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

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of federal habeas relief to petitioner, who was sentenced to death for two murders. The court held that Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), did not apply retroactively to petitioner and any challenge to his death sentence on this basis was beyond the court's reach on federal habeas review. The court also held that the Florida Supreme Court's rejection of petitioner's ineffective assistance claim was not an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). In this case, counsel's decision not to call an equivocal expert, in part to preserve an advantage at closing, was reasonable trial strategy. Furthermore, petitioner failed to meet his burden of showing prejudice under Strickland because there was no reasonable probability the expert's testimony would have made a difference in the outcome of the trial, given the weight of the evidence against him. View "Knight v. Florida Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief to petitioner, who was sentenced to death for murder. The court held that the state court did not unreasonably determine that petitioner failed to establish objectively incompetent performance by his counsel during the penalty phase of his trial. Furthermore, even if petitioner had demonstrated that his counsel performed as no reasonable lawyer could have, the court did not find that the state court's decision -- that a different result was not substantially likely -- was an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington.The court also held that the state court did not unreasonably determine the facts or unreasonably apply Atkins v. Virginia with respect to the intellectual component of intellectual disability; the record supported the state court's conclusion that petitioner did not have substantial deficits in adaptive behavior; the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals' determination that petitioner did not have intellectual disability was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Atkins; and the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying an evidentiary hearing on the Atkins claim. View "Jenkins v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to a correctional facility officer and warden in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action brought by plaintiff, alleging that defendants were deliberately indifferent to his substantial risk of safety.The court held that the evidence plaintiff presented regarding a general risk of inmate-on-inmate violence did not rise to the level necessary to show deliberate indifference to a substantial risk. In this case, plaintiff failed to produce evidence that he was in an environment so beset by violence that confinement, by its nature, threatened him with the substantial risk of serious harm. Likewise, plaintiff's claim that defendants were deliberately indifferent to the more specific threat he warned them about in April 2016 -- that he had heard from a friend that someone intended to harm him -- failed because he did not have enough evidence to establish a genuine issue of fact that the warden was put on notice that plaintiff faced a substantial risk of serious harm. Finally, plaintiff failed to establish that defendants were deliberately indifferent in failing to investigate his report that someone was out to harm him or in otherwise failing to abide by prison policy. View "Marbury v. Warden" on Justia Law

The ACRU filed suit alleging that defendant, the former Broward County Supervisor of Elections, failed to satisfy her list-maintenance obligations under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).The Eleventh Circuit held that, under the NVRA, the states and their subsidiaries are required to conduct a general program of list maintenance that makes a reasonable effort to remove voters who become ineligible on account of death or change of residence, and only on those two accounts. The court also held that nothing in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) changes what is required by the NVRA. Finally, the court held that the NVRA sets forth an explicit safe-harbor procedure by which the states may fulfill their list-maintenance obligations as to voters who move. In this case, the district court did not clearly err by finding that defendant's Election Supervisor conducted a program reasonably designed to accomplish these tasks required under the NVRA. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "American Civil Rights Union v. Snipes" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit denied petitioner's application seeking an order authorizing the district court to consider a second or successive petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner claimed that he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty. The court held that petitioner failed to make a prima facie showing that his claim satisfied the requirements of 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(2), because petitioner failed to rely on a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable, because all the cases he relies on were either previously available to him or were not made retroactive to cases on collateral review. The court also denied petitioner's emergency motion to stay his execution. View "In re: Gary Ray Bowles" on Justia Law

After plaintiff was arrested for simple battery following an altercation with her sister, she filed suit against Deputy McDonough, alleging the violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The district court granted summary judgment for the deputy.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed and held that the deputy had ample probable cause to arrest plaintiff where the underlying information indicating that she had battered her sister was credible and his investigation was sufficient. The court also held that the deputy did not use excessive force in making the arrest by pulling plaintiff's arms, cinching the handcuffs too tight, or tugging on her fingers and arms to remove her rings. View "Huebner v. Bradshaw" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit denied the motion for stay of execution pending appeal, holding that the district court rightly dismissed petitioner's current petition as second or successive under 28 U.S.C. 2244(b)(3)(A). In this case, petitioner failed to obtain authorization from this court before filing the petition. The court rejected petitioner's remaining three claims as to why his petition should not be dismissed, and held that petitioner failed to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of his appeal. View "Bowles v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an involuntarily committed inmate, filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action claiming that FCCC's policies violated his expressive freedoms under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.Applying the four factor test in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89–90 (1987), the Fifth Circuit held that the FCCC's ban of plaintiff's newsletter was reasonably related to the substantial government interest of security and safety that was unrelated to the suppression of expression. The three other factors also weigh in favor of FCCC where plaintiff has alternative means of exercising his asserted right; allowing residents to read the newsletter could increase tension and hostility, potentially resulting in inmate-on-staff violence; and the ban was not an exaggerated response to FCCC's security concerns. The court also held that the 2006 page-limit policy did not violate plaintiff's First Amendment rights where it clearly related to FCCC's legitimate interest in conserving resources. View "Pesci v. Budz" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit held that the City of LaGrange did not enjoy state-action immunity when it ties its water-utility service to its natural-gas service for customers in unincorporated Troup County, Georgia. In this case, the Georgia legislature could have foreseen that cities would use their water monopoly to increase their share of an unrelated market and that such an anticompetitive move was not the inherent, logical, or ordinary result of the legislative scheme. Therefore, the district court correctly denied the City's motion to dismiss for state-action immunity and the court affirmed the district court's judgment in this interlocutory appeal. View "Diverse Power, Inc. v. City of LaGrange" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's stay of execution, holding that 18 U.S.C. 3599 did not create a right that was enforceable under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the states. Plaintiff wanted to pursue his 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim that Florida interfered with his right under section 3599 to have attorneys in the Capital Habeas Unit (CHU) of the Federal Public Defender's Office represent him before the Florida Clemency Commission and Board.Therefore, because plaintiff sought to enforce a right under section 1983 that Congress did not make enforceable against the states, he failed to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of his section 1983 claim before the district court. Consequently, he failed to show a substantial likelihood of success on his appeal of the district court's denial of his motion to stay his execution. Finally, the court held that plaintiff failed to show that he was otherwise entitled to the stay. View "Bowles v. Desantis" on Justia Law