United States v. Martinez Docket: 20-20148 Opinion Date: October 27, 2020 Judge: Jennifer Walker Elrod Areas of Law: Criminal Law The judge may not delegate to the probation officer the decision to require inpatient, rather than outpatient, treatment because of the liberty interests at stake. The Fifth Circuit vacated the district court's modification of defendant's conditions of supervised release to include a provision that he participate in an inpatient or outpatient substance abuse treatment program supervised by defendant's probation officer. The court held that the option to require inpatient rehabilitation delegates to the probation officer the judicial decision to significantly restrict defendant's liberty during treatment. The court remanded for further proceedings. Read Opinion
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Louisiana v. Revish Docket: 2019-K-01732 Opinion Date: October 20, 2020 Judge: Per Curiam Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law Defendant Nicholas Revish was found guilty of the second degree murder of Latrell Davis and the attempted second degree murder of Jamond Rougeau. All three were in Rougeau’s parked vehicle on March 26, 2012, in Baton Rouge when violence erupted from a dispute over cocaine. Rougeau’s weapon was used to shoot Rougeau and Davis. Rougeau identified defendant as the shooter. Defendant, however, turned himself in to police, admitted he shot Rougeau and Davis, but claimed he did so in self-defense. The district court sentenced defendant to serve concurrent terms of life imprisonment at hard labor without parole eligibility for second degree murder and 25 years imprisonment at hard labor for attempted second degree murder. The court of appeal vacated the convictions and sentences because it found trial counsel provided ineffective assistance sufficient to deprive defendant of a fair trial by failing to object to a defective jury instruction on self-defense. The court of appeal remanded for a new trial. While awaiting retrial and after several delays, defendant moved to quash the indictment in which he contended the State failed to timely commence the new trial. In opposing this motion, the State argued that when the court of appeal’s order of a new trial became final, the slate was wiped clean, the clock restarted, and the State had a new two-year period to commence trial. The parties also disputed whether the time to commence trial was interrupted by the filing of various motions, and, if so, when the interruptions ceased. The district court rejected the State’s interpretation of Articles 578 and 582 and granted defendant’s motion to quash. The State appealed. Finding that the State miscalculated the time afforded by statute to retry a defendant following mistrial, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the district court's decision to grant defendant's motion to quash. Read Opinion Arnold v. Williams Docket: 19-30555 Opinion Date: October 23, 2020 Judge: Jennifer Walker Elrod Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law The Fifth Circuit withdrew its prior opinion and substituted the following opinion. Plaintiff filed suit against defendant under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for violations of various constitutional rights and under Louisiana tort law. In this case, after defendant approached, questioned, and reached to grab plaintiff outside of his home, plaintiff fled, fell off a fence, and dislocated his shoulder. The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of the unreasonable search claim and remanded for the district court to consider qualified immunity before proceeding to the merits of the case. The court held that plaintiff's complaint plausibly alleges a trespassory search of his home where the officer's search of the curtilage of plaintiff's home was unreasonable insofar as it infringed on plaintiff's reasonable expectation of privacy and exigent circumstances were lacking. However, the court held that the complaint lacks allegations that would allow the court to draw all reasonable inferences in plaintiff's favor and to conclude that he plausibly alleged a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the court affirmed the dismissal of the unreasonable seizure claim. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's remaining section 1983 claims, holding that plaintiff failed to state a false arrest/false imprisonment claim because he failed to plausibly allege that his ultimate arrest was false; plaintiff failed to state a claim for malicious prosecution because, as the district court correctly observed, there is no freestanding right under the Constitution to be free from malicious prosecution; and plaintiff failed to state a claim for a violation of procedural and substantive due process because resort to a generalized remedy under the Due Process Clause is inappropriate where a more specific constitutional provision provides the rights at issue. The court also affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's claim for intentional infliction of emotion distress under Louisiana law, the district court's grant of summary judgment, and the three evidentiary rulings appealed by plaintiff. Read Opinion AG Jeff Landry sues Google, alleging the company ‘unlawfully maintained monopolies’ www.houmatimes.com/news/ag-jeff-landry-sues-google-alleging-the-company-unlawfully-maintained-monopolies/ Louisiana Supreme Court Opinions Louisiana v. Hill Docket: 2020-KA-00323 Opinion Date: October 20, 2020 Judge: Genovese Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law In 2017, Louisiana filed a bill of information charging defendant, Tazin Ardell Hill, with altering an official identification card to conceal his designation as a registered sex offender. The issue this case presented for the Louisiana Supreme Court's review involved the constitutionality of the statutory requirement that persons convicted of sex offenses carry an identification card branded with the words “SEX OFFENDER.” Other states (and the federal government) have enacted similar collections of laws. However, the specific requirement to carry a branded identification card distinguished Louisiana from the rest of the country. The Court found this requirement constituted compelled speech and did not survive a First Amendment strict scrutiny analysis. Thus, the Court upheld the trial court’s ruling striking this specific requirement as unconstitutional and quashing the prosecution of defendant for altering his identification card to conceal the “SEX OFFENDER” designation. Read Opinion US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Opinions M.D. v. Abbott Docket: 19-41015 Opinion Date: October 16, 2020 Judge: James C. Ho Areas of Law: Civil Procedure, Government & Administrative Law Plaintiffs, a certified class of minor children in the permanent managing conservatorship (PMC) of the Texas Department of Family Protective Services, filed 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims alleging that the Texas foster-care system violated their substantive due process right to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm. The district court issued a wide-ranging permanent injunction imposing sweeping changes on the Texas foster-care system. The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded the injunction to the district court for modification; the district court made additional modifications to the injunction; and the state appealed again. The Fifth Circuit then instructed the district court to begin implementing, without further changes, the modified injunction with the alterations the court made. On remand, however, the district court expanded the injunction again by enjoining the state from moving any PMC child from their current placement as a result of enforcement of the court's requirement for 24-hour awake-night supervision unless application is made to the court prior to the proposed discharge. The Fifth Circuit reversed and held that it is black-letter law that a district court must comply with a mandate issued by an appellate court. The Fifth Circuit remanded to the district court to begin implementing, without further changes, the modified injunction with the alterations the court has made. Read Opinion United States v. Montgomery Docket: 19-50535 Opinion Date: October 13, 2020 Judge: Per Curiam Areas of Law: Criminal Law The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 1); possession with intent to distribute cocaine (Count 2); and distribution of methamphetamine (Count 3). The court rejected defendant's contention that the district court misapplied USSG 4A1.1(e) and held that his criminal history score was correctly calculated; defendant's above-Guidelines sentence is substantively reasonable where the district court based its decision on a number of the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors, including not only defendant's criminal history, but also the nature and circumstances of the offense and the need for the sentence imposed to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct and to protect the public; and, under the totality of the circumstances, the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing defendant's sentence. Read Opinion United States v. Strother Docket: 19-40361 Opinion Date: October 9, 2020 Judge: Stephen Andrew Higginson Areas of Law: Criminal Law The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Because defendant's arguments for plea withdrawal—particularly his argument that his plea was not given knowingly and voluntarily—derive from his claim that he received ineffective assistance of counsel, the court chose to address the merits of the district court's denial of his motion to withdraw his plea. The court considered the Carr factors and the totality of the circumstances, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Given defendant's consistent, repeated statements in court affirming that he understood the required elements of his charge up until the time of his plea withdrawal motion, the court found that the district court did not err in determining that the record did not support defendant's assertion that he was unaware of the "knowingly possessed" element of his offense. Furthermore, the record supports the conclusion that counsel was available to defendant throughout the proceedings; defendant's original plea was knowing and voluntary; defendant delayed in filing his motion to withdraw; and the government would suffer prejudice if the withdrawal motion were granted. Read Opinion US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Opinions United States v. Hinojosa-Almance Docket: 19-50942 Opinion Date: October 7, 2020 Judge: Higginbotham Areas of Law: Criminal Law The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to marijuana trafficking offenses. Defendant received two concurrent, within Guidelines sentences of 27 months. The court held that the district court did not reversibly err in denying a sentencing adjustment for acceptance of responsibility under USSG 3E1.1(a). Even without considering defendant's pretrial release violations, the court concluded that his driving while intoxicated supports the district court's decision. The court also held that defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable where the district court considered the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors and the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing defendant. Read Opinion United States v. Fields Docket: 19-10639 Opinion Date: October 2, 2020 Judge: Jerry E. Smith Areas of Law: Criminal Law The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for three firearms offenses, but vacated his sentence in part, remanding for amendment of the written judgment by removing an unpronounced special condition. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to support his conviction under an aiding-and-abetting theory of making false statements in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, as well as making false statements with respect to information that a licensed firearms dealer is required to keep in its records; the evidence was also sufficient to support his conviction of possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon; but the district court abused its discretion by including, in the written judgment, a special condition of supervised release that it omitted from the oral pronouncement of sentence. Read Opinion Rountree v. Lopinto Docket: 20-30111 Opinion Date: October 2, 2020 Judge: Jerry E. Smith Areas of Law: Criminal Law The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's claim alleging that the seizure of his vehicle violated his clearly established constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. In this case, the officer investigating a hit-and-run incident came across one of the cars involved and seized it without obtaining a warrant. The court held that the warrantless seizure was constitutional, because there was probable cause to believe that the vehicle was an instrument or evidence of crime. Therefore, the officer is entitled to qualified immunity. Read Opinion Will bars be allowed to open in Terrebonne parish today? www.houmatimes.com/news/will-bars-be-allowed-to-open-in-terrebonne-parish-today/ |
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