Justia U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

A jury found Defendants guilty of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. In a consolidated appeal, the three raise numerous challenges to the admission of wiretap evidence, the jury instructions, the sufficiency of the evidence, and their sentences.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. In regards to Defendant’s argument that the district court erred in admitting the wiretap evidence, the court found that the district court did not clearly err in determining that the Government satisfied the necessity requirement. The court reasoned that the affidavits explained in great detail how these conventional methods had failed—and would have likely continued to fail—to reveal the full extent of the organization’s drug-trafficking activities and membership because, among other reasons, Defendant and his associates utilized various and frequently changing residences and vehicles. Further, the orders authorizing the wiretaps expressly required minimization, providing that interception “must immediately terminate when it is determined that the conversation is unrelated to communications subject to interception.”   Moreover, the court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to give the multiple-conspiracies jury instruction. Here, the Government’s evidence at trial overwhelmingly pointed to a single conspiracy with a singular purpose—selling methamphetamine and cocaine—a steady core membership—Defendants, and others—operating primarily in the same territory—Burlington—over several years. Witnesses consistently described a single organization in which Defendant would recruit and oversee multiple underlings. Although one of the defendants may have joined the conspiracy later than other members, and membership in the organization may have fluctuated somewhat over the years, this is not necessarily evidence of separate conspiracies. View "United States v. Breon Armstrong" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C Section 922(g)(1) pursuant to a written plea agreement. He later moved to withdraw his guilty plea when the probation office determined that he had three or more prior convictions “for a violent felony or a serious drug offense,” which qualified him for a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years imprisonment under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”). At sentencing, the district court denied Defendant’s motion, reasoning that the plea agreement expressly stated that Defendant may be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence under the ACCA and that this would not be grounds for withdrawal of his plea. The district court then concluded that Defendant’s prior convictions indeed qualified him for a 15-year sentence under the ACCA and sentenced him accordingly. Defendant argued that the district court erred by not allowing him to withdraw his guilty plea and by finding that his criminal history included three ACCA predicate offenses.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court consulted the indictment to which Defendant pleaded guilty. The court explained that the language makes clear that Defendant pleaded guilty to the Section 571.030.1(9) offense of shooting at other persons from a motor vehicle. The final step, then, is to determine whether this offense has a physical-force element. The court concluded that it does because there is no “non-fanciful, non-theoretical manner” to knowingly shoot at other persons from a motor vehicle “without so much as the threatened use of physical force.” View "United States v. Clarence Harris" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Defendant of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The district court denied his motion for a new trial in a thirty-page Order and sentenced Defendant as an armed career criminal to 360 months imprisonment. The court also revoked Defendant’s supervised release and imposed a consecutive fifty-four-month sentence. Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, arguing there was insufficient evidence to convict him of the firearm offenses; the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly instructed the jury; the government committed Brady violations; his trial counsel was ineffective; and the district court erred in sentencing him as an armed career criminal and abused its discretion in revoking supervised release.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction but, based on an intervening armed-career-criminal decision, remanded for resentencing.  The court explained that at oral argument, without conceding the merits of these issues, government counsel conceded that United States v. Perez, 46 F.4th 691 (8th Cir. 2022), would require a different outcome and, therefore, the court should remand for further proceedings on whether Defendant was properly sentenced under the ACCA. The court agreed that is the proper course of action. As the district court may decide that the Iowa convictions are no longer proper ACCA predicate offenses, an issue the court did not decide, that would moot the question of whether the Georgia conviction is a qualifying ACCA predicate, absent a second appeal. View "United States v. Kenny Smart" on Justia Law

Following a six-week trial in 1998, a federal jury convicted Defendant of twelve crimes he committed as part of the 6-0 Tres Crips, including the five murders (Counts 51-55) and conspiracy to distribute cocaine and crack cocaine (Count 2). Under the mandatory sentencing guidelines then in effect, the district court imposed statutory maximum life imprisonment sentences on those counts. Defendant sought Section 2255 relief under Section 404 of the First Step Act of 2018, which made relief under Sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 available to eligible defendants sentenced prior to 2010. Invoking the concurrent sentence doctrine, the district court denied First Step Act relief. On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court abused its discretion by employing the concurrent sentence doctrine to avoid resentencing Defendant.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court wrote that in reviewing the district court’s use of the concurrent sentence doctrine for an abuse of discretion, the district court applied the doctrine consistent with controlling Eighth Circuit decisions. The court explained that when, as here, the district court ruling on a First Step Act motion initially sentenced the defendant and later granted a sentence reduction, the court’s “plain statement” that it declined to exercise its discretion to grant a further reduction “closes the matter.” The district court properly treated the concurrent sentence doctrine as “a species of harmless-error review.” As it applied the proper analysis in invoking the doctrine, and its analysis is consistent with our First Step Act precedents, there was no abuse of its broad First Step Act discretion. View "United States v. Robert Jefferson" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Defendant of aggravated sexual abuse, and the district court sentenced him to 440 months in prison. Defendant appealed his conviction. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that Defendant claims the district court erred “by failing to instruct the jury that it had to agree on the specific act of sexual abuse in order to convict.” However, Defendant cites no authority that failure to give a specific unanimity instruction. To the contrary, the Eighth Circuit has held that jurors need not agree on a specific sexual act to reach a unanimous verdict.   Further, Defendant contends the district court erred in admitting hearsay statements regarding the reports of abuse. The court wrote that the statement was limited in scope to the victim’s disclosure of the abuse, not the specifics of it. But even if the statements were inadmissible hearsay, their admission would be harmless given the other evidence against Defendant.   Moreover, Defendant maintains he was deprived of his Fifth Amendment right to a fair trial because the government’s closing argument “distorted its burden of proof and unfairly mischaracterized Defendant’s theory of the case.” Even if the closing were improper, under plain error review, the Eighth Circuit wrote it will “reverse only under exceptional circumstances,” which requires that Defendant show “a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different absent the alleged error.” The evidence and the district court’s instructions show this is not an exceptional case where the conviction is overturned based solely on a prosecutor’s statements during closing argument. View "United States v. Adam Poitra" on Justia Law

After a jury convicted Defendant, former Sheriff of Franklin County, Arkansas, of depriving two jail detainees of their constitutional rights by subjecting them to unreasonable force that resulted in bodily injury, the district court sentenced Defendant to 48 months imprisonment, followed by 2 years of supervised release. Defendant challenged both his conviction and his sentence.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the district court’s finding that Defendant attempted to influence Ball’s testimony was not clearly erroneous and sufficiently supports the district court’s application of the obstruction-of-justice enhancement. The district court sentenced Defendant to a within-Guidelines sentence of 48 months’ imprisonment. Defendant argued in a cursory fashion that his sentence is “greater than necessary,” given the alleged de minimis nature of his victims’ injuries and the purported bias of the witnesses at trial. However, the district court discussed Section 3553(a) factors in-depth and considered the proffered mitigating and aggravating circumstances in crafting the sentence. View "United States v. Anthony Boen" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to carjacking and brandishing-a-firearm charges and received a 179-month sentence. He now argued that the district court committed procedural and substantive errors in determining his sentence.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. He first argued that the district court procedurally erred by referring to the JSIN statistics. He claimed that he had a right under Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to have notice of, and therefore time to review, all material information relied on by the district court at sentencing.  The court explained that it found that any error made by the district court in interpreting the JSIN statistics “did not substantially influence the outcome of the sentencing proceeding” because the district court focused on Defendant, not the data. If the district court erred in this case, its error was harmless.   Further, Defendant’s 179-month, within-guidelines sentence reflects the district court’s careful weighing of the Section 3553(a) factors. As the district court did not fail to consider or properly weigh any relevant factor or otherwise commit a clear error of judgment, the court concluded that Defendant’s sentence is not substantively unreasonable. View "United States v. Ryan McDaniel" on Justia Law

Defendant was sentenced to 27 months of imprisonment and a five-year term of supervised release after pleading guilty to one count of failing to register as a sex offender. His term of supervised release began on September 2, 2020. At a revocation hearing, Defendant admitted to several substance- abuse violations of his supervised release. The district court revoked his supervision and imposed a ten-month sentence of imprisonment to be followed by a one-year term of supervised release. Defendant married a woman with three minor children from a previous relationship, and he asked the district court to add “stepchildren” to “biological and legally adopted children” for purposes of setting up supervised visits. The district court denied his request. Defendant appealed, challenging the special conditions of his post-revocation supervision.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that contrary to Defendant’s characterization, the Court does not interpret Special Condition 2 as an outright prohibition on visits with his stepchildren. As Defendant points out, the condition does not include “stepchildren” in the category of minors with whom supervised visits may be arranged with the help of the probation office. But, more generally, the condition’s first sentence prohibits “contact” with minors “without the prior written consent of the United States Probation Office.” A fair reading of this restriction would permit Defendant to visit his stepchildren so long as he obtained the requisite permission from the proper source. The court read Special Condition 2 as barring Defendant from visiting his stepchildren only when the probation office does not give him permission to do so beforehand. View "United States v. Shawn Hutson" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted on separate counts of producing, receiving, and possessing child pornography. He moved to suppress all evidence obtained after the warrantless seizure of his cell phone, including the images found on the phone, the evidence seized at his house, and the images found on the hard drive. Defendant also moved to suppress the statements he made to law enforcement. The district court denied Defendant’s motion in its entirety. Shrum entered conditional guilty pleas to one count of producing child pornography and one count of receiving child pornography and was sentenced to 210 months of imprisonment. Defendant timely appealed the denial of his motion to suppress. Defendant argued that his cell phone was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment and, therefore, the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the Sergeant had probable cause to believe Defendant’s phone contained contraband or evidence of a crime. The Sergeant had seen photos of text messages between A.B. and Defendant that indicated they had engaged in sexual activity, perhaps as recently as on the camping trip the night before. Further, there was a fair probability that those text messages, or related evidence of unlawful conduct, would be found on Defendant’s phone. Exigent circumstances were also present. When the Sergeant did find the victim, it appeared that she had just showered, suggesting to the Sergeant that she may have washed away physical evidence of sexual contact. Given the totality of the circumstances, the court agreed with the district court that the good-faith exception applies. View "United States v. Keith Shrum" on Justia Law

A jury convicted three Defendants (“D1”, “D2”, and “D3”) of conspiring to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana. The jury also convicted D1 and D3 of possessing 100 kilograms or more of marijuana with intent to distribute and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. All three Defendants appealed the denial of a motion to suppress and challenge the sufficiency of the evidence. They concede officers properly stopped their vehicle for commercial inspection but argue the officers subsequently exceeded the permissible scope of the inspection. In addition, D2 appealed his sentence.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed, holding that the officers developed probable cause before their actions exceeded the permissible scope of a commercial inspection and Defendants’ other arguments lack merit. The court found that the district court properly concluded that asking a driver for log books, bills of lading, and safety equipment; inquiring as to ownership, registration, and insurance; inspecting a vehicle’s exterior; and looking in a trailer for safety equipment or to inspect cargo securement are all proper aspects of a Level II inspection. Further, the district court did not commit clear error in finding the facts as a whole, including reliance on the dog, provided probable cause. Further, as to D2’s sentencing challenge, the district court did not clearly err in finding him to be a leader and applying an enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. Section 3B1.1. The resulting within-range sentence is presumptively reasonable on appeal, and D2 presents no persuasive arguments to suggest this is the “rare case” where such a presumption is rebutted. View "United States v. Tu Anh Nguyen" on Justia Law