Justia U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned the United States District Court for the District of Utah's decision to dismiss the charge against Jonathan Alexander Morales-Lopez, who was accused of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). This statute prohibits any person who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance from possessing a firearm.The district court held that the phrase "unlawful user" in the statute is unconstitutionally vague, both on its face and as applied to the facts of Morales-Lopez's case. However, the appellate court disagreed on both counts.First, the appellate court held that the district court erred in considering whether § 922(g)(3) was unconstitutional on its face. The court cited longstanding precedent that a defendant whose conduct is clearly prohibited by a statute cannot pose a facial challenge to it.Second, the appellate court held that the district court erred in finding § 922(g)(3) unconstitutional as applied to Morales-Lopez's conduct. The appellate court found that there was sufficient evidence of a temporal nexus between Morales-Lopez's drug use and his possession of a firearm.The facts of the case are as follows: Morales-Lopez and another man were caught stealing firearms and ammunition from a store in Utah. Morales-Lopez was found with a stolen gun and methamphetamine. He also admitted to using drugs regularly in the month prior to his arrest.The appellate court concluded that the phrase "unlawful user" in § 922(g)(3) is clear in its application to Morales-Lopez's conduct and that the district court should reinstate the jury’s verdict. The case was remanded back to the district court with instructions to proceed accordingly. View "United States v. Morales-Lopez" on Justia Law

In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit analyzed whether a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment by prolonging a traffic stop to determine whether the driver of a rental vehicle was authorized to drive it. The driver, Jerry Dawson, was pulled over for speeding, and during the stop, the officer discovered marijuana and two pounds of methamphetamine in the vehicle. Dawson argued that the officer had no reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity and therefore had no authority to detain him beyond the time necessary to issue the speeding ticket.The court held that the officer did not violate the Fourth Amendment because checking a rental agreement is an ordinary inquiry incident to a traffic stop. The court found that this inquiry is part of an officer's mission during a traffic stop and does not constitute an "unrelated investigation." Therefore, the officer was justified in continuing to detain Dawson to determine whether he was authorized to drive the rental car.Dawson also appealed his 70-month imprisonment sentence, arguing that the district court erred in concluding it could not adjust his sentence to account for his pretrial time served for a relevant offense. The court dismissed Dawson's appeal of his sentence, holding that it lacked jurisdiction to review a discretionary refusal to depart from the sentencing guidelines. View "United States v. Dawson" on Justia Law

In this case, Domingo Martinez Jr. was convicted of possession with intent to distribute and distribution of 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. On appeal, he challenged the admission of a narcotics detective’s testimony about Santa Muerte shrines, claiming the testimony violated his First Amendment rights. He also objected to the district court’s instruction to the jury to disregard a robocall inadvertently played during the trial, rather than declaring a mistrial.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction. The court found no error in the admission of the detective's testimony relating to Santa Muerte, noting it was based solely on the detective's law enforcement experience, not personal self-study. Moreover, the testimony was relevant to the issue raised by Mr. Martinez's entrapment defense, whether he was predisposed to drug trafficking. The court also found no error in the district court's treatment of the robocall interruption. The district court had instructed the jury to disregard the interruption twice and recessed the trial briefly to ensure it would not happen again. The court of appeals found no indication that the jury had time to process the robocall or that it affected the outcome of the trial. View "United States v. Martinez" on Justia Law

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that impounding a vehicle from a private property without a reasonable, non-pretextual community-caretaking rationale violates the Fourth Amendment. The defendant, Isaac Ramos, was arrested after an altercation at a convenience store. His truck was impounded from the store's parking lot, and a subsequent inventory search revealed a machine gun and ammunition. Ramos was charged with unlawful possession of a machine gun and being a felon illegally in possession of ammunition. He moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the impoundment of his truck violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied his motion, and he appealed.The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court's decision, finding that the impoundment was not supported by a reasonable, non-pretextual community-caretaking rationale. The court considered five factors: whether the vehicle was on public or private property; if on private property, whether the property owner had been consulted; whether an alternative to impoundment existed; whether the vehicle was implicated in a crime; and whether the vehicle’s owner and/or driver had consented to the impoundment. The court found that all of these factors weighed against the reasonableness of the impoundment, and thus, it violated the Fourth Amendment. The court remanded the case to the district court with instructions to grant Ramos’s suppression motion and conduct any further necessary proceedings. View "United States v. Ramos" on Justia Law

Timothy Chischilly gathered five relatives to get something “off his chest.” To the shock of the relatives, Chischilly confessed that he and his girlfriend, defendant-appellee Stacey Yellowhorse, had killed a woman. The relatives told law enforcement about Chischilly’s confession, and the accounts were largely consistent: Chischilly had admitted: he held the woman down while Yellowhorse bludgeoned the woman with a sledgehammer or mallet; and he and Yellowhorse pinned the woman down with nails and a hammer. Authorities later found parts of the woman’s skeletal remains in various locations, including a fire pit next to Chischilly’s house. Despite confessing to the murder, Chischilly pleaded not guilty. That plea led the district court to set Chischilly’s trial after Yellowhorse’s. At Yellowhorse’s upcoming trial, the government wanted Chischilly to testify about what he told his relatives. Because his statements were self-incriminating, however, the government expected Chischilly to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he was called as a witness. So the government asked the district court to allow the relatives to testify at Yellowhorse’s trial about three of Chischilly’s statements. Chischilly's statements would ordinarily constitute inadmissible hearsay; the hearsay exception would apply only if Chischilly's statements harmed his penal interest and had corroboration. The government argued the district court applied the wrong test by assuming that Chischilly’s statements about Yellowhorse’s involvement were not self-inculpatory. Yellowhorse disagreed, adding that the excluded parts were also inadmissible because the court shouldn’t have found corroboration. In the Tenth Circuit's view, the district court’s approach contradicted its precedent. The case was remanded for the district court to reconsider the admissibility of Chischilly’s statements to his relatives. View "United States v. Yellowhorse" on Justia Law

Defendant Terrence Taylor plead guilty to two counts of being a felon in possession of ammunition and one count of felon in possession of firearms. On appeal, he argued these charges were multiplicitous in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Tenth Circuit rejected this argument because he waived his multiplicity claim when he entered his plea to the three separate offenses. View "United States v. Taylor" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Dalton “Dash” Brown pled guilty to a single count of being a felon in possession of ammunition, and was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. On appeal, he challenged the sentence, arguing the district court improperly calculated his offense level under the Sentencing Guidelines. According to Brown, the district court erred in applying: (1) a multiple-firearms enhancement; (2) a stolen-firearm enhancement; (3) a higher base offense for possession of a high-capacity magazine; (4) a reckless-endangerment upward-adjustment; and (5) an “in-connection-with” enhancement. He urges the court to reverse and remand for resentencing with a lower offense level. Findnign no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the sentence. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Kenneth Walker appealed his conviction and sentence for assault resulting in serious bodily injury within Indian country. Walker lived "off and on" with his adult niece, Victoria Dirickson. Walker asked Dirickson for a set of house keys. She declined because “[i]t was [her] only day off, and [she] really didn’t feel like getting out and making a copy” of the keys. Walker became “[r]eally aggravated,” and an argument ensued in the living room, which lead to the assault charges at issue in this case. A grand jury indicted Walker on one count of assault resulting in serious bodily injury within Indian country. The indictment alleged Walker was a non-Indian and Dirickson was Indian. A jury found Walker guilty as charged. On appeal, Walker: (1) challenged the district court's jurisdiction because it erred in admitting Dirickson's Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (“CDIB”) and tribal registration cards; (2) the district court abused its discretion in admitting the testimony of a medical expert; (3) the district court abused its discretion in failing to give a unanimity-of-means jury instruction; (4) abused its discretion in failing to consider sentencing disparities arising from a possible sentence in a state case; and (5) Plainly erred in imposing an anger management condition of supervised release due to insufficient notice, and improper delegation of authority to the Probation Office. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Walker's conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Walker" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Edward Parson was convicted by jury of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Parson argued: (1) the district court erred in admitting expert testimony about the process of child-sexual-abuse disclosures and the characteristics and behaviors of children who make such disclosures; and (2) the district court erred in admitting specific testimony of the expert that children are four times more likely to omit facts than to make up facts in the process of disclosing abuse. The Tenth Circuit determined the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the expert testimony, and his second claim of error was unpreserved and Parson failed to demonstrate an entitlement to relief under the difficult-to-satisfy plain error standard. Thus, the district court’s judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "United States v. Parson" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Anthony Mason was convicted by a jury of assault of an intimate or dating partner by strangulation and Oklahoma first-degree burglary. The Presentence Report (PSR) initially calculated an offense level of 22 and a criminal history category of III, resulting in an advisory guideline range of 51 to 63 months’ imprisonment. But when a statutorily required minimum sentence is greater than the maximum of the guideline range, as was the case here, the statutorily required minimum was the guideline sentence. For convictions of first-degree burglary, Oklahoma state law imposed a sentence “not less than seven (7) years.” Accordingly, the PSR recommended a sentence of 84 months’ imprisonment, 21 months more than the initial advisory guideline range. Mason objected to the PSR sentence, arguing that his eligibility for a suspended or deferred sentence under the Oklahoma sentencing scheme meant that it did not impose a “true mandatory minimum.” Finding no reversible error in the calculation of Mason's sentence, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Mason" on Justia Law