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

This appeal arose out of a bankruptcy adversary proceeding, and centered on the ownership of a federal tax refund. The tax refund was issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to United Western Bancorp, Inc. (UWBI), a thrift holding company that had, under the terms of a written “Tax Allocation Agreement,” filed consolidated returns on behalf of itself and several subsidiary corporations. The tax refund was the result, however, of net operating losses incurred by United Western Bank (the Bank), one of UWBI’s subsidiaries. Simon Rodriguez, in his capacity as the Chapter 7 Trustee for the bankruptcy estate of UWBI, initiated this adversary proceeding against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as receiver for the Bank, alleging that the tax refund was owned by UWBI and was thus part of the bankruptcy estate. The bankruptcy court agreed and entered summary judgment in favor of the Trustee. The FDIC appealed to the district court, which reversed the decision of the bankruptcy court. The Trustee appealed the district court’s decision. The Tenth Circuit agreed with the district court that the tax refund belonged to the FDIC, as receiver for the Bank. Consequently, the Court affirmed the district court and remanded to the bankruptcy court for further proceedings. View "Rodriguez v. FDIC" on Justia Law

Perry Odom suffered serious injuries when a semi-trailer collapsed on him at work. His employer, Penske Logistics, did not own the trailer, but his employer’s sole stockholder, Penske Truck Leasing, did. Odom and his wife sought to recover from Penske Truck Leasing through a personal injury action in federal court. The district court dismissed their complaint, reasoning Oklahoma’s workers’ compensation scheme as applied here shielded an employer’s stockholders from employee claims arising out of a workplace injury. The Odoms appealed, challenging the district court’s interpretation of the Oklahoma statute. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals certified the interpretive question to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and received an answer making it clear the district court applied an incorrect legal standard in dismissing this case. The Tenth Circuit therefore reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Odom v. Penske Truck Leasing Co." on Justia Law

Petitioner-Appellant Azael Bedolla-Zarate, a native and citizen of Mexico, petitioned the Tenth Circuit for review of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Final Administrative Removal Order (FARO) based upon his having been convicted of an aggravated felony. Bedolla-Zarate was convicted of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor in Wyoming state court in September 2016. He contended that his conviction did not qualify as an aggravated felony. The Tenth Circuit found a person convicted under the Wyoming sexual abuse of a minor statute necessarily has committed sexual abuse of a minor under the INA, therefore DHS properly issued a FARO against Bedolla-Zarate for committing an aggravated felony under the INA. The Court denied review. View "Bedolla-Zarate v. Sessions" on Justia Law

In 2004, Chance Wade Driscoll (“Driscoll”) pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. At Driscoll’s sentencing in January 2005, the sentencing court accepted the Presentence Investigation Report’s (“PSR”) determination that Driscoll was an armed career criminal based upon one previous drug conviction and two previous burglary convictions. The sentencing court did not state whether the two burglary convictions counted as violent felonies under the ACCA’s enumerated offenses clause or the residual clause. Over ten years later, Driscoll filed this 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion, arguing it was possible the sentencing court relied on the now-unconstitutional residual clause of the ACCA to enhance his sentence. The district court denied his section 2255 motion as untimely. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, finding that the predicate Nebraska crime that served as his sentence enhancer did not categorically fit under the generic offense of burglary. As a result, Driscoll's 1988 Nebraska burglary conviction was not a violent felony as defined by the enumerated offenses clause of the ACCA. This meant Driscoll did not qualify as an armed career criminal under the ACCA, not eligible for 18 U.S.C. 924(e)'s fifteen-year minimum sentence, and instead was subject to section 924(a)(2)'s ten-year maximum. The Tenth Circuit found the sentencing court's error was not harmless. View "United States v. Driscoll" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Taunya Perry was arrested and booked into the Ottawa County Jail on December 28, 2012. According to Perry, detention officer Daniel Clements raped her approximately two months later, on February 25, 2013. As a result of the alleged rape, Perry brought suit against the Ottawa County Sheriff, defendant Terry Durborow, under 42 U.S.C. 1983, asserting that Durborow was responsible for the alleged rape under a theory of supervisory liability. In response, Durborow moved for summary judgment, arguing that he was entitled to qualified immunity. Durborow appealed the district court’s order denying his motion, arguing only that - even assuming he violated the Constitution - the district court erred in finding that the contours of the constitutional right at issue were clearly established. The Tenth Circuit agreed: “the clearly established law must be ‘particularized’ to the facts of the case. ... In reaching this conclusion, we do not mean to suggest that “[a] prior case” must have “identical facts” before it will put reasonable officials on notice that their specific conduct is unconstitutional." Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court’s order and remanded with directions to enter summary judgment in Durborow’s favor. View "Perry v. Durborow" on Justia Law

This case arose from two restaurant robberies in 2009, during one of which, defendant-appellant Francisco Melgar-Cabrera’s cohorts shot and killed a waitress. Defendant was charged with numerous crimes but was not immediately tried because he fled to El Salvador. He was extradited in 2013 and subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for causing the death of a person while using a gun to commit an 18 U.S.C. section 924(c) crime of violence. He appealed, contending that the underlying crime for which he was charged, was not categorically a crime of violence. An additional issue this case raised for the Tenth Circuit's consideration was the fact that in the Tenth Circuit, section 924(j) has been held to constitute a sentencing enhancement, not a separate crime. The Court raised this issue because the El Salvador Supreme Court granted defendant's extradition only after holding that he could not be charged with or convicted of a section 924(c) crime. The government subsequently re-indicted defendant, charging him with violating 924(j), and he was convicted of that “crime” rather than a 924(c) offense. Defendant challenged his conviction on appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, but finding no reversible error in the proceedings, the Court affirmed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Melgar-Cabrera" on Justia Law

A former small-town doctor, defendant Joel Miller, was charged with multiple counts of health-care fraud, money laundering, and distributing a controlled substance outside the usual course of professional treatment, as well as one count of making a false statement on an application submitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A jury acquitted him on all of the financial charges as well as several of the drug distribution charges, but found him guilty on seven counts of distributing a controlled substance, and one count of making a false statement to the DEA. The district court granted Defendant’s post-judgment motion for acquittal on one of the controlled-substances counts based on an error in the indictment. The court then sentenced him to forty-one months of imprisonment on the six remaining distribution counts, plus a consecutive sentence of nineteen months on the false-statement count, for a total sentence of sixty months of imprisonment. Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence. The Tenth Circuit found no error in the imposition of defendant’s sentence on the six distribution counts; however the Court reversed and remanded on the false statement count. The Court was persuaded that trial court proceedings “broadened the possible bases for conviction beyond those found in the operative charging document. …we are persuaded that the trial proceedings in this case effected a constructive amendment.” View "United States v. Miller" on Justia Law

Kenneth Francis was convicted by jury on three federal firearms charges, namely, two counts of making false statements to a firearms dealer and one count of unlawful disposition of a firearm to a felon. The charges stemmed from Francis’ straw purchase of two firearms for a felon working as a confidential informant with ATF agents. On appeal, Francis argued: (1) whether the government sufficiently proved he disposed of the firearms to a felon (informant); (2) whether the trial court erred in imposing a four-level sentencing enhancement for trafficking firearms; and (3) whether the district court erred by ordering sex-offender treatment as a special condition of his supervised release. The Tenth Circuit determined the facts found by the district court didn’t suffice to support applying the firearms-trafficking enhancement in calculating Francis’s sentence. The Court found Francis was convicted of a sex offense in 2011, and during the investigation of that crime someone accused him of having intimate sexual contact with a twelve-year-old girl. He failed to complete his previous court-ordered sex- offender-treatment program. Because the record revealed a basis for the sex-offender-treatment condition, Francis could not show prejudice and harm to his substantial rights. So Francis failed to meet his burden under plain error review. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the conviction and sex-offender-treatment special condition, but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Francis" on Justia Law

Cornelia Tapaha was convicted of assault for hitting her boyfriend, Myron Yazzie, with her car. She appealed, arguing the district court: (1) denied her the ability to mount a defense to the charges by excluding three witnesses’ testimony; (2) violated the Confrontation Clause by excluding certain testimony by Yazzie; and (3) erred in refusing to admit redacted portions of an interview with a law-enforcement officer. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Tapaha’s conviction. View "United States v. Tapaha" on Justia Law

Early in the morning of November 12, 2009, police officers from the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Department were dispatched to an apartment complex to investigate a 911 domestic violence call. Upon their arrival, they saw Walter Deiter and his wife, D’Leah Harris, in the middle of the street. When Deiter and Harris saw the officers, they separated, each walking in the opposite direction. Deiter proceeded toward the apartment complex; Officer Patricia Whelan followed him. Deiter went behind a staircase; Whelan temporarily lost sight of him. Deiter emerged a few minutes later on the second-story open breezeway. Whelan told Deiter to come down and talk to her. But before doing so, he made a “squatting, bending motion” which led Whelan to believe he had “dropped” something illegal. She could not see what was dropped because a three- to four-foot tall wall obstructed her view, but once Deiter came down the stairs, Whelan asked Officer Sammy Marquez to determine what had been dropped. As Marquez proceeded up the steps to the second-story breezeway, Deiter took off running. Deiter was eventually brought down with a taser; once he was secured, officers found a holster containing a loaded .22 caliber revolver. Forensic testing revealed Deiter’s DNA on both the holster and firearm. The firearm also contained a small amount of DNA from an unidentified source. A jury convicted Deiter of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. Deiter filed a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion, claiming a prior bank robbery conviction could not be deemed a “violent felony” supporting the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) enhancement to the sentence he ultimately received. He also argued trial counsel was ineffective for (1) failing to challenge his ACCA sentence and (2) reading a transcript of Whelan’s belt tape recorder to the jury which contained an incriminating statement from a witness. After review of the briefs submitted for review, the Tenth Circuit found no reversible error to Deiter's sentence, nor ineffective assistance of counsel. View "United States v. Deiter" on Justia Law