Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff appealed from a district court order dismissing his 42 U.S.C. 1983 civil rights action against the Attorney General of Florida and the State Attorney for Florida's Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. Plaintiff claimed that the State prevented him from gaining access to physical evidence for purposes of DNA testing, in violation of his procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation and compulsory process, and his Fourteenth Amendment right of access to the courts. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of all the claims for failure to state a claim or for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction where the Supreme Court had recently made it clear that there was no freestanding constitutional right to access evidence for DNA testing, and that the federal courts could only upset a state's postconviction DNA access procedures if they were fundamentally inadequate to vindicate substantive rights. View "Alvarez v. Attorney General, State of FL, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to 17 counts of tax-related offenses and was sentenced to 27 months in prison. On appeal, defendant argued that the district court erred by refusing to group all of his counts into a single group pursuant to U.S.S.G. 3D1.2(b) or (d) as "counts involving substantially the same harm." The court agreed and held that all 17 of defendant's counts should have been grouped under section 3D1.2(d) because their offense level was determined largely on the basis of the amount of loss, the underlying offenses were of the same general type, and grouping served section 3D1.2's principal purpose of grouping closely related counts. Accordingly, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Register" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed the district court's grant of Troup's motion for summary judgment as to plaintiffs' sexual harassment claim brought pursuant to Title IX, 20 U.S.C. 1681. The facts of this case stemmed from circumstances surrounding the sexual molestation of a 12-year-old boy by his 45-year-old seventh grade homeroom teacher. The court held that the district court combined Title VII, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., workplace discrimination standards with Title IX teacher-on-student harassment standards when it articulated plaintiff's burden. However, the district court's reliance on the wrong standard did not necessarily mandate that the court must now reverse its decision and remand the case. After considering the factual record and drawing all justifiable inferences in favor of plaintiffs, the court found that the information of which the school principal had knowledge was not enough to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether he had actual notice sufficient to alert him to the possibility of sexual harassment of the 12-year-old by his teacher. Accordingly, although for different reasons than the district court, the court granted summary judgment. View "J.F.K., et al. v. Troup County Sch. Dist., et al." on Justia Law

Petitioner, a Florida prisoner on death row, appealed from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner argued that the trial court erred in sentencing him to death because his sentence was unconstitutionally disproportionate pursuant to the Eighth Amendment and the Supreme Court jurisprudence laid out in Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona. Petitioner also argued that his trial counsel was ineffective at the guilt phase and at the penalty phase, and that the trial court erred in denying his claim that trial counsel was operating under a conflict of interest by delegating the primary responsibility for litigating petitioner's case to counsel for his co-defendant. The court held that the Florida Supreme Court's resolution of petitioner's case was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Therefore, petitioner's habeas petition was denied. View "Stephens v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant was before the court of a single incident of extreme domestic violence. At issue was whether the single incident of battery justified termination of supervised release. Defendant was present and represented by counsel; he neither objected nor did he or his counsel indicate by words or even body language that any language of the court's crystal clear holding was less than fully understood; and given the simple issue before the district court, the evidence and the reasons for revoking supervised release were clear. The court concluded that nothing more was required by the Constitution and affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, has lived in the United States since 1972 and in April 2004, he pleaded guilty to, and was sentenced to 96 months imprisonment for, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine. At issue was whether the district court properly denied his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion as successive and whether Padilla v. Kentucky announced a retroactively applicable new rule of law. The court held that the district court failed to issue Castro v. United States warnings when it recharacterized petitioner's July 2008 motion as a section 2255 petition. However, the court affirmed the district court on the ground that petitioner's July 2010 petition for post-conviction relief was untimely under section 2255. Accordingly, the court affirmed. View "Figuereo-Sanchez v. United States" on Justia Law

Petitioner, an Alabama prisoner on death row, appealed from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254. The court found that petitioner's claim that Alabama's judicial override scheme violated the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was foreclosed by precedent. The court could not say that the decisions of the state trial and appellate courts, in regards to the mitigation evidence, were contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established law. By presenting several relevant circumstances that in sum were sufficient to raise an inference of discrimination, petitioner met his burden of establishing a prima facie Batson v. Kentucky case. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's order and remanded the case for the district court to complete the final two steps of the Batson proceedings. View "Madison v. Commissioner, Alabama Dept. of Corrections, et al." on Justia Law

This case arose from charges against defendants, which related to the stealing of prescription medical devices from hospitals and selling them on the black market. In this interlocutory appeal, defendants challenged a district court's order denying their motion to vacate a pretrial protective order restraining their assets. Defendant argued that, in addition to traceability, they should have been allowed to challenge the factual foundation supporting the grand jury's probable cause determinations at a pretrial, post-restraint hearing. Because defendants were not entitled to try the entire case twice, once before trial and then again before a judge and jury, the court affirmed the district court's order denying defendants' motion to vacate the protective order. View "United States v. Kaley, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence of imprisonment of 27 months for illegal reentry after deportation. At issue was whether a sentencing court could assess a criminal history point for an uncounseled misdemeanor conviction where defendant was sentenced to probation and a monetary fine. The court agreed with the government's alternative contention that, even if the imposition of a sentence of probation violated defendant's right to counsel, the sentencing judge was entitled to assess the criminal history point for the monetary fine because that portion of the sentence remained valid. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Acuna-Reyna" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of first degree murder, burglary of a dwelling, and robbery with a deadly weapon after the brutal killing of an 88-year-old woman in her apartment. Defendant was sentenced to death and after direct appeal, defendant subsequently sought review of the district court's denial of his habeas petition. At issue was four claims: (1) the alleged ineffective assistance of counsel in excluding petitioner from an unrecorded bench conference during the penalty phase of trial; (2) the alleged ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to advise petitioner of his right to testify at the penalty phase or to call him to testify at the penalty phase; (3) an alleged trial court error in concluding that petitioner's past drug use was "not mitigating"; and (4) cumulative error. After thorough review, the court also concluded that petitioner was not entitled to relief on any of these claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court and denied the petition. View "Morris v. Secretary Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law