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

Defendants conditionally pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States with the substantive offense being a violation of the Anti-Riot Act. Defendants' charges arose from their violent participation in three white supremacist rallies during 2017.The Fourth Circuit held that, while the category of speech that lies at the core of the Anti-Riot Act's prohibition, called "incitement," has never enjoyed First Amendment protection, the statute sweeps up a substantial amount of speech that remains protected advocacy under the modern incitement test of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (per curiam), insofar as it encompasses speech tending to "encourage" or "promote" a riot under 18 U.S.C. 2101(a)(2), as well as speech "urging" others to riot or "involving" mere advocacy of violence under section 2102(b).However, the court held that, in all other respects, the statute comports with the First Amendment. Because the discrete instances of overbreadth are severable from the remainder of the statute, the court held that the appropriate remedy is to invalidate the statute only to the extent that it reaches too far, while leaving the remainder intact. Finally, the court held that defendants' convictions stand because the factual basis of defendants' guilty pleas conclusively establish that their own substantive offense conduct—which involves no First Amendment activity—falls under the Anti-Riot Act's surviving applications. View "United States v. Miselis" on Justia Law

Petitioner has been in prison for 44 years for a rape and burglary that he consistently maintained that he did not commit, claiming that police deliberately suppressed exculpatory evidence. The district court dismissed his petition for federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254, concluding that the MAR (Motion for Appropriate Relief) Court's decision did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. The MAR Court concluded that the cumulative effect of the withheld Brady evidence would have had no impact on petitioner's trial.The Fourth Circuit held that the MAR Court's analysis subjected petitioner to an enhanced burden, unreasonably applied Supreme Court law, and was objectively unreasonable. In this case, considering both the exculpatory and impeachment effects of the suppressed evidence, together with the shortfalls in the victim's identification and consistent testimony from alibi witnesses, the withheld evidence "could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict." Therefore, the court vacated the district court's dismissal of the petition. Because the district court failed to address the issue of whether the petition can survive the threshold requirements pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the court remanded for the district court to consider the issue in the first instance and to permit further discovery requested by petitioner. View "Long v. Hooks" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and sentenced to 78 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. After defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, the Supreme Court issued Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019). Defendant then filed a supplemental brief raising further constitutional challenges, arguing that Rehaif invalidated his indictment and conviction.The Fourth Circuit applied plain error review and held that the asserted Rehaif errors violated defendant's substantial rights. The court stated that sustaining defendant's conviction under the present circumstances would deprive defendant of several constitutional protections, prohibit him from ever mounting a defense to the knowledge-of-status element, require inappropriate appellate factfinding, and do serious harm to the judicial process. Therefore, the court exercised its discretion to notice the errors and vacated defendant's conviction, remanding for further proceedings. View "United States v. Medley" on Justia Law

Defendant's convictions under Va. Code 18.2-248 each qualify as a "controlled substance offense" that may trigger the career-offender enhancement.The Fourth Circuit affirmed defendant's 10 year term of imprisonment imposed after he pleaded guilty to one count of distributing cocaine. The court held that the district court did not erroneously sentence defendant as a career offender under USSG 4B1.1 where defendant's prior Virginia convictions for possession with the intent to distribute heroin fall within the Guidelines' categorical definition of a "controlled substance offense." Therefore, the district court correctly counted those convictions as predicate offenses for the career-offender enhancement. View "United States v. Ward" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit denied the petition for review of the BIA's decision dismissing petitioner's appeal of the IJ's finding that petitioner is statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal because, during his first seven years of continuous residence after admission to the United States, he committed an offense listed in 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2) that rendered him inadmissible.The Supreme Court held, in Barton v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1442 (2020), that conviction of an offense listed in Section 1182(a)(2) renders a lawful permanent resident "inadmissible" for purposes of Section 1229b(d)(1) even if he is not seeking admission. In this case, because petitioner committed such an offense during his initial seven years of residence after admission to the United States, and was later convicted of that offense, the court held that he is ineligible for cancellation of removal. View "Argueta v. Barr" on Justia Law

This criminal case stemmed from Defendant Terry and Brenda Millender's involvement in the Victorious Life Church. The district court granted Brenda's motion for a judgment of acquittal based on insufficient evidence to support her convictions for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The district court also conditionally ordered a new trial. The government appealed.The Fourth Circuit dismissed Terry's cross-appeal after his death and remanded the judgment against Terry to the district court for further proceedings. The court reversed the judgment of acquittal as to Brenda's convictions and held that the district court erred in concluding that no reasonable juror could find that Brenda knew of the fraud perpetrated by Micro-Enterprise and Kingdom Commodities; the district court relied on this ground alone to override the jury's guilty verdict as to two counts of wire-fraud conspiracy and two counts of money-laundering conspiracy; a reasonable jury could find that the Millenders not only spent the money but also tried to conceal its nature; and no more is required to sustain the jury's verdict on the three substantive counts of money laundering. The court also vacated the grant of a new trial where, on the record, the court cannot see whether the district court appreciated the limits on its discretion in making the decision. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Millender" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress child pornography images that were seized from his computer pursuant to a search warrant issued by a state magistrate judge. The court held that, even if the Fourth Amendment might require more specificity as to the place to be searched or the items to be seized in some computer searches, defendant failed to convince the court that the Fourth Amendment demanded that the descriptions of the place to be searched and the things to be seized needed to be more specific in this case.The court also affirmed the district court's ruling that the constitutionality of the warrant was unaffected by the superfluous language included at the end of the warrant; affirmed the district court's application of the plain view doctrine to the evidence of child pornography; and rejected defendant's belated request that the court not follow its own prior holding in United States v. Williams, and hold instead that ordinary principles of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, including the plain view doctrine, should not apply to computer searches. View "United States v. Cobb" on Justia Law

After defendant was captured and transported to a detention center in Iraq, the FBI Assistant Legal Attaché for Iraq interviewed defendant to gather intelligence about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) without providing him Miranda warnings. Ten days later, a different team of FBI agents interviewed defendant for purposes of a potential United States criminal prosecution. Defendant was subsequently convicted of conspiring to provide material support or resources to ISIL; providing material support or resources to ISIL; and possessing, using, and carrying firearms during and in relation to a crime of violence. On appeal, defendant challenged the admission of his statements to the second team of FBI agents, contending that the midstream Miranda warnings he received were ineffective.The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress his Mirandized statements and held that, even assuming the FBI deliberately used a two-step interview strategy, the agents undertook sufficient curative measures to ensure that a reasonable person in defendant's position would understand the import and effect of the Miranda warnings and waiver. However, the court vacated defendant's firearm conviction under 18 U.S.C. 924(c) in light of United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019), because defendant's conspiracy offense is not a predicate crime of violence. The court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Khweis" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit held that the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained from wiretaps. Defendant argued that because the wiretap orders did not include the name of each authorizing official, the orders were statutorily insufficient and therefore all evidence derived from them should have been suppressed.The court held that the wiretap orders were sufficient under the Wiretap Act because (1) the applications were in fact appropriately authorized by persons authorized by the Wiretap Act; (2) the orders on their face identified, albeit not by name, the Justice Department officials who authorized the applications; (3) the applications themselves, to which the orders on their face referred, did contain both the title and name of the official authorizing the application; and (4) the applications and proposed orders were submitted together as one package to the judge who signed the orders and later to defendant, whose communications were intercepted, such that both the judge and defendant actually knew both the title and name of the official authorizing each application. Furthermore, even if the court were to assume that the omission of the name of the authorizing official in the orders was a defect, it would not be the type of defect that rendered the orders "insufficient" under Section 2518(10)(a)(ii) of the Wiretap Act. View "United States v. Brunson" on Justia Law

The Government initiated a civil commitment proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 4248, seeking the commitment of appellee to the custody of the Attorney General as a "sexually dangerous person."The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the section 4248 civil commitment certification as untimely. The court held that once the Maryland district court determined appellee was incompetent to stand trial, appellee could remain committed to the Attorney General for only an additional reasonable period of time until his charges were disposed of in accordance with law. Absent a creditable explanation of the reasonableness of appellee's commitment post-December 2018 -- two years after his initial commitment and six full months after the Unrestorability Determination -- the statutory language and the court's precedent in United States v. Searcy, 880 F.3d 116, 122 (4th Cir. 2018), and United States v. Timms, 664 F.3d 436, 451–52 (4th Cir. 2012), compel the court to hold that appellee could no longer be considered legitimately committed to the Attorney General's custody in June 2019. View "United States v. Wayda" on Justia Law