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

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action challenging the "winner-take-all" aspect of South Carolina's process for appointing its nine Electors to the Electoral College.After determining that it has subject matter jurisdiction to address the merits of the appeal, the court held that the winner-take-all process does not violate the Equal Protection Clause, because it does not treat any particular group of voters in the State differently; the winner-take-all process does not violate plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights because it does not burden plaintiffs' right to freedom of association; and the winner-take-all process does not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In this case, while plaintiffs allege that Black voters in South Carolina are a minority group sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district, the court stated that they fail to address what this means in the context of a statewide election. View "Baten v. McMaster" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an inmate in custody of the VDOC, filed suit pro se alleging that the Director of the VDOC and three other VDOC officials violated his rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fourteenth Amendment when they did not allow him to resume his job after a short hospitalization.The Fourth Circuit held that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's ADA claims for damages against the defendants in their official capacities, and in dismissing plaintiff's ADA and equal protection claims for injunctive relief against the Director in his official capacity. The court held that plaintiff's ADA and 42 U.S.C. 1983 equal protection claims were timely filed; plaintiff plausibly alleged a violation of Title II and an equal protection claim; and defendants are not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity at this juncture. Therefore, the court vacated the district court's dismissal of these claims. The court otherwise affirmed the district court's judgment. View "Fauconier v. Clarke" on Justia Law

On rehearing en banc, at issue was whether the Fourth Amendment's exigent circumstances doctrine justified the suspicionless seizure of defendant. In this case, the police seized defendant responding to several gunshots that were fired in or near an apartment complex less than a minute earlier. When the police arrived at the scene, they encountered five to eight men, including defendant, calmly and separately walking in the public area behind the complex, as well as several other people standing around closer to the apartments and another man walking toward the rear of the officers' patrol car.The court held that the stop was not justified by exigent circumstances and thus was not reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's grant of defendant's motion to suppress a firearm and other evidence based on the unreasonableness of the seizure that led to its discovery. The court explained that, to hold otherwise would create a sweeping exception to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). The court stated that the exigent circumstances exception may permit suspicionless seizures when officers can narrowly target the seizures based on specific information of a known crime and a controlled geographic area. The court further stated that, by allowing officers to bypass the individualized suspicion requirement based on the information they had here—the sound of gunfire and the general location where it may have originated—would completely cripple a fundamental Fourth Amendment protection and create a dangerous precedent. View "United States v. Curry" on Justia Law

In 2015, the SEC initiated enforcement proceedings in the District of Arizona against appellant for illegitimate investment activities. In 2017, appellant entered into a consent agreement with the SEC, and the United States District Court for the District of Arizona ultimately held appellant liable for disgorgement in the amount of $4,494,900. Then the grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia returned an indictment charging appellant with, inter alia, securities fraud and unlawful sale of securities, based in part on the same conduct underlying the SEC proceeding. Appellant filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, which the district court denied.The Fourth Circuit joined with every other circuit to have decided the issue in holding that disgorgement in an SEC proceeding is not a criminal penalty pursuant to the Double Jeopardy Clause, such that an individual cannot be later prosecuted for the conduct underlying the disgorgement. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of appellant's motion to dismiss the indictment. View "United States v. Bank" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit for damages against federal officers, invoking the implied cause of action recognized in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). The district court denied the officers' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity.The Fourth Circuit held, contrary to the officers' suggestion, that the court's well-established forfeiture rules govern here, and those rules do not allow the officers to raise before the court a Bivens-related claim they never pressed in the district court. The court dismissed the portion of the officers' appeal contending that the district court misconstrued the record evidence, because, during this interlocutory posture, the court's jurisdiction is limited to issues of law and does not permit review of the district court's assessment of the factual record. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part and dismissed in part the district court's order. View "Hicks v. Ferreyra" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit granted a petition for review of the BIA's decision finding that petitioner was removable because he had been convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude. The court held that neither of petitioner's convictions for leaving an accident in violation of Va. Code Ann. 46.2–894 and for use of false identification in violation of Va. Code Ann. 18.2–186.3(B1) is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude. The court explained that petitioner's failure-to-stop conviction lacked the required culpable mental state and there is no morally reprehensible conduct. Regardless of the required culpable mental state, the court was not convinced that the offense of false identification has the required moral reprehensible conduct to qualify as a crime involving moral turpitude. Accordingly, the court vacated the BIA's order of removal and remanded with instructions that the government be directed to return petitioner to the United States. View "Nunez-Vasquez v. Barr" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit vacated defendant's sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm after officers discovered guns and drugs in the bedroom of a private home where defendant was arrested. The court held that, because the district court made no findings linking defendant's possession of a firearm to his felony drug possession, the district court clearly erred when it applied USSG 2K2.1(b)(6)(B)'s four-level enhancement on the ground that defendant possessed a firearm "in connection with" the felony possession of cocaine. View "United States v. Bolden" on Justia Law

After the district court sentenced defendant to an above-Guidelines revocation sentence, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369, 2373 (2019)(Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment), that a different mandatory revocation provision, 18 U.S.C. 3583(k), was unconstitutional in an as-applied challenge. Defendant relied on Haymond and appealed the revocation of his supervised release, arguing that 18 U.S.C. 3583(g) similarly violates his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Defendant also alleged that his prison sentence is plainly unreasonable.The Fourth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence, holding that any constitutional error is not plain at the time of this appeal. The court held that section 3583(g) likely does not meet Justice Breyer's controlling test, and given that no majority of the Supreme Court endorsed the application of Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), in the supervised release context, the court remained bound by this court's prior decision that it does not. The court also held that defendant's sentence was not plainly unreasonable because it reflected his repeated violations of supervised release. View "United States v. Coston" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for multiple criminal offenses related to drug trafficking and money laundering. However, the court vacated defendant's life sentence and held that his sentence was procedurally unreasonable because the district court failed to address his non-frivolous mitigation arguments against a life sentence. In this case, there is no mention in the district court's brief explanation of the sentence of defendant's argument that given his age, a shorter, 20-year sentence would be sufficient to incapacitate him until he is in his 60s and thus less likely to recidivate. Furthermore, the district court did not address defendant's arguments regarding sentencing disparities with his coconspirators. Accordingly, the court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Webb" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against various correctional officials under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging a violation of his procedural due process rights. Plaintiff's claims stemmed from the four years that he spent in solitary confinement in prison. The district court granted summary judgment to the officials on the ground that plaintiff had failed to establish a protected liberty interest.The Fourth Circuit vacated and held that plaintiff has presented evidence demonstrating that his confinement conditions were severe in comparison to those that exist in general population and that his segregation status may have had collateral consequences relating to the length of his sentence. Furthermore, although the duration of plaintiff's segregated confinement is not as long as the substantial periods of segregated confinement that this court has found sufficient to support a protected liberty interest in the past, prisoners need not languish in solitary confinement for decades on end in order to possess a cognizable liberty interest under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this case, the four-plus years that plaintiff spent in administrative segregation is significant enough to tip the scales in his favor, particularly in light of the other evidence of indefiniteness that he relies upon in this case. Therefore, the court held that there is at least a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether plaintiff's conditions of confinement imposed a significant and atypical hardship in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Smith v. Collins" on Justia Law