Justia U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Two noncitizens were determined removable because they had convictions for aggravated felonies, offenses “relating to obstruction of justice,” 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(S), 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). The Ninth Circuit concluded that Cordero-Garcia’s state conviction for dissuading a witness from reporting a crime did not constitute an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” because the state offense did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. The Fourth Circuit concluded that Pugin’s state conviction for accessory after the fact constituted an offense “relating to obstruction of justice” even if the state offense did not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending.The Supreme Court held that an offense may “relat[e] to obstruction of justice” under section 1101(a)(43)(S) even if the offense does not require that an investigation or proceeding be pending. The definition of “aggravated felony,” for purposes of removal, was expanded in 1996 to include offenses “relating to obstruction of justice.” Obstruction of justice is often “most effective” when it prevents an investigation or proceeding from commencing. The phrase “relating to” indicates that the statute covers offenses having a connection with obstruction of justice—which surely covers common obstruction offenses that can occur when an investigation or proceeding is not pending. Even if a specific prohibition in 18 U.S.C. 1503(a) requires that an investigation or proceeding be pending, Congress defined offenses under 1101(a)(43)(S) more broadly. View "Pugin v. Garland" on Justia Law

A federal court imposing multiple prison sentences typically has discretion to run the sentences concurrently or consecutively, 18 U.S.C. 3584. Section 924(c)'s exception provides: no term of imprisonment imposed “under this subsection shall run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment.” Lora was convicted of aiding and abetting a violation of section 924(j)(1), which penalizes “a person who, in the course of a violation of subsection (c), causes the death of a person through the use of a firearm,” where “the killing is a murder.” A violation of subsection (c) occurs when a person “uses or carries a firearm” “during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime,” or “possesses a firearm” “in furtherance of any such crime.” Lora was also convicted of conspiring to distribute drugs. The district court concluded that it lacked discretion to run the sentences for Lora’s two convictions concurrently. The Second Circuit affirmed.A unanimous Supreme Court vacated. Section 924(c)(1)(D)(ii)’s bar on concurrent sentences does not govern a 924(j) sentence, which can run either concurrently with or consecutively to another sentence. Subsection (c)’s consecutive-sentence mandate applies only to the terms of imprisonment prescribed within subsection (c). A sentence imposed under subsection (j) does not qualify. Subsection (j) is located outside subsection (c) and does not call for imposing any sentence from subsection (c); while subsection (j) references subsection (c), that reference is limited to offense elements, not penalties. It is not “implausible” for Congress to have imposed the harsh consecutive-sentence mandate under subsection (c) but not subsection (j). That result is consistent with the statute’s design. Unlike subsection (c), subsection (j) generally eschews mandatory penalties in favor of sentencing flexibility. View "Lora v. United States" on Justia Law

Smith was indicted in the Northern District of Florida for theft of trade secrets from StrikeLines’ website. Smith moved to dismiss the indictment, citing the Constitution’s Venue Clause and the Vicinage Clause. Smith argued that he had accessed the website from his Alabama home and that the servers storing StrikeLines’ data were in Orlando, Florida. The Eleventh Circuit determined that venue was improper and vacated Smith’s conviction, but held that a trial in an improper venue did not bar reprosecution.The Supreme Court affirmed. The Constitution permits the retrial of a defendant following a trial in an improper venue conducted before a jury drawn from the wrong district. Except as prohibited by the Double Jeopardy Clause, when a defendant obtains a reversal of a prior, unsatisfied conviction, he may be retried. Nothing in the Venue Clause suggests that a new trial in the proper venue is not an adequate remedy for its violation. The Vicinage Clause—which guarantees the right to “an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” concerns jury composition, not the place where a trial may be held, and concerns the district where the crime was committed, rather than the state. The vicinage right is one aspect of the Sixth Amendment’s jury-trial rights and retrials are the appropriate remedy for violations of other jury-trial rights.The Double Jeopardy Clause is not implicated by retrial in a proper venue. A judicial decision on venue is fundamentally different from a jury’s verdict of acquittal. Culpability is the touchstone; when a trial terminates with a finding that the defendant’s criminal culpability had not been established, retrial is prohibited. Retrial is permissible when a trial terminates on a basis unrelated to factual guilt. The reversal of a conviction based on a violation of the Venue or Vicinage Clauses, even when called a “judgment of acquittal,” does not resolve the question of criminal culpability. View "Smith v. United States" on Justia Law

Dubin was convicted of healthcare fraud, 18 U.S.C. 1347 after he overbilled Medicaid for psychological testing performed by his company. The prosecution argued that, in defrauding Medicaid, he also committed “[a]ggravated identity theft” under section 1028A(a)(1), which applies when a defendant, “during and in relation to any [predicate offense, such as healthcare fraud], knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.” Dubin’s fraudulent Medicaid billing included the patient’s Medicaid reimbursement number. The Fifth Circuit affirmed Dubin’s aggravated identity theft conviction.The Supreme Court vacated. Under section 1028A(a)(1), a defendant “uses” another person’s means of identification “in relation to” a predicate offense when the use is at the crux of what makes the conduct criminal. Under the government’s view, section 1028A(a)(1) would apply automatically any time a name or other means of identification happens to be part of the payment or billing used in the commission of a long list of predicate offenses. The Court concluded that the use of a means of identification must entail using a means of identification specifically in a fraudulent or deceitful manner, not as a mere ancillary feature of a payment or billing method. The inclusion of “aggravated” in 1028A’s title suggests that Congress contemplated a particularly serious form of identity theft, not ordinary overbilling offenses. View "Dubin v. United States" on Justia Law

Then-New York Governor Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” initiative administered through Fort Schuyler Management Corporation, a nonprofit affiliated with SUNY, aimed to invest $1 billion in upstate development projects. Investigations later uncovered a scheme that involved Cuomo’s associates--a member of Fort Schuyler’s board of directors and a construction company made payments to a lobbyist with ties to the Cuomo administration. Fort Schuyler’s bid process subsequently allowed the construction company to receive major Buffalo Billion contracts.The participants were charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud 18 U.S.C. 1343, 1349. Under the Second Circuit’s “right to control” theory, wire fraud can be established by showing that the defendant schemed to deprive a victim of potentially valuable economic information necessary to make discretionary economic decisions. The jury instructions defined “property” as including “intangible interests such as the right to control the use of one’s assets,” and “economically valuable information” as “information that affects the victim’s assessment of the benefits or burdens of a transaction, or relates to the quality of goods or services received or the economic risks.” The Second Circuit affirmed the convictions.The Supreme Court reversed. Under Supreme Court precedents the federal fraud statutes criminalize only schemes to deprive people of traditional property interests. The prosecution must prove that wire fraud defendants “engaged in deception,” and also that money or property was “an object of their fraud.” The "fraud statutes do not vest a general power in the federal government to enforce its view of integrity in broad swaths of state and local policymaking.” The right-to-control theory applies to an almost limitless variety of deceptive actions traditionally left to state contract and tort law. The Court declined to affirm Ciminelli’s convictions on the ground that the evidence was sufficient to establish wire fraud under a traditional property-fraud theory. View "Ciminelli v. United States" on Justia Law

Percoco served as the Executive Deputy Secretary to New York Governor Cuomo from 2011-2016. During an eight-month hiatus in 2014, Percoco resigned from government service to manage the Governor’s reelection campaign; he accepted payments totaling $35,000 to assist a real-estate development company in dealings with Empire State Development, a state agency. Percoco urged a senior ESD official to drop a requirement of an agreement with local unions as a precondition to receiving state funding. ESD informed the company the following day that the agreement was not necessary.Percoco was convicted of conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. 1343, 1346. The court instructed the jury that Percoco could be found to have had a duty to provide honest services to the public during the time when he was not serving as a public official if the jury concluded that “he dominated and controlled any governmental business” and that “people working in the government actually relied on him because of a special relationship he had with the government.” The Second Circuit affirmed.The Supreme Court reversed, finding the jury instruction erroneous. The instructions did not define “the intangible right of honest services” with sufficient definiteness. The Court cited its 2010 “Skilling” rejection of the prosecution’s argument that section 1346 should apply to cases involving undisclosed self-dealing by a public official or private employee, While a person nominally outside public employment could have the necessary fiduciary duty to the public “the intangible duty of honest services” does not extend a duty to the public to all private persons. View "Percoco v. United States" on Justia Law

Convicted of the 1996 strangulation murder of Stites, Reed was sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. Reed’s state and federal habeas petitions were unsuccessful. In 2014, Reed sought DNA testing of the evidence. The prosecutor refused to test most of the evidence. The court denied Reed’s motion; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, citing chain of custody issues.Reed filed suit, 42 U.S.C. 1983, asserting that Texas’s stringent chain-of-custody requirement was unconstitutional and effectively foreclosed DNA testing for individuals convicted before the promulgation of rules governing the handling and storage of evidence. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit, finding that the two-year statute of limitations began to run when the Texas trial court denied Reed’s motion, not when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied rehearing.The Supreme Court reversed. The statute of limitations began to run at the end of the state-court litigation. Establishing a procedural due process violation requires proof of deprivation by state action of a protected interest in life, liberty, or property, and inadequate state process. The claim is not complete when the deprivation occurs but only when the state fails to provide due process. Texas’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete when the state litigation ended and deprived Reed of his asserted liberty interest in DNA testing. If the statute of limitations began to run after a state trial court’s denial of the motion, the prisoner would likely continue to pursue state court relief while filing a federal section 1983 suit. That parallel litigation would run counter to principles of federalism, comity, consistency, and judicial economy. If any due process flaws lurk in the DNA testing law, the state appellate process may cure those flaws, rendering a federal suit unnecessary. View "Reed v. Goertz" on Justia Law

Halkbank is owned by the Republic of Turkey. The United States indicted Halkbank for conspiracy to evade economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran by laundering Iranian oil and gas proceeds and making false statements to the Treasury Department. Two individuals, including a former Halkbank executive, have been convicted for their roles in the conspiracy. The Second Circuit affirmed the denial of Halkbank’s motion to dismiss.The Supreme Court held that the district court has jurisdiction under the general federal criminal jurisdiction statute, 18 U.S.C. 3231; the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1330 does not provide immunity.Section 3231’s text encompasses the charged offenses; the Court declined to limit the broad jurisdictional grant to exclude suits against foreign states and their instrumentalities “simply because" unrelated U.S. Code provisions "happen to expressly reference foreign states and instrumentalities.”FSIA's text exclusively addresses civil suits against foreign states and their instrumentalities. Although most litigation involving foreign states and their instrumentalities at the time of the FSIA’s 1976 enactment was civil, the Executive Branch occasionally attempted to subject foreign-government-owned entities to federal criminal investigations. Given that history, it is unlikely that Congress sought to codify foreign sovereign immunity from criminal proceedings without mentioning such proceedings. Congress housed FSIA within Title 28, which mostly concerns civil procedure, not in Title 18, which addresses crimes and criminal procedure. Under Halkbank’s view, a commercial business that is owned by a foreign state could engage in criminal conduct affecting U.S. citizens and threatening U.S. national security while facing no criminal accountability in U.S. courts. The Court rejected various arguments that U.S. criminal proceedings against instrumentalities of foreign states would negatively affect national security and foreign policy. The Court remanded for consideration of arguments regarding common-law immunity. View "Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States" on Justia Law

Cruz, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, argued that under the Supreme Court’s “Simmons” decision, he should have been allowed to inform the jury that a life sentence in Arizona would be without parole. The Arizona Supreme Court held that Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme did not trigger Simmons. The Supreme Court subsequently held ("Lynch" (2016)), that it was fundamental error to conclude that Simmons “did not apply” in Arizona.Cruz sought to raise the Simmons issue under Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g), which permits a successive post-conviction petition if “there has been a significant change in the law that, if applicable ... would probably overturn the defendant’s judgment or sentence.” The Arizona Supreme Court denied relief, reasoning that a significant change in the application of a law is not a significant change in the law itself, focusing on whether Lynch was a significant change in federal law.The U.S. Supreme Court vacated. A state procedural ruling that is “firmly established and regularly followed” ordinarily forecloses review of a federal claim but the Arizona ruling rests on such a novel and unforeseeable interpretation of a state-court procedural rule that it is not adequate to foreclose review of the federal claim. Although Lynch did not change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Simmons, it did change the operation of Simmons by Arizona courts in a way that matters for Rule 32.1(g). The analytic focus of Arizona courts applying Rule 32.1(g) has always been on the impact on Arizona law. View "Cruz v. Arizona" on Justia Law

Castro-Huerta was convicted of child neglect in Oklahoma state court. The Supreme Court subsequently held that the Creek Nation’s eastern Oklahoma reservation was never properly disestablished and remained “Indian country.” Castro-Huerta then argued that the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute him (a non-Indian) for a crime committed against his stepdaughter (Cherokee Indian) in Tulsa (Indian country). The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals vacated his conviction.The Supreme Court reversed. The federal government and the state have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country. States have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in Indian country unless preempted either under ordinary preemption principles, or when the exercise of state jurisdiction would unlawfully infringe on tribal self-government. Neither preempts state jurisdiction in this case.The General Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 1152, does not preempt state authority but simply “extend[s]” the federal laws applicable to federal enclaves to Indian country. The Act does not say that Indian country is equivalent to a federal enclave, that federal jurisdiction is exclusive in Indian country, or that state jurisdiction is preempted in Indian country. Public Law 280 affirmatively grants certain states broad jurisdiction to prosecute state-law offenses by or against Indians in Indian country, 18 U.S.C. 1162; 25 U.S.C. 1321, and does not otherwise preempt state jurisdiction.Employing a balancing test, the Court considered tribal, federal, and state interests to conclude that this exercise of state jurisdiction would not infringe on tribal self-government nor preclude an earlier or later federal prosecution. Oklahoma has a strong sovereign interest in ensuring public safety and criminal justice within its territory. Indian country is part of a state, not separate from it. View "Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta" on Justia Law