its factual findings and legal conclusions.   The Fourth Circuit vacated. The court explained that the detainees’ motion for a preliminary injunction presented the district court with a disputed factual record and a difficult, fact-bound constitutional question. Thus, the district court had to explain the factual findings and legal conclusions that supported its determination that the preliminary injunction should be denied. Yet it only made generalized comments about the difficulty of deciding. So it violated Rule 52(a)(2). Further, the court wrote that it will disregard a Rule 52(a)(2) error and reach the merits of the district court’s preliminary-injunction order only if there is a record sufficient “to enable us to pass upon the questions involved.” However, there isn’t one here. View "Robert Frazier v. Prince George's County, Maryland" on Justia Law

Plaintiff resisted arrest during a traffic stop, and Officer Patrick deployed a burst of pepper spray to her forehead. Further, Sheriff S. Kincaid’s officers required Plaintiff to remove her hijab for the purpose of taking booking photographs. Plaintiff claimed that Officer Patrick used excessive force in arresting her and that Sheriff Kincaid was liable for her office’s policy that disregarded Plaintiff’s religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. The district court dismissed Plaintiff’s claim against Officer Patrick on the basis of qualified immunity, but it granted Plaintiff a permanent injunction, requiring Sheriff Kincaid to destroy all copies of the booking photographs of Plaintiff without her hijab. Sheriff Kincaid filed an appeal seeking to reverse the district court’s order, and Plaintiff filed an appeal from the district court’s order denying her motion for attorneys fees.   As to Sheriff Kincaid’s appeal, the court dismissed it as moot and remanded with instructions to vacate the district court’s judgment. As to Plaintiff’s appeal of the dismissal of her claim against Officer Patrick, the court affirmed. And as to Plaintiff’s appeal of the district court’s order denying her motion for attorneys fees, the court vacated and remanded. The court explained that under Section 1988(b), a prevailing party should ordinarily be awarded reasonable attorneys fees unless special circumstances would render them unjust, whereas under Rule 54(d)(1), a prevailing party is presumed to be entitled to an award of costs unless the court finds an element of injustice in doing so. By addressing Plaintiff’s motion under the incorrect legal standard, the district court erred. View "Abrar Omeish v. Stacey Kincaid" on Justia Law

Four inmates at the Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, Virginia, commenced this action pro se against agents of the IRS, alleging that the IRS unlawfully denied them all or part of their COVID-19 stimulus payments. The complaint alleged that the IRS was categorically denying payments to inmates on account of their incarcerated status. The four inmates contended that the IRS had “violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection of the law,” and they sought an injunction requiring the IRS to disburse the proper payments to them. The four inmates filed a motion to amend it by adding five additional inmates with the same claims. The three inmates whose claims were severed from the original action filed these appeals, challenging the legal and factual underpinnings of the district court’s order. They contend that the district court erred both in applying Section 1915(b)(1) as they were not proceeding in forma pauperis and in making factual findings that were not supported by the record.   The Fourth Circuit vacated the court’s order severing Plaintiffs’ claims and its order denying amendment and remanded. The court explained that Section 1915(b)(1), by its explicit terms, is restricted to in forma pauperis actions. The court wrote that because Plaintiffs here did not proceed in forma pauperis, the court should not have construed Section 1915(b)(1) and applied it to them, and it was an error to have done so. View "Aaron Ellis v. Daniel I. Werfel" on Justia Law

An administrative law judge (ALJ) working for the United States Department of Labor (DOL) ordered K & R Contractors, LLC to pay living miner’s benefits to its former employee pursuant to the Black Lung Benefits Act. K & R filed a petitioner for review challenging to the constitutionality of the ALJs' appointment.The Fourth Circuit found that both ALJs were constitutionally appointed and that, even if the dual good-cause removal protections were unconstitutional, K & R was not entitled to relief because it had not identified any harm resulting from those removal provisions. View "K & R Contractors, LLC v. Michael Keene" on Justia Law

Defendant n served five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. He was released in 2020 subject to a lifetime of supervised release. Three years later, the district court found that Defendant had violated numerous conditions of his supervised release. The court sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment and reimposed a lifetime of supervised release. Defendant brought several challenges to this sentence.   The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that Defendant claims the lifetime term of his supervised release is an “extreme and unusual remedy” that should be “viewed critically.” He suggests that lifetime release should typically be affirmed only in cases involving “child pornography or violent crimes.” But the appropriateness of lifetime supervised release in one serious class of cases does not render it inappropriate for another. Defendant combined extremist ideology and technical sophistication to build widespread support online for ISIS’s brutal campaign of terror and violence. He simultaneously coaxed men into traveling to Syria with deadly consequences. Upon his release from prison, Defendant continued to spread toxic messages online, including a call to “exterminate” all non-believers of ISIS’s jihadist ideology—the vast majority of the global population. It was eminently reasonable for the district court to reimpose a lifetime of supervised release under these circumstances. View "US v. Ali Amin" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit in federal district court against Judge Goldston and others present at the search. Plaintiff claimed that the warrantless search and seizure of his property violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, that the restrictions on recording the incident violated the First Amendment, and that Judge Goldston’s practice of conducting “home visits” violated the Equal Protection Clause by disadvantaging pro se litigants like himself. He sought compensatory and punitive damages under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, as well as attorney’s fees and injunctive and declaratory relief. Judge Goldston moved for summary judgment, claiming she was entitled to absolute judicial immunity. The district court denied her motion. At issue on appeal is whether Judge Goldston is entitled to judicial immunity.   The Fourth Circuit affirmed, holding that judicial immunity protects only judicial acts. It does not shield the conduct of judges who step outside their judicial role, as Judge Goldston did when searching Plaintiff’s home. The court explained that while Judge Goldston might have had the authority to order a search, the proper authority to conduct the operation was the local sheriff’s department or some other appropriate law enforcement agency. The court explained that just as “judges do not do double duty as jailers,” so too they do not do double duty as sheriffs. View "Matthew Gibson v. Louise Goldston" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit granted the government’s motion to dismiss Defendant’s appeal based on the appeal waiver in Defendant’s plea agreement.Defendant pleaded guilty pursuant to a plea agreement to conspiracy to communicate, transmit, or disclose Restricted Data of the United States Navy relating to Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines with the intent to injure the United States or to secure an advantage to a foreign nation. At sentencing, the district court calculated her Sentencing Guidelines range and sentenced Defendant to 262 months imprisonment, which was at the bottom of that range. Defendant contends that “the district court so severely infected the sentencing [and] the sentencing process that [her] due process rights were violated during the course of the sentencing hearing to an extent that could not have been contemplated by, and transcends, the appeal waiver.” She also contends that the government, in its appellate brief, breached the plea agreement and therefore that the agreement “is now void” and the “waiver in it is invalid.” The government filed a motion to dismiss the appeal based on the appeal waiver in Defendant’s plea agreement.   The Fourth Circuit granted the government’s motion to dismiss. The court concluded that Defendant had failed to make a sufficient showing to avoid the clear terms of her plea agreement, which she acknowledges she entered into knowingly and intelligently. The court also concluded that the government did not breach the plea agreement. Further, the court noted that the plea agreement provided further that once the district court exercised its authority to sentence Defendant, the government was authorized to advance arguments on appeal in support of that sentence. View "US v. Diana Toebbe" on Justia Law

Following a series of COVID-19-related continuances and other setbacks, Defendant was convicted by a jury of two counts of fentanyl distribution. Defendant argued that these delays violated his statutory and constitutional rights to a speedy trial. Defendant also argues the district court erred in denying his motion for acquittal.   The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that, in total, 357 days of 401 days were properly excluded. This means that, at most, only 44 days accrued towards Defendant’s speedy trial clock. The court concluded that Defendant’s rights under the Speedy Trial Act were not violated. Moreover, the court noted that Defendant has not “shown, or even argued, that any evidence was damaged or lost, that any witnesses could not be found, or that his case was harmed in any manner by the delay.” Further, the court wrote that substantial evidence supports Defendant’s convictions. Much of the evidence at trial came from the testimony of the confidential informant who purchased the drugs from Defendant. This informant testified that he knew Defendant because they had a mutual friend whose apartment they both frequented. He also testified that he and Pair had discussed doing business together prior to the informant cooperating with law enforcement. The court explained that viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government as the prevailing party below, any reasonable finder of fact could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendant was guilty of distributing fentanyl. View "US v. Quotez Pair" on Justia Law