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

The Fourth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9), which prohibits anyone who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence (MCDV), from possessing a firearm. The court held that, in enacting section 922(g)(9), Congress sought to protect victims of domestic abuse from the risk of gun violence posed by their abuser. Therefore, the legislature has forbidden anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm.In this case, defendant has admitted to committing such a crime -- made in the form of a guilty plea -- with representation by counsel, under no inappropriate pressure from the state, in a forum where there was no right to a jury trial. Accordingly, the court held that the guilty plea stands, and defendant's possession of the firearm was illegal. View "United States v. Locke" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from the wrongful conviction of two brothers, teenage boys with severe intellectual disabilities, for the rape and murder of an 11 year old girl in 1983. The brothers spent 31 years in prison and on death row before they were exonerated based on DNA evidence linking another individual to the crime. The brothers filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action alleging that the state and county law enforcement officers investigating the crime violated their Fourth Amendment and due process rights.The Fourth Circuit held that the district court did not improperly apply the test for qualified immunity by waiting to parse the liability of each individual defendant as it relates to each claim until the facts were determined; defendants did not have probable cause to arrest the brothers as a matter of law; and the brothers' right not to be arrested without probable cause based on a coerced and fabricated confession was clearly established. Therefore, the district court did not err by denying summary judgment to defendants on the false arrest and malicious prosecution claims based on qualified immunity.The court also held that the district court properly denied summary judgment as to the due process claims where it was beyond debate at the time that the brothers' constitutional rights not to be imprisoned and convicted based on coerced, falsified, and fabricated evidence or confessions, or to have material exculpatory evidence suppressed, were clearly established. View "Gilliam v. Sealey" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed their convictions stemming from their involvement in a conspiracy to distribute controlled substance analogues. The Fourth Circuit held that, either under the de novo or abuse of discretion standard of review, the district court wrongly quashed the subpoena of the DEA expert, and the court therefore reversed the district court's materiality ruling as to this issue.On the merits of defendants' remaining evidentiary challenges, the court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding a special agent's testimony as irrelevant and affirmed that evidentiary ruling. However, with regard to an attorney and Defendant Ritchie's testimony, however, the court vacated the district court's exclusion of that evidence and remanded for further proceedings. Finally, the court declined to reassign the case on remand. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated, and remanded. View "United States v. Galecki" on Justia Law

A defendant must meet a high bar before he may challenge the veracity of a facially valid search warrant affidavit. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's refusal to hold a Franks hearing after defendant was convicted of federal drug and firearm offenses. Defendant argued that a police officer's trial testimony contradicted her search warrant affidavit that had led to evidence used at his trial. In this case, defendant failed to show that the mere imprecision of the warrant affidavit showed falsity. Even assuming the affidavit was false, defendant failed to show intentional falsity or a reckless disregard for the truth by the officer. Furthermore, defendant's additional challenges to the affidavit failed the rigorous plain error standard. View "United States v. Moody" on Justia Law

This case arose from a car accident between petitioner and another driver, who caused the accident while she was driving under the influence of alcohol. Petitioner sought a writ of mandamus after the district court denied restitution as a condition of the driver's probation.The Fourth Circuit held that it had subject matter jurisdiction over the petition pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3771(d)(3). The court also held that the district court abused its discretion by failing to state why the burden of complexity or delay in sentencing outweighed petitioner's need for restitution, and this error harmed him because he received none of the requested restitution to which he may be entitled under the Victim and Witness Protection Act.The court also exercised its discretion to address certain issues that were likely to recur upon remand: United States v. Fountain should not be a guiding star for the lower court's balancing analysis on remand; in considering and balancing the statutory factors under section 3663(a)(1)(B)(ii), the district court may consider, among other factors, the availability of alternative civil remedies for petitioner's past lost earnings; and, in performing its section 3663(a)(1)(B)(ii) balancing analysis, the district court should confine its review to what petitioner requested—past lost earnings. View "In re: Carlos Brown" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit granted a petition for review of the FWS's new 2018 Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement in connection with the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The court held that FWS arbitrarily reached its no-jeopardy conclusions and failed to correct the deficiencies in the take limits that the court identified in the previous appeal.In this case, the Biological Opinion's conclusion that the pipeline will not jeopardize the rusty patched bumble bee (RPBB) in Bath County, Virginia was arbitrary and capricious because it runs counter to available evidence, relies on data without providing a meaningful basis for that reliance, fails to consider the species’s status as a whole, and fails to consider the pipeline’s impacts on RPBB recovery. Furthermore, the Biological Opinion's finding that the clubshell's continued survival will not be jeopardized by the pipeline construction was not in accordance with the law and failed to consider important aspects of the issue before the agency. The court also held that the Biological Opinion failed to create enforceable take limits for the Indiana bat and the Madison Cave isopod. Accordingly, the court vacated the 2018 Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement. View "Defenders of Wildlife v. U.S. Department of the Interior" on Justia Law

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