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Author Archive | Yuanchung Lee

Friday, July 30th, 2021

District court’s egregious flouting of long-established procedures regarding a jury note and a proposed Allen charge does not constitute “plain error” because its mistakes did not prejudice the defendant

In United States v. Catherine Melhuish, No. 19-485 (2d Cir. July 27, 2021) (opinion by Judge Nardini, joined by Judges Walker and Wesley), the Circuit rejects the defendant’s argument that the trial judge erred in responding to a jury note and in proposing an Allen charge during deliberations; concludes that 18 U.S.C. § 111, prohibiting the assault of a federal officer, is a general-intent offense; and remands for further fact-finding on the defendant’s claim that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to introduce evidence supporting an insanity defense. The first is worth discussing.

The principal issue is the trial judge’s egregious refusal to follow the Circuit’s long-established procedures for how to deal with jury notes and supplemental instructions during deliberations. These are the steps that a trial judge must follow:

(1) the jury inquiry should be in writing; (2) the note should be marked as the court’s exhibit …

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Categories: Allen charge

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Thursday, July 29th, 2021

Panel upholds 40-year prison sentence for Hizballah “sleeper agent” who did not injure anyone or engage in violence; Judge Pooler dissents on the ground that the Guidelines’ terrorism enhancements yield inappropriately high ranges that can result in sentences that, like this one, “shock[] the conscience.”

Ali Kournai was a “sleeper agent” working on behalf of Hizballah1 and the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) in the United States and Canada for over a decade. In United States v. Kourani, No. 19-4292 (2d Cir. July 27, 2021) (opinion by Judge Cabranes, joined by Judge Kearse), the Circuit affirms the judgment below, rejecting Kourani’s challenges to his conviction following trial as well as to his 480-month sentence.

Judge Pooler agrees that “Kourani received a fair trial and was properly adjudicated guilty by a jury.” But she dissents on the punishment: Although “[h]is crimes were undeniably serious” and “[i]t is not lost on me that Kourani’s actions could have culminated in far more injurious results,” she explains, “[n]evertheless, they did not, and accordingly, the sentence imposed is disproportionately high.”

Here are the relevant facts as recounted by Judge Cabranes; whether 40 years is “unreasonably long” is the principal …

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Categories: terrorism enhancement

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District court lacks jurisdiction to amend a clerical error in the judgment (under Rule 36) while an appeal is pending from the court’s denial of a prior Rule 36 motion

In an opinion by Judge Kearse, the Circuit ruled in United States v. Jacques, No. 20-1762(L) (2d Cir. July 26, 2021), that a district court lacks authority under Rule 36 (of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) to correct a clerical error in the judgment while an appeal is pending in the Circuit from the court’s denial of the defendant’s prior Rule 36 motion. This simply applies the general rule that “the filing of a notice of appeal confers jurisdiction on the court of appeals and divests the district court of its control over those aspects of the case involved in the appeal.” Op. 14.

Although Rule 36 states that the court “may at any time correct a clerical error in the judgment,” the Circuit reads this as “meant literally in the temporal sense, rather than in a situational sense.” That is, Rule 36 empowers a court to correct …

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Categories: Rule 36

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Wednesday, May 26th, 2021

Twenty-year term of supervised release neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable

In United States v. Joseph Williams, No. 20-1021 (2d Cir. May 26, 2021), a Panel of the Court (Pooler, Sullivan, and Park) ruled in a per curiam opinion that Williams’s 20-year term of supervised release, to follow a 160-month term of imprisonment, was neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable on plain-error review. Williams argued principally that the term of supervised release was procedurally faulty because the district court violated 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c), requiring a sentencing court to “state in open court the reasons for its imposition of the particular sentence . . . .” Specifically, while the court the explained the basis for the chosen term of imprisonment (and discussed the § 3553(a) factors in so doing), it “did not separately explain the factors [in] imposing the term of supervised release.” Op. 4.

The Court found “no procedural error in the district court’s failure to separately explain the basis …

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Categories: plain error, supervised release

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Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

Circuit strikes a special condition of supervised release requiring the defendant to participate in a “restorative justice program” as vague and as delegating judicial authority to the Probation Office

In United States v. Patrick W. Carlineo, 2d Cir. No. 20-1020 (May 25, 2021), a Panel of the Court (Parker, Lohier, and Menashi) invalidated a special condition of supervised release requiring the defendant to “participate in a program known as the Partners in Restorative Initiatives” as too vague and as delegating too much authority to the Probation Office. Judge Parker’s opinion does not invalidate all such conditions. Rather, the takeaway is that if a district judge wishes to impose a restorative-justice-related condition of supervision, the judge must specify the details of the program — preferably one vetted by the Probation Office — and indicate specifically what the defendant must do to satisfy the condition and avoid violation.

Carlineo pleaded guilty to threatening Congresswoman Ihlan Omar and to possessing a gun after a felony conviction. Before sentencing, the district court received an unsolicited letter “from Will Bontrager, who identified himself …

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The Supreme Court throws a wrench into § 1326(d) motions in the Second Circuit

In United States v. Palomar-Santiago, No. 20-437 (May 24, 2021), Justice Sotomayor ruled for a unanimous Court that as a matter of statutory interpretation (1) each of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d)’s three requirements must be satisfied; and that (2) a showing by the defendant that the deportation proceeding was “fundamentally unfair” under § 1326(d)(3) — because the immigration judge (IJ) mistakenly told him that he was removable as an aggravated felon due to his DUI conviction (this became error six years later in Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004), holding that a DUI is not a § 16(b) “crime of violence” and thus not an “aggravated felony”) – does not suffice to dismiss a reentry indictment. The decision overrules Ninth Circuit law holding that “defendants are ‘excused from proving the first two requirements’ of § 1326(d) [– noncitizen defendants must show that they exhausted administrative remedies and …

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Categories: aggravated felony, crime of violence, deportation

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Wednesday, February 24th, 2021

SCOTUS will review the ACCA’s “committed on occasions different from one another” requirement – so object, object, object

Earlier this week the Supreme Court granted cert. in Wooden v. United States, SCOTUS No. 20-5279, which concerns the interpretation of the ACCA’s requirement that each of the three required prior convictions arise from offenses “committed on occasions different from one another . . . .” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). The Court will likely resolve a Circuit split on whether mere temporal distinctness between two offenses suffices to satisfy the requirement of separateness, or whether a broader inquiry is necessary.1

In Mr. Wooden’s case, the Sixth Circuit ruled that his burgling of 10 different units at the same Georgia mini-storage facility, one after another, which resulted in a guilty plea to 10 counts of burglary more than twenty years ago, constituted 10 separate burglaries for purposes of the ACCA, even though everything occurred at the same location over a short period of time. Several Circuits agree with the …

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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021

Circuit affirms convictions of Dean and Adam Skelos, concluding than a McDonnell error in the court’s charge to the jury was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

In United States v. Dean Skelos and Adam Skelos, 2d Cir. Nos. 18-3421 & 18-3442 (Feb. 23, 2021), a panel of the Court (Walker, Sack, and Carney) affirms the Skeloses’ convictions, following a 2018 retrial, for various public-corruption and bribery related offenses (Dean Skelos was the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate and Adam Skelos is his adult son). Their earlier convictions, following a 2015 trial, had been vacated in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in “McDonnell v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2355 (2016), which narrowed the definition of the ‘official act’ that a public official must exchange for benefits in order to be convicted of Hobbs Act extortion or honest services fraud, where those crimes have been defined by reference to the term ‘official act’ in the federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201. Because the McDonnell definition conflicted with the broader …

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Categories: bribery, corruption, Hobbs Act

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District court must make clear, specific finding that defendant committed perjury before imposing the 2-level obstruction enhancement based on trial testimony.

In United States v. Ivan Rosario, 2d Cir. No. 18-1994 (L) (Feb. 23, 2021) (per curiam), the Court (Sack, Chin, and Lohier) reaffirmed the longstanding rule that a district court may impose a 2-level obstruction enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, based on the defendant’s allegedly false trial testimony, only if it “make[s] findings to support all the elements of a perjury violation in the specific case,” namely, “that the defendant (1) willfully and (2) materially (3) committed perjury, which is (a) the intentional (b) giving of false testimony (c) as to a material matter.” Op. 6 (quoting United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87 (1993) and United States v. Thompson, 808 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2015)). This “rigid requirement of fact-finding” ensures “that courts will not automatically enhance sentences whenever the accused takes the stand and is thereafter found guilty.” Op. 5-6. Because “[a]ny sentence …

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Categories: obstruction of justice, perjury

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Thursday, September 10th, 2020

Federal law barring false voter registrations applies to town election because New York’s “unitary registration scheme” allows a falsely registered voter to vote in future federal elections. And the Travel Act’s bar on “bribery” is not limited to acts involving public officials (as payees) and encompasses a New York law barring payments to voters.

In United States v. Smilowitz, 2d Cir. No. 19-361 (Sep. 8, 2020), a panel of the Court (Walker, Parker, and Carney) ruled that the defendant’s conduct of falsely registering voters for a town election, and of offering payment to voters for their votes in that election, fell within the reach of the federal election law, 52 U.S.C. § 10307, and qualified as “bribery” under the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952(b). Here are the essential facts.

Smilowitz owned part of a real-estate development in Bloomingburg, New York, population 420. It had a mayor and two trustees.

In 2013 those officials voted against a measure that would have benefitted Smilowitz and several other real-estate developers. Hoping to overturn that decision, Smilowitz and his confederates tried to influence the 2014 election and replace the local officials with candidates amenable to them.

The conspirators did several things giving rise to this prosecution. …

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Thursday, August 6th, 2020

Rehaif claim cannot be brought in second or successive § 2255 motion because the decision involved statutory interpretation and did not render a “constitutional” rule as required by AEDPA’s gatekeeping provision.

In Mata v. United States, 2d Cir. No. 20-1875, a panel of the Court (Park, Nardini, and Menashi) held in a per curiam opinion that federal prisoners cannot rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct 2191 (2019), to challenge their underlying conviction or sentence in a second or successive § 2255 motion. This is so because while § 2255(h)(2) requires that a successive motion be based on (among other things) “a new rule of constitutional law,” Rehaif’s holding – that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) requires proof that the defendant knew that s/he fell within a relevant class barred from possessing a gun – was a matter of statutory interpretation and not based on the Constitution.…

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