Byline: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF
7th Circuit Digests
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Juana Hernandez-Garcia, et al. v. William P. Barr
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Immigration Removal Order
Juana Hernandez-Garcia is a citizen of Guatemala. She and two of her children, Brian and Yeniser Morales-Hernandez, entered the United States without proper documentation on August 29, 2015. They immediately received Notices to Appear for removal proceedings, but those Notices did not specify a date and time for their hearing. Later, when they nonetheless appeared before an immigration judge, they conceded removability but filed requests for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention against Torture. As we detail below, first the immigration judge and then the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected those requests and ordered removal. Hernandez-Garcia, on behalf of both her children and herself, has petitioned this court for review. We conclude that the Board's decision must be upheld, and so we deny their petitions for review.
Petition denied
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Andrew L. Jackson v. Byran Bartow
Officials: KANNE, HAMILTON, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
Focus: 6th Amendment Violation
A Wisconsin trial court denied Andrew L. Jackson's request to represent himself at trial, and Jackson later pleaded guilty. He seeks a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2554, arguing that Wisconsin unreasonably applied Supreme Court precedent involving the Sixth Amendment right for competent defendants to represent themselves at trial. The district court agreed with Jackson that the Wisconsin trial court erred in ruling that he could not represent himself at trial, but it nonetheless denied his petition. It correctly concluded that under Gomez v. Berge, 434 F.3d 940 (7th Cir. 2006), Jackson waived his right to challenge that earlier ruling when he later entered an unconditional, knowing, and voluntary guilty plea. Therefore, we affirm.
Affirmed
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: James Graham, Jr., v. Arctic Zone Iceplex, LLC,
Officials: KANNE, BARRETT, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.
Focus: ADA Violation
James Graham, Jr., sued Arctic Zone Iceplex, his former employer, for discrimination. According to Graham, Arctic Zone failed to accommodate his disability and ultimately fired him for it. The district court granted summary judgment to Arctic Zone. We affirm.
Affirmed
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Joseph A. Williams
Officials: KANNE, HAMILTON, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sentencing Guidelines
Joseph Williams pleaded guilty to possessing a gun as a felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), and possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1). He appeals only his sentence, arguing that the district court erred by sentencing him under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(1), based on three prior Indiana convictions: burglary, robbery, and dealing cocaine. He challenges the use of the cocaine conviction on two grounds. First, he says the record does not show just which statute he was convicted of violating. Second, he argues that Indiana's statute on dealing cocaine, Ind. Code 35-48-4-1 (2006), is broader than the ACCA definition of a "serious drug offense." We disagree on both points and affirm the sentence under the ACCA.
Affirmed
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Rod Hunt
Case No.: 18-1197; 18-1198
Officials: KANNE, HAMILTON, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sentencing Supervised Release
While on supervised release for failing to register as a sex offender, Rod Hunt robbed a bank in Madison, Wisconsin. He pleaded guilty to bank robbery and brandishing a gun during a crime of violence. 18 U.S.C. 2113(a), 924(c). The district judge revoked his term of supervised release and sentenced him to 172 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for the new crimes. Hunt has appealed both the revocation (No. 18-1197) and the new sentence (No. 18-1198), and we have consolidated the appeals. His brief on appeal challenges only two conditions of his new term of supervised release. We affirm on those points in No. 18-1198 because in the district court Hunt waived those two challenges. His brief says nothing about the revocation of his earlier term of supervised release, and at oral argument counsel told us that Hunt has no quarrel with the revocation itself. We therefore dismiss No. 18-1197.
We AFFIRM the judgment in appeal No. 18-1198. We DISMISS appeal No. 18-1197.
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Richard Walker
Officials: RIPPLE, ROVNER, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sex Offender Registration
Richard Walker was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender between 2016 and 2017, as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. He argues that his conviction must be vacated because he did not have to register at that time. We agree. Because his obligation to registertriggered by a 1998 Colorado convictionexpired after fifteen years, we reverse the district court and vacate Walker's conviction and sentence.
Reversed and vacated
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Joseph Krell v. Andrew M. Saul
Officials: EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
Focus: ALJ Error Abuse of Discretion
We focus here on an issue involving a well-known figure in Social Security cases: the vocational expert. Specifically, we address whether an administrative law judge (ALJ) can decline to issue a subpoena requiring a vocational expert to produce his underlying data sources. Given recent Supreme Court precedent, we conclude that, here, the ALJ did not abuse his discretion by denying a request to issue such a subpoena. See Biestek v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1148 (2019).
Denied
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Delrico J. Nelson
Officials: EASTERBROOK, BARRETT, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sentencing Supervised Release
Delrico Nelson appeals the revocation of his supervised release and ensuing 60-month prison sentence. At his revocation proceeding, he waived his right to a contested hearing and stipulated that the government would be able to provide evidence to show that he violated his terms of release. Nelson now argues that his waiver was not knowing and voluntary. Because the totality of the circumstances demonstrates otherwise, we affirm the district court's judgment.
Affirmed
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Tyjuan Anderson, et al. v. City of Rockford, et al.
Case No.: 18-2211; 18-2232
Officials: FLAUM, KANNE, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Due Process Violation
Nowhere does the Constitution's promise of due process mean more than in a criminal trial. This promise translates into an obligation when police and prosecutors find themselves in possession of information that exculpates a criminal defendant. That is the cornerstone of the Supreme Court's 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland, and this case presents serious and unresolved questions whether certain detectives in Rockford, Illinois, failed to adhere to their Brady obligations when prosecuting three men for the murder of eight-year-old Demarcus Hanson on April 14, 2002. One of those detectives has since admittedunder oath no lessto engaging in serious misconduct during the investigation.
In 2013 an Illinois court found a Brady violation as part of vacating the murder convictions of Tyjuan Anderson, Lumont Johnson, and Anthony Ross after each man served more than a decade in prison. The case entered federal court when Anderson, Johnson, and Ross then brought claims for money damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and state law against the City of Rockford and a score of individual defendants. The district court granted summary judgment on all claims in favor of all defendants. We reverse. While the case entails many complexities, Anderson, Johnson, and Ross have brought forth sufficient evidence to move forward against particular defendants on particular aspects of their alleged due process violations.
Affirmed in part. Reversed and remanded in part.
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Eleazar Corral Valenzuela
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Immigration Naturalization Denied
Seventeen years after Eleazar Corral Valenzuela (Corral) was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a minor family member in Illinois state court, the United States filed a civil complaint to revoke his naturalized citizenship and cancel his certificate of naturalization. 8 U.S.C. 1451(a). The district court granted the government judgment on the pleadings, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c), after dismissing Corral's affirmative defenses. We affirm.
Affirmed
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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Refugio Ruiz-Cortez v City of Chicago, et al.
Officials: HAMILTON, BARRETT, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence
Glenn Lewellen, a dirty cop with the Chicago Police Department (CPD), arrested Refugio RuizCortez for possessing cocaine. Lewellen served as the key witness at the trial, where Ruiz-Cortez was convicted. RuizCortez then spent a decade in prison before the federal government discovered Lewellen's crimes, which included drug conspiracy, racketeering, and, according to the government, perjury at Ruiz-Cortez's trial. The government prosecuted Lewellen and moved to vacate Ruiz-Cortez's conviction, recognizing that without Lewellen's testimony...
