Opinion ID: 153024
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Claim was previously foreclosed by circuit law

Text: Likewise, as Garland argues and the Government appears to concede, his present claim was foreclosed under our pre- Santos cases. See Government Br. 15. Thus, he satisfies the second Reyes-Requena factor. Our cases have never explicitly defined the meaning of foreclosed by circuit law as used in this Reyes-Requena factor. Nonetheless, we have previously adopted the ordinary meaning of foreclosedexclude[d] by prior controlling case law. 6 Oxford English Dictionary 47 (2d ed.1989). See Garrido-Morato v. Gonzales, 485 F.3d 319, 322 n. 1 (5th Cir.2007); United States v. Cathey, 259 F.3d 365, 368 (5th Cir.2001). We have consistently held that if an argument falls within the scope of, and is excluded by, a prior holding of a controlling case, it is foreclosed by that case. The court need not have specifically considered and rejected the exact claim for it to be foreclosed, as long as the breadth of a prior holding was meant to encompass and preclude the argument. For instance, in Garrido-Morato we held that circuit case law foreclosed the defendant's claim that her conviction for harboring aliens should not bar her from discretionary relief from deportation. 485 F.3d at 322 n. 1 (citation and quotation marks omitted). Individuals are barred from such discretionary relief if they have committed an aggravated felony. See id. A prior case in this circuit had held that the parenthetical `related to alien smuggling' [in the statute defining aggravated felonies] is descriptive and not limiting. Id. Clearly, harboring aliens, although not part of the process of importing or exporting aliens, could be described as relating to alien smuggling. See Black's Law Dictionary 1516 (9th ed.2009) (defining smuggling as [t]he crime of importing or exporting illegal articles). Therefore, we concluded that our case law excluded the defendant's narrower interpretation of aggravated felony as not including harboring aliens; Garrido-Morato was foreclosed from arguing that she was entitled to discretionary relief on the basis that she had not committed an aggravated felony. Id. Similarly, in Cathey, 259 F.3d at 368, we held that Cathey's argumentthat the district court's sentence, based on its finding that [another individual's] death resulted from [Cathey's] distribution of heroin, violated [Cathey's] right to a jurywas foreclosed by United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148, 117 S.Ct. 633, 136 L.Ed.2d 554 (1997). In Watts, the Supreme Court held that a jury's verdict of acquittal does not prevent the sentencing court from considering conduct underlying the acquitted charge, so long as that conduct has been proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Cathey, 259 F.3d at 368 (quotation marks omitted) (quoting Watts, 519 U.S. at 157, 117 S.Ct. 633). The Supreme Court had established a general rule that encompassed, rejected and thereby foreclosed the defendant's specific argument. Under this definition, Garland's claim was previously foreclosed by circuit case law. In United States v. Allen, a panel of this court wrote, [f]raudulent scheme[s] produce[] proceeds, at the latest when the scheme succeeds in disgorging the funds from the victim and placing them into the control of the perpetrators. 76 F.3d 1348, 1361 (5th Cir.1996). The panel then used this definition to conclude that the defendants could be convicted of money laundering because the money left the control of the victim and came into the possession of the defendants. Id. The court indicated it did not need to determine that the funds were the profits of the unlawful activity; it was sufficient that the Government demonstrated that the defendant had control over the funds. Id. See also United States v. Puig-Infante, 19 F.3d 929, 938 (5th Cir.1994) (stating that [t]he only permissible inference from the government's proof is that [the defendant] was in possession of the proceeds of unlawful activity, when all the Government had shown was that the defendant had control over money obtained through the sale of illegal drugs). In this manner, this court previously held that the term proceeds was defined by whether the defendant had control over the derivatives of an unlawful activity, not the nature of those derivatives, i.e., whether the money or property represented the gross receipts or profits of the fraud. We are bound by the decisions of prior panels. United States v. Rose, 587 F.3d 695, 705 (5th Cir.2009). Therefore, as Allen predated Garland's conviction and remained controlling case law until Santos, Garland was previously foreclosed by circuit case law from raising his instant claim.