U. S. Supreme Court Happenings and Favorable Federal Circuit Opinions for the Week of September 30-October 4, 2024--

U. S. Supreme Court Happenings– Week Ending October 4, 2024 –

The Court is currently in summer recess. The first conference of the new term was held on Monday, September 30, 2024. The Court returns to the bench on Monday, October 7th to start a new term that includes cases on transgender rights, ghost guns, flavored vapes, and securities fraud. One case generating interest is Hewitt v. United States, which seeks to reverse a 5th Circuit holding that First Step Act mandatory minimum changes cannot be applied to people sentenced before the Act was passed but whose cases were remanded for resentencing after the Act became law. Federal circuit courts are split on this question. a bipartisan group of senators led by Richard Durbin (D-IL), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a brief in the Hewitt case. The Senators told the Court that in “designing the First Step Act, Congress sought to ensure that individuals who committed an offense before the Act was enacted, but who were not yet subject to a sentence for that offense, would benefit from Section 403. That group, as Congress conceived of it, includes both individuals facing an initial sentencing proceeding as well as individuals facing resentencing following vacatur of a prior sentence.” The Dept of Justice has refused to argue in support of the 5th Circuit’s decision.

Favorable Federal Circuit Opinions for the Week of September 30-October 4, 2024 –

2nd Circuit

United States v. Orelein, (23-6175-cr)(2d Cir. October 3, 2024)– On December 4, 2019, Defendant-Appellant Huggins Orelien (“Orelien”) and a co-conspirator robbed a woman (the “Victim”) at gunpoint in a hotel room in the Bronx. Following a jury trial, Orelien was convicted of Hobbs Act Robbery and conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act Robbery, both in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951.1. The district court sentenced Orelien to two concurrent 96-month terms of imprisonment, one for each count, followed by three years of supervised release.2 Orelien now appeals from the judgment of conviction. He argued that, among other things, that the district court erroneously increased his offense level by two levels pursuant to § 3C1.1 of the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) for obstruction of justice. The Court agreed with Orelien that the district court did not support the two- level increase under § 3C1.1 with a sufficient finding that Orelien’s obstruction of justice was intentional and vacated the obstruction of justice enhancement and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

9th Circuit

United States v. Patterson, (No.22-50287)(9th Cir. October 1, 2024)– The panel vacated a sentence and remanded for resentencing in a case in which the district court imposed on Derrick Patterson, who pleaded guilty to Hobbs Act robbery and identity theft, a sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1 for a hate crime motivation. Patterson met the victim of the offense through Grindr, a dating application. During the encounter, Patterson took the victim’s phone and used it to withdraw money from the victim’s bank accounts. The panel agreed with Patterson that the language of the enhancement, requiring a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally selected the victim “because of” one of the protected grounds, is ambiguous. The panel held, however, that even though the word “motivation” is not in the guideline, the guideline’s title (“Hate Crime Motivation”), history, and purpose all support the conclusion that application of the enhancement requires a finding that the defendant was motivated by hate. Because the district court imposed the enhancement without finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Patterson was motivated by hate or animus, the panel vacated and remanded for resentencing.

10th Circuit

United States v. Harper, (No. 23-5091)(10th Cir. October 3, 2024)– Elga Eugene Harper was tried before a jury and convicted of kidnaping and assaulting a single victim, E.F., in Indian country. The indictment, predicated on federal jurisdiction, alleged Harper is an Indian as defined under federal law. Harper was sentenced to life in prison and judgment was entered on July 27, 2023. Harper timely appealed and raised, among other things, that the district court erred by admitting a hearsay verification letter from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to prove Harper’s Indian status as it was inadmissible hearsay and not a business record. Finding merit in hia issue on appeal, the Court reversed the convictions and sentence and remanded for the district court to vacate the judgment and conduct further proceedings.

OTHER NEWS

SUPREME COURT GRANTS CERT ON 13 NEW MATTERS, WITH A FEW OF POSSIBLE INTEREST TO OUR CAUSE--

The U. S. Supreme Court's new season, known as October Term 2024, officially gets started on Monday with oral arguments in two cases raising technical procedural issues. However, Friday felt like opening day because the Justices this morning released this big new order list detailing all the cases for which it granted cert following its "long conference" on Monday. The Court granted cert on 15 cases to deal with 13 issues. There are four cases involving criminal law issues (or criminal-law adjacent), though is seems technical procedural issues may be at the heart of a couple of them. The only pure criminal case appears to be Thompson v. United States dealing with what constitutes a "false statement" to sustain a federal bank fraud conviction. But Fourth Amendment fans will certainly be excited because Barnes v. Felix takes on, in the context of a civil rights suit, the so-called "moment of the threat" doctrine in assessing excessive force claims under the Fourth Amendment.
Technicalities come to the fore in Perttu v. Richards, another civil rights case, this one involving a state prisoner dealing with when the Prison Litigation Reform Act requires a prisoner to exhaust administrative remedies prior to securing a jury trial. And in Gutierrez v. Sanz, a capital case, deals with standing issues in conjunction with efforts by a defendant to secure post-conviction DNA testing.
An Associated Press article previewing cases on the Supreme Court docket before today suggested the Term looks like it could be "relatively sleepy." None of these new grants, either in the criminal cases or any of the others, seems to be much of a wake-up call. But with a major election and a presidential tradition transpiring in the next few months, we doubt there will be much dozing off among Justice or advocates in the Term to come.

COMMENT:

The Corrlinks/Trulinks website has been changed. A new policy effective September 30, 2024, where the BOP is only allowing groups of ten (10) emails may be sent out at a time. Alert2020 has several different emails which we have acquired through all the years we have produced and published the Alert Update. Currently, we have groups of 1000 inmates so that when we send out the weekly Alert Update, we can send out 1000 emails at a time and we do that to all the thousands of readers and our followers each week. Of course, all of our newsletter can be found on our website at: federal-alert.com. Because this new policy will make it difficult to continue to send out the newsletters. We have sent out our newsletter since Corrlinks began about 15 years ago. We have considered charging a subscription fee to cover the high costs of sending them out in groups of 10.

HOWEVER, WE WANT TO FIRST TRY AND RECRUIT PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THE LAW LIBRARIES OR WHO CAN HAVE THE NEWSLETTERS POSTED IN THE LAW LIBRARIES SO OTHER INMATES CAN MAKE COPIES OF THEM. IN THE MEAN TIME, WE WILL BE EXPERIMENTING AND SEEING WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO GET ALL OF THEM OUT. IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE ONES THAT RECEIVES A NEWSLETTER, PLEASE SHARE IT WITH YOUR FELLOW INMATES. WE APPRECIATE YOUR HELP.

We believe that President Biden will be granting a lot of clemencies, commutations and pardons before the end of his term as part of his legacy. As such, we can help you file these documents and make a showing before Biden leaves office. It is anyone’s guess what will happen after the election. Alert2020 has also been successful in the past in having clemencies and commutations granted. If you are interested regarding these remedies, please contact us ASAP because time is running out.

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