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In this Civil Rights claim Carter along with two other plaintiffs sued the Butts County, Georgia Sheriff office and a deputy sheriff for false arrest, claiming the Sheriff violated the Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizures.

These are the facts leading to the Plaintiffs’ arrest. When the deputy’s home had fallen into foreclosure, the mortgage holder advised the deputy that the home would sold in a foreclosure sale. After the deputy moved out of the property, the property was turned over to a maintenance company to prepare the property for resale. The deputy was given notice, and the authorized representatives of the entity handling the sale, the plaintiffs, had entered the house to clean and prepare for the sale. The deputy arrived at the house and ordered the plaintiffs to leave. The plaintiffs tried to show him credentials and documentation of the eviction. The deputy contacted the court clerk and learned there was no eviction proceeding against him. He ordered their arrest for burglary, criminal trespass, and theft, and all three went to jail.

The trial court denied defendant deputy’s motion for summary judgment in which he argued for qualified immunity protection against the claim against him and it denied the sheriff’s summary judgment motion on the conversion claim. As to the remaining claims the trial court granted summary judgment.   The Defendants appealed from the trial court’s rulings.

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In United States v Holmes the defendant appealed his conviction for production of child pornography and possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2251(a) and 2252(a) (4)(B). Holmes was charged with surreptitiously videotaping his teenage stepdaughter performing her daily bathroom routine over a period of approximately five months and of being in possession of the videos and images of her in the nude. Holmes had installed concealed cameras in the stepdaughter’s bathroom and in the videos discovered on his computer the girl is seen completely naked. Plainly visible in those videos was her nude pubic area. Holmes also created a twenty-six screen captures from certain sections of the videos depicting close-up views of her pubic area. After trial, Holmes was found guilty and he appealed.
Under the statutes a defendant commits the crime of production of child pornography when he uses, persuades, entices or coerces a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct. The crime of possession of child pornography involves the knowing possession of a visual depiction that involves a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. The pornography statutory definition of sexually explicit conduct that applies here is the “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person.”

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In this appeal Jimenez-Antunez appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to fire his retained counsel and his request for court appointed counsel. Jimenez was a drug dealer with connections to a Mexican supplier who had couriers deliver drugs to Jimenez and then directed Jimenez to deposit drug sales into various bank accounts. Jimenez was arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy to commit money laundering. A private attorney filed a notice of appearance as his counsel and he worked out a plea agreement with the government to plead guilty to the two conspiracy charges. Three months before sentencing hearing Jimenez sent his attorney a letter asking him to withdraw from the case and telling him he wanted the judge to appoint another lawyer. The attorney then moves to withdraw as the defense attorney. Prior to sentencing the judge held a hearing on the motion to withdraw and heard that that the client felt the attorney had coerced him into pleading guilty, that the attorney did not let him speak or explain certain matters, that the attorney threatened him by telling him he would be sentenced to 30 years if he did not plead guilty. He also said the attorney did not visit him in six months. The district court refused Jimenez’s request for new counsel concluding that Jimenez had been afforded effective counsel. It found no evidence that the attorney actually coerced Jimenez to plead guilty nor did credit Jimenez’s claim that the attorney had not visited him in six months. The district court believed that Jimenez’s real gripe was his disappointment with the sentencing guideline range in the presentence investigation report. Continue reading

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In United States v. Croteau, the defendant challenged the sufficiency of the evidence for his ten-count criminal conviction in federal court for making false and fictitious claims on this tax returns and for the reasonableness of his 56 month federal sentence. Croteau was a tax protester who filed false returns for three consecutive years claiming that he was entitled to refunds totaling $400,000 and to substantiate his return he submitted false 1099-OID forms reporting that financial institutions had issued interest income to Croteau and withheld the interest for federal tax purposes. Croteau’s tax returns sought refunds of the money withheld. None of the financial entities listed on Croteau’s 1099-OID forms had issued any interest income or any income to Croteau. Despite communication from the I.R.S. notifying him that he had provided the I.R.S. with frivolous tax information, Croteau repeatedly submitted amended tax returns for the same years containing fictitious and fraudulent 1099-OID information.   To make matters worse, Croteau also recorded several false and fictitious liens and documents in the Lee County Clerks’ office asserting that the IRS owed him hundreds of millions of dollars.   At his trial he did not contest that he had in fact filed false and fictitious tax returns and other financial documents. He raised a good-faith defense, claiming he had an honest belief that what he was doing was correct.

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In US v. Damion St. Patrick Baston (“Baston”), the Defendant worked as a pimp and forced various women to work as prostitutes in Florida and around the world while keeping the money they earned As a result he was indicted for violating 18 U.S.C. 1593 and charged in Miami federal court for sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion in Florida and in the countries of Australia and United Arab Emirates. He was also charged with several counts of money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1956 based his having wired the sex-trafficking proceeds from Australian to Miami.

At his trial the government called three prostitutes that worked for him as witnesses who testified how they met Baston and how he used violence and coercion to force them into prostitution. His defense what that he never coerced the woman into prostitution and they were already prostitute when they met. He said they did it freely and voluntarily and in Australia prostitution is legal trade from which they could make money.
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In USA v. Thomas the Defendant was convicted of knowingly accessing with intent to view child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(4)(B). Prior to his federal court trial he filed a motion to suppress the incriminating images of child pornography that were seized from his desktop computer at his home in violation of the Fourth Amendment. He appealed the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress asking the Eleventh circuit court of appeals to overturn the trial court’s decision.

These are the facts of the seizure. A police officer arrived at Thomas’s home in response to a telephone report from Thomas’s wife that there was child pornography on a computer within the home. The officer was greeted by Thomas’s wife who told the officer that she found eight to ten child pornography websites on a computer in their shared home. The wife described what appeared to be minors engaged in sexual conduct with an adult. The wife told the officer that the defendant was home but sleeping and did not give consent to view the computers, but the wife said they both use the computer though Thomas used the computers more often, and the wife gave permission to search all the electronic equipment. Other officers arrived while Thomas still slept and approached the computer screen where they saw in plain view web sites “pictures of young girls that had only their underwear on” though not engaged in any sexual activity. The officers learned from the wife that she had seen nude photos of 4 – 13 year old children in sex poses and being sexually abused but the wife mistakenly closed the web pages before the police arrived. The officer started to conduct a forensic search/scan of the hard drive of the computer and began a forensic search.
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In U.S. v Cubero the Defendant appealed from his 151 month federal sentence and life-term of supervised release. He was sentenced in federal court after pleading guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography and two count of possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(4)(B). For various reasons he argued that his sentenced was procedurally and substantively unreasonable. His procedural challenges were anchored to a double counting argument that he received a two level increase under the sentencing guideline provision U.S.S.G. 2G2.2(b)(3)(F) for the distribution of child pornography, in that both the base offense level and the section 2G1.2(b)(3)(F) cover the act of distribution. The court of appeals rejected the argument by finding that the base offense level covers multiple possible violations of §2252(a)(2) including knowing distribution, knowing receipt, and knowing reproduction, and the guideline addressed the range of harms associated with child pornography distribution through various offense level increases and decreases.

He argued he was entitled to a two level decrease under USSG § 2G2.2(b)(1), which provides for a two-level decrease if the defendant’s conduct was limited to receipt or solicitation of child pornography and the defendant did not intend to traffic in or distribute the material. Unfortunately, the argument failed because the defendant used a peer to peer file sharing network to obtain hundreds of images and he elected to make them available to others.

The court rejected the Defendant’s next procedural challenges: the district court treated the guidelines range as presumptively reasonable; failed to properly consider non-guideline § 3553(a) factors; failed to properly consider the Defendant’s argument for variance, and failed to adequately explain its sentence. It found the sentencing court heard all the factual and legal arguments in favor of a variance but was “not convinced that based upon the images, [it] should go below the guidelines”, while stating that it would not “sentence below the guidelines in the exercise of its discretion.”
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In U.S. v. Brown the Defendant pleaded guilty in federal court for knowingly receiving 481 counterfeit United States Postal Money Orders from a foreign county with intent to pass them off as real, violation of 18 U.S.C. § 473. As part of her plea agreement she waived her right to appeal her federal conviction and sentence. At the plea colloquy she admitted that she knew the postal money orders were not true and were counterfeit.

Nevertheless, she filed her appeal and raised the issue in her appeal that her indictment was defective because it did not expressly allege the mens rea element of the section 473. She argued that the omission deprived the federal court of subject-matter jurisdiction to accept her guilty plea and therefore her conviction is null and void.
Brown’s two count indictment was based on her receipt of packages containing the counterfeit money orders. Count one did not allege knowledge, however count 2 did allege that the defendant acted knowingly. The Defendant plead guilty to count one.

Brown’s jurisdictional argument went like this. The indictment was defective on its face because count one did not include the required mens rea element, which is an essential element of section 473 that makes if a crime to receive and/or pass counterfeit money orders. Because of this omission, Brown argued the indictment does not state a federal crime and therefore the district court never had jurisdiction to sentence her.
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In U.S. v. Edmond, Defendant was indicted for conspiracy to commit access-device fraud and aggravated identity theft based upon his use of social security numbers to make fraudulent bank transfers. Pursuant to a plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to possession of fifteen or more unauthorized access devices – an unindicted offense – and one count of aggravated identity theft. On the basis of this plea, the District Court sentenced Edmond to prison for a total of 48 months.

For some time in January to the beginning of April 2013, Edmond and his co-conspirator, Sheenequa Angel Michel, allegedly engaged in a scheme fraudulently transfer money using unauthorized “replacement cards”. Michel, a Bank of America teller, would improperly access, photograph, and create lists of “the personal identification information, including Social Security numbers,” of BofA customers. Edmond would then use that information to acquire unauthorized replacement cards, and in turn, would use those cards to make fraudulent money transfers. This resulted in a total loss of $14,243.31. A BofA representative confronted her after investigation identity-theft complaints. Michel admitted her involvement. Later she agreed to cooperate. She transferred another 90 names to Edmond, this list consisted of controlled identities provided by law enforcement. Following the transfer, agents arrested Edmond.
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In U.S. v. Hollis, the court of appeals is required to decide whether the subject of an arrest warrant may challenge the use of evidence found in plain view during a protective sweep in a third party’s residence.

In February 2011, Officers were searching for Hollis based on an outstanding Georgia arrest warrant for parole violation. In March 2011 officers surrounded an apartment alleged to be a drug house. Hollis peered out from behind the window, and the officers recognized him. The officers yelled “police” and ordered Defendant to open the door. After waiting, the officers used a battering ram to open the door and arrested Hollis. Other officers sweep of the area. They found a cosmetic bag with marijuana on a dresser, weapons under a bed, and marijuana on the kitchen counter. The officers then obtained a search warrant for the premises, in a thorough search of the apartment, they discovered about a pound of cocaine, large amounts of marijuana, crack cocaine, ecstasy, scales, and about $5,000 in cash. One of the scales had a latent fingerprint on it, latter attributed to Hollis.

A Federal grand jury indicted Hollis on two counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, one count of possession of a fire arm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and one count of felony possession of a firearm.
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