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

This appeal stemmed from a search, which took place after the police spoke with defendant Desmond Gaines. After a brief exchange, Gaines fled but was soon captured. The police then found cocaine, marijuana, PCP, drug paraphernalia, over $640, and a handgun. Gaines unsuccessfully moved to suppress this evidence, and he appealed denial of his suppression motion. Presented for the Tenth Circuit's review were issues of whether: (1) Gaines was seized by police; and (2) were his Fourth Amendment rights violated. After careful consideration of the facts presented at trial, the Tenth Circuit determined: (1) no, Gaines was not seized; and (2) the development of probable cause or the subsequent discovery of the arrest warrant did not attenuate the connection between the seizure and the drug/money evidence. The Court vacated the denial of Gaines’s motion to suppress. View "United States v. Gaines" on Justia Law

Defendant Ian Alexander Bowline was convicted by a jury on a number of charges involving unlawful prescriptions for oxycodone. He appealed his conviction, raising only one issue: whether the district court properly denied his untimely pretrial motion to dismiss his indictment on the ground of vindictive prosecution. The district court ruled: (1) he was procedurally barred because he had not shown good cause under Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(c)(3) to excuse his untimeliness; and (2) on the merits, he had not demonstrated that he was being subjected to a vindictive prosecution. After review, the Tenth Circuit Court of appeals affirmed, finding Defendant was not entitled to relief on appeal absent a showing of good cause to excuse the untimeliness of his motion. The Court therefore did not reach the merits of his vindictive-prosecution claim. View "United States v. Bowline" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Stacy Knapp entered a conditional plea of guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, for which she was sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. The conditional plea allowed her to appeal the district court’s denial of her motion to suppress, and in the event it was successful, to withdraw her guilty plea. The validity of Knapp’s arrest was not at issue; this appeal turned on: (1) whether the search of her purse was one of her person for the purposes of Robinson; and (2) if the search was not of her person, whether the search was nevertheless justified because it was within “the area from within which [she] might [have] gain[ed] possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Knapp presented two arguments why the search of her purse was not one “of her person” at the time of her arrest: (1) the government was wrong on the facts because she was not carrying her purse when she was told she was under arrest, rather, it was sitting somewhere within the truck, and she had to “collect” it from the truck to bring it into the store; and (2) the district court did not make a specific factual finding comparing the exact time of the arrest with when Knapp grabbed her purse - It simply noted, “[Knapp] brought her purse with her into the grocery store.” The Tenth Circuit reversed and remanded, finding the search of Knapp’s purse was not one of her person for the purposes of United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234 (1973), and because the search of her purse was not actually supported by the Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763 (1969) justifications, the exception for a search incident to arrest did not apply here. View "United States v. Knapp" on Justia Law

Taxpayers Neil Feinberg, Andrea Feinberg, and Kellie McDonald were shareholders in Total Health Concepts, LLC (THC), a Colorado company allegedly engaged in selling medical marijuana. After the Taxpayers claimed THC’s income and losses on their tax returns, the IRS conducted an audit and disallowed certain deductions under 26 U.S.C. 280E, which prohibited deductions for businesses engaged in unlawful trafficking of controlled substances. The IRS then recalculated the Taxpayers’ tax liability and issued a notice of deficiency for the unpaid balance. The Taxpayers challenged that determination in tax court, which affirmed on the basis that the Taxpayers had failed to substantiate the business expenses. Both parties agreed the tax court erred by injecting a substantiation issue into this case not raised in the notice of deficiency, and then placed the burden for refuting that claim on the Taxpayers. But the Commissioner argued the Tenth Circuit should affirm on the alternative ground that the Taxpayers did not meet their burden of proving the IRS’s determination that THC was unlawfully trafficking in a controlled substance was erroneous. The Taxpayers disagreed and contended placing the burden on them would violate their Fifth Amendment privilege. Because the Tenth Circuit concluded allocation of the burden of proof did not constitute “compulsion” under the Fifth Amendment, and because the Taxpayers made no attempt to meet their evidentiary burden, the Court affirmed the tax court on the alternative ground that section 280E prohibited the deductions. View "Feinberg v. CIR" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellee Gregory Orozco was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine (count 1), and possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of methamphetamine (count 2). Orozco moved for a new trial, alleging the government violated his Sixth Amendment right by interfering with his right to call a witness on his behalf. The district court granted the motion, vacated the two convictions, and dismissed the underlying counts of the superseding indictment. The government appealed, challenging the district court’s finding of prosecutorial misconduct and the remedy imposed. The Tenth Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. On remand, the district court was ordered to vacate its dismissal of the underlying counts of the superseding indictment to allow for retrial. View "United States v. Orozco" on Justia Law

Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez challenges his Oklahoma conviction for first-degree murder and his accompanying sentence of death. The victim, Olimpia Fisher, and her adult daughter, Katya Chacon, lived with Cuesta-Rodriguez in a home Fisher and Cuesta-Rodriguez had purchased together. In the year following the home purchase, Cuesta-Rodriguez and Fisher’s relationship was strained. Cuesta- Rodriguez feared Fisher was cheating on him. Whenever Fisher and Chacon would leave the house, Cuesta-Rodriguez would question them “about where they were going and what they would be doing.” The relationship deteriorated to the point that both Cuesta-Rodriguez and Fisher wanted the other to move out. An argument between the two ended when Cuesta-Rodriquez shot Fisher in both eyes. The district court denied relief and denied a certificate of appealability (COA). The Tenth Circuit concluded Cuesta-Rodriguez was not persuasive in his argument that combined errors led to a trial that wasn’t “fundamentally fair.” As such, the Court affirmed the district court's judgment that Cuesta-Rodriquez was not entitled to relief. View "Cuesta-Rodriguez v. Carpenter" on Justia Law

Petitioner Christopher Hobdy, a Colorado state prisoner serving time for first degree assault and aggravated robbery, filed an application for federal habeas relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254. The criminal charges against Hobdy arose from an assault on the victim Jerry Williams outside a convenience store in 1997. The victim was a police officer with the City of Aurora, Colorado, who had a terminal illness and was living in a hospice at the time of the assault. Williams left to make a purchase at a nearby convenience store early in the morning; as he walked back to the hospice, Hobdy stuck the victim with a shovel. The victim fell to the ground, and his possessions fell out of his pocket. Hobdy picked the items up and ran away. Police located Hobdy and identified him from photographs taken from the store's surveillance camera. Hobdy's main argument at trial was that because of medicines the victim took to treat his terminal illness, his identification of Hobdy from the convenience store and surveillance photos was legally insufficient. The victim died months after the incident, and approximately 8 months prior to trial. In his post-conviction appeals, Hobdy argued he received insufficient assistance of trial and appellate counsel for a variety of reasons, centering primarily on mishandling of testimony and trial procedure, and for failing to preserve certain issues related to the jury's deadlock notes. The district court granted Hobdy’s 2254 application and ordered the State of Colorado to retry him within ninety days. Respondents Rick Raemisch, the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, and Phil Weiser, the Attorney General for the State of Colorado, appealed the district court’s decision. The Tenth Circuit concluded Hobdy's principal arguments for habeas relief were procedurally barred and could not serve as the basis for relief. The Court therefore reversed the district court, remanded the case with directions to enter judgment in favor of respondents. View "Hobdy v. Raemisch" on Justia Law

In 2014, CNB auditors conducted a surprise audit of the Burlington, Kansas Central National Bank (“CNB” or “Bank”) vault. The vault was missing $764,000. When they began to suspect defendant Denise Christy, she forged documents to purport that she had sent the missing cash to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (“FRB”). A grand jury indicted her on one count of bank embezzlement, six counts of making false bank entries, six counts of failing to report income on her taxes, and 10 counts of money laundering. After a six-day trial, a jury found Christy guilty of all charges except four money laundering counts. On appeal, Christy argued: (1) cumulative prosecutorial misconduct violated her due process rights; (2) the evidence was insufficient for her money laundering convictions; and (3) the jury instructions improperly omitted a “materiality” element for the false-bank-entry charges. The Tenth Circuit: (1) rejected Christy’s prosecutorial misconduct challenge because she has not shown the prosecutor’s comments influenced the jury’s verdict; (2) reversed Christy’s money laundering convictions because the Government did not produce sufficient evidence of the intent to file a false tax return; and (3) affirmed Christy’s false-bank-entry convictions because, even assuming materiality was an implied element of 18 U.S.C. 1005, its omission from the jury instruction was harmless error. The matter was remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the convictions for money laundering, resentence the defendant, and further proceedings. View "United States v. Christy" on Justia Law

After investigating complaints regarding the tax-preparation services of defendant Donald Iley, the Colorado Board of Accountancy (Board) issued an “Agreement and Final Agency Order” in which Iley admitted to engaging in professionally negligent conduct and agreed to accept certain disciplinary sanctions, including a $10,000 fine and a five-year probationary period. Among the acts for which the Board disciplined Iley was taking a client’s money, ostensibly to pay the client’s payroll taxes, but then failing to promptly and properly pay those funds to the IRS. While serving the Order’s probationary term, Iley executed a fraudulent scheme in which he fleeced his clients of more than $11 million. As part of this scheme, Iley fraudulently misrepresented to his clients that he was taking their funds to pay outstanding payroll taxes to the IRS but, instead, Iley used those funds for personal purposes. After this fraud was discovered, Iley pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aiding in the preparation of a false tax return. At sentencing, the district court enhanced Iley’s sentence under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, section 2B1.1(b)(9)(C). The question presented to the Tenth Circuit was whether the court erred in doing so. The Court held that under the particular circumstances of this case, the court did not err in Iley's sentence, and affirmed. View "United States v. Iley" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Richard Roe pled guilty to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute 280 grams or more of cocaine base (“crack”) and five kilograms or more of cocaine. Because of the quantities involved, Roe was subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years. Pursuant to a plea agreement, the government requested a sentence below the mandatory minimum. The district court sentenced Roe to fifteen years. Roe did not file a direct appeal; instead, he filed a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, arguing trial counsel was ineffective in failing to: (1) challenge the drug quantity at the sentencing hearing (“drug-quantity claim”) and (2) file a notice of appeal as requested (“failure-to-file claim”). The district court summarily denied the drug-quantity claim, concluding Roe’s guilty plea established the relevant quantity. It held an evidentiary hearing on the failure-to-file claim. Trial counsel testified Roe never told him to file an appeal because they never discussed the issue. In a post-hearing motion, Roe sought to amend his failure-to-file claim so it focused on trial counsel’s failure to consult with him as to whether an appeal should be filed (the “failure-to-consult claim”). The district court rejected, on two separate grounds, Roe’s failure-to-consult claim. It concluded the failure-to-consult claim was an untimely new claim that did not relate back to the failure-to-file claim set out in Roe’s original Section 2255 motion. In the alternative, the district court concluded the failure-to-consult claim failed on the merits. Roe filed and received a certificate of appealability to raise both the drug-quantity and failure-to-consult claims. The Tenth Circuit affirmed denial of Roe's 2255 motion: (1) when a criminal defendant enters a knowing and voluntary guilty plea to an indictment charging a drug conspiracy with an attendant quantity element, the defendant is subject to the enhanced penalties associated with that quantity; and (2) Roe’s failure-to-consult claim did not relate back to his failure-to-file claim and was, therefore, untimely. View "In re: Sealed Opinion" on Justia Law