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

Defendants, a married couple, opened numerous rewards accounts at OfficeMax using fictitious names and addresses. They fraudulently claimed other customers’ purchases as their own to generate undeserved rewards through OfficeMax’s customer loyalty program. As part of the scheme, Defendants also violated the terms of the reward program by using various accounts to sell more than 27,000 used ink cartridges to OfficeMax in exchange for OfficeMax rewards. In 21 months' time, they redeemed $105,191 in OfficeMax rewards. A jury convicted Defendants of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud relating to their scheme to defraud OfficeMax. At sentencing, the district court ordered Defendants to pay $96,278 in restitution to OfficeMax and entered a separate forfeiture money judgment jointly and severally against Defendants in the amount of $105,191. In Defendants' first appeal, they argued the district court erred when it entered a forfeiture money judgment without proving the $105,191 constituted, or was derived from, proceeds traceable to the wire fraud. The government contended it proved Defendants fraudulently acquired OfficeMax rewards with a face value of $105,191, and that Defendants exchanged that credit for $105,191 in actual merchandise. At first glance, the Tenth Circuit surmised a district court’s order of forfeiture and its order of restitution appeared to be a double punishment, particularly when the district court ordered defendants to pay forfeiture and restitution in the same amount. Restitution exists to make victims whole; forfeiture punishes those who commit crimes. In some cases, a defendant either does not resell fraudulently obtained merchandise or does so at a discount and thus has no profit above the value of the merchandise. To address that scenario, the Tenth Circuit held here that a district court could base a judgment’s forfeiture amount on the value of the fraudulently obtained merchandise at the time a defendant acquired it. Furthermore, a district court may not reduce or eliminate criminal forfeiture because of restitution. Finally, the Court reaffirmed its holding that in personam money judgments representing the amount of unlawful proceeds are appropriate under the criminal forfeiture statutes. View "United States v. Channon (Brandi)" on Justia Law

A federal grand jury indicted Defendant Melvin Bailey, III, on four counts of Hobbs Act robbery, four counts of brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, and one count of Hobbs Act conspiracy. At trial, the jury acquitted Defendant on one count of Hobbs Act robbery and one count of brandishing a firearm. The jury convicted Defendant on the remaining seven counts, which stemmed from three robberies of a Walgreens in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Of these three robberies, the parties agreed Defendant personally committed two of them (those that occurred on April 28, 2015, and July 20, 2017). Based on these robberies, Defendant was convicted of two counts of Hobbs Act robbery and two counts of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. Those convictions were not at issue in this appeal. With respect to the third robbery on January 6, 2018, the parties agreed Defendant did not personally commit the offense. Rather, Defendant enlisted the help of a juvenile accomplice. For his part, Defendant instructed the juvenile on the execution of the robbery, provided him with a firearm and a mask, and acted as the getaway driver. The parties agreed Defendant’s participation made him an aider and abettor. In relation to this robbery, Defendant was convicted of Hobbs Act conspiracy, Hobbs Act robbery, and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. Before the Tenth Circuit, Defendant argued the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict him of brandishing a firearm during the 2018 robbery. Specifically, Defendant contended this conviction had to be vacated because the evidence showed he did not personally commit the charged offense. The Tenth Circuit found this argument "unavailing," and affirmed conviction. View "United States v. Bailey" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellees David Millard, Eugene Knight, and Arturo Vega challenged the constitutionality of Colorado’s Sex Offender Registration Act (CSORA). The district court held CSORA was unconstitutional as applied to the Appellees because the statute inflicted cruel and unusual punishment and violated substantive due process guarantees. Additionally, the district court held that the state courts’ application of CSORA’s deregistration procedures to Vega violated his procedural due process rights. Defendant-Appellant, the State of Colorado, appealed the entirety of the district court’s decision. The Tenth Circuit determined the district court’s ruling contravened binding Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit precedent, and reversed. View "Millard v. Rankin" on Justia Law

To alleviate some of the impacts caused by the statutory sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (“2010 FSA”). In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act (“2018 FSA”), which, inter alia, made the Fair Sentencing Act’s benefits retroactively applicable to offenders who committed offenses prior to the 2010 FSA’s effective date of August 3, 2010. Arthur Mannie, Jr., and Michael Maytubby moved the district court for reductions in their sentences pursuant to the 2018 FSA. In 2009, Mannie pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute 50g or more of crack cocaine; Mannie's was ultimately sentenced to 262 months, the bottom of the guideline range. Because the 2010 FSA reduced the statutory maximum sentence for Mannie’s offense from life to forty years imprisonment, his alternate offense level was 34, rather than 37. This reduction, combined with a reduction for acceptance of responsibility, resulted in a new advisory guideline range of 188 months to 235 months. Mannie requested a below-guidelines sentence of 120 months or, in the alternative, a sentence at the bottom of the range, 188 months. In 2006, a jury convicted Maytubby of eight counts relating to his participation in a drug trafficking organization, including one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine base. In 2007, Maytubby’s three original 235-month sentences were each reduced to 188 months, pursuant to Amendment 706. Seven years later, pursuant to Amendment 782, each of Maytubby’s three, modified, 188-month sentences was further reduced to 151 months. The district court declined to reduce either sentence under the FSAs; both Mannie and Maytubby appealed. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded that in Mannie's case, the sentencing court presented a "thorough and reasonably articulated basis" for denying relief, and thus did not abuse its discretion in denying Mannie's request. With regard to Maytubby, the Tenth Circuit found his original sentences were not below the guideline range, and had been reduced to the bottom of the then-current guideline range. The court had no authority to reduce Maytubby's drug offense sentences further. Maytubby's appeal was dismissed for lack of standing. View "United States v. Mannie" on Justia Law

Kimberly Meadows appealed a district court’s denial of her motion to suppress evidence obtained during a traffic stop, arguing that the officer’s stop was unreasonable because it was based on probable cause of a Utah equipment violation, and the state decriminalized such violations. On December 4, 2017, a Utah highway-patrol officer pulled Meadows over after he observed that tinted glass obscured the brake light inside the rear window of her car, which he believed violated Utah law. He issued Meadows a warning citation for an equipment violation. During the stop, he found drugs and drug paraphernalia. The Tenth Circuit rejected Meadows' argument, concluding that the officer’s stop was reasonable regardless of whether Utah has decriminalized such violations. Accordingly, the district court was affirmed. View "United States v. Meadows" on Justia Law

In 2013, defendant-appellant Donovan Muskett was indicted by grand jury, charged with four counts: assault with a dangerous weapon in Indian Country; aggravated burglary in Indian Country (based on New Mexico’s aggravated burglary statute by way of the federal Assimilative Crimes Act); using, carrying, possessing, and brandishing a firearm during and in relation to and in furtherance of a crime of violence; and negligent child abuse in Indian Country. Muskett entered into a plea agreement, under which he pled guilty to the brandishing a firearm charge, the government dismissed the remaining three counts. The parties agreed that, contingent on the district court's acceptance of the plea agreement, Muskett would be sentenced to 84 months in prison. The district court accepted Muskett’s plea and sentenced him to 84 months of imprisonment followed by a three-year term of supervised release. In this matter, Muskett appealed the denial of his motion to vacate the brandishing conviction as a crime of violence based on the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019) (invalidating the residual clause in 18 U.S.C. 924(c)’s definition of a “crime of violence” as unconstitutionally vague). The parties’ primary disputed whether Muskett’s predicate federal felony—assault with a dangerous weapon, 18 U.S.C. 113(a)(3)—qualified as a crime of violence under the elements clause, thereby rendering harmless the Davis defect in his conviction. Muskett suggested the Tenth Circuit conduct this analysis using the law as it existed at the time of his conviction because application of current law would violate due process limits on the retroactive application of judicial decisions enlarging criminal liability. The Tenth Circuit found precedent compelled the conclusion that assault with a dangerous weapon was categorically a crime of violence under the elements clause. "And we conclude that at the time of his offense, Mr. Muskett had fair notice that section 924(c)’s elements clause could ultimately be construed to encompass his commission of assault with a dangerous weapon." The Court thus affirmed the district court's denial of Muskett’s section 2255 motion. View "United States v. Muskett" on Justia Law

Petitioner Everett Johnson, a citizen of the Bahamas, became a United States permanent resident in 1977. But in 2016, he pleaded guilty to possessing a schedule II controlled substance in violation of Colorado law. Soon after, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged Johnson as removable from the United States based on the state drug conviction. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) then ordered Johnson’s removal from the United States back to the Bahamas. He appealed, challenging that the state drug conviction subjected him to deportation from the United States. The Tenth Circuit determined Colorado Revised Statute section 18-18-403.5(1), (2)(a) was overbroad and indivisible as to the identity of a particular controlled substance. Therefore, Johnson’s conviction could not subject him to removal from the United States. The Court therefore granted Johnson’s petition for review, vacated the BIA’s order, and remanded to the BIA for further proceedings. View "Johnson v. Barr" on Justia Law

Defendant Gregory Lozado appealed the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate his sentence. Lozado was tried by jury and convicted of possessing ammunition as a previously convicted felon. The Presentence Report (“PSR”) prepared by the probation office in January 2014 recommended that he be sentenced as an armed career criminal under the ACCA based on five predicate violent-felony convictions, all from the state of Colorado: (1) a juvenile conviction for second-degree assault with a deadly weapon; and adult convictions for (2) robbery; (3) second-degree burglary of a building; (4) felony menacing; and (5) theft from a person. This increased the recommended offense level from 28 to 33. With Lozado’s criminal-history level of VI, the advisory Guidelines range was thus raised from 140–175 months to 235–293 months. Application of the ACCA changed the statutory maximum penalty of ten years for Lozado’s offense to a statutory minimum penalty of fifteen years. At Lozado’s sentencing hearing, the district court adopted the PSR with only a few non-substantive amendments. The district court then sentenced Lozado to 235 months of imprisonment, the bottom of the ACCA-enhanced advisory Guidelines range. In his 2255 motion, Lozad contended his sentence should have been vacated based on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). Lozado contended the Johnson ruling affected the violent-felony classification of at least three of the five prior convictions the district court had relied on at his sentencing. The district court denied his 2255 motion, holding that Johnson affected the classification of two of his prior convictions but that the remaining three convictions were sufficient to sustain the enhancement. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded the sentencing court classified two of the prior convictions as violent felonies based on the invalidated residual clause, and that a third conviction should not have been counted as a violent felony because it was a juvenile offense that did not involve a firearm, knife, or destructive device. Furthermore, the Court concluded the government could not show harmless error because none of these three convictions would have qualified as a valid ACCA predicate if Lozado were sentenced under current law, thus Lozado no longer has enough qualifying convictions to trigger the ACCA enhancement. View "United States v. Lozado" on Justia Law

The issue presented for the Tenth Circuit's review in this matter involved a police traffic stop that ended with the tragic death of the motorist. In 2016, Okfuskee County Sheriff Deputy Blake Frost shot and killed James Coale, as Coale was fleeing in his truck from a roadside police stop. Coale’s estate sued Deputy Frost, alleging the use of excessive force in violation of Coale’s Fourth Amendment rights. The district court denied Deputy Frost’s motion for summary judgment that was based on qualified immunity. Because the Tenth Circuit found it was clearly established that Deputy Frost’s use of deadly force to stop Coale’s fleeing vehicle was objectively unreasonable, it affirmed the trial court's denial of summary judgment. View "Reavis v. Frost" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Edgar Mier-Garces was separately charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances in both the Western District of Texas and the District of Colorado. After pleading guilty in Texas, Mier-Garces argued that the District of Colorado indictment violated his rights under the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause. The district court denied his motion to dismiss. Mier-Garces was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 178 months’ imprisonment. On appeal, he challenged the district court’s Double Jeopardy Clause ruling, arguing the district court erroneously calculated his advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines range by applying an enhancement under section 2D1.1(b)(12). After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded the district court did not err in either ruling and affirmed. View "United States v. Mier-Garces" on Justia Law