MONEY LAUNDERING ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 320; (#06-1005, 06-02-08) Affirmed judgment of Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversing conviction of money laundering. A four-justice plurality held that revenue that an illicit business uses to pay its operating expenses does not constitute “proceeds” for purposes of the federal money-laundering statute's prohibition against using criminal proceeds to engage in transactions designed to promote the unlawful activity. Only net profits, not gross receipts, can qualify as “proceeds” from an illegal gambling enterprise. Defendants are entitled to the benefit of the rule of lenity because the language of the statute provides just as much reason to think “proceeds” means receipts as to think it means “profits.” View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. MONEY LAUNDERING ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 333 (#06-1456, 06-02-08) Reversed judgment of Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming conviction of money laundering. The federal money laundering statute cannot be satisfied solely by evidence that the funds were concealed during transport. Prosecutors must show that the purpose of the transportation of the cash out of the country was to conceal the nature, ownership, or other specified attributes of the tainted cash, not just that one of the attributes was concealed to achieve the transportation. However, the statue does not require the government to prove an attempt to give tainted cash “an appearance of legitimate wealth.” View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. SENTENCING AND PUNISHMENT--Sentence Enhancement ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 246; (#06-1646, 05-19-08) Reversed judgment of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming decision of district court refusing to apply federal enhancement provision. The “maximum term of imprisonment. . . prescribed by law” for a prior state conviction used as a predicate for an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is the maximum term to which the offender was exposed under an applicable state recidivist sentencing provision. A prior conviction with a minor sentence not long enough to qualify for federal enhancement can nonetheless trigger the federal enhancement if the state recidivist statute enhanced the state sentence to the ACCA threshold. Congress must have understood that the maximum penalty prescribed by state law in some cases would be increased by state recidivism provisions. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. DEFENSES--Void for Vagueness DEFENSES--Void for Overbreadth ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 255; (#06-694, 05-19-08) Reversed judgment of Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals finding a section of the federal pornography statute unconstitutional. The section of the 2003 Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act (PROTECT) that criminalizes the pandering or solicitation of child pornography does not cover so much protected speech that it is overbroad. The statute requires proof that the speech at issue be accompanied by a transfer of child pornography from one person to another. Offers to engage in illegal transactions are categorically excluded from First Amendment protection. The statute also requires that the defendant actually have held the subjective belief that the material was child pornography. Nor is the statute facially vague in violation of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. EXPLOSIVES, POSSESSION ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 268; (#07-455, 05-19-08) Reversed judgment of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversing conviction of carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony. The federal statute prohibiting the carrying of explosives “during the commission of” any federal felony offense does not require a relationship between the act of carrying the explosives and the underlying felony. The government need prove only a temporal connection between the carrying of the explosives and the other crime. Because the defendant had the explosives when he made false statements to a customs official, he carried them “during” the commission of that offense. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. JURY--Conduct of Voir Dire ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 209; (#06-11612, 05-12-08) Affirmed judgment of Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming drug convictions. Express consent by defense counsel suffices to permit a magistrate judge to preside over jury selection in a felony trial. Neither Article II of the Constitution nor the Federal Magistrates Act requires the personal consent of the defendant. Accepting a magistrate judge at jury selection is a tactical choice “well suited” for the attorney's decision. Requiring a defendant to personally consent on the record would burden the trial process, with little added protection for the defendant. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. ARREST--Probable Cause ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 83 CrL 159; (#06-1082, 04-23-08) Reversed judgment of Virginia Supreme Court reversing conviction of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. State police do not violate the Fourth Amendment when they arrest a suspect and conduct a search incident to that arrest on the basis of probable cause to believe the suspect has committed a misdemeanor for which state law does not authorize a custodial arrest. Warrantless arrests for crimes committed in the presence of an arresting officer are reasonable under the Constitution. A state's decision to provide more protection to suspects than is required by the Constitution does not render less-restrictive options constitutionally unreasonable. A contrary conclusion would make the constitutionality of arrests vary from place to place. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. MISCELLANEOUS--International Law ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 82 CrL 670, (#06-984, 03-25-08) Affirmed judgment of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals holding that President Bush overstepped his constitutional authority by directing state courts to give effect to a decision issued by the International Court of Justice. Texas is not bound by the ruling of the International Court of Justice in Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v United States), 2004 ICJ 12 (March 31, 2008), that 51 Mexican nationals sentenced to death in state court are entitled to reconsideration of their convictions and sentences on the basis of their claims that their consular-notification rights under the Vienna Convention were violated. The Avena decision is not directly enforceable as domestic law in a state court in the United States. The Vienna Convention is not a self-executing treaty, and ICJ judgments were not meant to be enforceable in domestic courts. The president's memorandum directing the Texas court to give effect to Aveno does not alter the conclusion that the IJC ruling is not binding in state and federal courts. The President has an array of political and diplomatic means to enforce international obligations, but unilaterally converting a non-self-executing treaty into a self-executing one is not among them. The State of Texas is not required to provide review without regard to its usual procedural default rules. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. JURY--Exclusion of Jurors by Race, Gender, Age JURY--Constitutional--Equal Protection ___ US ___; ___ SCt ___; ___ LEd2d ___ 82 CrL 695, #06-10119, 03-19-08 Reversed judgment of Louisiana Supreme Court affirming conviction of first-degree murder and rejecting defendant's Batson claim. The trial court clearly erred in rejecting defendant's challenge under Batson v Kentucky, 476 US 79 (1986), to the prosecutor's peremptory strike of a black juror. The prosecutor offered two race-neutral reasons for the strike: the juror “looked nervous” and he might agree to a lesser charge in order to avoid the penalty phase and thus shorten the trial so he could get back to his college studies. The explanation was “by itself unconvincing.” The trial judge failed to find that the juror was nervous, and it was highly speculative that the juror might have been inclined to convict the defendant of a lesser offense, especially where the jury was told that the trial would be short. Moreover, the prosecutor failed to excuse other white jurors who had conflicting obligations at least as pressing as the juror in question. The pretextual explanation for the strike gave rise to an inference of discriminatory intent. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site. RETROACTIVITY HABEAS CORPUS--Federal #06-8273, February 20, 2008 82 CrL 550 Reversed judgment of Minnesota Supreme Court affirming conviction of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Case below: 718 NW2d 451 (2006). The rule of Teague v Lane, 489 US 288 (1989), does not limit a state court's authority to give broader effect to new constitutional rules of procedure. Teague prohibits the retroactive application of new constitutional rules of criminal procedure on federal habeas corpus review unless they place certain conduct beyond the states' power to prohibit, or they represent “watershed” principles of criminal procedure that implicate the fundamental fairness of trials. This was tailored to the unique context of federal habeas and has no bearing on whether the states can provide broader relief in their own postconviction proceedings. View fulltext of this opinion from the FindLaw Web Site.  Send a message to Criminal Defense Resource Center
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