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

The concurrent sentence doctrine is satisfied when the only potential harm to the defendant is grounded on unrealistic speculation. In this case, defendant alleged that the district court erred in applying the concurrent sentence doctrine because he would be exposed to the possibility of a collateral consequence if his firearm sentence were not reviewed and reduced.The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's application of the concurrent sentence doctrine in the circumstances presented to it. Nonetheless, after parties filed their briefs in this appeal, Congress enacted the First Step Act of 2018, and defendant subsequently claimed that leaving his firearm sentence unreviewed would also have the consequence of denying him relief under that Act. Given this development, the court remanded to allow the district court, in the first instance, to consider defendant's argument that he is eligible for a reduction of his drug-trafficking sentence under the First Step Act. View "United States v. Charles" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment. Defendant had pleaded guilty to illegally being in the United States after having been removed after a felony conviction. The district court held that defendant failed to establish that the removal was fundamentally unfair and denied his motion to dismiss.The court held that when an expedited removal is alleged to be an element in a criminal prosecution, the defendant in that prosecution must, as a matter of due process, be able to challenge the element if he did not have a prior opportunity to do so. Because the rules attendant to expedited removal preclude review of the removal order, the defendant in a 8 U.S.C. 1326 prosecution premised on an expedited removal order under 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(1)(A)(i) must be given the opportunity in the section 1326 prosecution to challenge the validity of that order. Because section 1225(b)(1)(D) strips courts in section 1326 prosecutions from hearing a defendant's challenge to an expedited removal element, the court held that this jurisdiction-stripping provision is unconstitutional.On the merits, the court held that defendant did not sufficiently demonstrate a reasonable probability that the Attorney General would have allowed him to withdraw his application for admission under section 1225(a)(4), and thus he failed to show prejudice, as required to demonstrate that his removal was fundamentally unfair. View "United States v. Silva" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, her minor son, and her father-in-law filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action against a state trooper, asserting various violations of the Fourth Amendment. Plaintiff's claims arose from her arrest for obstruction when she attempted to stop the trooper from shooting her family's dog. The district court granted summary judgment for the trooper.The Fourth Circuit held that there were genuine disputes of fact underlying the false arrest, excessive force, and malicious prosecution claims. The court also held that the district court properly denied plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on the search and seizure claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order denying plaintiff partial summary judgment and reversed the order granting summary judgment to the trooper. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Hupp v. Cook" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of a petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241 and remanded with instructions to grant the writ. The court held that petitioner's current sentence stems from faulty arithmetic based on a now-obsolete scheme of statutory interpretation, and thus his petition met the requirements of section 2255(e), the savings clause. In this case, petitioner's conviction on Count IV—the second of his 18 U.S.C. 924(c) convictions—could not stand because it was not supported by an independent firearm possession under recent Tenth Circuit precedent. View "Hahn v. Moseley" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit reversed defendant's conviction for knowingly making a false statement to a licensed firearms dealer in the acquisition of a firearm. The court held that it need not determine whether the expert testimony at issue was properly excluded because the evidence introduced at trial was insufficient to independently corroborate defendant's confession. Consequently, without the necessary corroboration of the confession, the prosecution failed to present sufficient independent evidence that a crime was committed, and where, as here, the prosecutor's failure to do so was "clear," the absence of substantial independent evidence cannot sustain the jury's verdict and required reversal. The court remanded with instructions to enter a judgment of acquittal. View "United States v. Rodriguez-Soriano" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit vacated the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's action against NCG, which alleged two claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Plaintiff alleged that NCG breached its fiduciary duties in the administration of a group life insurance plan in which plaintiff's late husband had enrolled and for which NCG was the "named fiduciary."The court held that the complaint sufficiently alleged NCG's fiduciary status in relation to plaintiff's ERISA claims. In this case, the complaint showed that NCG acted as a function fiduciary when it failed to inform or misinformed plaintiff's husband about the continued eligibility under the plan, and NCG neglected to notify her husband that he had the option to convert or port his life insurance coverage. Furthermore, NCG breached the fiduciary duty that it owed to plaintiff as a beneficiary when Vice President Baham advised her not to appeal Unum Life's denial of her benefits claim. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "Dawson-Murdock v. National Counseling Group, Inc." on Justia Law

Life filed a complaint against another corporation of the same name, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition under the Lanham Act. Life obtained an injunction against the defendant corporation and its officers, including the corporation's president, who was not named a defendant. After entry of a default judgment against the corporation and damages-related discovery, the district court awarded damages and attorneys' fees against both the defendant corporation and its president personally.The Fourth Circuit held that the district court erred in entering judgment against the president personally when he was not named as a party or otherwise brought into the case by service of process. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the president in contempt of court. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for the district court to determine whether any of the damages and fees award entered against the president is attributable to his contempt of court. View "Life Technologies Corp. v. Govindaraj" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit held that it had jurisdiction over a petition for review of the IJ's determination that petitioner was removable, because petitioner had exhausted his administrative remedies.The court also held that petitioner's prior Virginia offense of participating in a criminal street gang was not categorically a crime involving moral turpitude. Therefore, petitioner's prior conviction could not be a basis for removing him. Accordingly, the court granted the petition for review, vacated the order of removal, and remanded with instructions. View "Rodriguez Cabrera v. Barr" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action alleging that the former Chief of Police and a Virginia State Police Superintendent were directly liable for violation of his substantive due process rights based on the police department's failure to protect him from violent protesters at a rally.The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the complaint for failure to state a claim, holding that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established at the time of the rally that failing to intervene in violence among the protesters would violate any particular protester's due process rights. View "Turner v. Thomas" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an indigent state prisoner, filed three pro se civil rights actions in the district court against various employees of the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the City of Allendale. The Fourth Circuit joined the Ninth and Tenth Circuits to reaffirm that a district court's dismissal of a prisoner's complaint does not, in an appeal of that dismissal, qualify as a "prior" dismissal. Accordingly, plaintiff's motions to proceed in forma pauperis under the Prison Litigation Reform Act are granted. View "Taylor v. Grubbs" on Justia Law