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

From 2002 to 2007, Defendant-appellant Jerold Sorensen, an oral surgeon in California, concealed his income from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and underpaid his income taxes by more than $1.5 million. He used a “pure trust” scheme, peddled by Financial Fortress Associates (“FFA”), in which he deposited his dental income into these trusts without reporting all of it to the IRS as income. Over the years, he also retitled valuable assets in the trusts’ names. In 2013, after a series of proffers, the government charged him with violating 26 U.S.C. 7212(a) for corruptly endeavoring to obstruct and impede the due administration of the internal-revenue laws. A jury convicted him of the charged offense. On appeal, Sorensen argued his conduct amounted to evading taxes so it was exclusively punishable under a different statute; that the prosecution misstated evidence in its closing rebuttal argument; and (7) cumulative error. Furthermore, he argued the district court erred: (2) by refusing his offered jury instruction requiring knowledge of illegality; (3) by giving the government’s deliberate-ignorance instruction; (4) by instructing the jury that it could convict on any one means alleged in the indictment; and (5) by refusing to allow him to provide certain testimony from a witness in surrebuttal. Finding no merit to any of these contentions, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Sorensen's conviction. View "United States v. Sorensen" on Justia Law

Appellee Jacob Ind had been incarcerated in Colorado state prisons since 1992. At the time he filed this lawsuit on in 2009, he was in administrative segregation at the Colorado State Penitentiary ("CSP") subject to a limit of two personal books imposed by the Colorado Department of Corrections ("CDOC"). Appellee filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983, claiming the book limit was a substantial burden on his sincerely-held religious beliefs in violation of his constitutional rights and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 ("RLUIPA"). In 2011, appellee was transferred out of administrative segregation and into the general population, where he was allowed 15 personal books. The CDOC moved to dismiss the case as moot. Although the magistrate judge recommended the motion be granted, the district court concluded appellee would likely be returned to segregation in the future and denied the motion. Following a bench trial, the court held CDOC's two-book policy violated appellee's rights under RLUIPA and directed that, in the event appellee returned to administrative segregation at CSP, CDOC would be enjoined from enforcing the policy against him. CDOC appealed, arguing again that the case was moot. After review, the Tenth Circuit held that appellee's transfer from administrative segregation to the general population indeed mooted his claim, thereby depriving the Court of jurisdiction. View "Ind v. Colorado Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Steven Burns challenged the amount of restitution that the district court ordered him to pay. Burns, a custodian at the Rock Springs, Wyoming post office, pled guilty to one count of possessing stolen mail. Burns admitted that from December 1, 2013, through January 25, 2014, he possessed letters, packages, mail, and articles and things contained therein, that had been stolen from post office boxes in the Rock Springs Post Office, knowing that those items had been stolen. The district court sentenced Burns to one year probation and ordered him to pay $3,090.58 in restitution under the Mandatory Victims’ Rights Act (“MVRA”). Burns argued: (1) the district court clearly erred in finding that he took all of the items on which the district court based the amount of restitution; and (2) that the controlling case law required a jury to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, the facts underlying a restitution award. The Tenth Circuit rejected both of these contentions on review of Burns' appeal, and affirmed the restitution order. View "United States v. Burns" on Justia Law

In 2003, Paul LeCompte pled guilty in state court to a sex offense involving a minor female and was required to register as a sex offender. In 2010, after having traveled in interstate commerce, LeCompte failed to register. In 2011, he pled guilty in federal court to failing to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA"). As part of the sentence on this conviction, the district court imposed several conditions, including one prohibiting any association with minors except in the presence of an adult approved by the U.S. Probation Office ("Probation"). In 2014, a probation officer visited LeCompte's home and found him sitting outside with several adults (none of them approved by Probation) and his then-girlfriend's three-year-old granddaughter. Because LeCompte had associated with a minor in the absence of an approved adult, Probation filed a petition to revoke LeCompte's supervised release. LeCompte moved to dismiss, challenging the supervised release condition as applied. The district court denied his motion, revoked his supervised release, and sentenced LeCompte to a prison term. It also imposed six standard sex offender conditions. LeCompte appeals the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss. He also challenged the procedural and substantive reasonableness of the six sex offender conditions imposed. Upon review, the Tenth circuit concluded the district court's as-applied analysis was inadequate and incomplete. The denial of the motion to dismiss was reversed and the case remanded for further consideration. View "United States v. LeCompte" on Justia Law

Defendant-appellant Kefelegne Alemu Worku was an Ethiopian man who entered the United States after assuming the identity of an Eritrean man, Habteab Berhe Temanu. Using Berhe's identity, Worku lived in the Denver area for years and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Immigration authorities learned that Worku was using a false identity and suspected that he had tortured Ethiopian prisoners in the 1970s. After an investigation and trial, Worku was convicted of: (1) unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization; (2) fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents, and (3) aggravated identity theft. Worku was sentenced to 22 years, relying in part on a finding that he had committed these crimes to conceal violations of human rights in Ethiopia. On appeal, Worku argued (1) the immigration-related convictions violated the Double Jeopardy Clause; (2) the conviction for aggravated identify theft was improper because Worku had permission to use Berhe's identity; (3) the sentence was procedurally unreasonable because there was no evidence that Worku had come to the United States to conceal violations of human rights and the witnesses identifying him as an Ethiopian torturer had done so because of improperly suggestive photo arrays; and (4) the sentence was substantively unreasonable. Finding no merit to any of these contentions, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United States v. Worku" on Justia Law

In May 2011, Mark Feltz, an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, learned that A.J. Aldridge was willing to sell methamphetamine and firearms. Feltz arranged to purchase a gun and one ounce of methamphetamine. Feltz contacted a supplier, Robert Blankenship, and arranged to pay for two ounces of methamphetamine. They agreed to complete the transaction at a liquor store in Englewood, Colorado. Blankenship indicated he would send a relative to deliver the methamphetamine. After Feltz arrived at the liquor store, Michael Spaulding pulled into the parking lot in a GMC truck. Feltz entered the truck and completed the transaction. Spaulding was subsequently arrested and charged, along with Aldridge and Blankenship, with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and distribution of methamphetamine. Spaulding and the government entered into a plea agreement. Spaulding agreed to plead guilty to distributing methamphetamine and to cooperate with the government in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by him and his co-defendants. In exchange for his guilty plea and cooperation, the government agreed to (1) recommend a three-level decrease to Spaulding's offense level for acceptance of responsibility, and (2) move for a downward departure for substantial assistance. Rather than imposing a sentence in the seventy-seven to ninety-six month range recommended by the government, the district court imposed a sentence of 137 months, the top of the advisory guidelines range set out in the PSR. When the government asked the district court to reconcile its grant of a section 5K1.1 motion with a sentence at the top of the pre-departure advisory sentencing range, the district court stated it had accepted the motion, but was "not following [the government's] recommendation." In support of its chosen sentence, the district court cited Spaulding's lengthy criminal history. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in review of Spaulding's appeal of the sentence he received, surmised this case presented a significant jurisdictional question: whether 18 U.S.C. 3231 allowed a district court, absent government objection, to set aside a criminal judgment that contains a term of imprisonment at any time and for any reason. Or, instead, was a district court empowered to set aside such a judgment only in the situations listed in 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)? The Tenth Circuit concluded that section 3231 did not, standing alone, confer upon a district court jurisdiction to set aside a previously imposed criminal judgment that contains a term of imprisonment. Instead, district courts have jurisdiction to alter such criminal judgments only to the extent "expressly permitted by statute or by Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure." Because it did not act pursuant to statutory authority or Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, the district court acted without jurisdiction when it vacated Michael Spaulding's original judgment of conviction. Accordingly, all of the actions and proceedings taken in this case after that point were void. The matter was, therefore, remanded to the district court to (1) vacate the judgment it entered on August 27, 2013, and (2) reenter the judgment imposed on December 6, 2012. View "United States v. Spaulding" on Justia Law

Johnny Ray Davis was convicted of first-degree murder, for which he received a life sentence. After his state-court challenges to his conviction and sentence failed, Davis filed a pro se federal habeas petition alleging that: (1) his life without parole sentence violated the Constitution due to a “new standard [that had] been set in the U.S. Supreme Court” invalidating sentencing schemes mandating life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders; (2) his counsel was ineffective at trial and on appeal; and (3) as “a juvenile offender, [his] sentence of life without parole” was unconstitutional. The district court concluded that the last two issues were time-barred and that the first issue lacked merit because the case Davis claimed created a new standard, "Miller v. Alabama," (132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012)), was inapposite. The court thus denied habeas relief and denied a COA. The Tenth Circuit affirmed: "while Miller certainly reiterated the relevance of youth at sentencing as a general matter, Davis’s argument at best relies on an extension of Miller’s logic. Two dispositive conclusions follow from that: (1) because this version of Davis’s argument does not assert the new right actually recognized in Miller, it suffers from the same timeliness flaw as his petition’s other contentions; and (2) because the state post-conviction trial court rejected this argument, [. . .]deference applies, and we cannot say declining to extend Miller was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court." View "Davis v. McCollum" on Justia Law

A deputy sheriff shot Aaron Palmer dead after entering Palmer's home to serve a bench warrant for Palmer's father, Randall Palmer. The elder Palmer failed to appear and comply with a performance contract with the drug court. The deputy thought he say Randall in Aaron's garage earlier int he day, and arranged for support from other law-enforcement officers to apprehend Randall. When he returned to the area with other officers, the deputy allegedly saw somebody who appeared to be Randall running through the garage into the house. He then sped to the front door of the house with gun drawn, pushed the door open, and fired his gun at Aaron, who was standing a few feet from the door, allegedly with a knife in his hand. Randall was not found on the premises. Aaron's widow Nicole Attocknie filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 suit on behalf of herself, Aaron’s child, and Aaron’s estate claiming that: (1) the deputy violated Aaron’s Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully entering the house and using excessive force; and (2) another deputy (who was not present when Aaron was shot) violated Aaron’s Fourth Amendment rights by failing to train or supervise the deputy who shot Aaron. Both deputies claimed qualified immunity, but the district court denied their motions for summary judgment. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the denials of qualified immunity to the deputies: "[h]ot pursuit is the sole justification offered by the defendants for Cherry’s entry of Aaron’s home. But Plaintiff presented sufficient evidence that Cherry was not in hot pursuit of Randall when he entered the home and that the entry was therefore unlawful. And because the use of force would only have been necessary as a result of the entry, a jury could properly find that the unlawful entry caused Aaron’s death." View "Attocknie v. Smith" on Justia Law

The government successfully prosecuted defendant-appellant Joseph Kupfer in two trials, alleging Kupfer and his wife conspired to enable Dr. Armando Gutierrez (a media consultant) to increase his compensation under a State contract without any additional work. In exchange for the increase, Gutierrez allegedly gave kickbacks to Kupfer through Kupfer’s consulting company. The government alleged that Gutierrez had disguised the kickbacks as payments for Kupfer’s work on a separate media campaign involving voter awareness. In the first trial, the jury found Kupfer and his wife guilty of tax evasion. In the second trial, the jury found Kupfer guilty of stealing and participating in a conspiracy to steal federal government property with Gutierrez. The district court entered a judgment of conviction for these crimes and sentenced Kupfer to ten years in prison. Kupfer appeals the conviction and sentence on all counts. After review, the Tenth Circuit found no reversible error as to Kupfer's conviction. The Court did concluded that the district court miscalculated the sentence, reversed and remanded for resentencting. View "United States v. Kupfer" on Justia Law

Defendant Kenneth Barrett was convicted on two counts of felony murder and one count of intentionally killing a state law enforcement officer. He received a death sentence, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed that sentence on direct appeal. Defendant then filed a motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. 2255, which the district court denied. The Tenth Circuit then granted a certificate of appealability (COA) enabling him to appeal on several of his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. Upon review of the merits of defendant's appeal, the Tenth Circuit affirmed on all but one claim: because defendant could have been entitled to relief on his contention that his trial attorneys were ineffective by failing to investigate and present evidence of his background and mental health for the trial’s penalty phase, the Court reversed and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on that issue. View "United States v. Barrett" on Justia Law