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

Appellants, Burson Augustin, Stanley Grant Phanor, Patrick Abraham, Rotschild Augustine, and Narseal Batiste, were all convicted of crimes related to terrorist activities and Al Qaeda. On appeal, defendants raised six issues: (1) Batiste and Augustine challenge the district court's order granting in part the government's motion to strike portions of the indictment as surplusage; (2) Augustin, Phanor, and Augustine each challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions; (3) Augustin argued that the government's involvement in the criminal scheme was outrageous and therefore violated the Due Process Clause; (4) Batiste and Abraham challenged several of the district court's evidentiary rulings relating to the admissibility of lay and expert testimony; (5) Batiste argued that limitations on his cross-examination of witnesses resulted in cumulative error requiring a new trial; and (6) all appellants challenged the district court's dismissal of a juror for refusing to follow the court's instructions on the law. After careful review of the record and the parties' briefs, and after having had the benefit of oral argument, the court affirmed.

Defendant, a professional sports agent, was convicted of smuggling five Cuban baseball players into the United States, transporting the players from Miami to Los Angeles, and harboring them there until they applied for asylum. Defendant appealed his convictions and his five-year mandatory minimum sentence. The court held that the evidence did not support defendant's convictions of transporting and harboring aliens and therefore, reversed and vacated their sentences. The court held that the evidence supported defendant's convictions of conspiracy to smuggle, aiding and abetting an attempted smuggle, and aiding and abetting a smuggle and therefore, affirmed these convictions and sentences. The court found defendant's remaining assertions of error to be without merit.

Respondent appealed the district court's order granting petitioner a new trial based upon Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States errors involving the State's payment of $500 in reward money to the state's key witness. As a preliminary matter, the court observed that in this case, there were no issues of procedural bar, exhaustion, statute of limitations, or non-retroactivity often encountered in habeas cases. The court held that, pursuant to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), deferential standard of review, because petitioner demonstrated an unreasonable application by the state court of the Giglio standard, the court affirmed the district court's order granting habeas relief.

This case involved convictions for two Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. 1951(a), conspiracies and related to substantive offenses: the first conspiracy Count 1, charged two appellants, Rene Gonzalez Perez and Amilka Del Monte, with conspiring to rob a check-cashing store; the second conspiracy, Count 5, grew out of the first conspiracy and charged all four appellants - Perez, Del Monte, Roberto Davila, and Luis Fernandez - and Reinier Pereier with conspiring to rob a fictional cocaine stash house. The related offenses were charged in Counts 6, 7, and 8. Count 6 alleged that all appellants attempted to rob the cocaine stash house; Count 7 alleged that they carried firearms in connection with such attempt; and Count 8 charged Del Monte with being a felon in possession of a firearm. On appeal, all appellants challenged the sufficiency of the evidence; in the alternative, appellants argued that a new trial should be granted because of several prejudicial errors that the district court made both pretrial and at trial; and Perez and Del Monte challenged their sentences. The convictions of Perez, Del Monte, Fernandez, and Davila were affirmed; Del Monte's sentences on Counts 7 and 8 were also affirmed; and Perez's sentences on Counts 1, 5, 6, and 7 were vacated, and his case remanded so that he could be afforded his right of allocution.

Defendant appealed his convictions for aggravated identify theft, principally claiming the government did not produce sufficient evidence that defendant knew the name and social security number he used in applying for a United States passport belonged to an actual person. Defendant also argued that a two-level obstruction-of-justice enhancement was erroneously applied to his sentence because the admittedly false statements he made during his pretrial services interview were not material, because he did not intend to obstruct justice, and because no finding was made that he had actually obstructed justice. Defendant also asserted for the first time on appeal, that use of his pretrial services interview statements against him violated the Fifth Amendment because he had not yet been Mirandized when the statements were made. After thorough review, the court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions and that the district court properly applied the obstruction-of-justice enhancement to his sentence.

Petitioner, who was convicted of capital murder, appealed the district court's denial of habeas relief on two alternative grounds. First, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rested its decision on independent and adequate state procedural grounds when it relied on Rules 32.6(b) and 32.7(d) of the Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure to dispose of the relevant claim, thereby precluding federal review. Second, even if these procedural grounds did not preclude the district court from considering the relevant claims on the merits, 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1) barred habeas relief because the Court of Criminal Appeal's decision was neither contrary to, nor involved an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington. While the district court erred in finding that petitioner had procedurally defaulted the relevant claim, the court agreed with that court's alternative holding that, through the lens of section 2254, petitioner was unable to carry the burden of demonstrating that his attorneys' allegedly ineffective assistance of counsel prejudiced the sentencing phase of his criminal proceedings, as required by Strickland.

In 1994, defendant was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, one count of armed burglary, and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but those convictions were set aside on appeal by the Florida Supreme Court. In 2004, defendant was retried and again convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and defendant claimed that this second trial violated the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on double jeopardy. On direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court denied him relief, as did the federal district court on his application for a writ of habeas corpus. Having carefully reviewed the Florida Supreme Court's decision in light of United States Supreme Court precedent, the court held that defendant was not entitled to habeas relief because he was not "twice put in jeopardy" as that phrase was defined in federal constitutional law.

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Cuba and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, petitioned for review of the decision of the BIA affirming the IJ's order of removal rendered on the ground that he was inadmissible to the United States because he was convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude due to his conviction for false imprisonment under section 787.02, Florida Statutes. The court held that the BIA and the IJ erred by considering evidence beyond the record of petitioner's false imprisonment conviction to determine that he had been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. The court held, however, that because the BIA and IJ assumed without deciding that the Florida offense of false imprisonment was not categorically a crime involving moral turpitude, the court must remand to the BIA to determine in the first instance whether petitioner's false imprisonment conviction qualified as a conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude. Therefore, the court granted the petition and remanded for further proceedings.

In 1987, petitioner burglarized a home and murdered the two people inside. Petitioner, now a death-row inmate, appealed the district court's denial of his section 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The court held that petitioner had pointed to no Supreme Court precedent establishing that the Florida Supreme Court's decision, that petitioner's trial lawyers had performed well enough, was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, or that it was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. The court also held that the Florida Supreme Court's decision rejecting petitioner's Batson claim was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief.

In this Section 1983 case, four homeless plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of two ordinances in the City Code of St. Petersburg, Florida and of the city's enforcement of the ordinances. The trespass ordinance at issue authorized certain city agents to issue a temporary trespass warning for specific city land on which the agent determined that the warning recipient had violated city or state law. The storage ordinance at issue prohibited storage of personal property on city land such as parks and rights-of-way. The district court dismissed all of plaintiffs claims. The court affirmed the district court's rulings, except the court vacated part of the district court's ruling about the trespass ordinance. Plaintiffs have stated claims on the issues of procedural due process under the United States Constitution and on their right to intrastate travel under the Florida Constitution.