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

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in permitting one of his arresting officers to offer testimony at trial on the correlation between guns and drug activity and to suggest that defendant was selling drugs; the court declined to evaluate the applicability of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), because the district court would have imposed the same sentence regardless of whether the mandatory minimum applied; and the court rejected defendant's claim under Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), and held that there was no plain error in the district court's failure to instruct the jury of the knowledge-of-status element and any error from the lack of a knowledge-of-status element in defendant's plea colloquy did not affect his substantial rights. Finally, the court remanded for clarification of the judgment to reflect the sentence the district court said it would have imposed if the Armed Career Criminal Act did not apply. View "United States v. McLellan" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate his sentence. The court held that defendant's prior 1996 Florida convictions for robbery qualified as violent felonies under the Armed Career Criminal Act's (ACCA) elements clause, and rejected his contention that the court's decision in his direct appeal carved out a narrow exception to pre-1997 Florida robbery convictions obtained in Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal. The court also held that petitioner's prior Florida felony battery conviction was a violent felony under the ACCA in light of the court's holding in United States v. Vail-Bailon, 868 F.3d 1293 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 2620 (2018). View "Welch v. United States" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that, given the totality of the circumstances, it was reasonable for officers, mistaking a dog's whimper for a person in distress, to enter defendant's home without a warrant. Therefore, defendant's challenge to the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence failed.The court upheld the district court's imposition of a 22 offense level finding because defendant possessed a semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a large capacity magazine under USSG 2K2.1(a)(3)(A)(i) (2016). The court also upheld defendant's sentencing enhancement under USSG 2K2.1(b)(4)(B) for possessing a rifle that had an obliterated serial number. View "United States v. Evans" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit stayed an injunction that was issued by the district court against the County and the Director of the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitations Department (MDCR), requiring defendants to employ numerous safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and imposing extensive reporting requirements. Metro West inmates had filed a class action challenging the conditions of their confinement under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and seeking habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241 for the named plaintiffs with a "medically vulnerable" subclass of inmates.The court held that defendants established that they are likely to prevail on appeal. In this case, the district court likely committed errors of law in granting the preliminary injunction when it incorrectly collapsed the subjective and objective components of the deliberate indifference inquiry. Defendants are also likely to succeed on appeal because plaintiffs offered little evidence to suggest that defendants were deliberately indifferent. Furthermore, defendants have shown that they will be irreparably injured absent a stay where defendants will lose the discretion vested in them under state law to allocate scarce resources among different county operations necessary to fight the pandemic. Finally, the balance of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of the stay. Because defendants have satisfied all four Nken factors for a stay, the court granted the stay pending appeal and motion to expedite the appeal. View "Swain v. Junior" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241. Plaintiff alleged that President Obama commuted his "total sentence" of imprisonment, which included the 37 months of imprisonment that he served as part of his 2003 sentence. Based on the terms of the commutation order, the Constitution, and Supreme Court precedent, the court could not say that the Bureau erred in excluding the 37-month term of imprisonment from its recalculation. View "Andrews v. Warden" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possessing a firearm and ammunition as an immigrant illegally or unlawfully in the United States. After defendant appealed his conviction and sentence, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), which reversed a decision from this court and held that under 18 U.S.C. 922(g), the government must prove that a defendant knew "his status as a person barred from possessing a firearm" when he knowingly possessed a firearm.The Eleventh Circuit held that defendant established the necessary prejudice under plain error review and vacated defendant's section 922(g) conviction, remanding for further proceedings. In this case, the district court committed an error that was made plain by the Supreme Court in Rehaif. Furthermore, defendant has sufficiently shown a reasonable probability that but for the error, the outcome of his trial would have been different. View "United States v. Russell" on Justia Law

This case arose when a truck driver driving a truck owned by FST collided with two vehicles. Grange, the insurer of the truck, filed suit against the driver of one of the impacted vehicles, FST, and T&G, asking the district court to declare its obligations under three insurance policies—two issued to FST and one issued to T&G. At issue was whether there was a change in the truck's legal status, such that FST could have "borrowed" its own truck back from T&G. The district court determined that coverage existed under the T&G policy but not the FST policies.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment, holding that defendants failed to introduce evidence showing that a written lease gave exclusive use rights to T&G. Therefore, the district court correctly held that no reasonable factfinder could have found in defendants' favor. Although defendants introduced new evidence purporting to establish that the lease granted T&G exclusive use rights in their motion for reconsideration, the court held that the district court properly denied that motion, because the evidence could have been produced earlier. Finally, the court agreed with the district court that, under the policies and under Georgia law, the events here constituted a single accident. View "Grange Mutual Casualty Co. v. Baisden" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that DISH violated the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act (FCCPA) in its attempts to collect debt it knew had been discharged in bankruptcy and in its direct contacts with plaintiff knowing she was represented by counsel. Plaintiff also alleged that DISH violated the Telephone Consumer Practices Act (TCPA) by contacting plaintiff about the debt with an automated dialing system after she revoked her consent to receive such calls.The Eleventh Circuit first determined that DISH's claim for the Pause debt was discharged. The court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment as to the FCCPA claims. In this case, DISH attempted to collect debt it had no legal right to collect because the debt had been discharged in bankruptcy, and DISH directly contacted plaintiff after having received notice that she was represented by counsel. Accordingly, the court remanded on the FCCPA claims for the district court to consider whether DISH actually knew that the Pause charges were invalid and that plaintiff was represented by counsel with regard to the debt it was attempting to collect, and if so, whether such errors were unintentional and the result of bona fide error.The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment as to the TCPA claim, holding that the TCPA does not allow unilateral revocation of consent given in a bargained-for contract. The court reasoned that, by permitting plaintiff to unilaterally revoke a mutually-agreed-upon term in a contract would run counter to black-letter contract law in effect at the time Congress enacted the TCPA. View "Medley v. Dish Network, LLC" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas relief. Petitioner alleged that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase of his capital-murder trial.The court held that, even assuming that counsel performed deficiently in failing to investigate and present the mitigation evidence that petitioner now raises—thus satisfying the first prong of the two-part Strickland standard that governs ineffective-assistance claims—petitioner failed to carry his burden of demonstrating resulting prejudice. View "Knight v. Florida Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Roper Pump and its affiliated companies, alleging a claim for retaliation and race discrimination in violation of Title VII. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants.The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Roper Pump on plaintiff's retaliation claim, holding that there was enough evidence in the record, when taken in a light most favorable to plaintiff, to support his claim that Roper Pump responded to a claim of race discrimination by conditioning continued employment on a release of claims and firing plaintiff for refusing to sign the release. However, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment as to the race discrimination claim, agreeing with the trial court that plaintiff failed to proffer comparators that were similar in all material respects. View "Knox v. Roper Pump Co." on Justia Law