Topic
Every decision we've filed under Violent Crimes.
The Fifth Circuit vacated a restitution order under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act because the statute does not authorize awards for lost income or mental anguish absent bodily injury. The court held that bodily injury requires physical damage, not purely psychological harm.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence of Omar Deangelo Charleston. The court rejected arguments regarding jury pool composition, sufficiency of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and substantive reasonableness of the sentence.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court's grant of summary judgment for prison officials sued over the Eighth Amendment death of an inmate. The court held that the officers did not act with the deliberate indifference required to establish a constitutional violation.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a wrongful death claim against child welfare workers who failed to prevent a child's death while in his mother's custody. The court held that the workers' investigative errors did not create a constitutional danger or shock the conscience under the state-created danger exception.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of foreign official immunity to a former Salvadoran colonel accused of ordering the extrajudicial killing of Dutch journalists. The court held that violations of jus cogens norms, such as extrajudicial killing, do not constitute sovereign acts protected by immunity under international and domestic law.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed a district court's denial of a sentence reduction motion for a defendant convicted of second-degree murder. The appellate court found no abuse of discretion in the lower court's weighing of the defendant's egregious offense conduct and ongoing disciplinary issues against his rehabilitative efforts.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction of Robert MacLean for abusive sexual contact on a commercial flight. The panel rejected arguments regarding the exclusion of a police report and the denial of a lesser-included offense instruction.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that a convicted murderer is barred from receiving her deceased husband's retirement benefits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The court held that the final criminal conviction conclusively established the appellant as the slayer, precluding her from claiming the estate's assets.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed a sixty-month prison sentence for a defendant convicted of escaping custody. The court rejected challenges to the sentencing guidelines calculation and the substantive reasonableness of the term imposed.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed a conviction for threatening a federal official, finding sufficient evidence that a voicemail constituted a true threat. The court also held that the district court's jury instructions on the required mental state were not plainly erroneous.