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

Appellant illegally reentered the United States in 2007 and pled guilty to being an alien found in the United States after having been convicted of aggravated felonies and deported. Appellant challenged the district court's decision to impose a 16-level enhancement to his base level offense score pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2L1.2(b)(1)(A), where the district court based the enhancement on its finding that the North Carolina statute under which appellant previously was convicted, N.C. Gen. Stat. 14-202.1, constituted "sexual abuse of a minor" and thus, was a "crime of violence" pursuant to the Sentencing Guidelines. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court and held that the Padilla-Reyes v. United States definition of "sexual abuse of a minor" was at least as broad and inclusive as section 14-202.1 and where appellant failed to demonstrate any North Carolina precedent that did not fit within the broad contours of the definition in Padilla-Reyes. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Defendant was convicted of capital murder stemming from the shooting death of his estranged wife and father-in-law in front of his three children. Defendant sought a writ of habeas corpus vacating his death sentence on the ground that his attorney rendered ineffective assistance of counsel during the penalty phase of his murder trial in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. The court held that defendant failed to establish that the judgment of the court of appeals was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court and that the judgment was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented. Therefore, the court held that defendant was not entitled to habeas corpus relief and recounted the facts that led to his conviction and the reasons why the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his claim that his attorneys' performance was constitutionally deficient.

Convicted and sentenced to death for a 1982 beating death, petitioner exhausted state appeals and twice sought habeas corpus in state courts. A petition alleging ineffective assistance of counsel was rejected; the second, alleging that petitioner was mentally retarded, was found to be barred for not having been raised at trial. Although petitioner was hospitalized before trial and found to show complete psychomotor retardation and be unable to answer any questions, he did not receive an independent psychiatric evaluation. The federal district court denied a habeas petition in 2009. The Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded. Georgia's procedural default rule, O.C.G. 9-14-51, is inadequate to bar federal review of a mental retardation claim because it has not been consistently and regularly followed. The court noted that petitioner's trial occurred prior to Georgia’s 1988 ban on executing mentally retarded persons. The district court must determine whether discovery, including a mental evaluation, and a hearing are appropriate.

Plaintiff, a 63-year-old, was gardening at her son's house when an officer, disguised as a mailman, delivered a package containing ketamine. She spoke to the officer and accepted the package. Officers executed a warrant 30 minutes later. Plaintiff, unable to get up and down because of arthritis, was pushed to the ground and held down for 10 minutes and heard the click of a gun. A friend of plaintiff's son, a guest in the house, admitted that the package was his; he was removed. Plaintiff was detained for about two hours while the house was searched. The district court and Eleventh Circuit rejected plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claims. Although the warrant referred to persons within the dwelling, and plaintiff was outside, the initial detention was reasonable in light of the facts known to officers at the time. After officers determined that plaintiff was no threat, continued detention in the house was reasonable during the diligently-pursued search. The force employed was minimal and reasonable despite officers' knowledge that plaintiff was an elderly woman, wearing only a one-piece bathing suit, and was known by officers to be infirm.

The court sua sponte modified its previous opinion in this appeal to reflect recent developments in the law of the First and Seventh Circuits. At issue was whether the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA), Pub. L. No. 111-120, 124 Stat. 2372, applied to defendants who committed crack cocaine offenses before August 3, 2010, the date of its enactment, but who were sentenced thereafter. The court held that the general savings clause could not bar application of the FSA to sentencing conducted after its August 3, 2010 enactment. Accordingly, the court remanded defendant's case to the district court for resentencing.

Plaintiff, owner and operator of a flat-rate ground transportation service, filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, claiming that the Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission's (Commission) regulations required him to obtain certificates and permits for his vehicles were preempted by 49 U.S.C. 14501, also known as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. Specifically, plaintiff contended that section 14501(a)(1)(C) preempted the Commission's regulation regarding his 15-passenger vehicle and section 14501(c)(1) preempted the Commission's regulation regarding his 7-passenger minivan. The court affirmed the district court's decision rejecting plaintiff's first argument and adopted that court's reasoning. The court also held that, because plaintiff transported property only as an ancillary service to the transportation of passengers he was not a "[m]otor carrier of property" under section 14501(c). Consequently, it followed that the provision and its subparts did not preempt the Commission's luxury service transportation rule. Accordingly, the district court correctly granted summary judgment to the Commission.

In this reverse discrimination case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., and 42 U.S.C. 1981, plaintiff, a white male, claimed that his former employer discriminated against him on account of his race in terminating his employment. At issue was whether the district court misapplied the summary judgment standard to the evidence presented. Based on the totality of the circumstances, the court held that the record contained sufficient circumstantial evidence from which a jury could infer that the employer displayed a racially discriminatory animus toward plaintiff when it fired him in May 2005. Consequently, plaintiff presented a case sufficient to withstand the employer's motion for summary judgment. Therefore, the judgment of the district court was vacated and remanded for further proceedings.

Martin J. Bradley III and his father, Martin J. Bradley, Jr. (collectively, the Bradleys), owned Bio-Med Plus, Inc. (Bio-Med), a Miami-based pharmaceutical wholesaler that purchased and sold blood-derivatives. This case stemmed from multiple schemes to defraud the Florida and California Medicaid programs by causing them to pay for blood-derivative medications more than once. The Government chose to prosecute the schemes and a grand jury indicted eight individuals, including Albert L. Tellechea, and two companies, Bio-Med, and Interland Associates, Inc. The Bradleys, Bio-Med, and Tellechea subsequently appealed their convictions and raised several issues on appeal. The court affirmed the Bradleys', Bio-Med's, and Tellechea's convictions, and Bradley III's and Bio-Med's sentences. The court vacated Bradley, Jr.'s sentences on Counts I and 54 and Tellechea's sentence on Count 3, and remanded those counts for resentencing. The court reversed the district court's October 4, 2006 order appointing the receiver and monitor, and its supplemental receivership order of May 17, 2007. The court finally held that, as soon as circumstances allowed, the receivership should be brought to an immediate close.

Petitioner appealed the denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging his death sentence after he was convicted of murdering two people. At issue was whether defendant was denied his Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights to effective assistance of counsel when the trial court denied his requests to remove his lawyer and his lawyer's requests to withdraw and when his lawyer failed to investigate and to present mitigating evidence at resentencing in addition to that which the lawyer presented at the original sentencing. The court held that defendant was not denied effective assistance of counsel and in applying the deferential review standard mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), (d)(2), the Florida Supreme Court's ruling was not contrary to, and did not involve an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law and was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. Accordingly, the court affirmed the denial of habeas corpus relief.

This case stemmed from defendant's spree of murder and mayhem that covered three counties of rural Georgia. Defendant was convicted of malice murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. Defendant was sentenced to death and appealed the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. At issue was whether the prosecution's exercise of six peremptory challenges against six black members of the jury venire on the basis of race was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Also at issue was whether certain arguments made by the prosecutor amounted to misconduct that deprived defendant of a fair trial. The court held that the adjudication of defendant's Batson claims and prosecutorial misconduct claims by the Supreme Court of Georgia was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, and was not an unreasonable determination of the facts. Therefore, the court held that, after careful review of the record, defendant's claims lacked merit. The court further held that three remaining claims raised by defendant also failed. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction and sentence.