Civil Procedure, Civil Rights and Criminal Matters
In US v. Hughes, No. 08-60870, the Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's firearm possession conviction and sentence, holding that 1) faced with contradictory testimony regarding what officers saw in defendants' car, the district court was entitled to decide whom to believe when both presented "reasonable views of the evidence"; 2) there was not enough in this record to rule on whether defendant's counsel was ineffective, so he was required to follow the usual route of collateral attack; and 3) defendant's third prior conviction for violating the federal escape statute, 18 U.S.C. section 751(a), was a violent felony, as the district court held, which qualified defendant for enhanced sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Del Prado v. B.N. Dev. Co., No. 09-10581, concerned proceedings arising out of a class action brought against Ferdinand Marcos, the former President of the Philippines, to enforce an Illinois registered judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The court of appeals reversed the dismissal of the complaint on the ground that a judgment entered in one federal court and then registered in a second federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. section 1963, may be re-registered and enforced in a third federal court, a process termed "successive registration."
In US v. Davis, No. 09-10731, the Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence following the revocation of his supervised release, holding that 1) defendant failed to meet his burden of establishing a reasonable probability that the district court's consideration of an incorrect advisory range affected his sentence; and 2) the court of appeals declined to exercise its discretion to remand for resentencing.
Jennings v. Owens, No. 09-50047, involved an action claiming that officials from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice committed procedural due process violations after the Board of Pardons and Paroles imposed sex offender special conditions on plaintiff's parole. The court of appeals reversed summary judgment for defendant, holding that because plaintiff was indeed a sex offender, he failed to show that he had a liberty interest that was infringed when the parole board imposed sex offender special conditions on his parole.
Related Resources
- Full Text of US v. Hughes, No. 08-60870
- Full Text of Del Prado v. B.N. Dev. Co., No. 09-10581
- Full Text of US v. Davis, No. 09-10731
- Full Text of Jennings v. Owens, No. 09-50047
- 28 U.S.C. section 1963