Federal Criminal Law & Process – Page 46 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Corporate Criminal Liability, Reconsideration of Suppression Rulings, and More

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:April 11, 2009
Post category:Circuit Splits Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Seventh Circuit

The Seventh Circuit had four new opinions in criminal cases this week. The cases addressed the mens rea requirements for corporate criminal liability, procedural aspects of suppression hearings, child pornography sentencing, and conditional guilty pleas. Taking the cases in that order:

In United States v. L.E. Myers Co. (No. 07-2464), the defendant corporation was convicted of criminal OSHA violations in connection with the electrocution death of one its employees. The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Sykes) reversed and remanded for a new trial in light of erroneous jury instructions. The errors related to mens rea issues. Myers was convicted under a statute that bases liability on the knowing creation of a hazardous condition in knowing violation of an OSHA requirement.

The problem is that a corporation, as a legal construct, cannot really know anything; the only way a corporation knows something is to the extent the law is willing to impute the knowledge of particular employees to the corporation. Seventh Circuit precedent indicated that “corporations ‘know’ what their employees who are responsible for an aspect of the business know.” More specifically, the corporation was said to know what an employee knows if the employee has a duty to report that knowledge to someone higher up in the corporation.

Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Crook Impersonates Cop, Cop Impersonates Teenager

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:March 29, 2009
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Seventh Circuit

The Seventh Circuit had only two new opinions in criminal cases last week, with both focusing on sentencing issues. The first, United States v. Abbas, clarified the harmless error doctrine as it relates to mistaken sentencing calculations. The second, United States v. Nagel, considered the constitutionality of a ten-year mandatory minimum for enticement of a minor. By some coincidence, both cases involved impersonation.

In Abbas (No. 07-3866), the defendant was convicted of several crimes, including impersonating an FBI agent. Falsely claiming the power to make various immigration and criminal problems go away, Abbas tricked several desperate victims into paying him for assistance. A jury found him guilty of a number of charged offenses, but acquitted him of extortion under color of official right in violation of the Hobbs Act. Curiously, though, the district court judge sentenced Abbas based on the federal sentencing guideline for extortion under color of official right. (As I discussed with my Sentencing students just last week, the guidelines permit defendants to be punished for crimes of which they have been acquitted. Sound strange? You would not be alone in so thinking!)

On appeal, Abbas argued that “extortion under color of official right” only applies when someone who is actually a public official abuses his authority, and does not cover private citizens who are merely pretending to be public officials. In effect, Abbas argued that he was really only guilty of fraud, not the more serious offense of extortion. And, had he been sentenced for fraud, his guidelines range would have been only 15-21 months, instead of the actual 24-30 months.

The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Tinder) agreed . . . but still declined to order a resentencing. Abbas won the battle, but not the war.

Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection and Improper Closing Arguments

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:March 23, 2009
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Race & Law Seventh Circuit

The Seventh Circuit had three new opinions in criminal cases last week. The most interesting was United States v. McMath (No. 08-2316), which featured the Seventh Circuit’s most extended discussion to date of Snyder v. Louisana, 128 S. Ct. 1203 (2008). In my view, the Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder represented a real break-through in the Court’s on-again/off-again efforts to eliminate racial bias from the jury-selection process. In McMath (which was, coincidentally, decided on the exact one-year anniversary of Snyder), the Seventh Circuit seemed to recognize the significance of Snyder and awarded the defendant a remand for further consideration of the racial bias issue in the district court. McMath also included an interesting discussion of questionable closing arguments made by the prosecutor.

McMath’s jury-selection claim centered on alleged racial bias in the prosecutor’s use of peremptory strikes. In Batson v. Kentucky, of course, the Supreme Court made clear that prosecutors are prohibited from removing potential jurors from a case on account of their race. Here are the relevant facts from McMath: