Court Opinion

ID: 9402874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-17 21:00:31.147695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:03.161388
License: Public Domain

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                                             UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                               No. 22-4082

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                             Plaintiff - Appellee,

                      v.

        ARUN DHAVAMANI,

                             Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at
        Bluefield. David A. Faber, Senior District Judge. (1:19-cr-00159-1)

        Submitted: December 21, 2022                                      Decided: June 16, 2023

        Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, THACKER, Circuit Judge, and MOTZ, Senior Circuit
        Judge.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ON BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, Appellate
        Counsel, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia,
        for Appellant. William S. Thompson, United States Attorney, Jennifer Rada Herrald,
        Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,
        Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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        PER CURIAM:

               Arun Dhavamani was convicted of traveling in interstate commerce with the intent

        to engage in illicit sexual conduct, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b). Dhavamani

        appealed, contending, among other things, that the Government agents intentionally

        manufactured federal jurisdiction in this case. We vacated in part and remanded to the

        district court “for a factual finding as to whether law enforcement officers changed the

        agreed meeting location from West Virginia to Virginia for the sole purpose of creating

        federal jurisdiction.” United States v. Dhavamani, No. 20-4306, 2021 WL 4786614, at *1

        (4th Cir. Oct. 14, 2021). We affirmed Dhavamani’s conviction and sentence in all other

        respects. Id.

               On remand, the district court held an evidentiary hearing during which four

        members of the FBI Crimes Against Children Task Force testified. The officers were

        consistent in their testimony that the task force does not prefer federal or state cases and

        task force members are not pressured or even encouraged to bring more federal cases. The

        officers explained that the meeting location in this case was changed for safety reasons and

        because they anticipated that more people would be present at the original meeting place

        at the time the meeting was to take place.

               Following the hearing, the district court concluded that the manufactured

        jurisdiction doctrine did not apply. The court specifically found all four officers credible

        and that their testimony clarified the conflict in the testimony presented during

        Dhavamani’s trial. The court found that creating federal jurisdiction was “not even one

        reason for changing the meeting location . . . [i]t certainly was not the sole reason.”

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               Addressing the discrepancy between Trooper Jillian Yeager’s trial testimony, in

        which she testified that the meeting location was changed in order to get Dhavamani across

        the state line in order to make this a federal case, the district court acknowledged that

        Yeager was not a member of the task force at that time and she was not privy to the reasons

        for the change in the meeting place. The district court credited Yeager’s testimony during

        the evidentiary hearing in which she explained that she was not involved in planning the

        meeting location for Dhavamani and that she misunderstood the questions asked at trial

        about why the meeting location had been changed. The district court thus found that the

        evidence did not support a conclusion that federal jurisdiction was manufactured.

               We review factual findings by the district court for clear error. United States v.

        Charboneau, 914 F.3d 906, 912 (4th Cir. 2019). A factual “finding is clearly erroneous

        when although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is

        left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United

        States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395 (1948) (internal quotation marks

        omitted).   We have held that a district court’s credibility determination, made after

        observing the witnesses and weighing their credibility during an evidentiary hearing, is

        entitled to “the highest degree of appellate deference.” United States v. Slager, 912 F.3d

        224, 233 (4th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the district court

        concluded that all four witnesses who testified during the hearing were credible. Where a

        district court makes a factual determination based on its “decision to credit the testimony

        of one of two or more witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible

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        story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence, that finding, if not internally

        inconsistent, can virtually never be clear error.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

               With these standards in mind, we have reviewed the record and we conclude that

        the district court did not err in finding that the Government agents did not change the

        meeting location for the sole purpose of creating federal jurisdiction and therefore that the

        manufactured jurisdiction doctrine did not apply. See United States v. Davis, 855 F.3d 587,

        589, 592 (4th Cir. 2017). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order and therefore

        affirm the judgment.     We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal

        contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would

        not aid the decisional process.

                                                                                        AFFIRMED

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