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

In this political corruption case, Larry P. Langford, formerly a Commissioner for Jefferson County, Alabama and mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, appealed his convictions for multiple counts of bribery, conspiracy, money laundering, mail fraud, tax fraud, and criminal forfeiture. Langford broadly argued that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions for mail and wire fraud; the district court fatally erred in some of its evidentiary rulings; the district court wrongfully charged the jury about the bribery statute; and the district court mistakenly denied his post-voir-dire motion for a change of venue. After thorough review, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Plaintiffs, Cindy Fils and Nemours Maurice, raised claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that certain named police officers used excessive force to subdue plaintiffs at a club. The court denied the officers' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity and the officers appealed. The court affirmed the district court with respect to Maurice's excessive force claims against Officer Bergert and Williams; reversed the district court with respect to Fils' excessive force claims against Officer Bergert and Burns; affirmed the district court's decision to dismiss the remaining claims; and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.

Plaintiffs, visually or manually impaired Florida citizens who were registered to vote in Duval County, Florida and were represented by the American Association of People with Disabilities, filed a putative class action against defendants, alleging that defendants violated federal statutory and state constitutional provisions by failing to provide handicapped-accessible voting machines to visually or manually impaired Florida voters after the 2000 general election. The court vacated its prior opinion and in its revised opinion, held that the district court erroneously granted plaintiffs' requested declaratory judgment and injunction against purported violations of the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101-12213, and the regulations promulgated thereunder. The opinion, however, based that outcome exclusively on the ground that voting machines were not "facilities" under 28 C.F.R. 35.151(b).

Defendant was convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping, sadistic sexual battery, and murder of a nine-year-old girl. At issue was whether defendant demonstrated that he was entitled to equitable tolling of the one year limitations period imposed by 28 U.S.C. 2244(d)(1). The court held that defendant's habeas petition was filed 520 days after the expiration of his one-year limitations period under section 2244(d); even with the generous assumption that the entire 492 days while counsel was representing defendant should be equitably tolled, the petition was still 91 days too late; and given the facts alleged in the petition, if true, would not warrant enough equitable tolling to make it timely. Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion for an evidentiary hearing to prove such allegations and the judgment dismissing the petition as untimely was affirmed.

Defendant, a death-row inmate, appealed the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for writ of habeas corpus. Defendant was granted a certificate of appealability on four issues; however, this opinion addressed only two of the issues: (1) whether trial counsel was ineffective at the penalty phase because counsel failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence and (2) whether defendant was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his competency to stand trial. The court held that counsel was ineffective because he failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence and that absent the errors, the sentencer would have concluded the balance of aggravating and mitigating factors did not warrant death. Therefore, the district court erred in denying habeas relied on defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The court held, however, that petitioner's second claim was without merit where the record was devoid of evidence that he was incompetent to stand trial. Therefore, the court reversed the denial of habeas relief on petitioner's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and affirmed the district court's denial of an evidentiary hearing.

Defendant appealed and filed a motion for a stay of execution where he was sentenced to death after murdering his mother, father, and fourteen-year-old sister. At issue was whether the use of pentobarbital as an anesthetic posed a substantial risk of serious harm to defendant and whether the lethal injection protocol, as written and administered in practice, violated his rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court held that the two-year statute of limitations for 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims began to run on October 5, 2001 and expired nearly eight years before defendant filed his action. The court also held that defendant failed to show that pentobarbital, once fully administered and allowed to act, was ineffective as an anesthetic and that the "use of pentobarbital does not create a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates." The court further held that there was no support for defendant's proposition that the Equal Protection Clause required a written execution protocol sufficiently detailed to ensure that every execution was performed in a precisely identical manner. The state had a legitimate interest in ensuring that its executions occurred in a thorough manner with maximum inmate safeguards and the alleged deviations from the written protocol were rationally related to that interest. Therefore, defendant had not shown a substantial likelihood of success on his equal protection claim. Accordingly, the motion for stay of execution was denied.

Defendant, pro se, was convicted of 129 counts of unlawfully dispensing certain controlled substances by means of written prescriptions and sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment totaling 97 months and fined $200,000. At issue was whether the district court effectively denied defendant his right to testify. The court held that in these circumstances, where the district court initiated a colloquy with defendant regarding his right to testify, the district court was duty-bound to correct a pro se defendant's obvious misunderstanding of his right to testify. The court also held that the error was not harmless and therefore, the court vacated defendant's convictions and remanded.

Plaintiff was convicted of murder for his role in a shooting of a correctional officer during an escape attempt. Plaintiff sought access to evidence to conduct DNA testing for the purpose of seeking executive clemency. The court held, as a preliminary matter, that plaintiff's claim was not time-barred. The court held, however, that plaintiff had not shown that defendants, state officers, have violated a federally protected right on the facts of the case. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. 1983 action.

Defendant pleaded guilty by agreement to distributing more than 50 grams of cocaine base and the district court sentenced him as a career offender to 360 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release. Defendant's predicate state convictions were ultimately vacated. At issue was whether the district court erred in finding that defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion was second or successive in light of his argument that the grounds he had asserted for challenging his sentence did not exist at the time he filed his previous motion to vacate. The court held that because the basis for Johnson v. United States did not exist before defendant's proceedings on his initial section 2255 motion concluded, defendant's numerically second motion was not "second or successive," and section 2255(h)'s gatekeeping provision did not apply. The court also held that because attempting to raise defendant's Johnson claim in his initial section 2255 motion would have been an empty formality, defendant was permitted to raise it in a second, diligently pursued 2255 motion. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for resentencing.

Defendant was convicted of charges under 18 U.S.C. 1956 and 31 U.S.C. 5324 where Toros Seher sold jewelry in cash-based transactions to people he knew to be drug dealers. These sales were often structured to avoid any individual payments in excess of $10,000, which would have required Seher, as a jewelry store agent and recipient of the cash, to file a report with the government (Form 8300), containing information about the buyer. At issue was whether the forfeiture of the jewelry store's inventory was an excessive fine in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The court held that the forfeiture order was not grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the crime in light of the factors in United States v. Browne, the interplay between the forfeiture order and the fine imposed by the district court, the value of the forfeited property, and the seriousness of the criminal conduct. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.