Source: https://www.pbwt.com/white-collar-defense-and-investigations/second-circuit-criminal-law-blog/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 03:00:01+00:00

Document:
In United States v. Ojudun, the Second Circuit (Katzmann, Kearse, Meyer by designation) vacated the revocation of Oluwole Ojudun’s supervised release, finding that the District Court improperly admitted the confession of Ojudun’s codefendant under the statement against interest hearsay exception.
In a recent summary order in United States v. Smith, 17-2446, the Second Circuit (Katzmann, Kearse, Meyer by designation) remanded a case for additional fact-finding on a narrow issue relating to the duration of the time it took police to obtain a warrant to search the contents of a tablet computing device following the lawful warrantless seizure of the tablet.
In United States v. Mears, 18-460-cr, the Second Circuit (Sack, Livingston, Chin) issued a summary order that merits attention primarily because of the Court’s decision to remand for further proceedings based on the imposition on an unwarranted supervised release condition.
In United States v. Altareb, 17-1717, the Second Circuit (Sack, Parker, Chin) issued a summary order affirming a conviction for, inter alia, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and bulk cash smuggling.
In United States v. Walters, 17-2373 (Dec. 4, 2018), the Second Circuit (Jacobs, Chin, Kuntz (by designation)) affirmed the conviction of professional gambler William T. Walters for securities fraud and related claims arising out of insider trading. On appeal, Walters argued that the indictment should be dismissed in light of repeated leaks of confidential grand jury information made by the FBI to reporters from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times in violation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
In Illarramendi v. United States, 18-35 (October 16, 2018), the Second Circuit (Walker, Calabresi, Livingston) in a per curiam decision affirmed the denial of a motion for bail pending resolution of the motion to vacate petitioner’s sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. In doing so, however, the Second Circuit held that the petitioner need not obtain a certificate of appealability (COA) in order to proceed with the appeal of the district court’s decision. This was a departure from Second Circuit precedent—a rare event in the absence of an en banc decision by the Court of Appeals.
In United States v. Bekim Fiseku, the Second Circuit (Cabranes, Lynch, Carney) rejected the defendant’s argument that police officers unlawfully seized evidence from the trunk of his co-defendant’s vehicle. The Panel held that an officer acted reasonably and consistent with the Fourth Amendment when he handcuffed Fiseku—despite lacking probable cause to believe Fiseku was engaged in criminal activity and having already determined that Fiseku was unarmed—due to the “unusual circumstances” of the encounter. Despite the Court’s assertions that its holding was based on the “unusual circumstances” presented by the case, the decision could be incorrectly taken by law enforcement personnel as permission to handcuff a suspect during a routine Terry stop, even in the absence of more tangible indications that the suspect is armed or otherwise dangerous.
In United States v. Paul, the Second Circuit (Newman and Pooler Circuit Judges, and Cote, J., by designation) issued an opinion interpreting the meaning of the phrase “physically restrained” during a commission of a crime for the purpose of applying the physical restraint enhancement set forth in Sentencing Guidelines Section 2B3.1.
In United States v. Le, No. 16-819, the Second Circuit considered the constitutionality of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 and whether it can reach “purely local” conduct. The panel (Sack, Raggi, Gardephe, D.J.), affirmed the conviction of Cheng Le for attempting to acquire the toxin ricin to create a foolproof murder method, rejecting his constitutional challenges.
In United States v. Baker, the Court (Livingston, Chin, C.J.J., Koeltl, D.J.) affirmed the conviction of Raymond Baker, who after a jury trial in the Northern District of New York was convicted of participating in a conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 100 grams of heroin, in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. §§841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(B), 846 and 851.
On July 25, 2018, in United States v. Lambus, No. 16-4296 (Kearse, Livingston, Jeffrey Meyer, D.J.), the Second Circuit issued a lengthy decision analyzing two questions related to the suppression of GPS data from an ankle bracelet and evidence obtained from a wiretap. The GPS question raises interesting issues about when a federal prosecution can make use of evidence obtained in connection with state parole supervision without a federal warrant and the relevance of state-federal coordination when making that assessment. And the wiretap issue addresses whether an undisputed, but inadvertent, error in a wiretap application should result in the suppression of evidence. On both issues, the district court (Weinstein, J.) granted the defendants’ motions to suppress, but the Circuit reversed.
On July 31, the Second Circuit issued a decision in United States v. Iverson (Kearse, Calabresi, Livingston) and affirmed the conviction of a defendant who had challenged the district court’s denial of his suppression motion and the district court’s mid-trial decision to excuse one of two black persons on the jury for cause right before summations based on an interview of the juror conducted in camera. The decision presents an interesting set of facts and applies established law in the Second Circuit.
In a brief decision issued on Tuesday, July 31, in United States v. Green, the Second Circuit (Cabranes, Carney, Goldberg by designation) vacated in part a judgment ordering the defendant to pay restitution for the theft of government property that was stolen outside the applicable statute of limitations. In doing so, the Court rejected the government’s arguments that the defendant had (i) waived her right to appeal in her plea agreement, and (ii) consented in her plea agreement to pay restitution for property stolen outside the applicable limitations period. Having disposed of these contentions, the Court rejected the government’s argument that the underlying theft was a “continuing offense” that would permit the government to obtain restitution for amounts stolen both within and outside of the limitations period.
Second Circuit Reverses Immigration Proceeding Based on Constitutional Violation, Criticizes Immigration Enforcement Based on Ethnic Generalizations As "Teeter[ing] On The Verge of The Ugly Abyss of Racism"
In the context of an appeal from a decision of the Board of Immigration appeals, Zuniga-Perez v. Sessions, the Second Circuit (Pooley, Wesley, Chin, C.JJ) ruled that a search conducted by law enforcement personnel violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court recognized that the petitioner “made a sufficient showing of an egregious constitutional violation” by law enforcement agents, and reversed the immigration judge’s decision to deny a suppression motion without a hearing. While this is not a criminal law decision, it raises some important criminal law issues, so we have decided to cover it.
On July 25, 2018, in United States v. Lambus, No. 16-4296 (Kearse, Livingston, Jeffrey Meyer, D.J.), the Second Circuit issued a lengthy decision reversing pretrial rulings suppressing evidence obtained from wiretaps and GPS monitoring.
In United States v. Jimenez, the Second Circuit (Pooler, Raggi, Droney) rejected an as-applied Second Amendment challenge to a provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that makes it illegal for a person who has been dishonorably discharged from the military to possess guns or ammunition, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(6). In the decision, which marks the first time a federal court of appeals has grappled with the statute’s constitutionality post-District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court was careful to note that it was not considering a facial challenge and limited its discussion to persons, as here, who have been dishonorably discharged for “felony-like” military offenses.
In United States v. Gasperini, the Court (Cabranes, Lynch, Carney) resolved various challenges by Fabio Gasperini, an Italian citizen, to his conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (“CFAA”). Gasperini was convicted following an elaborate hacking scheme in which he exploited a “backdoor” of certain internet-connected devices around the globe to seize control of the devices, used the compromised devices to search for other vulnerable devices to grow his computer army, and then unleashed his “botnet” of over 155,000 machines to generate “ad click” revenue and launch distributed denial-of-service attacks. Gasperini was ultimately arrested in the Netherlands and tried in the Eastern District of New York.

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